The Lair

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Lily

“What the hell are we going to do with this damn thing?”

She looked up at Ely. The dome light in the car was still on and she could clearly read his expression of pure disgust.

Lily just shrugged. She didn’t know what to do with Josie. She’d dug out one of the way-too-big diapers and sort of had it on her, but beyond that, Lily was lost. Josie’s tiny body looked so pale that it was nearly blue, even though the light had a decidedly yellow cast to it. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know anything about babies.”

“Obviously.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the expert? All those siblings and cousins. Isn’t that what you said?”

He scowled at her, then turned his attention to the road ahead and didn’t answer.

“Are you just full of crap or what? Do you know anything about how to take care of babies or not?”

Ely made a grumbling noise, almost like a growl. He glared at her. “Cover her up.”

“What?”

He gestured toward Josie. “Can’t you tell she’s cold? It’s friggin’ freezing in here for me and I wasn’t just born an hour ago.”

“Oh.” God, Lily felt like an idiot. She quickly wrapped the sheet around Josie like she was a burrito, but didn’t know what to do with the ends of the sheet, so she tucked them under and then brought them back around and tied them in a loose knot. “Better?” she asked.

He frowned, but nodded.

She thought back to when she and Mel were on the Farm and she hadn’t been sure if she could get them out. Back when she had sole responsibility for keeping herself and Mel alive. Back when things seemed really bad.

That was nothing compared to this.

Mel had known how to take care of herself. She’d had her own thoughts and ideas. Sometimes that made her a pain in the ass, but other times, her ideas were better than Lily’s.

But Josie? Josie was really, truly, one hundred percent dependent on her. For everything.

She didn’t know how long a baby could go without starving to death, but it couldn’t be very long. They needed to find food, and they needed to do it soon.

The sun would be up within the hour. The Ticks would nest down for the day. When that happened, they would have to start scouring stores and homes and anywhere else they could find food and supplies. Slowly, she noticed the sky lightening on Ely’s side of the car.

“We’re still heading south,” Lily said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any idea where we even are?”

“I figure somewhere in the panhandle.”

She laughed then. “We’re in Texas?”

“Yeah. You got any better ideas?”

She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to ask him to turn the car around and take her back to Carter. But she couldn’t do that. Her reasons for staying away were the same as her reasons for leaving in the first place.

“No,” she said. “It’s just that I worked pretty damn hard to get out of Texas. But I can’t go back to Base Camp. Not after I lost McKenna.”

“You lost McKenna?” he asked. “Christ you’ve got some kind of martyr complex.”

She shot an annoyed look at him. “No, I don’t.”

“You do. It’s pathetic. You didn’t lose McKenna. She bled out. That happens, and you happened to be there. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

“I could have—”

“What? What could you have done? A doctor, in a hospital, with tons of support staff and maybe she could have made it.”

“But—”

“No. There’s no ‘but’ to that. You can’t save everyone. Get over it.”

She clamped her mouth closed and didn’t say anything else. She wasn’t going to argue with him. Ely liked to pick fights and she wasn’t in the mood. Maybe he was right. Maybe there was nothing she could have done anyway.

After a moment, he added in a gentler voice, “Look, I didn’t mean—” He jammed his hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t mourn her. And I’m sorry I made you leave. It was the right call. I did what I had to do.”

“She was my friend and she trusted me to keep her safe. Now she’s dead. That’s not something I’m going to just get over.”

He was silent for a minute and when he spoke again, his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it. “No. I don’t guess you will. Losing someone like that. You don’t get over that. Probably ever. But even though she was your friend, she didn’t expect you to take care of her. You didn’t let her down. This wasn’t your fault any more than it was hers or mine. Things just happen. Just don’t blame yourself, okay?”

She nodded, pretending to consider his words. He was probably even right. But the truth was that she was too damn tired to even think beyond her crushing grief. There would be plenty of time for her to wrestle with her guilt later.

Nestled in Lily’s lap, Josie’s eyes were drifting closed, and her own eyelids felt heavy. The steady rhythm of the wheels on the asphalt lulled her to drowsiness. She hadn’t intended to sleep. She’d planned on staying awake to help Ely look for somewhere they could stop to search for baby formula, but before she knew it, her eyes were closing. She would have to trust that Ely would wake her up when there was somewhere to look. Trust had never come easy for her, but sometimes, you just didn’t have much choice.