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“Are you going to sit there forever?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“People need you,” he said.
“No one needs me,” Gutsy said. “I did what I could, but I’m done.”
He came in and squatted down. Sombra allowed it.
“Listen to me, Guts,” he said softly. “You look like crap.”
“Thanks.”
“No, you need some food and a shower and some air.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and looked away.
“No,” insisted Ledger gently, “you’re not. Listen—I get that you likely feel that you somehow let Alice down, that it’s your fault she died. Thinking that is natural. We humans tend to take out the knives and stab ourselves when things are really bad. You’re looking at the champ of that.”
She said nothing.
“Here’s the thing:
you did more to save New Alamo than anyone. You want me to go over it point-by-point to explain why I—and everyone else—thinks that?”
“Just leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t be doing that. Your friends out there won’t either. And pretty soon they’re going to get tired of this vigil or whatever it is.” He rubbed some old scars on his face. “But they’re going to need Gabriella Gutsy Gomez. That smart problem solver, the one who figures things out. And you know why they’ll need you? Because you do figure things out. You look at the clockwork and understand what makes it tick.”
“I did everything I could do, and look what happened.”
“I get it. You lost your mom, and now you lost Alice. You are gutted, empty, broken. I really get that,” he said.
She shook her head. “If you came in here to give me a pep talk, it’s not a very good one.”
“Look, we’re all children of the storm lands,” said Ledger. “We’re all marked. We’re all scarred, inside and out.” He leaned forward and gave Gutsy’s shoulder a slow, firm squeeze. “What matters in the end is what we choose to become when the world rips apart who we’ve been. So, tell me, Gutsy Gomez: Who are you going to be?”
Instead of waiting for an answer, the soldier got slowly to his feet, knees popping. He lingered in the opening of the tent and gave her a sad, weary smile. But it was a smile nonetheless.
Eight
Three weeks after the fall of the Raggedy Man, Benny Imura and Gutsy Gomez sat on the same picnic table, looking out at the endless wastes of the Broken Lands. She looked southwest, to where New Alamo had been. He looked northwest, toward his home in Central California. Sombra lay with his head in Gutsy’s lap.
“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Benny asked.
“I thought about it,” she admitted, “but no. Thanks, though.”
“So, what are you going to do? Go live in Asheville?”
Gutsy bent down and plucked a stalk of sweetgrass and put it between her teeth. “For a while. Alethea and Spider want to see it. I guess I do too.”
Benny turned to look at her. “See it, or live there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Yet.”
He nodded, and they watched a fleet of clouds sail across the sky.
“What about you?” she asked. “Back home to California?”
