Drought (23 page)

“I’ve never …,” I say. “I don’t know.…”

Ford smiles, his face half shadowed, half bright in the light of the movie playing. “That’s okay.”

He tugs his shirt back on, then he rests his arm on the back of his seat. I straighten, tighten my clothes. Then I rest my head on his shoulder. We stare at the people on the screen, in their jewel-bright clothes, doing things I only half understand. Ford’s fingers gently trace a circle on my shoulder.

“You don’t have to go back,” he says.

All the heat still stirring in my body freezes. “I do,” I tell him. “I have to go back.”

Ford’s hand on my shoulder stops. I feel his arm go tense. He swallows hard and looks out the window.

“They need me,” I tell him.

“Darwin can live with one less pair of hands,” he says, still looking away from me.

I reach up to touch his cheek—but still, that feels wrong, to be close to any part of him. Instead I lean forward and cross my arms tight. “They need the Water.”

“You mean your blood.” His voice is flat.

“Yes.”

“It’s heresy, Ruby. And it’s … crazy. Your blood isn’t magic.” His voice is low, but hard.

“You don’t have to believe me.” I edge away from him until I’m as far away as I can get, pressed up against the window on my side.

“Look, Ruby …” His voice is gentle now, and he reaches out to take my hand. I let him hold it but keep it limp. I think about the strong girl in the movie. She would have snatched her hand away and stalked off to another boy.

But there is no other boy in my heart. I only want to be here.

I can’t, though.

“Take me home,” I tell him.

“I’d take care of you. I’d do anything for you,” Ford pleads.

I look down at the empty box of spaghetti, the empty rows meant for modern people’s cars—it all seems wrong. I’ve tried something I’m not meant to have.

“Take me home,” I whisper. “Please.”

“Unbelievable.” Ford picks up the popcorn bucket and flings it out the window. The white scatters everywhere like snow.

Did he ever think I would go back? Had he planned to put me in his truck and never see the Congregation again?

“You think you can control me,” I say. “Like Darwin West.”

“Don’t ever compare me to that man,” he says.

“You want to tell me what to do. You want me to obey,” I say.

Ford twists the key, and the truck’s engine roars to life. “One more day, Ruby. One more day and I’m gone. No more chances.”

“I know,” I say. Tears blur my eyes. Does he think I don’t realize this is all coming to an end? That the rest of my life is before me, the same as all the other years before I met him?

“I thought you wanted me,” he says.

“I do,” I tell him.

But the Congregation needs me. That is where my promises lie.

“Doesn’t seem like you want me much,” Ford mutters.

We don’t wave at Chuck when we leave the movie behind, even though he leans out of the window and waves wildly, with a big grin on his face.

We don’t talk all the way home.

Chapter 33

Ford stops the truck when we reach the edge of Darwin West’s property.

“One last chance,” he says.

Then he takes my hand, softly, and traces a circle on my skin. He doesn’t look at me. He looks only at our hands, joined.

I can’t speak. I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes. I listen to the rumble of the truck, inhale the stale spaghetti smell. None of this is my world. None of it feels right.

“They’d die without me,” I say.

Ford lets out a long breath. His hand falls away, and the truck moves forward again. The road feels so bumpy after being on the faster, smooth ones.

“You don’t have to go all the way to my cabin,” I tell him.

“It was a date. That’s how you do it,” he says.

I don’t want to remember him angry. “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“I know.”

Now that we are close to the cabin, he switches off his lights. The truck slows and then we are there. The cabin looks so much smaller now. I notice the roof, half its shingles sideways or missing, and the crooked door with mold growing on the parts that never see sun.

“When will you be gone?” I ask.

“Two days,” he says. “At most.”

“So … good-bye,” I tell him.

He turns to face me, and I face him, even though every part of me screams: get out, hurry away, make sure nobody sees you.

When we kiss, my tears slide between our lips. Ford wipes them away when we part.

“I could’ve saved you,” he says.

“Otto saves,” I tell him.

“Right.” His hand goes to his necklace, for a moment, and then he comes around to open my door.

As soon as I step outside, I sense it: someone is out here, someone besides us. I don’t know if I saw a shadow move, or heard breathing, but I’m certain.

“Careful,” I whisper.

“What?” Ford says, far too loudly, looking around.

I stand still, as still as a hunted animal. But I don’t see anything, hear anything. My skin crawls with being watched, though.

“Go,” I tell Ford.

“Not until you’re inside,” he answers.

Yes. Yes, inside I’ll be safe, safer than out here. I want to kiss him again. I want to say good-bye. But I only raise my hand and half run, half tumble down the hill to the cabin.

It’s dark inside; the sun hasn’t started to come up yet, and I extinguished the lamp before I crept out to be with Ford. I stand still to let my eyes adjust; in the silence I hear the truck’s engine grow to a rumble, then gravel spitting from under its tires. Ford is leaving.

