Really? That’s fascinating. “Do you feel if they’re healthy or sick?”
“I can when I’m at home.” He shoots me a sly look. “When I’m seated upon my throne of scabs.”
I snort.
“I know you don’t want to kill anyone, but robbery is a victimless crime.”
I think he and I have very different ideas of “victimless crimes.” “I guess we could try and find some odd jobs if there’s a town and it’s safe for us to go there. Maybe we can work to earn enough food and a bit of coin for the road.”
“Ugh. Have it your way.” He’s not thrilled with my suggestion but shrugs anyhow. “I’m not sure why you’d want to work when there’s ways around it.”
I remind myself that he’s Apathy. “Because there’s nothing wrong with working for what you want.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t ‘mm’ me,” I say, laughing despite the situation. I’m hungry, I’m cold, I’m wet, and I’m tired, but for some reason, Kalos’s disdain for a bit of manual labor strikes me as funny. “What, do you think I’m going to march up to someone’s door and ask if the god of disease can clean their stables? I’ll work. You just hide out and watch Dingle or something.”
“I don’t like that you have to do everything.”
“So you’re going to work alongside me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I laugh again.
We head toward the direction Kalos points to and sure enough, within an hour, I see the lights of a village just as it grows dark and the rain dies off. The sight of it is so overwhelming I want to cry with joy. Or collapse. I do neither, though, because it’s muddy and I suspect if I sit down, I’m not going to be able to get back up.
By the time we get to the village proper, it’s very late and all the houses are dark. There’s an open-faced stable near the edge of town, but every time we approach, the horses get nervous. Dingle starts bleating his loud angry/hungry cry, and no amount of fabric offered to him shuts him up. He wants food.
I don’t blame him. I want food, too.
The inn doors are closed and there’s a plaque on the door with unfamiliar writing. Probably “no vacancy” judging from how tight it’s locked down. Frustrated and exhausted, we head back out to the nearby fields, resting against a farmer’s split-rail fence while Dingle pulls up tufts of grass and chews away.
Kalos sits next to me, his clothing as sodden and uncomfortable as mine. “Was this what you expected when you offered to join me?”
“I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I just knew I’d do whatever it took to save David.”
“Because you loved him more than you loved life itself,” he states.
I pause, because he makes it sound so simple, so altruistic. I don’t know if I think of it like that. I don’t know if I ever have. “It’s not that. It’s…” I drum my fingers on my lips, trying to think of how to express just how I feel about David and the sacrifices he’s made. “When my parents passed away, it was a very sudden surprise. They were young and hadn’t planned for it. David was twenty-two at the time and I was fifteen. Rather than send me into state care, he adopted me and took care of me from then on. It meant putting aside his college education and his dreams to work and take care of me. He kept us together when it would have been easier for him to walk away, but he wanted things to be as normal as they could be for me. I got to go to the same schools, to live in the same house, and graduate with my friends. David worked two jobs to make ends meet. And then when I graduated and started college, he wanted to start his classes again, but he got sick. Suddenly he couldn’t work and his insurance wouldn’t cover his treatments. He was so weak and so sick, and I’d always seen my brother as strong and capable. I knew it was my turn to help. So I did.”
I think back on those dark years, when I worked every shift I could, and drove David to his chemo sessions. To the long days afterwards, in which David endured horrible sickness because the cure is almost as bad as the disease. To being exhausted with no end in sight, but knowing I had to keep going, because David needed me. To seeing all the bills coming in and knowing we couldn’t pay them.
We’d lost my parents’ house and moved into an apartment, and I smiled and told David it was fine. That it was closer to David’s hospital. Less driving, and wasn’t that a bonus? Just like I never “minded” getting extra shifts because wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit more extra cash? Never mind that I was exhausted. Never mind that I felt just as hopeless as David sometimes. Someone had to bring the cheer, and I wore that responsibility like a cloak.
“I don’t know if it was altruism,” I say softly. “But I knew what it was like for him to be sick, and I’d have done anything to save him from that again.”
“I still think you’re too soft. You need to toughen up.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “If I was tougher, you and I would probably already be dead. Or we’d be working with Seth. There’s nothing wrong with feeling things for people. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spare someone pain, especially if you love them.”
“But would he have done the same for you?” Kalos asks.
“Does it even matter?”
“To me it does.” He picks up one corner of his sodden cloak and wrings it out.
He would have. Hadn’t David already given up years of his twenties just to take care of a bratty younger sister? “I wouldn’t have asked him to.”
