34

Remy

We'd agreed on 6:00 pm for dinner, because it had seemed like a good idea. Boden, Serg, and I were going over to visit Lazlo and Nova. I hadn't had an opportunity to meet Nova yet. She never came to the old farmhouse with him because she was needed back at their homestead with their daughter, the same reasons that I didn't bring Boden or Serg with me.

By the time the night of the dinner rolled around, it felt like a very bad idea. Max and Stella had only been home with the baby for a week, and it didn't feel right leaving them alone so soon.

Boden came up with an answer for that, though, and he invited Jovie to hang out with them while we were gone. He seemed to really be looking forward to the dinner, and I couldn't explain why, but the whole thing made me feel uneasy.

"I don't know why it's so important that we go out tonight," I said with ten minutes before we were set to leave. "We can have dinner with them another night."

Boden scowled at me. "That's ridiculous. You did your makeup and dressed up already. Rafaella's had a good day, and she's asleep. Max and Stella had supper, and Jovie is here now. Everything is fine, and we should go."

Serg, Boden, and I had all cleaned up the best we could, because we had so few excuses for it anymore. I had traded a few pelts from rabbits I'd hunted for a small makeup kit. Just eyeliner and eyeshadow, but it was more than I usually wore.

For my clothes, Harlow had given me a dress she made. Something woven from pale thread in a loose-knit midi-dress that I paired with my sneakers because I wasn't going overboard on this whole thing.

"You're right," I said, because I couldn't keep making excuses.

"And you hardly ever leave the house," Serg added. "It'll be good for you to get out."

I cast a look at him. "Are you two ganging up on me?"

Serg shrugged. "We only do that when we're worried."

"Well, there's no reason to worry, so let's go," I announced.

Lazlo and Nova lived on the northern side of Emberwood on a small farm. On Eliot Lane where we lived, with the newest housing, the homes were small and compact with little slivers for yards. It was to make the most of the finite amount of land within the fence. They could – and likely even would need to – expand the fencing around the town someday, but it was difficult, dangerous work with the zombies, wildlife, and Canadian weather.

The closer we got to the fence in the northside, the more spread out the houses. They soon became small farms with enough room for livestock. Most of the vegetables were grown in the greenhouses, but there were fields of corn and wheat along with pastures for grazing.

Still, Emberwood wasn't that big, and it only took us a little over twenty minutes to reach the address Lazlo had given me. The house itself was similar to ours, but there's also had a side pen made of tensile wire. That seemed a bit excessive for farm animals, but then I saw the pair of wolves relaxing in the shade. I had forgotten that Nova kept them as pets.

I knocked on the front door, and a tall, curvy Native American woman opened it. Her eyes were dark and framed by long lashes, and her smile was kind but uneasy.

"You must be Lazlo's friends," she greeted us. "I'm his wife, Nova."

And I froze at the word wife . Lazlo had never called her that before, although he been very clear that he loved her and she was the mother of his child. On top of all that, I had no desire to pursue a romantic relationship with Laz, regardless of his relationship status, and I was with Boden, who I loved.

Yet, when Nova said wife , I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

"I'm Boden, and this is –"

"– his wife, Remy," I finished for him. I don't even know why I said it, and I had blurted it out before I could even think.

"And I'm Serg, and I'm nobody's wife," Serg said.

Nova laughed and opened the door wider. "Come on in. Lazlo's just finishing up making dinner."

"I brought this cloudberry hard cider." Serg held up a gallon-sized mason jar filled with an amber-colored liquid. "I got it at the market yesterday."

"Thank you. That sounds delicious," Nova said.

As we went into the house, I could feel Boden looking at me, but I refused to meet his gaze.

Lazlo was in the kitchen, with his four-year-old daughter, Sage on his hip. He shouted a quick greeting over his shoulder, and the little girl watched us curiously. She looked more like Nova than she did him, except for his eyes. She had his same dark eyes.

The dining table had a candelabra in the center, next to a basket of dinner rolls and neatly folded napkins. We sat around the table, with me between Boden and Nova .

The grownups made polite conversation, talking about how all of us enjoyed the town or the shops. Most of us, anyway. Boden ended up playing a game with Sage that involved her hiding behind napkins while he pretended to be surprised.

When the food was finally finished, Lazlo joined us at the table, and the mood lightened some. We had the rosemary quail and root vegetables he'd made to keep us busy, and I had been sipping enough of Serg's hard cider that I didn't feel quite so tense.

As the meal went on, the conversation flowed easier, and by the time it finished, I was thinking that maybe this hadn't been so bad after all.

