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She wouldn’t make the same mistakes, and wouldn’t aim her focus so narrowly.
She veered west, studied the hills, the forests, waterways, fallow, overgrown fields, and the buildings—houses, vast shopping areas, and service centers.
Twice she took Laoch down for a closer look when she saw signs someone had settled. A broken trail, a few houses in good repair, a cow in a pen.
She marked the locations in her mind, continued home.
When she landed, Ethan gave a shout, and with Max, his closest companion, and a pack of dogs, raced over from the farm.
Under a tattered, faded ball cap, Ethan’s hair was damp with sweat. Both boys smelled of horses and dogs and dirt. Max, gangly like his father, waded through the dogs to lay a hand on Laoch’s neck.
“We were watching for you,” Ethan told her. “Mom said you’d be back today.”
“We’ve been helping Dad and Simon with the haying.” Max gestured out to the field and the oft-repaired baler. “But they said we could come when we saw you up there. Your mom made cherry pies, and mine’s going to pick sweet corn.”
“We’re going to have a cookout.” Already Ethan hefted her saddlebags. “Because you’re back.”
“Sweet corn and cherry pies?” Fallon dismounted. “When do we eat?”
Because nothing pleased them more, she turned Laoch over to them. They’d cool him down, groom him like a king.
She hauled her bags in through the kitchen.
Pies with glossy cherry filling, bold red through the golden latticework crusts, bread, fresh and scenting the air, wrapped in cloth on the counter. Wildflowers in a jug, peaches ripening in a bowl, potted herbs thriving on the windowsill.
After the battle and the blood, the work and the worry, here was home.
And here, she realized, was what she needed to bring to the world as much as peace.
She dumped her bags—they could wait. Now she opened the fridge, found another jug. And grateful, filled a glass with her mother’s lemonade to wash away the heat and thirst of the journey.
Travis came in, nearly as sweaty as Ethan.
“Saw you coming in.” He grabbed another glass. “Had to finish something up, but I wanted to come by. Is everything okay with Colin, with Arlington?”
“He’s good. The base is secure.”
“Haven’t had a chance to talk to you really.” He glugged down lemonade. “We’ve made good use of some of the stuff you sent back—got a couple houses furnished and supplied already. The mayor and council and committees are working to help the people who wanted to come here settle in.”
He grabbed a peach—just underripe as he preferred. “We had the funerals last week. It was rough.”
“I should’ve been here.”
“Everyone knew why you weren’t. We’re going to have a memorial. The council voted on it, since we always have the annual on the morning of the Fourth, but we’re going to hold one for the placing of the stars. Now that you’re back.”
“It’s good. It’s right.”
“The last of the wounded were discharged a couple days ago. Most are already back in training. It was rough,” he repeated, talking quickly through it as he bit into the peach. “But taking three bases—and, Jesus, Arlington—then your broadcast after?”
With a satisfied head shake, Travis gestured with the peach. “Arlys printed it out, word for word, and posted it. Anyway, the mood around here is strong. In the last week, we’ve gotten fourteen more recruits from the outside. Mick just sent word they’ve pulled in eighteen. Eighteen.”
“Duncan?”
“He’s pretty remote, but Tonia told me—and she’s going to meet up with you as soon as she can get away—he had seven last count. And one’s a doctor, or was a—what’s it—intern when the Doom hit.”
“That’s good news, and we’ll need to go over all this. But now—”
“Here it comes.” He held up his hands, one holding the half-eaten peach. “First, we were a little busy dealing with the deserters, and keeping the wounded and medicals from getting overrun.”
“Which is why you should have let me know.”
“Busy,” he repeated, “and pretty much under control. Plus, in the thick of it?” On a shrug, he bit into the peach again, the underripe fruit snapping crisp as an apple. “Mom was like—wow, just wow. I’ve never seen her in full battle mode, you know? The thing was, she had Dad out, like in a trance so she could treat the bullet wound. These PWs break through the lines to try to get to the mobiles and escape, and Mom’s zap! Zap, pow!”
