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Siege, I stayed on for a while. I thought…I didn’t want to give up, I guess. But, you know, when they started coming into town more…”
    She didn’t add that people stopped showing up at the A.A. meetings, until one day she was the only one in the room. That day, she knew she couldn’t live alone anymore.
    “Anyway I went over to the library to shelter.” She dug her fingernails into the callus of her thumb, under the table where they couldn’t see. The next part was hard. “I was there the first time the Beaters came. When they took a friend of mine.”
    And the second time .
    She couldn’t bring herself to tell it. Not yet. “Are there still…is anyone still over there?”
    “Yes, last time anyone was there, they were up to around fifty.” Smoke hesitated and Cass got the impression he wasn’t telling the truth—not all of it, anyway. “They got it reinforced. They haven’t lost anyone…not inside, anyway, in a while. We have eighty here. There’s a few dozen in the firehouse. And you know, you have your folks who are still trying to stay in their own places. More than you’d think, really.”
    “Fewer every day,” Nora muttered.
    “Not our place to judge,” Smoke said in a voice so low Cass was sure it was meant only for Nora.
    “Do you talk to them…the people at the library?” she asked. Now that she was so close, fear bloomed in her heart.
    “We did,” Smoke said. “Until…well, we had some trouble. A couple of weeks ago. Since then we’ve stayed local.”
    “Seventeen days,” Nora said, with surprising bitterness.
    Smoke nodded, acknowledging her point.
    “What happened?”
    “You don’t know?” The suspicion was back.
    Cass looked from one to the other, mystified. “No, I don’t—I told you, I’ve been on my own since I woke up and—”
    “Some people would just say that it’s awfully convenient that you can’t remember anything,” Nora said. “And that you just happen to show up after the Rebuilders set up camp over there.”
    “Who are—”
    “So now you want to accuse her of being a Rebuilder? ” Smoke said. “Really, Nora? That’s a little paranoid, even for you.”
    Nora scowled. “Freewalkers don’t threaten to kill children.”
    “Everyone would have thought she was a—”
    “Don’t say it,” Cass interrupted, resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears. She couldn’t bear to hear the word, to hear the accusation, again. “Please. Look, why don’t I just leave now.”
    “No one said anything about that,” Smoke said tiredly. “You’re safe here. Everyone’s just on edge. It’s been hard. Shit, no one needs to tell you that.”
    For a moment no one spoke. Cass could feel Nora’s anger clogging the air still.
    “All I want to know is how she’s managed not to be attacked,” she said, addressing Smoke alone. “Walking alone as long as she says she has—how does that happen?”
    Cass glared back. “I’ve been lucky, I guess.”
    “Lucky,” Nora repeated, spitting out the word as though it was poison.
    “Listen to me. My daughter was there,” Cass snapped. “In the library. The second time we were attacked. We were outside. She wanted…to be outside.”
    What Ruthie had really wanted was to pick dandelions, one of the few plants to survive the Siege. Cass had taught her to hold the blooms under her chin, so that the yellow reflected off her pale creamy skin. Oh, look, you must be made of butter , she teased Ruthie, peppering her sweet face with kisses. And then Ruthie would laugh and laugh and tickle Cass’s chin with bunches of dandelions wilting in her chubby little hands.
    Ruthie wanted to pick dandelions, and they were hard to find at dusk, so it was barely twilight when Cass led her outside to the little patch of dead lawn in front of the library, after she looked carefully in every direction.
    But not carefully enough. Because the Beaters were learning. And they had learned to hide. They hid behind a panel truck on