The Three (15 page)

“That’s a 1965 Ford Mustang,” Elin said. At Anna’s surprised look, she explained, “My dad taught me everything he knew about cars. He had a lot of books.” She folded her hands under her chin to continue watching.

“It’s a cool car,” Kael murmured from her spot on the sleeping bag beside Elin. She also lay on her stomach, head propped on an upturned palm.

“Yeah, it is.” Anna sat cross-legged next to the projector, ready to crank it up again when the power ran down.

Outside, hard rain pounded against the windows, providing a muted soundtrack for the silent film. The movie changed from a scene of the young man and his car to the same man and a running, jumping dog.

He held a disc high above the dog’s head, and every once in a while he would toss it so that it glided through the air. Most of the time, the dog would catch it in his mouth and return it to the man.

Anna grinned. “A guy called Jack in my tribe had a dog that survived the sickness somehow…and he was really sweet. We called him Lucky.”

“Could he do that?” Kael asked. Her eyes were glued to the screen, where the dog leapt into the air and snagged the disc between its teeth.

Anna smiled at the wonder in Kael’s gaze, so much more like Elin than Anna had ever seen her. “He would fetch a stick if you threw it, but he was too slow to catch it in the air.”

“I think it’d be really cool to train an animal to hunt with me.”

“You’d be good at that,” Elin said.

“Hell, yeah, you would,” Anna agreed. Kael’s good at just about everything he does. The thought made her flush as she considered it on an increasingly familiar level. From the way Elin acted when he had his hand between her legs earlier, sex is one of them.

Kael grunted, but her eyes stayed glued to the movie. The young man had been joined by a number of other young men in some kind of game. They ran around one another, tossing a ball and running it down the length of the grassy field where they played. Anna watched aggressive tackles from players on the opposing side stop the ball carrier time and again, sending them all crashing down to the ground in writhing piles.

“Okay, Garrett would have loved that game.”

Elin guffawed, familiar with Anna’s anecdotes about the boy-crazy young man. “I don’t know what else there is to like about football.”

“It looks pretty fun to me,” Kael said.

Elin bumped Kael’s shoulder with hers. “Boys.”

They watched the young man participate in a ceremony that Anna recognized as a high school graduation, and then they watched the party afterwards in which the camera followed him around and an older woman beamed at him proudly. Anna felt a tug deep in her stomach at the sight of something she barely remembered in her own life. Her uncle had never looked at her like that. In his eyes, she was a constant source of shame.

“His mother,” Kael whispered, sharing a quick look of sympathetic loss with Anna.

From the graduation party, the video moved into a much darker scene, that of the young man dressed in a military uniform and smiling as he had in front of his Mustang. Pride radiated from his lean body, and he held himself like a swaggering hero. Anna dropped her eyes, sick from the sight of the uniform. If there was one thing she had learned to fear, it was war, and the soldiers who waged it.

The film reel ran to its end, flapping in the air upon each revolution until Anna stopped the projector. Kael cleared her throat, awkward.

Elin sighed deeply and deposited a kiss on Kael’s temple. “Well, I thought it was pretty good up until the bummer ending. I think he should’ve found a girl and settled down. That going--to-war story is so played out.”

“I agree,” Anna said. “Maybe there’s a better one in this box.” She smiled at her companions, allowing her eyes to linger on their contrasting forms. Kael was dressed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, stretched out tall and lanky on her belly. Her body was lean muscle, solid, with narrow hips. Elin lay in just a tank top and her panties, all soft curves and warmth. Anna desired both so intensely that she felt weak.

She selected a reel of film at random and loaded it into the projector, cranking the handle to charge the machine. As she worked, she watched Kael’s hand tickle the back of Elin’s upper thigh. Starting the movie with the press of a button, she dragged her eyes from Kael and Elin to the images being projected on the wall. At once, there was complete silence in the room as they all watched what Anna had discovered.

Children. Three of them, tearing shiny paper from boxes stacked beneath a Christmas tree. The imagery was familiar to Anna. Christmas was something nearly everyone in her tribe had celebrated in some way.

