Page 80 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“They smoked six cigarettes,” Daniel remarks, counting the butts. His face is calm, expressionless, while I’m struggling to conceal my terror. “They must have been here for quite a while.”
“Who still has any cigarettes?” Kerry demands, but her usual wry insouciance falls flat; she looks too scared. The old barn is only a quarter-mile from the cottage. They might as well have been in our living room.
“They were watching,” Daniel states. “That’s why they must have smoked so many. They stood here for half an hour at least and watched us.” He glances up at the old apple tree, and nods slowly. “They must have been up there.”
“What—” I want to sound scornful, but I don’t.
Quickly, with an agility I didn’t realize my husband possessed, he scrambles up in the tree. “You can see the cottage from here,” he tells us. “And the deck, and the beach, and the dock. You can pretty much see everything.” He speaks flatly,without any emotion, but Kerry and I stare at each other, completely chilled.
We’ve been discovered. I always feared this would happen, but I let myself be lulled into a sense of security, simply because I wanted it so much.
“Maybe it’s just some rando,” Kerry says, without any conviction. Neither Daniel nor I bother to reply.
He shimmies down the tree and brushes the dirt off his hands. “We’ll have to take some precautions.”
“What precautions?” I ask, torn between eagerness and despondency. I want there to be precautions to take, measures to put in place that will keep us safe, yet already I know, in my gut, in my bones, that there won’t be. Not enough, anyway. Never enough.
Daniel rubs his chin in thought. “I’ll have to think it through, but I should probably park the car somewhere hidden, where we can get to it if we need to. Pack it with provisions, just in case.”
Kerry and I share uneasy glances. “You mean run away?” I finally ask, and Daniel gives me a level look.
“If it’s necessary.”
“What about defending this place?” I burst out, angry.
“How?” Daniel replies simply.
I spin away, my nails digging into my hands, tears of frustration rather than sorrow smarting my eyes.This isn’t fair, I think, and I almost laugh at myself. What a pointless emotion, the foot-stomping cry of a child. Of course, this isn’t fair. There has been nothing fair about what has happened for the last six months.
“I’m not saying we just give up, Alex,” Daniel says quietly. “We can take other precautions too. But depending on how many there are…” He lets that idea fade away into silence.
“What other precautions?” I draw a shuddering breath; I’m determined to be pragmatic, but positive. We can do this. We can, at least, do something.
“We should have an armed guard.” Daniel glances up at the loft of the old barn. “If the building is stable enough, someone could sit up there. You’d get a fairly decent view of the road.”
“And if they saw someone?” Kerry asks. “How would they alert everyone back at the cottage?”
Daniel shrugs, and I find myself saying, “We have a pair of walkie-talkies back at the cottage. Kids’ ones, but I think they would still work.” Ruby found them in the loft in an old box of toys; I don’t mention that they’re pink Barbie ones.
Kerry gives me a dryly disbelieving look, and I remember her sardonic quip about stringing tin cans along the road, like something out ofThe Goonies.Well, I think, raising my chin a notch,so be it.
“I suppose that could work,” Daniel replies slowly. “Do we have batteries?”
I think of the corroded batteries I threw out all those months ago, back when everything still felt theoretical. “We have some.”
“All right. Then that’s what we should do. And Mattie or Ruby shouldn’t come down here, just to be safe. Or Phoebe.”
“What about Sam?” I ask, and Daniel gives me a level look.
“Sam is an adult. He can make his own decisions.”
I think of my eighteen-year-old son tripping merrily out to college, and I wonder just how much he has had to grow up since then.
We head back to the cottage in silence; by the time we get there, it’s clear that everyone knows something is up. Kyle and Justine are standing by the back door, Phoebe perched on Justine’s hip. Mattie and Ruby crowd behind them, looking anxious, and Sam is lurking behind the screen door, keeping an eye on my mother but clearly as concerned as everyone else.
“What’s happened?” Justine asks quietly. Knowingly.
“Let’s talk inside.” Daniel speaks authoritatively; despite his seeming lack of interest in what we’ve been doing here, he has now become our leader, maybe because he knows what the outside world is like. He can guess what we might be facing more than we can…although when I think of the two men in Corville, the guys in the truck in Flintville, I’m afraid Idohave a good idea, and I don’t like it at all.
