Night Light

  Kay stroked her sweat-drenched back. “I know this must be a hard day for you then,” Kay said.

  “So the wedding’s off?” Logan asked.

  She breathed in a deep sigh and let it out in a huff. “Yeah, it’s off. Not that it would have happened anyway, even if I hadn’t broken up.” She blinked back the tears in her eyes. If it hadn’t been for the Pulses, in just a few weeks she would have walked down the aisle, her designer gown trailing behind her. She didn’t even have the gown now — she’d lost it as she ran from the killer a couple of months ago.

  She had planned so long for that wedding day. She’d looked forward to seeing Beth — her maid of honor — nervous as she faced the prospect of straightening the gown’s train and taking the bouquet in her trembling hands as she handed the ring to Deni. Her brothers would have been fidgeting and sweating in their rented tuxes. Her father would have been all emotional at her side as he passed her hand to her groom, and her mother would have been smiling and crying on the front row. Lately she’d even been thinking of the Gatlin kids lining up at the front, and little Sarah acting as her flower girl. Her sorority sisters, none of whom she’d heard from since she graduated, would have been standing to the side, tears in their eyes as they longed to be in her shoes.

  They’d bought tickets to Maui for their honeymoon — but now they were as useless as her engagement. The irony of her standing among twenty thousand people on a football field waiting for twenty-five measly bucks did not escape her.

  Man, how things changed.

  Would Craig even care when he got her letter?

  The line moved up, and she and her family followed like robots. The child in front of them screamed louder. It was giving her a headache. Her feet were aching, so she sat down on the turf and pulled out Craig’s letter. It was still wadded in a ball, so she carefully unfolded it and looked down at Craig’s sad handwriting. He should have been a doctor instead of a lawyer with an illegible scrawl like this. He probably hadn’t had to write much in years, since he’d done everything on his BlackBerry before. He was a whiz on the keyboard, but he and his Bic had only had a passing acquaintance.

  The line moved again. She told herself to get over it. She’d shed enough tears, and she didn’t intend to cry in front of all these people. She glanced at her mom and saw that Kay had been trying to see what the letter said.

  “Honey, do you mind if I read it?”

  Deni shrugged. She handed it to her mother.

  She watched as her mother scanned the page. The compassion on her face faded into anger. “You did the right thing, honey. You do deserve better.”

  She nodded. Her head knew it was true.

  She just had to get the message to her heart.

  forty

  “TWO MORE FAMILIES AND WE’RE UP.” DENI HAD WAITED ALL day to say those words. They had been in line for almost seven hours, with nothing to eat and only a couple of bottled waters each that FEMA had given out. People had been passing out all day, losing their places in line as they were taken to a medical tent set up in the parking lot.

  Their proximity to the front had revived Logan. He jumped up and down as they moved closer. Deni looked at the long table in front of the line. There were several government employees disbursing cash, so about six families at a time were being helped. Right now all the slots were filled, but there were only two families ahead of them. Finally this debacle would come to an end.

  The man standing at the table nearest them looked upset, and he began to raise his voice. “I told you, she had a baby this morning! She wasn’t able to come!”

  “Sir, we were very clear that everyone had to be present to get paid. Now we’ll give you fifty dollars for you and your son, but your wife and baby will have to be here before — ”

  The man bent over the table. “Do you have children? Have you ever given birth?”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  “Tell me, were you able to walk six miles or ride a bike that day?”

  The woman looked around, as if searching for security. “Sir, I know that in your case this seems unreasonable, but I’m not authorized to give any cash to anyone who’s not here. Now, please, either settle for your fifty dollars or step aside.”

  “Even if I can get them here, she’s in no shape to wait for hours to get to the front of the line. It’s barbaric not to have provisions for people with special needs! This is so typical of FEMA!”

  The woman turned to a coworker. “Bob, find security for me, please!” She looked around the angry man and called, “Next!”

  The family in front of the Brannings shot forward.

