road,” Sela suggested, both because the smooth walking would be easier and because . . . well . . . they could. There was no traffic at all. Walking in the middle of the usually busy highway felt both daring and freeing, and the fact that they could was one more example of how drastically their world had changed in a single day.
“Damn it,” Carol muttered when they were alone, making Sela think their leisurely speed was more by design than nature. “Why did you let me volunteer for a job like that?” she peevishly asked Sela. “Do you know what an aggravation this is going to be? How much time it’s going to take up?”
“There was no stopping you, once you got the bit in your teeth about Mr. Parsons,” Sela replied in amusement. She turned on her flashlight to light their way, the beam both reassuring and somehow feeble, as if it were nothing more than a whisper in the night. Normally the valley would be lit by lights in the homes, by headlights of traffic, the occasional security light, the gas station outposts of glowing light. Now there was only a growing darkness, and a silence she hadn’t heard in her lifetime. Nightbirds called, insects buzzed, frogs croaked, and the trees rustled from a faint breeze, so the silence wasn’t absolute, just—different.
“He made me mad, bulling toward Geneva Whitcomb the way he did.”
“I’m proud of you, Gran,” Olivia put in from beside Sela, who was walking in the middle because she had the flashlight.
“So am I. And you are a good person for the job,” Sela added. “I didn’t know the woman’s name.”
Carol sighed. “I guess. Still—I’m going to rely on you to help me think of things. You see things I don’t, think things through where I’d plow ahead without seeing the pitfalls. Look how organized you were about getting us as ready as possible for this.”
“We all had good ideas to contribute.”
Carol patted her arm. “Sela, honey, don’t sell yourself short. You bring more to the table than ninety percent of everyone else out there, me included. You just don’t trust your strengths.”
“That’s true,” Olivia chimed in.
Ruefully Sela wondered how much of a wuss she’d been that even a fifteen-year-old had noticed it. That had to change. She would change. She didn’t want to be the breakable link in their small family chain, she wanted to be as strong and dependable as they needed. She was the one in her prime, physically stronger than Carol, more experienced than Olivia. She had to be their fulcrum, no matter how much against her nature it was.
There didn’t seem to be much to add, so they continued in silence until they reached their neighborhood road and turned in. Now that true night had fallen, they could see faint, flickering lights inside each house, as either battery-powered or oil lamps took the place of electric ones. This must have been how the valley had looked a hundred and fifty years ago, when people had traveled by foot or by horse. Now that it was after sundown, the way the world had changed was striking.
They reached Carol’s house and she saw them in, said goodnight to them and Barb, then continued alone down the narrow road to her own house. She walked faster, aware that the bears foraged at night, and this was the time of year when the animals were actively looking for anything they could find. She swept the flashlight beam back and forth, looking for the gleam of eyes or the black bulk of an ursine body, resisting the urge to run back to Carol’s house and spend the night there.
This was how their lives were now; they couldn’t rely on their cars to go everywhere, nor were there security lights chasing away the shadows.
This wouldn’t be the last time she walked a night road alone.
Chapter Six
She couldn’t sleep.
The house was too silent, too dark; the hours crept past like cold syrup, barely moving. Normally Sela went to bed between ten-thirty and eleven, but after she’d gotten home and locked up—something she double-checked, because not having lights made her feel more vulnerable—there was nothing to do, no television to watch, and she was exhausted from almost two days of nonstop work. Going to bed seemed like the thing to do.
Sleep should have been easy. It wasn’t.
She dozed, woke, tossed and turned, dozed some more, then her eyes popped open and she lay staring upward in the darkness,