“Christmas.” Elin’s eyes shone with emotion as she watched the screen, seemingly lost in her own memories of the past.

A little boy sat beneath the Christmas tree with a miniature guitar that looked like it had been designed specifically for a child. His upper body swayed back and forth as he strummed the strings, and his mouth opened and closed in silent song. The other two children, both long-haired girls, danced in a circle for the camera. Each had a brand-new doll clutched in eager hands to serve as a dancing partner.

Anna stared at the images in rapt fascination. It had been over a year since she’d seen a child, and the movie brought home some memories she had tried to push aside. There had been eight children born into her tribe over the past twenty years. Growing up, she and Garrett had been two of only four pre-sickness children raised by the tribe. The new births in the years since the sickness had been a sign of hope, if not a source of constant worry for those charged with protecting the tribe and its future.

She wondered what had happened to the children that day. It wasn’t the first time she’d had the thought.

Janice and Owen always said they would hide the kids if trouble came, but Anna hadn’t seen whether they got away. Swallowing, she watched the carefree innocence of the children in the movie, not sure whether she preferred to think that the children she remembered were captured or just killed.

Elin released a wistful sigh. “I’d like to raise children someday.”

Anna swung her eyes over to Elin and tried to imagine her lover as a mother and found that it wasn’t very difficult. She’d be wonderful with a child.

“No.” Kael stared at the movie in silence, her eyes hard and expressionless, her face tight with pain. “There is no way I will ever help bring a child into this world. No child deserves that.”

“No?” Elin responded sharply. “Since when do you get to just tell me what’s going to happen? I thought we talked about things.”

Kael turned dark eyes to Elin. “Some things aren’t worth talking about.”

Anna stayed quiet, uncertain of her own feelings on the subject. On the one hand, Elin’s desire to raise a child was so utterly Elin-like that she found it hard to imagine her lover never getting that chance, and especially when she would do such a good job. On the other hand, Anna wasn’t sure what kind of legacy past generations had left for the three of them, let alone what they could leave for children. Maybe it is best that we just…stop. There’s so much pain in the world that I don’t want a child to have to feel.

“Not worth talking about?” Elin murmured. “Something that I want—that I’ve dreamed about—isn’t worth talking about?”

Kael’s eyes flashed with anger. “If you think I’m letting some man fuck you so that you can have a baby, then—”

“Then what?” Elin’s shoulders rose and fell with her rapid breathing, a sign that she was more upset than Anna had ever seen her. “And who said I needed to actually have a baby? I’m not talking about having a baby, necessarily, just raising a child—”

“Same difference.” Kael sat up and scooted backwards until she leaned against the couch, arms folded defensively. “And the answer is still no.”

“So your issue isn’t with the idea of a man fucking me, as if there weren’t other ways to solve that particular problem—”

“My ‘issue,’ “ Kael interrupted in a cold voice, “is that it’s a completely selfish desire that I want no part in.”

Elin recoiled as if Kael had slapped her across the face. Anna watched the hurt flash in her lover’s eyes, and it elicited her protective instincts. If there’s one thing you could never call Elin, it’s selfish.

“Kael,” Anna murmured. When Kael gave her a cold stare, she said, “You know that’s not fair.”

“I’m selfish?” Elin’s eyes filled with tears, even as her face grew hard with anger.

“Wanting a child is selfish,” Kael said. “What do we have to offer a child?”

“Love,” Elin replied.

On the wall, the movie faded away when the projector ran out of charge. Anna made no move to crank it up again.

“Love?” Kael scoffed. “Well, what does the world have to offer a child?”

“The same thing it offers us. I thought you agreed that the world isn’t a wholly awful place.” Elin shifted back to sit against the couch, a couple of feet from Kael. Their separation seemed far vaster to a silent Anna. “Loving you, loving Anna. Watching the sun rise in the morning or swimming in a cool lake on a hot summer day. There are a million things to love about life, and you know it.”