To demonstrate, he jabbed one fist, then the other. “Seriously, she took out three of them before you could fucking blink. And I’ve gotta say, Rachel’s no slouch. Grabs a scalpel with one hand, smashes this dude with an elbow, then slices him open. Then Hannah?”
He tossed the peach pit in the kitchen composter, turned to rinse off his hands. “You know, I’ve worked with her on combat training, self-defense. Let’s just say it hasn’t been her strength, right? She was moving from one mobile to the other when they hit us, and I’m yelling at her to get inside, barricade herself and the wounded. But she swings right around. Pow, pow, wham, bam. Man, she is fierce when she’s cornered. A ball-kicker. A fierce ball-kicker.”
“Hannah?” Fallon sincerely couldn’t imagine her loving, openhearted friend kicking balls.
“You bet your ass. It couldn’t have taken us more than a minute, two tops, to subdue them. Hannah’s bleeding a little—the guy whose balls are probably still bruised managed to punch her in the face. So Jonah and I are securing the deserters, and Mom tells me not to let you know, not then. Rachel’s checking out Hannah, and seconds that. Hannah chimes in, all cheerful, how we’re all fine, and not to distract you, and Jonah says the same. Mom gives me that look. You know, the one that says don’t screw with me, and goes back to fixing Dad up.
“I was outvoted, and they were right.”
“Maybe.” Because with words and gestures, Travis had taken her into the thick of it, she understood the decision. She leaned back against the counter. “Maybe, but the enemy shouldn’t have broken through, and that’s a weakness we’ll fix.”
“They were scared shitless, Fallon. Every one of them. Even if I couldn’t see it, and I could, I could feel it. And hey, we won. I gotta get back, but welcome home. Big feast tonight.”
He eyed the pies.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Too late, but I’m not stupid enough to risk the mighty wrath of Mom.”
He opened the door, turned back. “But if we’d needed you, even the mighty wrath of Mom wouldn’t have stopped me from calling you.”
Satisfied with that, she washed out her glass—and his—then took her bags to her room to unpack.
When Lana came home, carrying supplies, Fallon hopped up from the kitchen counter where she’d set up to draw her new maps.
“My baby.”
Before Fallon could take the cloth bags, Lana set them down, enfolded her.
“I’d hoped to be back before you got here, but Rachel needed some help in the clinic.”
“What happened?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Lana eased back, cupped Fallon’s face to study it. “School’s starting soon, and t
hey’re doing wellness checks. And she wanted to show me some changes they’ve made in the plans for the expansion. Sit while I put these things away and tell me how your brother is.”
“You sit while I put them away.”
Fallon nudged her mother to a counter stool, found olives from the Tropics, oil from the press her father had helped build, peppercorns, coffee beans, a bag of salt.
“Colin’s in his element,” she began. “The troops respect him, which is vital, but they also like him. We turned that fucking palace—” She caught herself, winced. “Sorry.”
“I think we’re beyond me scolding you over language.”
Still, Fallon thought. “That palace of an HQ? We cleared out the unnecessary.”
“And much of it’s been put to use here and elsewhere.”
“It had seven bedrooms, and other rooms that we turned into bedrooms. We’ve got troops housed there. Mallick will have a room there, one with a kind of parlor for his workshop. Colin has a room to himself, it’s the smallest of them. It works. We set up other barracks, and civilian housing.”
She went through the broad details as she put away the supplies, then sat.
Impressed, approving, Lana nodded. “You’re combining the templates from New Hope and our own cooperative back home.”
“I know how they work, and that they work. We need those fortified structures in locations like Arlington especially for training and to keep people safe. When Mallick gets back there—”
“He’s not there now?”
“I asked him to help Mick for a few days, then visit our other bases before he comes here, briefs me. Then he’ll go to Arlington. Colin’s solid, Mom.”
“I know it. I do. But I think he could use some of Mallick’s discipline and worldview.”
“Trust me, he’ll get it.”
“I resented him so much when he took you away. And now I’m depending on him to help another of my children. Life is damn twisty and strange.”
“I need him with Colin, but I need his perspective on our other bases, and future ones.”
Lana looked down at the maps in progress. “You’ve picked locations for others.”
