The Deathless Trilogy

3.24. Family

Teresa, Ava, Declan, and a group of rubble sweepers leave to scout out places where we can hide the Immortal without disturbing the Hellhole community. "We will figure it out," Jacob said, even after Teresa reminded him of all the things that could go wrong with our plan. "Anything for family."

While the others are gone to do the work we came to do, Jacob shows me and Mom his hive domicile. His is one of the holes on the ground level in case he is needed in an emergency, so we don't need to climb the ladders propped up along every vertical row of domiciles. The entrances are tall enough for someone a few inches shorter than me to stand perfectly straight, but because both Mom and Jacob are taller than me, we all hunch over to walk inside.

There is a wall blocking the toilet from view, a couple of makeshift beds, and tables made of stacked books. It's small, and I start to feel a little claustrophobic inside, like I'm back in the belly of a Prowler, but Jacob's smile has a calming effect. He is so much like Ben.

Once we are inside, Mom and I take a seat on the padded floor bed, and Jacob reaches beneath the padding to retrieve something. A light blue baby blanket, which I wouldn't recognize as mine if my initials weren't sewn into the corner in pink thread.

"Is that my baby blanket?" I ask to be sure.

Jacob smiles and hands it to me. "I was never sure whose it was. Once we were settled here, I asked a couple of our best sweepers to go back to the house in Pennsylvania. They only came back with this. They said the house was clear, but that it seemed like you had left recently. I always hoped maybe this blanket meant that Ben and Eleanor had a baby, but I see it was you, Beatrice."

"Ben and Eleanor did have a baby," I say. "They had a baby boy named Daniel."

He swallows hard. "I'm scared to ask what happened to them."

Mom rings her hands. "Eleanor and Daniel are safe. They're up there in the Immortal."

Jacob takes a huge breath. "And Ben?"

My mom shakes her head. "He never made it out of the lion's den."

I'm not entirely sure what that means, though I assume it has to do with the story in the Bible, the one Daniel is named after. It must have meant something to all of them when they were my age and still together.

"But you have to know," Mom continues teary eyed, "that Ben and Todd went looking for you every year since you left. They hiked down to DC and back looking for you and Todd's family. Why didn't you go to DC?"

"Have you seen it?" he asks. "There is nothing there. When we got there, it was clear it was a dead end. Half of the group we traveled with continued south, but the other half, myself included, came here. We met some people in our travels who heard rumors of a large group of survivors who were cleaning the earth, so we left westward with them. I wanted to see if there was hope for us somewhere else with a bigger group, and when I got here, I found there was. I sent out the travelers to check on you all, but when they only came back with a baby blanket. I feared the same thing had happened to one of you that happened to the Smiths."

"The Smiths?" I ask.

"A couple we knew," Mom tries to explain it away.

"Mrs. Smith died during childbirth," Jacob says. "Your mom and I were the only ones awake and around when it happened."

There is so much pain Mom has never shared with me. She bites her lip to keep from crying. "Isla Rebecca Blume," she says. "The baby was stillborn, but Mr. Smith still named her. Rebecca. I gave you her name as a tribute. Because she couldn't live her life, I would make sure that you lived yours, fully and happily."