“Andrew, my wife, Raven.”
“We’ve met before, when your husband was robbing us,” I say with faux-cheer.
She looks at me cautiously, letting the door close behind her. “I remember.” Her hand drifts down to her belly, which is much bigger than I recall. I guess the Howard-Raven family is expecting a new addition.
“It’s fine, darling,” Howard says. “Jeff just ran into them before we could.”
Raven huffs. “Dipshit.” Then her face clears up and she moves to stand so she can look at her husband while talking to him. “They have a kid with them. Do we have enough water treated for him?”
“We should. Ask Cookie to boil some extra before dinner.”
“We can get our own water,” I say.
“It’s fine,” Howard says. “We use our water for cooking, irrigation, and washing up, mainly. It got to be too much, trying to treat the water for drinking.”
I stare at him, then Raven. “So... you all just don’t drink water?”
Howard smirks. “Well, Raven does. For about seven months now. And if anyone wants to, they boil it off for themselves. But you see all the trees on your way in?”
“Yes?”
“Apple trees. Back in the day, before there was large-scale water treatment, people used to drink beer, wine, and cider more than water. Fermented drinks were healthier for them.”
I stare at them, wide-eyed. “Yeah, and they also used to do bloodletting as a treatment for insanity. So, you’re all just drunk all the time?”
Howard chuckles. “It’s low alcohol. Our apples are less sweet than what you’re used to, and we don’t add sugar. But just to be safe, pregnant women and kids get water.”
“Or milk,” Raven adds.
“If there’s extra from what Cookie needs it for.”
I clench my jaw, trying to figure out a polite way to say this—which, honestly, they robbed Jamie and me, so do they even deserve politeness? But on the other hand, they are helping me right now. “So, you have a cow—I’m assuming—”
“Your assumption is wrong. We have goats. But only four, which doesn’t go as far as you’d think.”
“Okay, you havegoatsand cider and apparently a whole-ass farm. Why did you rob us? And don’t say it was to scare us into joining you, because I’m not buying that. You could have knocked on the door and said ‘We got goats! Come see!’ and my ass would have been here in seconds. Goats are fucking adorable.”
Raven swats Howard’s arm as he opens the tube of antibiotic ointment. “See?”
“At the time, we didn’t have everything we do now. We weren’t producing our own crops—even that was hard this year.”
“The bugs?” I ask.
Howard looks at me as if he’s surprised, then seems to realize it must be a universal issue. “Right, breakdown of the food chain. Thankfully we still can make cider from the apples the bugs have gotten. Just adds a little protein.”
“Ew.”
Howard continues, “But we weren’t completely set up then. Weneeded more people and supplies. We’ve been through some tough times, and there’s a big learning curve to becoming a self-sustaining community. We’re still learning, honestly. But we’re doing it.” He lightly places the bandage across my cheek. “We do it by learning from each other and trying our best. Sometimes an extra hand or two comes in...” He pauses.
“Oh, please don’t say handy,” I say.
He and Raven both laugh; it’s absolutely what he was going to say. But he decides on, “It’s useful. So now we’ll do this the way we should have from the start. We would love to have you all join us.”
I stare at them, thinking it over.
Then Raven adds, “We got goats!”
I point at her, staring daggers at Howard. “See? How hard was that?” They laugh, but I’m still not sure. Living with groups hasn’t been what I expected. I prefer when it was just Jamie and me making our own decisions. Or even Niki and the others. I wouldn’t say Jamie wasright, but I’d say now I better understand where he was coming from—and I wish he were here so I could tell him.