A sob pushes out of me. I take careful steps to Mother’s bed, barely visible in the near black.

“I did this for you. I did this for the Congregation,” I say. More tears spill over my cheeks.

When I kneel to touch her on the floor, my hand passes through where her body should be. I feel only damp blankets. Has she moved? I stand and check her bed—but no.

Someone took her. I left for the first and last night in my life, and someone took her. Darwin West, I warrant, breaking the very few rules he ever followed.

I burst out the cabin door. I’ll get Boone. I’ll get ten men. We’ll go to Darwin’s house and we’ll save her; we will, I don’t care if we’re not supposed to fight back.

Then, a voice.

“I’m over here, Ruby.” Mother’s voice? Impossible. I scramble away from the sound, coming around the corner of the cabin.

I’m halfway up the hill when the person speaks again.

“Stop running, Ruby.”

It is Mother.

I spin around, looking for her. Everything is dark, and she says nothing more. But then I spy a sliver of white fluttering near the road. She’s in the bushes, only feet away from where the truck was parked.

Part of me wants to run. I’m afraid of what she saw, what she heard. But where would I go? I made my choice when I let Ford’s truck drive away.

“Mother?” I ask. My voice quavers. “Please come out.”

“Come here,” she says. The white fluttering grows, and I see now that she’s waving her arm at me.

What did she see, so close to the truck? What did she hear?

Slowly, I come close to her. She’s got one arm wrapped around a slim pine tree trunk, her face as pale as the bloodstained gown she wears. But she stands, and breathes.

“Do you still hurt?” I ask her.

“Not enough. You healed me well,” Mother says. “Too well.”

“I’m not sorry you’re better.” I can’t think of what else to say. So I offer her my hand. “Let me take you back to bed.”

“Your blood grows stronger every day, Ruby. That’s what I think. How else could I have healed so fast tonight?” She sighs and lays her head against the trunk, the brown of her hair blending until all I can see is the unnatural white of her face.

“I made a lot of Water,” I tell her.

“Still, you didn’t think I’d wake so soon, did you?”

No. I thought I could go away, and come back. I was more worried about Darwin West catching us.

Mother shakes her head. “There’s no room for romance here, Ruby.”

So she saw something—so she knows enough. My stomach feels like a rock. My arm drops slowly, slowly, as if passing through mud.

“And with an Overseer.” Her body slumps a little, and she grabs at the trunk with her other arm.

“Mother!” I wrap my arms around her chest and pull her upright. She twists against me, not wanting my touch, I think.

“You’ll let go of me now,” she says.

I obey, but I do not step back. “Let me bring you inside. You’re still healing.”

“They beat us. They starve us. And you … you
kiss
one?”

“Yes,” I whisper, familiar shame filling me. She’s telling me the same thing I’ve told myself.

“Never did I think, Ruby. Never did I think you would betray your family.”

“I didn’t betray us. I only … I only wanted … love.”

“To think I worried about what’d you do with Jonah Pelling,” she says.

“Ford’s a good person,” I tell her.

“No. No, he’s not.” Mother fixes a grim stare on me. “What did you tell him, Ruby? What does he know?”

I told him I craved escape. I told him I loved the short bristle of his hair. I told him I knew what it felt like to lose someone you loved, inch by inch.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” I say.

“Your blood? Our age? Does he know these things?”

“Only my blood,” I whisper. “But he doesn’t even believe it’s sacred.”

“Ruby! Your greatest secret, gone,” she says.

“He’s leaving,” I tell her. “He’s leaving for good. None of this matters.”

“And you?” she asks, her voice rasping, dryer than bark peeling off birch.

First I don’t understand. “And me? What do you mean?”

“Don’t mock me.” Mother grips the tree and turns so her back is to it, both hands behind her for support. Then she inches up, up, until she is standing very straight.

We are exactly the same height now.

The force of her stare pushes me back a step, then another.

“You’ll go with him, won’t you?” Mother says.

“No. No!” I look down the road, imagining the taillights I didn’t even see—because I was already in the cabin looking for Mother, worrying about her. “I’m a Congregant.”

“And a fine, fine young lady in love.” Mother’s laugh is terrible: low, bitter. She doesn’t think I’m fine. She thinks I’m soiled.

“I don’t—” But no. I can’t tell her I don’t love him, even though it’s the only thing I can say that might help.

So I swallow and give the best truth I can. “It doesn’t matter if I love him.”

“Does he give you pretty things? Trinkets, or food?”

I think of the spaghetti, and the popcorn, and his kisses. He gave me far better than trinkets.

“He’s kind to me,” I tell her.

“It’s far more than that, isn’t it, Ruby?” She moves as if to fold her arms, her usual powerful stance when she questions me—but when she lets go of her support, her knees betray her and she sinks to the ground.

I plunge to the forest floor next to her. “You’re not well enough to be outside,” I urge.

