None of them would ever make a professional singer, but there was joy in their stupid song, in the way they grinned at the crowd and shared smiles with each other. His eyes were drawn to and remained on Sela. She moved to the song a little. She wasn’t as boisterously into it as the others, but the way her hips swayed . . . Shit, he did not need this distraction. What he had to do could wait until tomorrow. And to be honest, he didn’t have to do anything at all. He shouldn’t even be here.
But he didn’t walk away. Even the dog, who sat at his side, seemed oddly entranced.
The song ended too soon, and Sela returned to her seat. He couldn’t see her nearly well enough from this vantage point, but he wasn’t willing to move from this safe spot to get a better view, though he was tempted. The older woman who had been singing with them remained standing to sing her own song, something slow and easy. She wasn’t too bad on her own.
Music by firelight. He hadn’t expected this.
When she was done with her easy song, someone else from the crowd took her place to sing a hymn. Several people joined in, until it seemed everyone was singing the familiar hymn. They should’ve sounded terrible, but they didn’t. They were out of tune—with gruff and less-than-pleasant voices mingled with those more talented—but . . . not terrible.
Ben didn’t leave, as he’d intended, but stood there in the deepest shadows of the night until the crowd began to disperse and Sela headed his way. She spent a lot of time with her family, but she slept here, in her own house, all alone. She thought she was safe. They all did.
No one was safe. He knew that, and surely some of them did, too. So why were they laughing and singing? This was a crisis, not a damn picnic.
And yet . . . A part of him envied their innocence, their ability to come together and forget for a while. He wished he could let himself believe everything was going to be okay.
He didn’t.
Sela, flashlight in hand and pointed to the ground, had almost reached her front door when he stepped around the corner and surprised her. He really surprised her. She damn near jumped out of her skin.
“Damn it!” she gasped, as she placed one hand over her heart. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cuss at you, but I’ll die ten years sooner now.” She took a breath. “How long have you been standing there?”
He didn’t smile, but he wanted to. “Long enough.”
He knew Sela well enough to know she had to be blushing. “Sorry. I can’t sing at all.”
“You did okay.”
She cocked her head and looked at him hard. “You should’ve joined us. We can always use a baritone.”
“I don’t sing.”
“Come on . . .”
“No way in hell.”
She laughed at that and headed for her front porch. “Come on in. What can I do for you?”
She had no idea. Well, maybe she did. The attraction that was driving him nuts wasn’t one-sided, he knew it wasn’t. What it was, was more than he could handle.
He had no intention of sitting next to her again, of tempting himself with impossible ideas. So why was he here, unless he liked torturing himself?
Right. He actually had a reason. He swung his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped the main compartment. “I had some extra solar lights, and I thought maybe you could use them.”
She turned to face him. “Extra?”
He’d noticed that she didn’t have any, and he did have more than enough, and damn it, she didn’t have to look at him that way. “If you don’t want them—”
“I didn’t say that!” she interrupted, and then she smiled and walked back toward him.
He placed his backpack on the ground and drew out not one but two powerful garden solar lights. He knew Sela well enough to know that if she had just one she’d give it to her aunt. This way they’d each have one. She pointed the beam of her flashlight down as he screwed the main unit into the stick. The lights would’ve been too long for his backpack if he hadn’t taken them apart. “Stick them into the ground in the morning, to collect sunlight, then bring them in at night.” He pointed out where the small on-off switch was located on the base.
She took the first one he handed her. It seemed they were both being extra cautious not to touch as the device changed hands. “This is fantastic,” she said. “Will it work on cloudy days?”
“Some, though it won’t be as bright. You should still get some use out of it.” He assembled the other light and placed it to the side, leaning it against the house.
“I’ll give one to Carol, if you don’t mind. These will really come in handy.”
He’d already assumed she’d do just that, and she did not disappoint.
There was a too-long moment of nervous silence, until the dog got involved. He danced at Sela’s feet. She smiled and set her solar light aside, leaned down to give the dog a good vigorous rub behind his ears while she called him a good boy.
Lucky mutt.
He wanted those hands on him. He could be a good boy, too. Mentally he snorted at the idea. More than wanting her to touch him, he wanted to put his hands on her. That was why he’d made this ridiculous trip, to offer her a couple of solar lights. Was he looking to impress her? To make himself useful? What a load of crock. His dick had pointed him in this direction, and he had followed.
“Dog,” he called gruffly, turning away and walking away from Sela. “Let’s go.”
“Uh, thank you,” she called in an uncertain and too-soft voice.
He muttered a gruff “Welcome,” as the pup pulled up beside him, but he didn’t look back.
The days slipped past and the reality of living without electricity became more routine. Sela no longer automatically flipped a light switch when she entered a room. October was always a dry month but there had been some rain, enough that she’d collected some water in her makeshift rain collectors and was able to skip a day or two of carrying buckets of water from the creek.
She loved the solar light Ben had given her, and Carol loved hers, too. Carol loved hers because it saved her precious candles, and that was a great benefit. For Sela, the simple gift was more personal, more . . . well, she didn’t know what it was.
Sela thought of Ben every night, when she brought the light in. Had that been his intention when he’d given it to her? Surviving was her focus all day long, but at night, when she switched on that light, her thoughts took another turn.
Carol said a gift of solar lights qualified as true and romantic apocalyptic courting, but Sela wasn’t so sure. Carol was just . . . Carol.
They were all losing weight, not necessarily because there wasn’t enough food but because they were all doing more physical work and automatically eating less in order to save food for later. The occasional biscuits or pan bread that Barb made—very occasional because flour and cornmeal were precious—were a treat rather than something they took for granted.
The valley had seen a few frosty mornings in late October, and then November brought more. The smell and smoke from fireplaces wreathed the valley almost every morning, though winter approached in fits and starts and some days were warm enough for people to go about in short sleeves. Those increasingly rare, bright days always saw people out more, moving around, getting things done.