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“I’m not sure there’s anything you could do, except listen to him if he wants to talk about it.”
Which Rhys didn’t want to do.She sighed.“Thank you for the advice.”
“You’re welcome.I also wanted to ask you about one of the empty housing blocks.”
Hannah sucked in a harsh breath.One of the blocks, on the southern end of New Eden’s settlement, was little more than rubble.The houses had been picked over for shreds of anything useful.They were the oldest, dating back to the earliest days of the colonists.
As if SP29 could read her mind, he continued.“The block closest to the power station.”
She exhaled in relief.Those houses—which were more one-room shacks than proper houses—were to the north of the settlement.“That block was abandoned when the former council wanted everyone to live closer together as the population shrank.”
“It’s only a kilometer and a half away from the main settlement.”
“That’s a significant distance on a land mass as small as New Eden.”
“We think the houses could be restored for our use,” SP29 continued.“Would it be all right if we started that, now that the power has been reactivated and the food supply restarted?”
“You don’t have to justify wanting your own spaces,” Hannah said.“I don’t see why you couldn’t live in those houses.”It pained her to say those words, more than she would ever admit.She liked having Rhys in her house, as closed-off as he could be.
And that kiss.It was far too short, far too gentle, but it was seared into her memory.Part of her wished she had stayed in the power station with him, awkwardness and an open control room door be damned.
SP29 beamed.“Thank you.”
They stood in front of the tomato garden.Hannah looked back at the barn.“I should get back to work.”
“What for?You’re caught up.All we have left to do is clone chickens.”
“I should learn how to do that and how the machine works.”
“You don’t want to take a break?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Hannah replied.If she went home now, all she would be able to think about was Rhys and their interrupted kiss.At least if she stayed at the agri center, she could learn something new.
“You never quit, do you?”But SP29 didn’t discourage her.She walked alongside him to the barn.
If she quit, she might think about Rhys.She might think about the quake, about her parents.About how she had lost her ability to relate to other people and could only focus on work.
“No,” she replied.“I don’t.”
Maybe I should.
A few graveswere marked with stones and rough-hewn wooden crosses that were mostly splinters, although most were bereft of monuments.If Hannah wasn’t intimately familiar with New Eden’s cemetery, she would have assumed there were far fewer people buried there than there were, but she knew it well.The cemetery was now full, thanks to time and the earthquake.Beneath a flat rock on its westernmost side were her parents.She’d found the rock on the ocean’s edge a couple of weeks after the quake and had hauled it to the cemetery herself, needing them to have their final resting place marked.She didn’t have the means to engrave it with the names Leonard and Tilly Forsyth.
She hadn’t even been able to bring them out to the cemetery when she had helped clear away the debris after the community center had collapsed.Jasmine had arranged for their burial, with the help of Freddy and Rhoda Barnes.Jasmine had stuck a little scrap of fabric on their mound, so Hannah could find it later on her own and mark it.Not for the first time, guilt ate at her that she hadn’t been able to face her parents one last time.
And she’d hardly visited them after the quake.Today marked the first time in six months that she’d made the trek across the settlement to the cemetery.She didn’t have any flowers to lay at their site and felt foolish for not picking a few before she arrived.
“I made contact.We’re getting help.We might be okay,” she murmured, hoping they could hear her.She sat at the foot of the grave and closed her eyes, trying to...meditate, maybe?Pray?Hannah hadn’t been raised in an especially spiritual home.She doubted she was capable of believing in the god whose name she so frequently took in vain.
Deliberate footsteps sounded behind her.She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.The memory of their kiss flashed through her mind.“Hello, Rhys.”
“Should I leave?Is this a bad time?”
“No, you can stay.”She patted the ground next to her.“Sit with me.”
He did so, black-clad legs sticking straight out ahead of him.“Your parents?”His voice was uncharacteristically soft.
She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat.“I guess you can tell we’re in a cemetery.”
