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“Thanksgiving is in four days. Do you think we’ll make it out of here by then?”
“I hope so, baby.”
Isaac put the phone on the floor beside the bed and moved back down under the covers, pulling her with him.
She hoped they’d be home soon too.
12
Isaac could count on one hand the number of mornings he’d woken up with Kate in his arms, and he’d still have a couple of fingers to spare. Sleepovers meant commitment to Kate, and for the first couple of months of their relationship, he’d been okay with taking things slow. But somewhere along the way, he’d wanted more.
The feeling of waking up beside her this morning, no matter where they were, had felt right to him. He’d been relishing it as she slept tucked into his side.
Since he hadn’t bothered to look at Kate’s phone, he had no idea how long he’d been awake or what time it was. His guess was he’d been awake about an hour, but time didn’t seem to exist in their little room.
He felt her stir a moment before she rolled over to face him. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said quietly as he leaned down and kissed her.
“Oh, minty fresh,” she said against his lips and then her breath was minty too. “Thank God our magic still works.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled against her lips as he kissed her.
“Wait.” She pushed against his chest as she struggled to a sitting position. “I have to go pee.”
In the light from the lanterns, he saw her look around the room. Nothing had changed since the night before, but he guessed she was hoping it had. When she turned back to him, her eyes looked as wide as saucers. “Oh no.”
“No problem,” he said, pushing back the covers. “Like you said, we’ve got our magic.” He got out of bed and pictured the portable toilet his mom had bought to take camping when he and his brother were younger.
After conjuring the toilet, he set it on the floor against the wall, kitty-corner to the end of the bed. Since the room was so small, it wasn’t as if he could put it in a far corner.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Isaac glanced over his shoulder at Kate, but he couldn’t see her face clearly in the semi-darkness. It didn’t matter; the panic in her voice told him how she felt.
Facing the wall again, mostly to hide his smile, he conjured a double-folding screen, about five feet high and just over two feet wide. They would need to be careful because it wouldn’t take a lot to fill up the small space.
Kate rubbed up against his shoulder when she came over to him, and he felt her shiver. The room hadn’t gotten any warmer, but right now, he didn’t think that was why a frown marred her beautiful features. She peered around the screen at the toilet. “Does that really work?”
“Yes, it even flushes.” Pushing aside the screen, he pulled the device forward so they’d have some room. “You need to pump this to create the water pressure first. Then, when you’ve done your business, you pull this lever…” He demonstrated. “It opens the bottom tank. Then you flush. Everything is sealed in the tank below, even the smell.”
Pushing the toilet back to the wall, he stood and walked around her, pushing the screen back into place.”
“Oh my God,” she groaned from behind the screen. “I’m supposed to do my business, as you called it, while you’re in the room? You’ll hear me!”
Isaac smirked and stuck his head around the screen. “Where would you like me to go, Kate?”
Her glare told him she had a few places in mind, then she looked down at the toilet. “I hope they find us soon,” she whispered.
In two strides, he was back at the bed and picked up the phone. “I’ll play some music, but we’ll have to make sure we keep an eye on the battery level and keep it charged. If the battery dies, the clock may not work.”
He checked the time on the phone—his own internal clock useless after such a short time. It was already eleven in the morning; they’d been missing for twenty-four hours already.
Not mentioning the time to Kate, he opened the phone’s music app to see she had quite a few playlists downloaded. Skimming through the songs, he settled on “I Did Something Bad” by Taylor Swift. That ought to do the trick. Turning up the volume, he pressed play.
After Kate finished, he handed over the baby wipes he’d conjured and then took his turn behind the screen. The music stopped and he smiled, figuring she’d done it on purpose to see if she could rattle him and not to save the battery. Good thing he wasn’t shy.
When he used a baby wipe for his own hands, he conjured a garbage bag and put it beside the screen. The room was already filling up. Living in one hundred square feet without a way to dispose of anything was going to be a challenge. “We’ll have to be careful deciding what to conjure,” he said, joining her on the bed and pulling the blankets up to keep them both warm. “Or we’ll quickly run out of places to put things.”
Kate sighed and curled up next to him. “I hope we’re not here long enough for that to happen.”
