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Justin nodded. It was important she understand it, even though it hurt to say the words. “That’s what I’m saying. There won’t be that sort of relationship between us.”
“Okay.” Carly stood and walked toward the door. She scooped her umbrella off the floor, and Sam hopped down to stand at her side.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside to check on Shadowfax.”
Justin hated for her to go out there alone, but that was the point. She would need some time, some privacy, to collect her thoughts. “Please, don’t go far.”
“I won’t.” She shut the door behind her, but not before he saw the moisture on her cheeks that hadn’t come from the rain.
Justin had to do it, he reminded himself in the morning. Had to. He couldn’t let Carly set her hopes on something that could never be. He hadn’t lied when he said he couldn’t give her a relationship because a good relationship was based on honesty, openness, and trust—things he could never give her.
But Carly stopped laughing. She stopped smiling. And some of the sunshine went out of his world as a result.
In the morning, Carly was pale and subdued. They’d gathered up their gear and repacked the wagon in the light drizzle. He’d found two disposable plastic rain ponchos for them. “Better than nothing,” he’d said. Though not by much.
They found Shadowfax grazing with a small herd of horses near the lake. Carly gave a soft, inarticulate cry at the sight and stepped forward as if to go fetch her horse back from its own kind.
“Her choice, Carly.” Even as he said the words, he saw such hurt on her face he vowed to lasso the horse and drag her back if he had to.
But Carly merely nodded and called, “Shadowfax, we’re leaving.” The horse looked up from her grazing and watched them wheel their bikes to the road. Carly mounted hers and didn’t look back, but her shoulders visibly sagged with relief when she heard the familiar sound of clopping hooves behind them.
Carly didn’t speak again until they stopped at noon and that was to ask Justin if he wished for her to gather kindling for a fire.
They treated one another with cool, distant politeness—like two strangers on a train forced to interact. That evening, when they set up the tent, Carly didn’t ask him to find other accommodations, but she turned her back on him as soon as he entered and didn’t respond to his “good night.”
And so it went for the next week. Justin kept trying to find ways to break the ice, and just as he had decided on something, he was reminded it was probably for the best, as much as it hurt. He missed Carly’s smiles. He missed the sound of her sweet soprano singing Monty Python songs. He missed her responding with movie quotes, her little jokes, her gentle coaxing when he fell into one of his dark moods. He smiled as he thought of the last prank she’d pulled on him—stuffing a rubber frog into his sleeping bag, but his smile died when he realized she might not ever do something like that again with him.
It was the longest damned week of his life.
One afternoon, they turned a corner in the road and came upon a man and woman walking down the center line. The man was pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with goods under a tarp, and he turned to face them when he heard the clip-clop of Shadowfax’s hooves. They stopped, waiting until Carly and Justin had caught up with them. Justin had his hand on his pistol, the other hovering near his knife, but the man raised both hands as a sign of harmlessness, and the woman stood there, staring dumbly at them, her thin white face half-concealed behind her lank black hair.
“Hey there,” the man said with gregarious cheer. He was in his mid-forties or so, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit with a stained plaid tie. He looked like a stereotypical used car dealer or a shady lawyer.
Sam inched up to stand in front of Carly. A patch of hair between his shoulder blades stood on end, and every muscle was tense, but he didn’t growl. He glanced up at Justin, and Justin gave him a nod. “Hello,” Justin replied.
“Lookin’ to trade?”
“Depends on what you have.”
“Oh, a bit of this and that. Name’s Jeremiah. This here is Marcy. Say hello, Marcy.”
The woman just stared. Jeremiah picked up her hand and flopped it in a little wave. “Her name ain’t really Marcy,” he said with a wink, as though he were certain Justin would find it as amusing as he did. “I don’t know what her real name is ‘cause she don’t talk. Marcy was my ex-wife’s name. It’s a lot easier not having to remember a new one.”
“I see.” Justin kept his face carefully blank though disgust and horror roiled in his gut. His hand fell away from his gun. Jeremiah wasn’t dangerous, though he made Justin’s skin crawl. “What do you want to trade?”
Carly put her bike’s kickstand down and went over to take Marcy by the hand. “Why don’t we go over and sit down and have a nice chat while the men are trading?” She pulled the woman across the road to a grassy bank, and they sat down together. Carly took a comb out of her pocket and began to work on Marcy’s tangled hair.
“You got any birth control pills?” Jeremiah asked. “I don’t know if she was a retard before the Crisis or not, so I’d rather she not get knocked up.”
Justin cringed at his terminology and thought it would be a mercy for the woman as well. “I do. What are you offering?”
“I got whiskey. Good shit, too. Bushmills.”
“A bottle per pack?”
Jeremiah whistled. “That seems pretty steep.”
