fight.”
Adrian replied, “All right, then, let’s see what the villagers say tomorrow.”
Sarah and Linda cleared the table and were washing the dishes after the men had gone into the living room.
Linda said, “That was the best meal I’ve eaten since before the grid collapsed. Fried chicken is one of my favorites, and you cooked it perfectly. I want to thank you again for inviting us.”
Sarah replied, “Think nothing of it, it’s my treat to have you here. I can’t remember the last time I had the pleasure of the company of another woman in the kitchen—not since Alice died, anyway. You’re welcome anytime, no need to wait for an invitation. Just come on over whenever you feel like it, and if you time it to be here for dinner, so much the better.”
Linda asked, “What happened to Alice? If that isn’t too personal of a question.”
Sarah gave Linda a knowing look and Linda’s face turned pink. Sarah smiled at that and said, “Not at all, honey. Alice was a great friend, and, as you know, Adrian’s wife. She was a doctor—a surgeon, actually. She and Jennifer and the nurses set up a hospital here. One day when she was working alone, a man with the plague showed up and asked for help. Alice immediately quarantined the hospital. Wouldn’t allow anyone to come near, especially Adrian. She was a bit over three months pregnant at the time, but Adrian didn’t know—she was waiting to surprise him. She told me, but made me promise to keep it a secret until after she told Adrian.
“Adrian sat outside the hospital, as close as Alice would let him—which wasn’t close at all—until she died. They talked a lot across the distance between them, but she never told him she was pregnant. It was too late to tell him then; if she had, he would have come into the hospital no matter what and died with her, and she knew it. She had to threaten to kill herself if he tried to come closer, as it was. After she passed away, he burned the hospital down with her in it. Those were her instructions to get rid of the plague virus. When the ashes cooled, Adrian went in to get what was left of her for burial. Some ceiling and insulation had fallen across her stomach during the fire. Adrian found some tiny cartilage fragments that hadn’t completely burned and figured out that she had been pregnant. Adrian loved Alice something fierce, and they had only been married a year, still in the honeymoon stage. He went a little insane and left only minutes after the funeral was over. But he seems to be over the craziness now. He’s still carrying a lot of hurt, though—a whole lot of hurt.”
Linda said, “Poor man. Hard enough to lose your wife, but to lose a child you didn’t know you were going to have—that’s beyond painful. I don’t wonder he went a little crazy. When I lost Jeff, I had time to see it coming, and Scott to go on for. It was damned hard and painful. I can only imagine what he felt.”
Sarah replied, “I know. That whole ‘stone age living’ thing shows how bad it was. That kind of desperation breaks my heart to think about. I loved Alice; she was a wonderful person. She died bravely, and well. That’s about the best thing I can say about the situation. They would have had such a wonderful life together.” Sarah’s eyes had gone watery.
Linda said, “Here now, let me finish these dishes, you sit down and talk to me while I do it.” She gave Sarah a hug.
The men in the living room had stopped talking for a few moments to consider all that had been said and what lay before them.
Scott asked Adrian, “Where did you find Bear, sir?”
Adrian replied, “I found him on my way home from the mountains. I was riding along and spotted a dead wolf, and Bear was sitting beside her. It looked like he had been there several days and was starving to death. I couldn’t just leave him there, not with him being that loyal to his mother. So I decided to raise him up enough to be able to take care of himself and then let him decide what to do—go back to being wild or stay with me.”
Scott asked, “He just let you pick him up?”
“Oh no. He put up a ferocious fight. Bit me several times.