Page 86 of Savage Surrender

Weller moves to the next aisle, and I follow far enough behind to catch both ends in the curved security mirror above the pharmacy counter. His floppy straw hat makes him look like a wealthy tourist. Mine keeps shading the top of my sunglasses every time I look up, but it also breaks the camera’s view of my face, so the indignity survives.

Shelves of travel medication give way to first-aid supplies. Weller compares electrolyte tablets to the packets already in our basket, checks the ingredients, and takes both anyway. He adds cooling packs, pain relievers, gauze, skin-safe tape, lubricant, and pregnancy tests Bianca will probably throw at our heads if he presents them too solemnly.

“Her temperature was normal when we left.” He reads over Freddie’s cramped additions to the list while I turn a bottle enough to catch the aisle behind us in its foil label. An older man in fishing sandals studies antacids. A teenage girl has been staring at her phone since we came in. Neither has glanced our way twice. “Her scent is still elevated, but it hasn’t changed again. We plan as if true heat starts today and lasts the full five days.”

I take a second bottle of pain reliever. “You have a gift for making the best thing that’s happened to any of us sound like hurricane preparation.”

“Hurricanes might be easier.”

I stare at him through the sunglasses. He’s already moved on to the cooling patches.

Bianca had gone running barefoot, her braid snapping against her spine as she pointed out where the roof disappeared behind the dunes and how easily a man could lie beneath the southern deck. Then she’d looked at the same stretch of fence and decided it needed flowering vines because the bare wood was ugly.

Weller pockets the list and takes the basket from me before heading toward the drinks aisle.

The reflection in the freezer doors moves with us. Pink flamingos dance across my chest in the warped glass.

The house came with a golf cart and five years of disuse. Owen spent the morning swearing at its battery terminals until the thing finally came back to life, which is the only reason we won’t be hauling water cases up the lane on foot. It sits behind the market now, sun-faded to match every other cart in the row, saying nothing about who parked it.

The bottled water comes in heavy cases. I stack three on the flatbed cart and start toward the electrolyte drinks. Weller catches the handle without breaking stride and steers us back.

At the water’s edge this morning, Bianca had stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into her. Pale light spread over the ocean, the first fishing boat nothing but a dark speck. She sat down in the cold sand, tugged me down behind her, and settled between my legs with her back against my chest like we’d been doing this for years.

We watched the sun come up. She talked about the vines she wanted for the fence, whether the fishing boat was too far out to see us, what the nest refrigerator still needed, and every third sentence her eyes went back to the dunes. I let her guard the beach for both of us. When she’s soft in my hands, it’s easy to forget she’s spent years looking out for herself. But her eyes never stop hunting.

I was mid-sentence when she bolted. One breath she was warm against my chest; the next she was up and running for the tree line.

There was no reason to chase her, but then she looked over her shoulder at me and laughed.

The cart rolls free with a violent jerk.

Weller studies the hand I still have locked around its metal frame. “Problem?”

“Inferior wheel design.”

His gaze drops to my scraped palm and stays there for a moment too long to be casual. We continue to the food.

Eggs require moving half the water again. Weller fills the newly cleared space with steak, chicken, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, milk, and enough coffee to keep five people conscious through several sleepless days. I add ready-made sandwiches and cut fruit. Beyond the front windows, a white SUV idles at the curb until the driver lets out a woman carrying a beach bag, then pulls away without turning toward us.

Weller checks the dates on two packages before choosing the fresher one.

I take salt-and-vinegar chips from the shelf.

By the time I reached the trees she’d slowed, backing deeper with her braid sweat-stuck to her back, glancing through gaps in the dunes while I let her choose the route. Once the trunks closed around us and muted the ocean, she shoved me against the first tree wide enough to hide my shoulders.

Bark bit into my skin. Bianca put one palm over my mouth even though I hadn’t made a sound and pressed her body into mine, warm from the sprint, breathing as though the chase had only just reached her lungs.

Quiet, she’d mouthed.

Her other hand slid beneath my waistband.

I set another box of cereal in the cart hard enough to dent one corner.

Weller looks from it to me. “She needs protein.”

He adds another package of steak.

At the end of the aisle, Weller takes the flatbed toward the registers while I circle past the windows to check the parking lot from another angle. The white SUV is gone. A golf cart occupies the loading space, keys dangling from its ignition while the owner argues pleasantly with an employee about a leaky cooler. Three bicycles lean against the wall.