The house still was not finished. Nearly three years since the family moved themselves from tents into Darius Draven's towering, unorganized brainstorm, and still tarp fluttered in the night air, makeshift shutters banged over holes never turned into windows, and the little girls were constantly getting splinters from climbing the rafters. It was the same splintery wood rubbing Ren's cheek raw as voices hummed through the floor, freely escaping through all the forgotten holes.
"...don't know how much longer that will last."
"Have you spoken like the foreman like I told you to?" This was Darius's deep, gentle rumble speaking over Dale's tight tone.
"Spoken with him about what? The factories won't stay open—"
There was a thump downstairs, following by a quickly muffled giggle. Ren shifted and peered down the open step-hole into the room below, in time to see Clover shove her head beneath a pillow, shoulders shaking.
"You were supposed to be asleep an hour ago," Ren said, straining her ears to catch the conversation in the lower quarters of the house.
"Ren, why the sun out?" asked Lark in a volume typically reserved for midday.
Ren glanced at the window in her nieces' bedroom, one of the few windows with glass. "You're just not used to the streetlamps." In the entire span of After the War, she could not recall the electricity on this long—three days with barely a flicker, the new town that had gradually popped up around the Dravens' house illuminated day and night.
Further below, a chair scraped across the floor. Ren was losing track of the conversation. "Not unless you cross the border." This was Anna now, her tone always steady against Dale's ups and downs. "You can't help but think about it. Hospitals still standing, water and electricity you can depend on—"
"—Ren, I can't sleep with sun in my face."
"It's not sun, Lark. Close your eyes."
Clover piped up. "But it's bright even behind my eyes. Mama forgot the curtains."
Ren saw she would not have peace until this was amended. Slithering across the floor, she scooted back her nightstand table to uncover the fist-sized hole in the floor used to communicate with her brothers. "Hollis, go pull Clover and Lark's curtains down. Hurry."
"Why can't Patch do it?" was his immediate reply as he lay on his bed below, thumbing through a book.
"Patch can't reach it. Hollis, go."
Without waiting for her thirteen-year-old brother to move, she returned to her original spot. Anna was speaking again. "You don't have to go that far. Look at what they're doing up north. Parks opening, the war monument they're going to construct—they have to hire someone to do all that."
"How are you going to get there? The tracks are still broken in places," said Darius before Dale could reply.
"I'll walk if I have to." Dale was louder now. "They announced the rivers are polluted again, the construction has halted—there's nothing else to do here. Shops aren't hiring. I'll go up north and sleep under bridges if I have to. I'll send my entire paycheck home. You feed my girls something decent with it."
Dale leaving?
There was silence downstairs. The little girls whispered, oblivious; in the boys' room, a mattress squeaked.
"You always had a flair for the dramatics, son," said Darius at last.
Ren rolled onto her back, staring at the rafters, the strings of beads and paper lanterns she had hung there the day they moved in. Dale leaving his wife and daughters, never seeing them? Never again sharing meals and sleeping under the same roof with his family?
Darius did the same thing, the other half of her mind reasoned, but that was Before the War. Before losing sight of any family member for even a moment sent Ren's heart into a panicked race so hard her head spun and her chest hurt.
On Ren's messy mattress on the floor, Pepper yawned and rearranged himself. The floorboards of the attic creaked. Darius had given Ren the uppermost room of the house, selling it to her as her own tower, comfortingly similar to their old treehouse. In reality, though Darius kept promising one day his ideas would be reality, it had the least amount of work done to it. Ren shared it with lawn tools, root vegetables, clothes Lark was yet to grow into.
The lights in the house shut off one by one, Darius's noisy yawn filling the silence. The humid wind sent shadows of the dead trees bending and scattering across the floor and Pepper growled a warning at them. Ren climbed into bed. With the next burst of laughter, Dale shouted up the stairs, "Girls,go to sleep."
"Can I sleep with you, Ren?" came Lark's voice.
"Fine," she said.
Seconds later came the noisy stomp of three-year-old bare feet on the stairs, then a hot body jostling the mattress, half-squashing Ren and pinning Pepper's tail. Ren pulled Lark against herself and held her. Her stomach growled and she felt the same empty gurgling in Lark's stomach against her palm, and she understood Dale now, knew his plan to be as right as it was terrible.
"Go to sleep," she said as Lark wriggled, kicking her in the knees.
"Pepper, no licking my foot!" Lark commanded. "He's licking my foot."
"Pepper, stop," Ren said. Pepper looked at her, wolfish fur smashed on one side of his muzzle, then collapsed onto his snow-white paws again.
Lark sighed deeply, tickling Ren's neck with her hot breath, sleepily chewing on her sleeve. The streetlamps outside bathed the shadows in gold and the wind swept the woods, carrying the scene of ash and burning, filling the house with the smell that had never gone away. Ren fell asleep.
