Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

Instead, he said, “Let’s go,” tiredly, and began to walk down the hill.

She watched him for a moment and then said, not really caring if he heard her, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going down to Mary Beth’s house. Would you rather stay here?”

She was appalled that he had thought to go there, that she had not. “Of course not,” she said. “Of course I’m coming.”

They walked down the hill together, across Maple Street, along a dirt-and-gravel lane that followed the course of the nearby creek, until they could see, up ahead, the house where Mary Beth had lived. There were several cars parked along the grassy edge of the lane. They heard the sound of a machine, tasted dust in the air.

Rachel grabbed Joe’s sleeve. “I can’t,” she whispered, her hand at her mouth. She pulled him off the lane and into the shelter of the trees, and they stood there together, looking at the house. “I can’t go in there. I just can’t.”

“Wait here, then,” Joe said, taking her hand off his sleeve. “Or go on back home. It’s all right. I’ll tell them to call you if they need anything.”

But when he started again toward the house, Rachel followed.

The front door was open, but no one answered their knock.

“Daniel?” Rachel called.

A man in jeans and a plaid shirt came down the hallway toward the door.

“Daniel,” Rachel said through the screen. “We wanted to know if we could do anything.”

“Hello, Rachel,” Daniel said, opening the door, “Joe.” He stepped out into the yard. “Judy’s at the hospital.” He did not stand still in one place, kept walking around, stopping, walking back to where he’d been. “She went into labor about an hour ago.”

“Oh, God, Daniel.”

“Yeah. She wants to die.”

Rachel pictured her in a white room, white bed, somewhere close to where Rusty had been lying when they cleaned his filthy burns.

Joe said, “Do you want us to watch the kids so you can go be with her?”

“No, the kids are at my mother’s in Randall. They don’t even know what’s happened yet. They think we’re just moving a few days early.” He looked around suddenly, as if startled to find himself standing in his own front yard, the light nearly gone now, the air cold. “We were going to leave on Tuesday,” he said. He stopped and stared at them. Rachel had never seen such disbelief as she saw on his face.

“Judy’s water broke right after we got to my mother’s. I took her straight to the hospital, and I’m going straight back as soon as I get her things.”

“She wasn’t due for a while yet, was she?”

“Not for another three weeks, but the doctor says the baby’ll be fine. Listen,” he said, glancing back toward the door. “You really shouldn’t be here. Mendelson told me to get going as soon as possible and to stay clear until they can take some more readings, see what’s going on down”—he made a vague motion toward the ground. And then suddenly he closed his eyes, began to tremble all over. His suffering escalated quickly, violently, as if he had swallowed a lazy poison and was only now beginning, himself, to die.

“She was just a baby,” he groaned, putting his hands over his face. “She was just my baby. Oh, God—” He wailed and ran away from them, into his house. And neither of them ever saw him again.

Chapter 50

        As much as Joe wanted Rachel away from Belle Haven, as much as he was now eager to leave himself, even he could see that she would need a day or two, perhaps as much as a week, to make everything ready.

In some ways, he considered himself lucky to have lost his possessions and was glad that the things he valued fit easily into his pockets: a pocketknife, an opal, the key to the Schooner. But, given enough warning, he would have spent some time sorting through his meager belongings and putting the most important out of harm’s way. His carving tools. His books. He would have saved everything in the Schooner if he could have. He would have saved Pal.

When he thought about it, which he often did, he admitted to himself that he’d had plenty of warning. He knew that he had made a choice: to stay a while longer with Rachel, at great risk. He was afraid that if she, too, ignored the warnings she’d been given—for another day, another hour—she might have more to regret than she already did.

But he was not so arrogant or so stupid as to condemn Rachel for her attachments. He knew that she would need some time to sort through her belongings and sever her ties. He thought that if he stayed with her, he could help her in some way. And so, when she asked him to stay with her, he did.

He was glad of the chance to use her shower, for the stream had made a cold, cold bath. He washed his sorry clothes, pared his fingernails, enjoyed the feel of a cushion at his back. He made her a good meal that first night after Angela and Rusty had left, but they ate it without exchanging a word. He had grown accustomed to the silence of solitude, of the woods, and she was far too preoccupied for talk.

Later, in her bed, they fell almost immediately to sleep, and it was only when they awoke in the early morning that they looked at each other and realized what they were facing.

“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered, opening her arms.

And he suddenly found himself wishing, as Rachel always had, that somehow they could stay.

After that first night back in the house together, Joe slept on the couch and Rachel alone in her bed.

As she packed her belongings into boxes, took the pictures from her walls, dismantled the place she had built around herself and prepared to emerge undefended, she spoke less and less often, almost