  “I’m not finished!” the new father shouted. He pushed the father of the new family out of the way. “Get back, pal. It’s my turn.”

  The woman pursed her lips. “Sir, you just lost your turn.”

  “No way! I get fifty dollars at least for standing here for seven hours!”

  “Get to the back of the line,” she said through her teeth.

  Deni could feel his fury rippling in the air. There was going to be a fight, and she couldn’t blame him.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Letting go of his little boy’s hand, he lunged over the table and grabbed the woman’s throat. “Give me my money now!”

  Deni screamed, along with several others. Two national guardsmen came running.

  Doug shot forward and tried to wrestle him off the woman.

  The guardsmen descended on them and pulled the man away from the woman. Handcuffing him, they jerked him away.

  “She wouldn’t give me my money!” the man shouted. His preschool son cried as he followed behind them, calling for his daddy.

  Doug turned back to his family, his lip bleeding from the tussle.

  “You all right, Dad?”

  He wiped his lip and looked back at the injured woman. “Yeah, but I’m not sure if she is.”

  A crowd formed around the injured woman, who was coughing, crying, rubbing at the reddened fingerprints on her throat.

  “Great,” Jeff said. “Now they’re down one and it’ll take longer for us to get our money.”

  Deni speared her brother with a look. “The woman was hurt, Jeff. Have a little compassion.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, “but come on, I don’t blame the guy. You don’t jerk around with people when they’ve been standing in line for most of the day, especially when he was up all night helping his wife have a baby.”

  “He didn’t have a right to attack her, son,” Doug said.

  “Admit it, Dad. You’d have attacked her too if she refused to give you your money after all this. I’ve seen you lose your temper.”

  Doug didn’t answer that.

  The woman took a break, leaving her spot empty. The family who’d been called a moment before had to come back to the line.

  “Stupid jerk,” the man muttered. “He messed it up for all of us.”

  “Someone will take her place,” Kay said. “You’re still next.”

  But everyone at the table now had some sort of problem. One lady with about nine children didn’t have the right documentation, and one of the other workers had found the imprint of the “indelible” stamp on two children who were being brought through — someone had tried to wash it off so they could collect a second disbursement for these children.

  Finally, a space cleared. The Brannings were now next in line. They waited at attention, all six of them ready to dash forward as soon as the next space cleared.

  Deni saw the guardsmen escorting the angry man to one of the sheriff’s vehicles.

  She felt sorry for the man who was on his way to jail. She couldn’t imagine what his poor wife would think as she lay in bed with her newborn, waiting for her husband to come home. Would anyone tell her he was in police custody? She wished she knew where they lived so she could go and lend a hand.

  Their time came, and they all rushed forward. Her father handed the worker the deed to their house and the birth certificates of all six of
them. The woman studied them carefully, as if she wasn’t aware that fifteen thousand more residents waited their turn.

  Finally she said, “Okay, 150 dollars.” She counted out the bills to Doug, then stamped each of their hands. “Next.”

  Deni wanted to dance with relief. Doug rolled the bills up and shoved them into his pocket. “We did it, guys. We have some cash. Let’s go.”

  They elbowed their way through the sweating crowd and off the football field. The parking lot and streets around the football field were full of vendors — wagons full of produce, baked bread, flour, batteries, matches, oil lamps, candles. Farmers had pulled in flatbed trailers on which chickens and goats cackled and bleated. One farmer even had some cows lined up, their smell wafting through the air. Merchants lined up selling camping stoves and lanterns, guns, hunting traps, fishing poles, farming tools, carriages, and bicycles. Logan and Beth wanted some of everything, but Deni’s parents stuck to their plans and refused to part with a nickel.

  Chris’s family had one of the wagons, selling the apples from their orchard. Deni envied them. They’d probably triple their disbursement by the end of the day. “Dad, can I have an apple?” Logan begged.

  “No, Logan. We talked about this. We have plans for every penny we’ve got.”

