After (42 page)

“Not Vallar and Dunn? Why?”

“Because. She's friends with James.”

“And she doesn't like Vallar and Dunn?”

“Sure. She likes them fine. But they're not really friends, are they? They don't all spend time together, just because they want to.”

“Well, maybe Hope should make some other friends. Besides Riggs.”

“Maybe so. But that's not what we're discussing.”

Smith laughs, exasperated. “Fine. What do you think is going to happen if we send Hope off to a sleepover at Riggs'?”

“I don't know. What do you think is going to happen?”

“You know damned well what I think.”

“I don't, actually.” Eva is studying Smith. Her eyes tracing over the particular bend of his mouth, the arch of his brow, the challenge in his look. “Do you think he's going to rape her?”

“Maybe.”

“Really?”

“I don't know. No, probably not. But give that man ten minutes alone with Hope, and I guarantee you he'll be seducing her.”

“Seducing her?” Now Eva laughs. “James couldn't seduce a prostitute with a five-hundred dollar bill. I doubt if that man ever got laid, except by a woman pretty much jumping him.”

A hot sting reddens Avery's cheeks and eyes, as if she's slapped him. As even as he is about the others, he can never discuss Eva's encounters with Riggs without a pained reaction.

“Well,” he says, measuring his voice, “suppose young Hope decides to seduce her 'friend.'”

“Suppose she does?” Eva comes back, her voice gentle. After two years with him, Eva has learned how to push Smith to his limits without letting him lose his temper.

“What, Eva? You're okay with Riggs fucking her?”

“Is he the man I'd pick out for her? Maybe not. But,honestly? I don't think it would be such a bad thing. She adores him. And he adores her. And,” she adds, carefully, “I know he'd touch her, do everything as gently as anyone's ever been with another person. He likes making her happy. Making her laugh and smile.”

Smith stays quiet, lost in his thoughts, or crafting his retort.

“But,” Eva says, “what I think isn't the point. Hope's been here for over a year.

She's had a chance to get to know everyone. To spend time with people she likes best.

And if she's old enough to have sex, she's old enough to decide who with. It's her choice. Not ours.”

Another thing Eva's learned is when to stop. Smith's habit is to stick to his guns as long as anyone is arguing with him. It's only later, when he's had time to think over Eva's words, or John's, that his mind sometimes changes.

“Anyway,” Eva says,” that's not what we're really talking about. All we're talking about is where Hope should stay when I go into labor.”

* * * *

“Riggs.”

“Sir.”

“Have a seat, please.”

Smith studies his corporal as he sits down across the desk from him, his posture rigid and awkward, his hands restless. But Riggs holds Smith's gaze. That's something.

“Riggs, how are things with you and Hope?”

Riggs blushes. “Good. Fine. I'm not sure—“

“I mean, Riggs, what kind of relationship do you have with her?”

“I think we're friends,” Riggs says, his voice gone quiet.

Smith scrutinizes the slump of Riggs's shoulder, how he seems to keep twitching to cross his arms, and forcing his hands back to the armrests.

“Hope isn't the child she was, when she turned up here. She's a woman, now.

Not by the legal standards we were accustomed to, before the dying. But physically. And in many cultures, she'd be old enough to marry.”

Riggs's chest bellows and his fingers wrap around the arms of his chair, his knuckles going white.

“What is it, Riggs?”

“Sir. You're not going to do a lottery?”

Smith is still and quiet, watching the man opposite him.

“No.”

Riggs's hands unclench. His breathing slows a little.

“No,” Smith says again, “Hope will be, or, rather, Hope is allowed to do as she pleases. With whom she pleases. Does that seem reasonable to you?”

“Me?” Riggs sounds like he's been asked a trick question. “I guess so.”

“You and Hope spend a lot of time together.”

“We're never alone. Eva's always there. Always.”

Smith grins. “You and Hope have...a rapport. She likes you. Doesn't she?”

“I think we're friends.”

“Yes,” Smith sighs. “So you've said. Listen, Riggs. This isn't some trick to get you to confess a crime. I realize that you know how suspicious I've been of you, where Hope is concerned. But I'm telling you, now, that if Hope wants a different kind of relationship with you, if she wants to be more than friends, I'll allow it.”

Riggs goes crimson.

