“How many people are here now?” I ask.
“About twenty-five hundred? Give or take. We brought in a few during supply runs.”
Twenty-five hundred people. That’s not so secluded. This could be the biggest settlement in America. At least on the Eastern Seaboard, from what Andrew and I have seen.
“So, my mother...” She’s nervous. She probably thinks Henri’s been dead for so long. I wonder if she ever thought about going north to look.
I nod. “We were traveling through Bethesda and Henri stopped us. She made us dinner and let us stay with her. She told us about you.”
Saying it aloud makes it feel like a dream.
“She asked you to come here?” She looks like she might be about to cry.
Andrew speaks first. “No, we chose to. We asked her to come with us, but she said she was too old for the trip. Though if you ask me, she was doing pretty damn well for herself.”
Amy lets out a loud laugh and claps her hand over her mouth. Andrew and I smile.
“She helped us and I thought we could repay her by letting you know she’s still alive.”
She nods, her hand still covering her mouth.
“Also...” I reach into my back pocket and take out the engraved multi-tool. Amy’s eyes go wide. “I wanted to give you this. She said it was your dad’s and she didn’t have any use for it. But we figured you might want to keep it in the family.”
Tears fall from her eyes and for a moment I think we’ve done the wrong thing. Maybe it was better when she thought her mom was dead. Now she knows her mom is alive and a thousand miles away. Then she pulls me into a hug and squeezes me. I hold in a groan as pain bursts from my side, but it’s only for a moment. She reaches out and grabs Andrew into the hug as well. Cara steps back to avoid being pulled in, too, but I can see a slight smile and her eyes are glassy.
“Thank you,” she manages to whisper. When she lets us go, she laughs and wipes at her eyes, taking the multi-tool from my still-outstretched hands.
She flicks the knife open, then closes it and flicks open the pliers and on down through each feature as she talks.
“My brother, Tommy, and I used to help my dad fix this old truck we had before we moved to Bethesda. My dad had thishugetoolbox—damn thing had to have weighed eighty pounds—and he’d make Tommy and me carry it out to the garage for him. But he never even used any of the tools in it! He’d just reach into his pocket and take this out instead and then send us into the house for a socket wrench. Like, why wasn’t the socket wrenchinthe toolbox? After he died, I looked all over for this thing, but we couldn’t find it.”
She wipes away a tear and laughs.
“Sorry. You show up with good news and I cry all over you. Youcame from Bethesda? That’s a really long way.”
I don’t correct her that we’ve come from much farther and nod, trying not to cry, but Andrew can’t help it. Tears stream down his cheeks in rivers. He laughs and she pulls him into another hug.
A cry echoes from within the house and Andrew pulls away from Amy, startled. She looks through the archway into the foyer, where the steps to the second story are.
“Oh, damn. She’s awake.” She looks at us. “Would you excuse me real quick? I’ll be right back.”
When Amy comes back down the stairs, there’s a baby bundled in her arms. She comes over to me, smiling.
“This is the only Henrietta I thought I had left.” Baby Henri looks up at us with the same eyes her mother and her grandmother have.
Andrew steps forward and he looks in awe. “Hey, Baby Henri.”
She looks like the most amazing thing in the world. I want to hold out my hand to her, but I know you’re supposed to wash your hands before, and who knows how clean Eddie and Dave keep the back of their truck.
“Every baby born in the past year or so has been immune to the superflu. They get the sniffles and colds, but nothing too bad. I was so worried I would have the baby only for her to get sick within the first few weeks. But she was fine.” Her voice switches to a high happy note. “Yes, you’re a little trouper, aren’t you?”
“She’s beautiful,” Andrew says.
Amy smiles. “Yeah, she is. Now thanks to you she might get to meet her grandmother one day.”
“Think you’ll go up to Bethesda?” Andrew asks. “You guys have a pretty nice setup here.”
I chime in. “It might be hard to convince her to travel all this way.”
