“I knew enough,” he said. “I knew from the moment that you walked down your front steps that I was done for.”
We lay back on the thin mattress that pretended to be a bed and failed in all the ways that mattered except one. His bodywas a better mattress. I tucked myself under his arm and let him tuck his hand into my hair. He kissed my forehead. If tenderness were a drug I would have been cuffed.
“Wrecker’s going to make jokes,” I said into his shoulder.
“I’ll make worse ones,” he said. “Balance the ecosystem.”
“Doc’s going to give you a shot.”
“He gives good shots.”
“Ranger’s going to steal your coffee.”
“I’ll steal his hat.”
“Ghost is going to… be Ghost,” I said, and he huffed a laugh.
“Ghost is a verb,” he said.
We were quiet again. The kind that heals. I felt sleep trying to crawl up my ankles and climb the rest of me. Cap’s breathing was already doing that deeper, even thing that makes me believe in the future.
“Hey,” I said, just before it took me. “We’re going to get her back.”
“Yes,” he said, like a line item. “We’ll get her back.”
“And burn them,” I added, soft.
“And burn them,” he agreed, softer.
We drifted. Hours or minutes, I don’t know. When the wind shifted, it brought the depot’s ghost-smell back into the little room. I reached for the window crank with a sleepy hand and opened it a little more. Air moved. Leaves said something private to each other. Cap’s arm tightened around me by instinct and then loosened, never letting go.
I dreamed of nothing complicated: my sister’s laugh, a road that didn’t end, Wrecker’s truck throwing dust, a kitchen with a stupid candle that smells like vanilla lies. When I woke, the light had finally decided to be daylight. The world was still there. So were we.
