and suddenly wanted to lean in and kiss him on the cheek. But I didn’t.
“Goodnight, Noah,” I said, and turned again.
I felt him move again and, this time, I didn’t try and pull my body away. Instead, I just let it settle where it was, leaning against his big back, and it felt good.
“Night, Zoe.”
God, I loved it when he called me by that name.
CHAPTER 47
“Here we go.” Mienkie passed us two brown paper packets through the car window.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Padkos,” she replied.
“Food for the road,” I repeated, translating the Afrikaans into English. I peered inside one of the bags and saw a sandwich, a juice box and some chocolates and biscuits. I smiled up at her and Tiaan, feeling like we were their kids, going off to school with a thoughtfully packed school lunch. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”
“And for not killing you,” Tiaan joked, and we all laughed.
“Especially for that!” I said.
“We’re going to miss you. If you are ever in the area again, you must pop in.”
“We definitely will,” Noah said as he started the car.
“Wait, here. Take our phone number. We don’t have a cell phone. Our sons are always telling us to get one, but I just don’t know how to use them.”
I pulled my phone out and added her number. I paused before saving it: this was my fifth number in only a few days and this made me smile.
“Goodbye!” Tiaan and Mienkie said together as we pulled off down the road.
I turned around in my seat and waved until they disappeared over the rise.
“That was a really nice, unexpected surprise,” I said, as we joined the main road.
“It was. I really liked them.”
“Me too,” I mumbled thoughtfully, thinking about all the strange ways that life had thrown people into my path recently. If it hadn’t been for the elevator accident, I wouldn’t have met Noah. If it hadn’t been for the storm, I wouldn’t have met Tiaan and Mienkie.
I looked at the road in front of us. The storm had definitely left its mark. Little streams and dams seemed to have popped up all over the place, as well as . . . something else. I sat up straight as a feeling gripped me.
“Stop the car!” I suddenly heard myself say. “Stop it.”
Noah pulled over.
“What is it?” he asked, looking through the windshield. Only, it wasn’t what was on the road that I was looking at; it was what was on the sides of the road that had caught my attention.
“There.” I pointed into the vast fields that lay to the left and right of us. I reached for the door handle and began pushing it open.
“The flowers,” I said, as I climbed out of the car to survey my surroundings. Because there, spreading out from the sides of the road on both sides, all the way into the distance, into the open fields and up to the faraway mountains that dotted the horizon, were pink and white flowers. Pops of color on the otherwise muted background. A colorful carpet stretching out as far as the eye could see.
“Cosmos,” I said.
“Yes,” Noah replied. “That’s how you know it’s autumn in South Africa. The cosmos comes out, and soon it’s chocolate Easter eggs.”
I walked up to the first flower I saw. Pink, with a bright yellow center looking straight at me. A darker, brilliant pink in the center radiated outwards to a soft pastel pink that you just wanted to somehow capture and use it to paint all your walls with. Because it was the kind of color that could only be associated with happiness . . . but . . .
But, what?
I moved deeper into the field, touching the cosmos as I went, running my hands over the flowers, picking up pollen like a bee making honey. Making something sweet . . . but . . .
But what was this feeling?
Walking through this field of sunshiney brightness, two very different emotions started growing inside me. I could feel one coming from one part of my brain and the other coming from a very different part. A hidden part. Both feelings rose up inside me, and their crashing together felt inevitable and imminent. One feeling: freedom, happiness, the best and most beautiful happiness ever; and the other feeling . . .
Darkness. Pain. Tragedy. Everything that was bad about the world.
How could these two feelings coexist, let alone both be building up in me at the same time, rushing towards each other,