Page 42 of The Pale Rider
The man lowered his machete and let us through. Miss Mabel wrapped her arm around my waist and led me inside.
“You don’t know how good it is to see you, girl. You haven’t kept up the pink in your hair. Did you want me to do it? You always said I was the only one you trusted to do your hair. I might still have some pink left.”
I knew there might be answers in my old apartment, but my gut was telling me I needed to sit and visit with Miss Mabel. She needed it just as much as I did. From what I could remember, we had been close. I did her grocery shopping, and she did my hair.
“Let’s just sit and chat. We need to catch up.”
Miss Mabel pat my arm.
“If I had known you would show up out of the blue today randomly, I would have had your favorite cookies waiting. Luckily yours don’t involve chocolate because they don’t give that out in your weekly basket. The only way to get chocolate now is to trade sex for it. I wouldn’t mind getting laid, but I’d have to question some of these children who will trade chocolate for sex with a granny.”
“I can get you chocolate with no strings, Miss Mabel,” Aeron said.
She just let out a little grunt.
“You might be built like a stallion and brought my Speedy home safely, but you aren’t getting chocolate here without dicking someone.”
I was trying so hard not to laugh. I ended up snorting, and then I laughed at the snort. I could see why I was friends with this woman. She was sassy, and she could even put Aeron in his place. He was the color of an eggplant, and he was usually unflappable.
“How about you both come over for dinner? I’ve got fresh bread cooling, and I got some lovely vegetables with my eggs in my box this week. I made a quiche.”
“We don’t want to eat all your food.”
“Nonsense. I might not be able to get chocolate, but I get plenty of food. The world might be ending, and people have gone feral, but we don’t stand for that in California. A lot of the people who lived in this building before you went missing are dead. Aeron here got them to agree to keep your apartment as it was, and I’ve been tending to it. Most of the people who got assigned the empty apartments here were people that got injured in the war.
“This building didn’t take a lot of damage, and there’s that medical clinic on the corner. They send me extra food because they know I host potlucks for the entire building sometimes. It’s not the same people, but this building is just as close as it used to be.”
Miss Mabel had a ground-floor apartment. I was glad she didn’t have to deal with that staircase we passed. As soon as I stepped inside, I had a massive flood of memories. Her apartment was homey and full of knickknacks. I remembered this place. I spent a lot of time here.
I moved in here as a fifteen-year-old runaway with stolen money for my deposit and no job. Miss Mabel caught me in the hall with my one backpack struggling to unlock the door and saw right through me and just adopted me right there on the spot. I think I spilled more of my secrets to her than I ever did to any of my girls on the softball team.
I couldn’t help it. I was so glad she was still alive. I flung my arms around her neck and gave her a huge hug. I didn’t see my mother in any of my memories, and I just got this feeling she wasn’t around when I was growing up. Miss Mabel filled that role for me, and that was why I’d never moved out of this apartment.
“Damn, Speedy. Not so hard. I missed you too.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
“Miss Mabel, so many of my memories are gone, but I remember the first day we met. I remember how close we were. I was so nervous about coming back here and not remembering anything. I’m so glad you’re still here.”
She pat my back.
“It will take more than walking corpses and World War III to kill Mabel Eastman. I found this sexy drink of water going through your things the day you told me you would be going away for a little while. I gave him what for with my broom until he told me you were supposed to meet him and went missing. I helped him go through your apartment and clean it up. Your laptop was missing, and so was your cell phone. We both think you would have taken those with you when you left, so they would have had those when they grabbed you. We still don’t know what they were after.”
I shrugged.
“I don’t either. I don’t even remember what my apartment looks like.”
“Let’s not talk about that right now. Let’s celebrate Aeron found you and brought you home safe.”
Miss Mabel’s entire apartment smelled like fresh-baked bread, and her quiche looked delicious. We started serving ourselves, but I’d have to break the news to her we weren’t staying—this kind of changed things. I found a home in California when I ran. Miss Mabel was my family, and she was still here.
I could stay here. California seemed relatively safe, considering what was going on with the rest of the world. Miss Mabel helped me find my first job and enroll in college. She brought me to set up my first bank account and taught me how to balance a checkbook. She had been there for me when I was totally lost.
I had this feeling when I agreed to go to Mexico with Aeron and Leif, I had every intention of coming back. Miss Mabel had to be in her nineties now. She made it through the apocalypse and was still taking care of people. It was my turn to take care of her.
“Aeron, I—”
“Let me stop you right there, Ariel,” Miss Mabel said. “I know what the next words out of your mouth will be. You never could hide anything from me. You told me you were going to Mexico because your father was planning something big and you had to stop him. I know all about what that evil man did to you. The day after you went missing, the shit started hitting the fan. You had a plan with Aeron to stop him before you went missing. Now that he’s found you, you can’t rest yet.
