“Is that supposed to impress me, Wastelander?” I called, goading him.
John made a face at me, then cast his eyes over at the gate at the far end of the paddock. He spurred Ghost into a gallop again, building speed by circling a few times. He steered towards the fence, and it took me a second to realize what he was doing. The horse jumped and I yelped, but of course, he had things well in hand. They cleared the fence easily, and John laughed with pure exhilaration.
“Now you're just showing off,” I shouted to him.
“Maybe a little,” he called back, laughing some more. “Do not try that yourself.”
He certainly had nothing to worry about on that front…though I did wonder what jumping might be like, and how it was done, and it even looked sort of…fun. Who am I?
John returned to the stable with Ghost, then showed me each step and let me brush Ghost while he removed Bella’s reins. We eventually got both horses into their stalls, which had been cleaned and filled with water and fresh hay.
“That was job one yesterday,” John commented. “Until I get the truck up and running, they’re going to be the main form of transportation.”
The stable was far fuller than I would’ve expected, with hay bales, bags of feed, and various other supplies.
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Danny delivered it,” he replied. “Traded him a couple PNCs for it.”
“Is that your strategy? To trade them for the things you need to get back up and running?”
“Yep,” he confirmed. “Thankfully, with all you found for us, we have more than we’ll ever need to trade. That said, we need a lot—not just farm supplies, but basic things like clothes and food. We can’t grow much till spring, and I don’t think those pants are gonna survive another season.”
He nodded at the pants I was wearing, and I felt unaccountably embarrassed at how frayed they were, and the patches I’d sewn in multiple places. I hadn’t thought much about the fact that everything I owned could fit into a backpack while we were on the road, but now, amongst all this, it seemed like a sorry state to be in.
“My pants are fine,” I said quietly, not wanting to ask him for even more when he’d already given me so much. “I don’t need anything.”
John bent and kissed me gently. “You don’t have to do that, you know—act like you deserve less than you do. I’m marrying you, and that means that everything here is yours, too. The house, the land, and everything else—they’reoursnow. I know Kimmy agrees.”
“But—” I started, but he shook his head firmly.
“You’re not asking me for anything,” he continued. “I’m sharing it with you because I want to, and because you deserve to have a good life as much as anyone else here. I’m not going to let my girl go without. Especially not because she thinks she doesn’t deserve it.”
I’m not going to cry, I told myself firmly as I swallowed hard. He’d touched the heart of what I’d struggled with for so long, being the less-favoured child. I’d so often been given less, treated less,lovedless. And some part of me always believed it was because there was something wrong with me. Something unknown and evil had touched me as an infant, rotted me to my core, and that was why my mother could never love me the way she did my sister, and why I couldn’t hold onto anything good. Even now, that belief remained, marked indelibly on my soul as a fundamental part of me.
That belief had caused me to accept my lot in the compound as it was: marrying a man I didn’t love, working a job I didn’t choose, living in a home that wasn’t really mine. It was why I didn’t know how to react to the kind of freedom I had once I ended up in the Wasteland. I’d never thought I deserved any better than whatever I got.
But John knew me, and he healed old, broken parts of me that I’d forgotten were even still there. I couldn’t help but envelop him in an embrace, burying my face in his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
John stroked my hair gently as Ghost nickered at us from her stall.
“See, even Ghost agrees,” he teased, and I couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “You ready for the official tour?”
I pulled back, smiling widely as I hooked my arm through his.
“Show me the way.”
As we walked toward the house, John pointed out a couple more of the smaller buildings, including a greenhouse and a woodshed. Every roof was covered with solar panels, which was connected to a main power supply in the utility shed. That was where the new PNCs had been installed.
“We got the power back on yesterday,” John said, guiding me past the barren woodshed. “The water system works, but it needs maintenance. We’ll get that done in the next few days.”
We stopped in front of the farmhouse, and I stared up at its beautiful, imposing figure. Back in the compound, I’d lived in a small, serviceable townhome—the kind assigned to most of the younger, lower-ranking residents. It had been fine for just two people…but the farmhouse was nearly triple the size.
“You’re looking at the home of generations of Madigans,” John said proudly. “My great, great uncle lived here before my grandparents moved back from Ireland in the ’30s.”
John took my hand and led me up the steps of the big wrap-around porch to the faded red front door.
