Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,79

my mom and my sister what had happened. I knew none of it was my fault, and yet it was hard to remember that, when I listened to them cry. The what-if games had begun in my mind, and no amount of logic could stop them.

Thanks to the quarantine, I couldn’t go live with my surviving family, none of whom lived in the Philly area. Dad’s second in command came over to the house and talked over my options with me. In ordinary circumstances, a girl like me with no family to take her in would move into the foster care system, but thanks to the situation, the foster care system was strained to the breaking point and needed all its resources for the many younger kids who couldn’t get by without an adult guardian. At seventeen, I was capable of taking care of myself.

Luke’s mom offered to serve as my unofficial guardian, and with my okay, that was more than enough for the authorities. My own mother wasn’t so okay with it, and she was pursuing legal action in hopes of forcing the government to either let me out of the quarantine area or let her in.

Yeah, good luck with that, Mom.

Luke and his mom were great, and were the only reason I stayed reasonably sane during those first few awful days. Despite the hospital’s desperate need, she stayed home from work for several nights, treating me like the broken thing I was. She moved me into their guest room and even took Bob in, despite being allergic to dogs.

Neither my mom nor my dad was the coddling type, both believing in self-sufficiency above all else, but Luke’s mom was a more nurturing sort, a natural-born caregiver. She never once told me not to cry, nor would she let me do anything for myself. I wasn’t allowed to cook, or help her and Luke with the housework, or even run to the grocery store for a quick errand, at least not for the first few days. Which I’m sure was just as well. If I’d gone to the store for milk, I probably would have stood in front of the dairy case for hours in an agony of indecision over whether to pick whole or two percent. I just wasn’t all that functional.

I knew I was starting to get a bit better the morning I offered to walk Bob—which Luke had taken on as his own personal chore—and Luke’s mom actually let me. Luke came along, but he insisted it was just to keep me company, not to keep an eye on me in case I had a breakdown.

I had begun the long, slow recovery process. Dr. Gilliam told me gravely that I would never “get over” my dad’s death. She had lost her mother ten years ago, and she said sometimes the pain of it would sneak up on her and take her by surprise, even now.

“But it does get easier,” she assured me with a sad smile. “Time can’t fully heal the wound, but you’ll figure out how to live with it. We all have to go through this at some point in our lives.”

It’s not like I hadn’t known I would in all likelihood outlive both of my parents. That was just the natural way of things. But I’d never let myself think about it, always thought it was some terribly distant eventuality. Even when my dad was still in the field, his life in potential danger every day, I’d never truly believed anything would happen to him, no matter how much my mom worried.

Reality could be one hell of a bitch.

* * *

It was four long days and three even longer nights after my dad’s death when Dr. Gilliam decided she had to go back to work. I was still prone to sudden, unexpected crying jags, but I was at least getting to the point that I could occasionally think about something other than the horrible, aching loss. And the situation out in the city wasn’t getting any better. There were casualties every single night, and every emergency room in the city was flooded the moment the sun set. It didn’t help matters that the nights were still getting longer.

When Dr. Gilliam told me she was going back to work, I told her I wanted to go back to my house to spend the night. I appreciated her care more than I could say, but even though my home was only across the way from