“Exactly. When you go from having luxury cars, a boat, and designer clothes to nothing, it’s a bit of a shock. We still had our house; it’s not like the banks were around to take those back anymore, but trying to keep it protected from looters or those trying to upgrade their housing was difficult. We abandoned it a few weeks after the war.”
“Where did you go?”
“All our family was in Connecticut, and after the war, the bridges to Cape Cod were shut down, so we had no way of getting to them. We lived in our car until we moved into a small, abandoned ranch house that I discovered. We were fortunate in the beginning because people would trade food for Dax’s services, but he got sick a year later and was gone by the next year.”
“What did you do afterward?” Aisling asked.
“In those first months, I spent a lot of time begging for food in the streets and bringing home whatever scraps I could. My mom had learned a lot from Dax and tried to keep his practice going, but she wasn’t as good at it, and people didn’t trust her as much, but we still got some food that way. Neither of us wanted my sisters on the street, so we tried to keep them out of it, but they weren’t stupid, and by then they were far from naïve.”
“What did they do?” Aisling asked.
“They would sneak out to beg for food too, but when I found out, I told my mom. It was the first time I ever saw her lose her temper and hit one of us. I’m not sure who cried more, my mom or my sister. That was when I knew something had to change, but I wasn’t sure what to do. By then, I’d stopped being a cute kid people felt sorry for; I’d grown five inches and become a nuisance.
“Because I was taller, I tried to volunteer for the wall at fifteen, but one of my old teachers ratted me out. After that, I started stealing. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I didn’t know what else to do. I refused to let something happen to one of my sisters because they were on the streets, and I couldn’t stand the broken look in my mom’s eyes anymore. She’d always been young and radiant, but she aged ten years in a matter of months.”
Aisling pulled her feet onto the chair and wrapped her arm around her legs while she studied me. “They never caught you?”
“No, thankfully.” If someone did catch me, they might have killed me instead of turning me over to the Guards for punishment. “After I turned sixteen, I volunteered for the wall and made sure they never had to beg for anything again.” The government took care of the families of volunteers.
“My mom cried so hard she soaked my shirt, but we knew I had to go,” I continued. “I used to write to them every day, and when the trucks came back from their yearly volunteer trip to my town, I’d have hundreds of letters from her and my sisters. I only read a few every day so they would last all year.”
“You used to write them?” she asked.
Unable to hold her gaze, I stared at the curtains covering the windows as anger and sorrow churned in my chest. “Lucifer killed them after he fled Hell.”
Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”
Only a little over a year had passed since Lucifer slaughtered my family; the grief of their loss still twisted like a knife in my chest. Even with the dangers of the Wilds to distract me, I’d spent a great deal of time grieving the loss of the family I volunteered to save.
I signed my life away to make sure they survived, and in a fit of rage, Lucifer destroyed them, everyone in my town, River’s town, and another town bordering ours. I hadn’t met River until we were both at the wall, but we’d grown up only miles away from each other.
“Hawk…”
Her words trailed off when I looked at her, and she started to rise, but I held up my hand to halt her. “Don’t come to me because you feel sorry for me. You’ll come to me because you’re ready for me and everything that comes with us, but not before then.”
She opened her mouth to protest but then closed it again and settled onto the chair. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness as she studied me before asking, “How many sisters did you have?”
“Three and they were pretty awesome.”
She smiled as she propped her elbow on the arm of the chair and rested her head on her hand. “What were their names?”
It took me a minute to answer around the lump in my throat. “The oldest was Jen. She had hair the same color as mine and clear blue eyes. She was so serious about everything and had this analytical way of looking at everything. As she got older, she would spend hours reading books and absorbing knowledge that shehadto share with everyone.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I recalled her following me around with her nose in a book while she told me about the different rock formations. I’d found it endlessly annoying and would often shut a door in front of her just to have her walk into it because she was still staring at her book.
“You’re a jerk!” she’d yell at me and then proceed to keep reading until I put on my headphones and cranked up the music to drowned her out.
Then, the war came, and our lives turned upside down. Jen stopped reading books to focus all her energy on making sure her younger sisters were taken care of while everyone else worked to bring in food.
“Sherry was my middle sister,” I said. “She was… she was likenoone I’ve ever met before. I’ve never known anyone who loved life as much as her.Everythingdelighted her, and she had this beautiful laugh. When she laughed, people stopped what they were doing to look at her, and they would smile or laugh too because it was impossible not to laugh with Sherry. She had this beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes that never stopped twinkling. My mom used to swear she smiled in her sleep, and I believed her.
“And the youngest was Judy. She was painfully shy but the sweetest of the three. She’d bring me a book to read her, curl up in my lap, and stick her thumb in her mouth. When she fell asleep, I’d sit there for hours waiting for her to wake up again because I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her.”
If I let myself think about it, I could still feel her silken brown hair against my chin as her brown eyes stared at me. Her tiny body had been so warm, and she was so trusting.
“I loved all my sisters, but Judy had a special place in my heart. She was almost two when my stepdad died, and she looked at me like a father figure. I found her body first, and what Lucifer did to her…”
I looked at the wall as the memory caused my eyes to burn; I feared I might choke on the lump in my throat. I volunteered to keep my family safe, and I’d failed them. If I hadn’t volunteered, if I’d been there…