“No. But I woke and my daughter was gone.” Mother bows her head for a moment, and when she looks at me again, her eyes are bright with tears. “I thought Darwin took you. I was … I was walking to his cabin.”

“I thought he took
you,”
I tell her.

“He could have, couldn’t he?” She gives her eyes a vicious wipe and looks away from me.

As long as my mother has been conscious, I do not think I have ever seen her so vulnerable before. It kills every bit of fight in me.

“I’m sorry. I never should have left you, not even for a few hours. Not for a moment.” I grasp both her hands and fold them together over my heart. “Please forgive me.”

She lets me hold her for a moment, then finds the strength to yank her hands away. “I can’t forgive a betrayal.”

“It was for one night. It was a good-bye.”

“You sold yourself for trinkets,” Mother says.

That lights anger in me. “I would never—”

“I saw your kiss. I saw how he watched when you walked down the hill. That boy desires you, Ruby. You made that happen.”

If she’s trying to make me feel worse, it doesn’t work. A small, proud flame lights in me. After we fought, after I put him aside, he still desires me.

That will carry me through many a long, hard day.

“He’s left,” I say simply.

“And what did he leave you with?” She looks down at my waist, then back up.

This time I do not miss her meaning. “We didn’t do that. Not like—” I stop before I say it. But she finishes the sentence for me.

“Not like me? Not like Otto and me?”

I nod.

Her slap hits me so hard, my head snaps sideways. Overhead, something flutters away. A bird, I suppose.

She hasn’t hit me since I was very small and I crept away from her. It was a game to me. She thought I had fallen into the Lake.

“Don’t ever leave without telling me,” she said then.

I’ve sinned the same way again.

“Sneaking about with an Overseer is
nothing
like what I had with your father,” Mother says.

“He’s not like the others,” I tell her.

“I’ve seen him lift his chain. I’ve seen him level a gun against us,” she answers.

“He hated every bit of it. And now he’s leaving, and I’ll never see him again.” I can’t help the tears that start down my face, even if it makes Mother snort with disgust. “He won’t tell anyone about me, Mother, I know it.”

“I wish it were true, Ruby. I wish it were true.” Mother puts both hands behind her and tries to stand, but her legs won’t hold her.

“Let me help you,” I tell her.

“Seems I’ll need to get by on my own, soon,” she says.

“Never. Never!” I cry.

Mother lets out a sigh and stops her attempts to stand. She tips her head back and looks up at the trees. “I hate the woods. I’ve hated them from the day I walked into them, and I’ll hate them until the day I walk out of them.”

“We all hate it here,” I say.

“I’ve dreamed of leaving. I’ve dreamed of fighting. But I know what we’re meant to do, Ruby,” she says. “You know it too.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“We are meant to wait, and pray, and endure. That is all,” she says.

There’s no way to make her understand. All I can do is show her it’s done. All I can do is stay by her side and remember my promises.

So I don’t argue anymore. I offer her my hand. “Let me take you inside. Please, Mother.”

She considers me for a moment, then nods once, short. When I pull her up, she groans. My hand slides against something wet along her back.

“You’re bleeding again,” I tell her. “Come.”

“Wait.” Mother shakes me off. She is barely standing, tilted to one side, her gown shaking from her body’s trembling.

“Promise me first,” Mother says.

I bow my head.

“Promise me you’ll never leave,” she says.

Anger stirs in me. Didn’t I already tell her that? Haven’t I already shown it? I made my choice.

But I say it. “I promise. Now … please.” I look up and hold out a hand.

“Promise me you’ll never look at him again,” she says.

He’s in my memory forever and gone in two days. I keep my eyes level, meeting hers, not looking away. “I promise.”

“Promise me you’ll forget all about him, Ruby.”

I look away from her.

“If you can’t do that … how can I trust you again?” she asks.

“You can trust me,” I tell her.

“How can I love you?” she whispers.

My breath stops.

“Promise,” Mother says.

I want to say it. I open my mouth to say it. But the wind shifts, and the smell of Ford is around me for a moment, caught in my hair and my clothes.

Never will I forget him.

“I can’t,” I tell her.

Her body slumps, but she does not fall.

“Come inside,” I say.

She shakes her head.

I want to leave her here, go to my bed, close my eyes, and forget every bit of this for the last few hours. But there’s no way I can leave her here, even after what she’s said.

“Then we’ll lie here,” I tell her.

I kneel at her feet and brush away the sticks and pinecones that surround her. Then I stand and press against her shoulders, gently. All the strength is gone from her. She sinks to her knees, then slumps onto the ground.

Mother curls into a tight ball, and I round my body around hers. Her breathing is ragged at first, and then it erodes into gasps, and then sobs. Her body shakes with them.

“Promise me you’ll be here in the morning,” she whispers.

“I promise,” I tell her.

Her body goes limp.

I wrap my arms around her tighter and stare into the woods, waiting for dawn.