“The crucial point there being if she wants it,” Smith emphasizes.

Shaking his head, Riggs breathes, “Sir...”

“What?”

“I don't...I wouldn't...”

“What? If Hope took your hand, begged for a kiss, asked you to take her to bed...”

“No, sir. I wouldn't.”

“Really?” Smith says, dubious. “Why is that?”

“Because. I like how it is with us. I like being friends with her. I don't want things different.”

“You've already been thinking about it.”

Riggs stares down at his lap. Mumbles, “Some. Yes, sir.”

“You know, it wouldn't mean things would change between you and Eva,” Smith says, watching Riggs's expression, the fresh blush, the darting glance.

“Either way,” Riggs says when he's settled down some, “I like how things are now, with Hope and me. I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings, or anything, but it's better for her and for me if we stay just friends.”

* * * *

“I talked to Riggs today,” Smith tells Eva.

“Mmm? About what?”

“That man sat there, looked me in the eye, and told me that if Hope wanted him to make love to her, he'd turn her down.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Are you joking?”

“Come on, Avery. Not the knee-jerk response. Was he telling you the truth?”

“Well,” he says. “He may well believe it. But that's not the same thing.” Eva smiles. “You're not even surprised.”

“Not so much.”

“Please enlighten me, my love.”

“James loves Hope. Like we all do. She's sweet and strange, and her smile could just about fix anyone's bad day. She radiates happiness and oozes love. And she's gorgeous. I'm sure most of the men are passing a lot of dull hours with all kinds of fantasies. But for James, I think the reason he loves being around her, loves her, is that she is so like a child, still. When he's with her, he sort of gets to be a child, too.”

Eva strokes Smith's face, gives him a sad smile.

“James doesn't talk much, you know, but I get the feeling he didn't really get much of a childhood. Not a happy one, anyway. I think Hope gives him some of that back—a chance to play and laugh, not having to prove himself all the time. Prove he's a man. And sleeping with her, he'd lose all that.”

* * * *

One morning, the seven men digging up potatoes from a field at the south-eastern edge of the base cease their work, one by one, rising from their knees, wiping the sweat from their brows with dirty sleeves. Two women—possibly a mother and her adolescent daughter—have quietly crept up, and are standing a dozen yards inside the gate, alert and ready to flee.

Nichols is the one who comes forward, welcomes them, escorts them to Smith's office. The older of the two women tells him they'd heard rumors about the base, skeptical talk of a kind of safety, there. They both look like they've gambled their lives, like they don't know if they've won or lost, until Eva shows up, heavily pregnant and absolutely glowing. Proof that their gamble will pay off.

* * * *

John flexes, stretches, lengthening his torso, pointing his toes under the white sheet, turns over, reaches for Eva. Opening his eyes, pinpoints of black squeezed down at the center of gray irises behind eyelids squinting against the early sun, he looks and feels for Eva, but her side of their bed is empty. Sitting up, he scans the room. Between the dresser and the crib where baby Gareth stands, gripping the vertical bars penning him in, staring at Mommy, Eva sits on the floor, huffing, arms cradling her swollen belly.

Seconds evaporate. John is there, with her, putting a strong arm around her.

“Are you in labor?”

She half grunt, half laughs. “Apparently.”

He finds her gaze. Kisses her, gingerly, just for comfort. Then a deep, ardent kiss.

His lover. She takes their love, and brings forth life.

Glancing at the clock, John says, “Avery's at his office, by now. I''ll get Hope and Gareth to Riggs, and bring Avery back. All right?”

Eva's face is sheened already with sweat. She gives him a pained smile and nods.

“Or should I get Avery here first?”

“No,” she huffs. “It's a long while off. No rush.”

John scoops up the baby and holds him out to her. Eva takes him, kisses him, making him squeal and giggle. Then, for a moment, she goes still and serious. Gazes at her son, who looks back at her, his big gray eyes wide in wonder, the way babies marvel at their world. She tears up, but smiles, her baby's wonder reflecting back at him.

Then she whispers, “I love you, Gareth.” And kisses the warm, baby-smelling crown of his head, pressing her lips to his dark, wavy tresses before she hands him back to John.

“I'll be right back,” he promises.

