Naomi was biting her lip. Maggie had both hands over her mouth. Nessie was shaking with silent laughter. Even Anson looked like he was fighting a smile, which was approximately three more facial expressions than Bear usually saw from him.
“Honey Bear,” X said, testing the words. “Oh man. That’s perfect. That’s staying.”
“It’s not staying,” Bear said.
“It’s absolutely staying,” River said. “Honey Bear. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.”
“Don’t make me put you through a wall.”
“You won’t, Honey Bear, because you’re too sweet.” River leaped out of his reach before Bear could move, which was probably the smartest tactical decision River had made all year.
“Yeah, Honey Bear,” Greta said, still wearing a smile that said she knew exactly what she’d done and was entirely at peace with it.
He scowled at her. He wanted to be annoyed. He was trying to be annoyed. But the smile— Christ, that smile. He hadn’t seen it in a week. He’d been watching her face for seven days, cataloging every degree of expression she allowed herself, and this was the first time since the night after the flood that something real and alive had crossed her face. Something that reached all the way to her eyes.
And he couldn’t be annoyed about that.
“Let’s go,” he grumbled.
The noise that came out of River from the porch was something between a victory crow and a cackle.
“Honey Bear,” X called from the driveway. “You want to ride with us or take your own truck?”
“I will end you, Xavier.”
“That’s a yes to riding with us. Got it.”
twenty-nine
The noise hit her first.
She was three steps past the entrance gate when it caught up with her — country music thumping from speakers mounted on poles, the screech of a girl on the Zipper somewhere to her right, the rolling bass of a tractor pull happening one arena over, a kid screaming for cotton candy ten feet from her shoulder. Then the smells came at her in layers. Diesel from the carnival generators. Frying dough. The sharp animal stink of the livestock barns. Cinnamon-sugar. Someone’s beer. The midway was packed with bodies moving in currents she tracked without meaning to, and the rides spun lights against the bruised purple sky — Ferris wheel turning slow, the Gravitron strobing red and white, the Tilt-A-Whirl throwing pulses of green across the faces of the crowd waiting in line.
Greta stopped. Her hand dropped to Atlas’s head, fingers buried in the thick fur behind his ears, before she’d thought about reaching for him. He pressed his ribs against her thigh and held still.
Bear’s palm settled at the small of her back, warm through her shirt.
“Too much?” he asked, close to her ear.
“No.” She took a breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way she did on bad climbs. “Just—give me a second.”
He gave her a second. He gave her ten. He stood beside her with his hand at her back and let the fair go on around them while she found her footing.
Atlas pressed against her left leg. King was already pulling toward the livestock barns with his ears pricked forward, but Bear had a firm hand on his lead and he held, watching her too, big head tipped.
“Okay,” Greta said eventually. “Okay.”
“You sure?”
She exhaled. “Yeah.”
Bear’s hand stayed where it was as they started walking.
The fair was bigger than she remembered. The midway curved past the food trucks and the carnival games—ring toss, milk bottle pyramid, a basketball hoop with a rim she knew from experience was bent half an inch smaller than regulation—and opened onto the wider grass alley that ran past the exhibition tents. Kids ran past with neon glow sticks looped around their necks. A boy younger than Oliver tripped over his own feet ten yards ahead of them, dropped a paper cone of cotton candy, and started wailing while his mother tried to scoop it up off the grass. Bear stepped around them without breaking stride and kept his hand at Greta’s back.
They wandered. She wasn’t tracking where they were going. She was tracking the noise level, the density of the crowd, the distance to the gate if she needed to bolt. But Bear had a course in mind and she let him steer her.
The floral exhibition tent was strung with Edison bulbs that threw warm light over everything, and the smell hit her before she was fully through the entrance — cut stems and potting soil and something sweet she couldn’t name, thick enough in the airthat she could taste it. The tent was narrow and deep, tables lining both sides in a tight corridor, arrangements competing for attention in explosions of color that made her eyes want to skip over all of it at once. After the midway, the quiet felt strange. Like stepping into a different building.
