This time, with Flicka, he wouldfeelevery moment of their child growing.
She sighed, the warmth of her breath brushing his neck. “We shouldn’t take anything, nothing at all.”
Flicka was trying to talk herself out of something. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t.”
“Flicka, you’re pregnant. If you knew a pregnant woman in your kitchen was hungry, what would you do?”
She argued, “But this lady isn’t here for us to ask, is she?”
Raphael grudgingly let her go and rummaged around in cabinets in the dark, using his fingertips to examine items.
Cans. Crisp cellophane. Squishy, crackly paper bag.
He said,“We’ll assume that this lady is as kind as you are because I generally don’t assume people are terrible human beings. Look, here’s some bread. It feels pretty fresh. They might have left this morning.” He opened the small fridge under the counter. Light glared out, and he moved to block its glow to the window. “And butter, cheese, and some fruit.”
“I don’t like this,” Flicka said.
He slicedthe bread and washed the knife in the sink. “When I was in ARD-10, this was called ‘living off the land,’ though most of the time we ate wild berries and roots and stuff, too. We slept outside, though, and we did pack food in with us.”
She gasped, “You’ve broken into people’s houses before?”
He glanced at her, standing there with her hand near her mouth in the dark kitchen, and explained, “Sometimes,to accomplish the mission, you do what you have to.”
“Did you leave money or something?”
“When we could, yes. But we generally didn’t break in unless we had no other choice, and then we chose houses like this one,” he waved the knife around at the spacious kitchen and second floor above them, and the moonlight glanced off the steel, “where the owners could definitely afford to give up a fewslices of bread and some cheese. Here, eat this.”
She took it from him, and her head dipped to eat a bite. “Did you send money to those people later?”
“Never,” Raphael said. “It might have been traced and exposed ARD-10’s involvement, or it might have gotten the residents shot as collaborators, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Flicka touched her mouth. “Oh my God.”
He shrugged.“Yeah, sometimes it was rough.”
“Are those grapes?” she asked.
He washed some grapes in cool water in the sink. “Here.”
She popped one in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m just so hungry, and I feel so bad about it.”
“Don’t feel bad about a sandwich. If you want to send money later, I’ll write down the address.”
“This is just so utterly foreign to me. I mean,takingsomething is so beyond what I’mused to. I’m used to being the benefactor, the charity maven. Imakethings. Igivethings. I don’t break in andtakethings.” She shoved the sandwich in her mouth and chewed off a huge hunk.
Raphael nodded. Yeah, subverting your morals to accomplish a mission’s goals was hard, but he’d learned how to do that early in his life.
Flicka swallowed the bite. “Don’t you want something, too?”
Hisstomach growled, but he shrugged. “I’m fine. I’m not pregnant.”
She bustled up to the counter. “If I’m eating a sandwich, you have to, too. Otherwise, I’ll feel worse. Here, I’ll slice it up for you.” She did it while she ate grapes.
Raphael stole a few grapes while she made a sandwich for him, too, each one popping with sugary juice as he bit down.
She said, “When we get somewhere safe, I’mgoing to send these people some money, so we’ll just have to get over this and not feel bad about it. Can you imagine if we couldn’t? If we were hungry and exhausted and running away from a madman who wants to enslave or kill us, and we couldn’t even pay these people back? I’m dying right now.”
