AllFreeNovel
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Sipping the last bit of coffee from the keepawarm pot, Ana slid a portable Touch from one of her pockets. It wasn’t new technology, but I’d never had one, seeing that I never really left the farm for more than a few hours at a time. Who would I contact? The cows? Pip?
She scrolled through it with her thumb, double tapping on a series of numbers and letters with my name at the end.
“This connects to the main control box of your house—it should still have backup power, right?”
“Give me that.” I snatched the Touch out of her hand when I realized she was holding it in front of her face, waiting for Twyla to answer the call. Had Ana always been this nosy? I hadn’t noticed before.
I got to my feet and moved away, well aware that Ana would overhear everything about our conversation anyway.
“How the hell does this work?” I heard Twyla’s voice on the other end, her features barely visible in the darkness of the house. I knew exactly where she stood in the living room, peering into the control box.
“Hi, it’s me.” I tapped on the button that said “share video.”
“Cedra! Where the hell are you?! You have no idea what’s going on here.”
Alarm gripped me like a fist around my heart. As the video focused further, I could see that there were circles under her eyes and her hair was wild.
I tried to keep my voice even, even though my heartbeat had doubled in a matter of seconds.
“What happened?”
She spoke quickly, running her fingers through her curls in clear frustration.
“So this morning, Ella came over to pass us some eggs, you know, like she usually does. She said the whole community lost power but the house had a generator in the basement. She asked if I wanted to use it. So I said yes and she offered to set it up for me ’cause I sure as hell don’t know anything about generators...”
I nodded, asking her to continue as I focused on breathing through the anxiety that was pulsing through my blood.
She took a deep breath. “But on the way down, it was so, so dark and she...she fell. On the stairs. I told her to be careful. We were just sort of feeling our way downstairs as best we could and I... I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It happened too fast.”
She looked close to tears and was taking big gulps of air.
I felt Ana’s presence at my back before I saw her face sharing space with me on the video screen.
“Are her babies okay?”
“I don’t know.” The last word was a worried wail. “She said she could feel the babies coming but she’s only nine months along. And Fanger babies take twelve months?! Can that be right?”
“Yes, where is she now?”
Ana was already moving towards the bopper, taking long strides that I ran to keep up with.
“I managed to get her up the stairs and a little way across the field. Someone saw us coming and pulled a solar cart to help. I don’t know his name, but we brought Ella home. I wanted so much to stay and help but Ella didn’t want me to. She made me promise I’d go straight home so no one else would see me. So I left after her husband showed up.”
“We’re on the way back now.” Ana’s voice carried as she lifted the bopper into the air. “It’s good that you got her home, Twyla.”
“Thank you...” Twyla trailed off, her eyes shifting back and forth on the screen. “Cee, where are you? Where did you go? And who is that?” Twyla asked, indicating Ana.
“This is Ana, she’s our neighbor to the west. She’s the mechanic slash electrician we turn to when the panels are down. We left this morning to try and get the electricity back up again.”
“Oh, yes, all right.” She sounded deflated. “It was a difficult morning not to have you around.”
My heart twisted. She was right. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been to get help for Ella, especially if she’d been in pain. Twyla must have been utterly panicked and I was far enough that I hadn’t felt her worries inside my head.
“We’re ten minutes out,” Ana said. “But we’ll go to Ella’s first.”
“Okay.” The note in her voice killed me.
“‘Mara, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