“Just because it isn’t wholly awful, that doesn’t mean we should start ushering kids into it,” Kael said. “Your child will never have a Christmas like that, Elin. That’s gone now. Over. What do you think your child is going to have to celebrate?”

“My child?” Elin stared at Kael as if looking at a stranger.

“Not mine.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “I refuse to watch a child grow up in this world. Do you really want to have to worry about what’s going to happen to your little girl when she grows up? Or about what your little boy could become?”

“But if there was a child who was already here, who needed someone—”

Kael wasn’t about to listen. “What about you?” she asked Anna. “You want to watch a child grow up so she can be gang-raped on the ground like you were?”

Shamed, Anna looked at the floor. Hot tears stung her eyes, and she blinked, desperately trying to clear her vision. She didn’t want Kael to see how much the comment had cut her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Kael?” Elin’s voice rose. “How could you say something like that? What did Anna ever do to you?”

Anna couldn’t meet Kael’s gaze, but watched her tense jaw work in silence, and her fists clench and unclench in her lap. After a moment of awkward silence, Kael stood and strode over to her discarded blue jeans. She tugged them on angrily.

“Where are you going?” Elin asked, tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

“Out,” Kael said in a rough voice.

“Don’t go far, please,” Elin whispered.

“I won’t.” Without turning around, Kael left the room, and a few moments later a door opened and closed in another part of the house.

“Did he just go outside in this rain?” Elin’s shoulders shook, and she lifted a hand to cover her eyes.

“I think so.” Anna had never seen Elin anywhere close to this upset. She gathered her into a gentle embrace.

Elin buried her face in Anna’s neck. “I know it’s silly to cry, but we’ve never fought like that before. I feel sick to my stomach.”

“He was really upset,” Anna said. It was an understatement. Kael had looked transported to another place with her pain and anger. “I can’t blame him, given what he’s experienced. Having to worry about his own child maybe going through some of the things he did…I’m sure it’s a scary thought.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he said to you. There was no reason for that.”

Anna focused on one of a myriad of freckles on Elin’s chin. “I’m okay.”

“He hurt you.”

“Yes, he did.”

“He hurt me, too,” Elin said in a quiet, sorrowful voice. “Do you think I’m selfish?”

“You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever known.”

“Do you think wanting a child is selfish?”

Anna hesitated, then shrugged cautiously. “I don’t know. I think if you wanted to adopt a child who needed someone, then no, not at all. As far as bringing new life into this world…sometimes I wonder what people think those children have to look forward to. Sometimes I wonder if I would have chosen to be born, knowing what I do now.”

Elin’s eyes turned sad. “Oh, Anna, I hope you don’t mean that. Every moment I’ve spent with you has made me happy to be alive.”

Anna hastened to explain, heart stuttering at the thought of never having lived her time with Elin. “Me too, every moment. Well, except maybe the first ten minutes or so.” She managed to crack a brief smile.

“Definitely once I bathed with you that first time.”

Elin chuckled. “You take the good with the bad, I guess. But doesn’t the good make it all worthwhile?”

Anna considered Elin’s question. The bad times in her life had once left her wishing to die; the good times she’d found with Elin and Kael made her grateful that nobody had listened to her wishes. Fear tugged at her gut at the thought of losing either Elin or Kael like she had lost Garrett, but fear wasn’t enough to keep her from basking in the joy of them for as long as she could.

“I guess so,” she said. I hope so.

“I would be just as happy adopting a child in need,” Elin said. “Maybe happier. I don’t need to get pregnant and have a baby. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want that, maybe, but it’s not about that for me. I tried to make Kael understand that.”

“I know you did. He just wasn’t listening.” Lightning flashed, and both women turned their heads to gaze out the window at the pouring rain. “For the record, I’m not sure I’d be okay with a man being with you, either,”

Anna said.

Elin gave her a gentle shove. “The sickness may have taken us back to the dark ages in some ways, but there are options when it comes to inseminating a woman. We could work around that, if need be.”