He shrugged. “Don’t have to kill them that way,” he replied. “Seems more humane to me.”
She grimaced. “Then you’re eating them out in the barn,” she retorted. “You know I hate it when you eat roadkill in the house.”
Ray cackled.
Elliot looked scandalized for about a half-second, then scrubbed it from his face, replacing it with a slight smile.
Ray wasn’t wrong. Ghouls were the only Nids who could eat carrion—even shifters really shouldn’t. It was asking for a case of the world’s worst food poisoning. But ghouls had iron stomachs with some sort of super-bacteria that helped them digest things that were so far gone that not even the vultures would touch them.
“Do they… taste good?” I asked, unable to help myself.
Ray laughed. “Not especially, but they don’t taste bad, either. But I’d much rather steak and eggs any day.”
“I also didn’t know ghouls can’t have dairy,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining, since I have alpha-gal and can’t have dairy, either.”
“As a species, we can,” he replied. “That’s just me.” He smiled. “Never knew what I was missing, so I can’t say I mind much.”
“I wish I didn’t know what I was missing,” I grumbled.
Ray chuckled. “Always the case, isn’t it?” he asked.
He wasn’t wrong. There were a lot of things that were worse when you knew how good things could be, but you couldn’t have them anymore. Ice cream was only one of them.
Elliot took over the conversation, asking about alpaca farming, asking about how to take care of goats and chickens, asking about what they grew in the massive garden beds that stretched along the side of the farmhouse. He talked about theherbalism work he and Henry had been doing, and Helen had several recommendations for things she or her family members had used for injuries, aches, and so on.
I actually felt myself relaxing the longer I spent in Helen’s kitchen, the smells of the food, the distinctive odor of dust and old wood, woodsmoke, and the musky-mushroomy odor of ghoul settled into my skin in a strangely pleasant way.
I’d always looked forward to seeing Helen as a kid, and I realized, now, that I genuinely liked her. And Ray. I wished I’d gotten to know them better when I’d lived here—I could imagine doing homework at this table instead of the one in my parents’ kitchen, smelling biscuits instead of whatever more appropriately ascetic food my father had dictated that my mother cook. Pasta with simple tomato sauce, meatloaf and baked potatoes, tomato soup and plain turkey sandwiches.
It wasn’tbadfood, just simple. Because anything my father deemed too fancy would incite us to gluttony. Well, incite us tomoregluttony, because even if we ate more than what he believed to be the necessary amount, we were pronounced gluttons and forced to repent and contemplate our sinful natures.
I was the one who more often fell prey to my greedy nature.
Probably because I was trying to consume enough calories to fuel my not-yet-six-foot-three growing body. It was probably also why I ate more than I had to as an adult—too many years of desperately trying to eat enough made me more inclined to overeat now. I also still felt guilty about it, although Elliot kept trying to convince me that I shouldn’t. And that not only didn’t he mind the softness of my belly, he liked it.
At least these days I worked out enough—between the firefighter training and the training I did to get in shape for it—that there were actual abdominal muscles under the fat.
I justified another biscuit with the fact that I’d been eating erratically all week, often missing meals. Elliot passed me the dish of margarine, and I concentrated on spreading it on my biscuit when I spoke.
“Did you talk to Momma much recently?” I asked Helen.
A hush fell over the table, almost as though everyone was trying to chew more quietly.
“Not especially,” Helen replied, her tone thoughtful. “We were never much for long conversations. Hello-how-are-ya and remarks about the weather is all.” She paused a moment, considering. “I’m not sure if it’s hindsight memory now with all that’s happened, but it seems to me she was more distracted in the last few weeks. Rushing. Anxious.” She shook her head. “Not that she shared nothin’ with me. We weren’t friends. Just friendly neighbors.”
I nodded. I hadn’t figured anything had changed in Helen’s relationship with my mother, but if Momma had started talking to outsiders, it wouldn’t have been that strange for Helen to have been one of them. Then again, if it was my father she was afraid of, Helen was perhaps too close. Too easily suspected.
And if my mother had thought that my father might harm her, it wouldn’t have been a stretch for her to assume that he would also have been capable of, and even taken pleasure in, killing Helen.
It suddenly made me wonder if my mother had any friends, or if she’d been deeply lonely, up here with father and no one else. I remembered how lonely I’d felt throughout most of my childhood—the other families in the Community weren’t like Noah and me. We’d had each other, of course, but we’d both still felt desperate, unprotected by the two people—our parents—who were supposed to keep us safe and sheltered and loved.
Momma’d had us for fifteen years, then my sister for thirteen. But other than that… I couldn’t imagine living just withfather. But, of course, she’d have done that before Noah and I were born, too. She’d married him, left her family to join him in the Community.
I wondered what her life had been like before that, what would make her choosethisover the life she’d had. Or maybe Father had been different when they’d first met. People could change, although in my experience most people were mostly just themselves. Not always. Things could happen that changed you forever. I didn’t know much of anything about my parents’ lives before my own.
“I ran into Iris Tabbard last night,” I said, taking a sip of coffee, rich and robust. “She was really concerned about me staying away from here at night.” I met her light blue gaze. “You said something similar the other night. Why? What’s going on up here?”
Helen sighed, but didn’t answer.