  “But just one. They’re only a nickel apiece. I have twenty-five whole dollars.”

  “No, you don’t,” Kay said. “That’s our family’s money, Logan. Not yours.”

  “Man!” He stomped his foot. “Not fair.”

  Today they would have to buy seed and farming tools and stuff for canning, since they had run out of jars. Deni had come up with the idea of making aprons and tool belts out of some of the old clothes in their closets. Now that everyone was a manual laborer, they all needed something to cover their clothes. Her father thought her idea was a good one, so she planned to start on making the items tonight after her parents bought some of the supplies she needed.

  Her mother planned to use part of the money to buy flour and baking goods so they could sell loaves of bread to the other families in the neighborhood. Not that her mother was that good at making homemade bread — but at least she was better than Amber. But Deni supposed that her mother would improve. It would become a family effort.

  Getting to the chickens proved impossible. The lines for them were hundreds of people long, and it was clear they were running out. They would have to wait and find a place from which to order them. They pushed their way through the crushing crowds to the chain-link fence around the field, where hundreds of bicycles were chained. They found the two bikes they had chained there, but her mother wasn’t ready to leave.

  “I don’t want to go until we find those kids,” Kay said. “They’re here somewhere. I want to look for them a little longer. What if they’re hurt? What if somebody’s done something to them?”

  Doug wiped the sweat off of his forehead. “All right. But then we’ve got to get moving. We’ve got a lot of stuff we need to buy today and supplies are low. I don’t want the few merchants open to run out of goods before we get what we need.”

  “Mom, can the rest of us go home?” Jeff asked. “I’m dying.”

  Kay nodded. “Okay, you kids can walk home. Your dad and I will need the two bikes to carry back our supplies. Everybody be careful now. If the looting was bad before, it’s going to be worse now that people actually have cash.”

  Deni knew that was true, but since the cash was on her parents, she figured they’d be safe. As she started walking away from the crowd, she longed for the days of McDonald’s and Wendy’s. She’d kill for a cold Diet Coke right about now. The kind from a fountain … in a Styrofoam cup that would keep it cold. Air-conditioning to cool off in. A nice long bath.

  But those days seemed gone forever.

  forty-one

  IT WAS ALL AARON COULD DO TO KEEP HIS BROTHERS AND sister from running off to play as they stood in the line that slowly wormed its way through the football field and up toward the tables. Edith was being real sweet to them today, sweeter than she ever had before, and she hadn’t yelled at them once.

  She had dressed Sarah up in a baseball cap and Luke’s clothes. When Edith had put Sarah’s hair in a ponytail and shoved it into the cap, Sarah had cried and tried to pull it out because she didn’t want to look like a boy. But she didn’t have a choice. Her curls made her too easy to spot, and they couldn’t take the chance of having the Brannings find them. But he doubted they would in this crowd.

  They’d stood in line for hours, the hot sun beating down on them, but Aaron knew it was worth it. Once he got the hundred dollars due to him and his siblings, he’d be home free. A hundred dollars was a lot even before the outage. He’d be able to do a ton with it now.

  They finally reached the front, and he noticed Edith jittering, nervous and impatient as they waited for their turn. “Okay, kids, remember what I told you. You let me do the talking.”

  Aaron stiffened and watched the woman working at the spot they would soon occupy. He hoped she would be nice, since they didn’t have their birth certificates. They had torn the apartment up last night trying to find them, but it was no surprise that they hadn’t — his mother couldn’t keep up with her driver’s license, much less documents she rarely needed. They had, however, found some welfare paperwork in a box under the bed, and it listed all their names.

  Edith had thought about trying to use Jessie’s identity so that she wouldn’t have to explain how she’d gotten the kids, but she decided there had been too much publicity about Jessie’s murder. She couldn’t take the chance. Instead, she had forged a letter supposedly written by Jessie herself, asking Edith to take care of her children if anything ever happened to her. Edith was good at forging signatures, and she’d nailed Jessie’s easily.