Eva's second labor is not like the first. Not fast. Not easy. It goes on, all through the day, and into the night, until Hope has fallen asleep in the extra bed set up in Riggs's room, and Riggs plucks Gareth out of his crib and holds him on his lap, maybe to keep himself from pacing—as he has been all evening and night—so he won't wake Hope. Sitting there, his elbow resting on the ledge of the open window, he watches Gareth watch him, watches his lids sink lower and lower over his big gray eyes with every drowsy blink, until they finally close, and then Riggs watches him sleep, letting the baby out of his sight only briefly and rarely to glance around the moonlit grounds, or up at the moon itself, luminous, full and heavy in the starry sky.

Over an hour later, the sound of footfalls on the gravel path draws Riggs's attention. Careful not to wake the sleeping baby cradled in his arms, he leans into the warm night and spots Karen and Joey, their tread slow, her feet scuffling over the gravel with each step. As they pass under the window, as their voices drift up though the thick autumn air, Riggs pales. Under his growth of dark stubble, his pulse throbs, faster, faster. His hands are shaking as he lays Gareth down in the crib, as he twists the doorknob and pulls the door closed silently behind him. Stealthily, he speeds down the hall, down the stairs, out of the building, then runs to catch Karen and Joey.

The threesome drifts apart. Karen and Joey continue shuffling toward their quarters, and Riggs turns, pale, slow, and wanders, zombie-like, back into his building.

He doesn't go back upstairs, back to his room, back to Gareth and Hope.

Instead, he drifts into one of the unoccupied first floor rooms. In the murky dark, he stumbles toward a bed. Sinks down. Down, down, until he's hunched double, his hands woven together behind his head, like he's taking cover.

When he emerges from that dark room, into the fluorescent glare of the hall, he looks hollowed out. Like he hardly has the strength to bear his own weight, to climb the stairs, to turn the knob and open the door. But as he does, as he steps into his room, his swollen, bloodshot eyes go sharp, the breath comes into his lungs, the blood surges through his body, pumping every muscle to violent readiness.

Riggs lunges.

But Lott gestures like he might let Gareth fall through the window and says,

“Close the door, Riggs. And sit down.”

Riggs's eyes dart. Gareth. Hope—what little he can see of her. Gareth.

“Sit down.” Lott is still grinning, his voice still has a trace of laughter to it, but the juxtaposition of his cold gaze and his grip on Gareth's little arms is terrifying.

Riggs sinks onto a chair.

“All night I been watchin' your window. Your door. Hoping you'd step out just long enough,” Lott gloats.

Riggs stares into the far corner, where he can just glimpse Hope—her copper hair, her thin, pale legs bare under the hem of the oversized man's t-shirt she sleeps in—screened behind Baldwyn.

“You know,” Lott says, bouncing little Gareth on his knee, but watching Riggs, “I used to think you were a real simple kinda man. And even this last year, while you been running around playing Daddy and Uncle, and defending Eva's honor so chivalrously, I didn't see much surprising in all that. What man don't like to suck at the tit of human kindness when it's offered? I admit, though, you give me kind of a shock, tonight, not bedding that little faerie soon as you had her here, all vulnerable. Even willing, I'd guess. Now, James Riggs, I've got an idea you've been trying to become something different from what you are. I've got an idea you think maybe you can be some kind of good man. Is that right?”

Riggs doesn't answer. He just glances over toward the corner, then back to Lott, tears running down his cheeks.

“See, now you're surprising me again. Not that you don't answer me. But that you don't beg, just a little. Say 'please.' I guess you're smarter than I gave you credit for.

Guess you know it won't make no difference.” Lott laughs and gestures with a nod toward the corner. “She hasn't begged none, either. But I don't suppose she can.”

Just then, from that corner, there's a muffled little whimper. Like the sound a brave child determined not to cry makes at the doctor's office when the syringe pierces his skin, sinks into his flesh.

Riggs jumps up.

“Sit!”

Riggs's head snaps toward the voice. He sits. Lott takes his hand from around the baby's neck.

“Now, now, Baldwyn. Don't you go putting your fingers in the pie when the rest of us aren't ready to sit at the table, just yet.”

His back to the room, Baldwyn lets out a nasty little chuckle. Hope is silent.

“Come on out from your corner, Hope,” Lott says, as if she were being rude, giving all her attention to one guest, ignoring the others. “The four of us should have a little chat.”