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“It was you,” I say, my tears close to the surface again. “You taught me how.”
He lifts my hand off his face and pulls it down to rest against his chest. “We taught each other.”
Chapter Twenty-One
We bury our dead at first light. Funerals are different than before the war. No big ceremonies, no coffins, no words of comfort. Maybe all those ways to mark a person’s passing disappeared when the number of dead reached millions. There was no point in having funerals when there were more people dead than alive. Now, we shroud our dead in homespun cotton, place them in unmarked holes in the ground, and save our words for the living.
Bishop and Caleb got up before the sun to dig the single grave. There’s an awful kind of irony in having our fathers buried together, along with Callie. But the ground is too frozen, the space too limited to allow for three separate graves. Sometimes in bad winters mass graves hold more than twenty people at a time. I tell myself they are dead, so what does it matter? I tell myself that maybe this is the resting place they’ve all earned, forced to merge in death as punishment for the hatred and resentment they couldn’t let go of in life.
Bishop stands between Erin and me, clasping both our hands as Ash and Caleb lower the bodies into the ground. Victoria is here, too, but no one else. Callie’s body goes in last, and a curl of dark hair escapes her shroud, floats in the cold morning breeze.
“May they rest in peace,” Bishop says as Caleb and Ash step back from the grave, from the pile of bones and flesh that used to be people we loved.
Erin weeps quietly beside Bishop, but I am empty again of tears. At least for now. The sun is taking its position in the sky, sending streaks of pale orange through the trees. A few birds chatter in the bare branches. The world keeps on spinning, no concern at all for our losses, the depth of our heartbreak. Strangely, it’s a thought that gives me hope. We will survive this moment, this pain. We will outlast it.
“I’ll help Caleb fill in the grave,” Bishop says.
I nod, and he lets go of my hand and his mother’s. As he walks away, I glance at Erin. Her hair is drawn back in a messy ponytail, and she’s wearing a sweater I would swear is President Lattimer’s, too big for her, the arms hanging past her wrists. I don’t know what to say to her, or even if she’d welcome the sound of my voice.
I look into her bloodshot eyes. Neither of us apologizes. We don’t offer or ask for forgiveness. We will never like each other; too much has happened for that. When she looks at me, she will always see the destruction of her family. When I look at her, I will always remember her condemning me to a life beyond the fence. But we’ve reached a kind of understanding, an acknowledgment that somehow we are on the same side now. Because of Bishop. Our love for him will forever be the tie that
binds us together.
We arrive at city hall early, file into the rotunda to wait and see who joins us. “We’ll stay back here,” Caleb says. He and Ash stand near the doorway, as close to being outside as they can get.
“You don’t want to come in, join the discussion?” Bishop asks. The light, mocking note in his voice is almost enough to make me smile.
“Don’t have a dog in this fight,” Caleb says. “But we’re here if you need us.”
“Yeah,” Ash says, “like if all this power starts going to your head. We’re available to knock some sense into you.”
Now both Bishop and I smile, grateful for Caleb and Ash, their constant presence, their allegiance to nothing and no one but us. Bishop hops up to sit on the edge of the stage and offers me his hand so I can sit next to him.
“A lot’s changed since the last time we were on this stage,” he says.
“Yes.” I can still see my father and Callie walking beside me the day I married Bishop, President Lattimer welcoming me to his family. All of them gone now. The day I stood on this stage and pledged my vows to Bishop, I could never have imagined the words I spoke would someday be true. We are no longer married, but I’m more connected to him now than I ever was when we were husband and wife.
A little before noon people begin filling the rotunda until it’s completely packed, the overflow crowd spilling out onto the courthouse steps. Victoria and Erin arrive, and while Erin comes to stand near Bishop and me, Victoria stops to talk to the gathering crowd, offering reassurances and calming the anxious. The crowd shifts restlessly, everyone looking at Bishop for a cue.
“Here goes nothing,” he says under his breath, and I squeeze his hand as he steps forward. “Thank you all for coming,” he calls out in a loud, clear voice. A shiver runs down my spine: pride mixing with apprehension. He sounds very much like his father. He sounds like a leader. “As I’m sure you all know by now,” he continues, “my father died yesterday.” A rumble passes over the crowd like a wave. “And Justin Westfall died as well.” Bishop turns to look at me and motions me forward with a slight frown. “Come up here,” he urges.
I move up next to him, let my eyes scan the crowd. Most people look nervous, scared. They’re waiting for someone to tell them what to do, how to behave. After so many years of having their choices made for them, they no longer remember how to make decisions for themselves.
“Both our fathers made mistakes,” Bishop is saying. “But while they had very different visions for Westfall, I believe they wanted only the best for all of us.”
“What’s going to happen now?” someone calls out. “Who’s in charge?”
And that’s what it comes down to for most of these people. They just want someone to guide them. Bishop glances at me. “I think that’s up to you,” he says. “I think everyone should get a say, a vote.”
A buzz goes through the room, shock and fear, maybe a little excitement. “We want you!” a man yells. “We want a Lattimer!”
“No!” another man cries. “We should all get to vote, like he said.”
“But what about for right now?” a woman chimes in. “We need someone in charge right now. Winter is here!”
We’re rapidly losing control of the room, people shouting over one another, voices rising so that no one can be heard. “Stop!” I yell, surprising myself. And apparently everyone else, too, because the room falls silent. “You’re right. We need someone guiding us until a new government is in place. That should be our first step, figuring out who will run Westfall in the short term.”
“Bishop!” a man yells.