  The space at the front of the line cleared and Edith grabbed Luke and Sarah’s hands and hurried them to the table. Her hands were shaking as she put the documents down.

  “These are not my kids, but their mama’s dead. I’m raising them for her.”

  The woman studied the paperwork, then looked at the forged document. Sweat dripped from her face down onto the paper, smearing some of the ink. She must have been sitting here for hours and hours, doling out money left and right. Aaron hoped that it hadn’t put her in a bad mood.

  “Well, these aren’t the right documents, but I guess they’ll do,” she said. “Give me your hands.” They each held out a fist, and she stamped the back of their hands. Aaron’s heart soared as she got a handful of cash and started counting it out. “That’ll be 125 dollars for five people.”

  She counted it into Edith’s hand.

  Aaron’s heart jolted. “A hundred of it goes to me,” he said.

  The woman laughed at him. “Sorry, kiddo. We only give it to the adults.”

  “But it’s mine.”

  Edith ground her thumb into his shoulder, telling him to be quiet. “Hold on, Aaron. We have to follow the rules.”

  He supposed she was right. They’d have to go through the motions, and then he’d get his share. He stood quietly, watching her count out the money in twenties. She finished with a five dollar bill.

  They stepped away from the table, and he thought he was going to burst. He wanted to celebrate, but first he wanted the cash.

  Edith waited till they’d left the stadium and entered the parking lot before crying, “We did it!” and fanning the bills in her hands. Sarah clapped her hands, and Luke looked like he’d just won a prize.

  Aaron stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Edith. I’ll take ours now.”

  Her laugh was high-pitched and brittle. “You wish.”

  He felt the blood rushing to the tips of his ears. Surely, she wasn’t going to back out on him now. “Edith, you promised.”

  “Do you think I’m a fool?” she asked. “I can’t give little kids a hundred dollars. You’d blow it on something stupid. I’ll hang onto it, don’t you worry.” She started to sashay away.

  “That
wasn’t the deal! You told us you would take us through and help us get our money!”

  “I know what I told you,” she said, “but forget it. I’m not giving you the money. It’s mine now.”

  Aaron’s heart beat in his throat. He tried to grab it, but she jerked it back. “It’s mine, you greedy witch! Give it back!”

  “What are you gonna do about it, you little creep? Go whine to the Brannings?”

  Joey kicked her in the shins. She bent double and screamed a string of curses at him. Grabbing him by his hair, she threw him to the ground. “Get away from me, you little jerk, or I’ll scream that you’re robbing me. They’ll throw you in a dark jail cell and throw away the key.”

  “Yeah?” Joey cried. “Maybe I’ll go find the sheriff and tell him what you did, then you can rot in jail!”

  “The sheriff won’t let you have this money, you fool. Even the Brannings were gonna take it from you. He’ll just put you back with some other foster family. Go tell him, I don’t care. I don’t need you anymore.”

  Something exploded in Aaron’s heart, bursting out in rage. No way! Edith was not gonna pull this on him! She took off into the thickest part of the crowd, but Aaron wasn’t going to let her get away. “Catch her, Joey!” he cried as he ran after her, pushing people out of his way.

  “Aaron!” Sarah screamed.

  He looked back at his little sister. She had fallen, and the crowd was so thick that he feared she’d be trampled. He stopped. “Get her, Joey!”

  Joey ran after Edith, fighting his way through the crowd.

  Aaron picked Sarah up, keeping his eyes on Edith. Then the worst thing Aaron could think of happened. A big guy who looked like Magic Johnson came barreling through the parking lot, grabbed the money out of Edith’s hand, and ran off so fast that no one would ever catch him.

  Edith’s scream pierced through the noise. “He took my money! I’ve been robbed! Stop him! Somebody stop him!”

  But the man’s long legs carried him out of the area and to the road faster than anyone could react. Joey froze. Aaron came up behind him, his eyes wide as he watched their money disappearing down the highway.