"That was fantastic. Lazlo, you really outdid yourself tonight," Nova said and patted her belly. "I am so full."

"Yeah, I would love to get the recipe," Serg agreed.

"It's honestly super easy," Lazlo said, downplaying it.

"Do you do most of the cooking?" Nova asked Serg.

"I do. I'm the best at it of the three of us, so it just makes sense," he elaborated.

"That's so interesting," Nova said, and then she turned her gaze to me and Boden. "How long have you two been together?"

"A little over eight years," Boden answered before I finished doing the math in my head. "What about you two?"

"About seven years," Nova replied and smiled across the table. "They haven't always been blissful years, but they have been better than we deserve."

"So, Remy, when was it that you and Lazlo dated?" Serg asked so nonchalantly, and suddenly my stomach dropped.

"Um, I don't even remember. It was so long ago." I tried sidestepping the question and took another sip of my drink.

"It was about eight and a half years ago," Lazlo said.

"I've never been so good with math," I muttered, when really I wished that we would just talk about something else, anything else.

"Why did you two break up?" Boden asked.

"I…" I stared down at my plate and toyed with my bent handmade fork. "It's not interesting. I'm sure I've told you."

"It's really not interesting," Lazlo agreed. "We basically just ghosted each other."

" Ghosted ?" I scoffed, and I hadn't even meant to, but he was grossly mischaracterizing the situation. "You made it sound like I just stopped talking to you out of the blue. I was locked up for six months in the medical ward, and you were evacuated."

"Wait." Something seemed to have occurred to Boden, and he rested his arms on the table and leaned forward as he stared at Laz. "You were there when Remy was locked up for all that time, and you never tried to get her out of there?"

Lazlo bristled. "Of course I did. I plotted and planned with another soldier, but it just couldn't be done. They put me in the stockades for helping her little brother escape, and they were going to exile me if I was caught again. I had to be careful because I had Harlow to think about, too."

"And that's why your relationship ended?" Boden pressed, and I could hear the anger simmering just below the surface. "She was locked up, and you just left her behind?"

Lazlo shook his head. "She volunteered. She voluntarily went up to the medical ward so she'd play human shield for her brother. She made her choice to protect him, and I had to make mine to protect me and Harlow."

" Voluntarily ?" Boden sneered. "They were vivisecting her without pain relief. Any consent that she gave –"

"Boden!" I snapped, and I felt strangely cold and out of my body. "My pain isn't yours to share."

Boden sagged, immediately looking ashamed. "I'm sorry."

"And you both really ought to stop talking about Remy as if she's not here," Nova interjected, and she looked over at me. "You are right here. What do you want to say about all of this?"

I squirmed as everyone's attention turned on me. "I don't know. It was a long time ago, and neither of us made the wrong choices. We're all just doing the best we can."

"And I think we all ended up where we were supposed to," Lazlo said, and he looked lovingly at Nova and their daughter. At his beautiful little family.

"Here, here!" Serg raised his glass for a toast. "To the here and now!"

I gulped down my drink, and Boden leaned back in his chair and put his arm around me. Normally, I didn't like public displays of affection, but tonight, I leaned into it, tilting my body toward his.

When there was a lull in the conversation, I heard the sound of zombies howling. I had noticed them being loud on our walk here, and we didn't usually hear them at our house, even when the baby wasn't crying, so I commented as much.

"Oh, yeah, that's because they feed the zombies at this end," Nova explained. "That's also how we're able to have so much more land out here, compared to you southies."

"Th-they what?" I stammered in surprise. "You guys are feeding the zombies?"

"Yeah, it keeps them away from the entrance of Emberwood," she elaborated. "The zombies all congregate at the feeding area where the fence is reinforced. We give them the junky parts of our red meat. Zombies won't hunt deer, but they do seem to enjoy their intestines."

"When you get the zombies all together when you feed them, why don't you just kill them?" I asked in dismay. "With arrows or bullets or blades or fire. Just kill them all."

"No bullets, waste of arrows, blades are too risky for a bite, and it's wildfire season, so no fire," Nova replied. "The zombies aren't hurting us, and it's easier and kinder to learn how to live with them to eradicate them, especially when I don't believe full extinction is even possible."

The evening eventually came to an end, with all of us in a better mood and tipsy. But I was still nervous about the walk home, afraid of what Boden would want to talk about. Would he be angry or confused or hurt?

He didn't bring up anything, not even after we got home and Jovie left, or after we said goodnight to the rest of the family. We went up to our loft together, and in the darkness, he helped me out of my dress and we began to kiss.

Without saying a word, we made love in our bed. When we finished, he wrapped his arms around me, and he held me tighter than normal.