Free Web NovelChapter 325: Invited At Carmen’s [2]
"So you finally showed up, brat."
Marlon looked at me sternly.
I stared at him dumbfounded.
What was this old man doing here?
Marlon stood in the middle of Carmen’s living space like he belonged there, which, apparently, he did, given that nobody around me seemed remotely surprised by his presence. Tank top, arms crossed, the look on his face somewhere between a commanding officer waiting for a report and a man who had arranged to be difficult.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
"Well?" he said.
I had no words immediately available.
What was this old man doing here? This was supposed to be a simple thing, eat something, recover some energy, get back to work. That was the whole transaction. Instead I’d walked into what felt increasingly like a coordinated ambush dressed up as a lunch invitation, and I was standing in the middle of it with nowhere obvious to go.
I turned and gave Maribel a hard look.
Her eyes went wide immediately. "W...why are you looking at me like that?"
"If this was some kind of plan," I said carefully, "you could have just told me. I would have mentally prepared, instead of cornering me like that..."
"Corner you...! I didn’t plan anything!" She said, color rising in her face. "I had no idea he was going to be here either!"
"Do you have a problem with my father being here?"
Summer’s voice came from behind me, one eyebrow raised.
Of course I have a problem.
Not with Marlon specifically. It wasn’t about him. It was about, all of it. The room. The people in it. The expectation of sitting down and having a normal social meal with a group I barely knew, where conversation would be expected and I’d have to perform a version of myself that functioned comfortably in that kind of setting.
I was good at working. Give me something physical, something with clear purpose and results, and I could go at it for hours without complaint. But sitting in a room full of near-strangers making conversation? That skill had never come naturally to me. It required a kind of energy I didn’t have a large reserve of, and what reserve I had was already being spent on everything else.
With Sydney and Christopher and the others it was different, three months of shared survival had ground away the awkwardness until it just didn’t exist anymore, rather they were family for me. Similar way but different with Margaret’s community. I knew those people. I knew their rhythms and their habits and what they needed from me and what I could ask of them in return. Here, the only people I had any real footing with were Maribel, which was new, still being established, and Summer, and even that had been built fast under emergency conditions in a mall that had been trying to kill us both.
Anyway, I really need a Sydney right now.
The thought arrived with the clarity of desperation. Sydney would have walked into this room and had everyone talking and tired within four minutes flat, would have dissolved every ounce of social tension without even trying, would have made the whole thing feel effortless. She was a double-edged weapon in almost every context, yes, she was equally capable of making things significantly worse but in a moment like this one, her particular brand of chaos would have been extremely welcome.
She wasn’t here though. I was.
"I just think—" I started, turning slightly toward the door. "I’m intruding. This is clearly already a gathering that was happening without me, and I don’t want to make it awkward for everyone. Please, enjoy yourselves, really—"
Shannon’s hand closed around my arm again. For someone her size, she had a grip that communicated a clear and nonnegotiable intention.
"You are not intruding," she said. "You saved my life. That means you belong here." She turned and shot a look toward Marlon that had considerably less warmth in it. "If anyone’s an intruder, it’s that suspicious old man lurking around my mother’s kitchen."
"That suspicious old man," I said patiently, "is the leader of your entire community."
"Which makes it more suspicious," Shannon said, without missing a beat.
"Ryan," Carmen said from the kitchen doorway, giggling. "Come on. What are you being shy for?"
"I’m not being—"
"Do you have a problem with me, boy?" Marlon asked with squinted gaze.
I did have a problem, but it wasn’t one I could explain in a way that wouldn’t sound strange.
"No," I said.
"Good."
"...Alright." I let out a slow breath and stepped away from the door.
This was part of it, I reminded myself. Part of what Marlon had asked me to do while I was here, show people I wasn’t a threat, make myself a known quantity, give them a reason to trust rather than simply tolerate. You didn’t do that by turning around every time a room had too many people in it. That wasn’t how it worked.
"Perfect!" Shannon released my arm only to grab it again in a completely different grip, already pivoting toward the hallway with the boundless momentum of someone who had been waiting for exactly this outcome. "I’ll show you around the house, you might be living here soon so you should know the layout—"
"S...Shannon." Carmen called out bewildered.
"I’m just showing him around, mom!" Shannon called back over her shoulder, already pulling me down the hallway. "He needs to know where everything is!"
Wait a minute, who is living where?
I looked back helplessly over my shoulder. Carmen just sighed.
Summer had her arms folded and was watching me get dragged away with a look that was sympathetic in a way that somehow didn’t help.
This girl was dangerous. Not in the way most dangerous people I’d met recently were dangerous, but in her own way, she was completely unstoppable. She reminded me of Rebecca in several ways, that same absolute disregard for the concept of limits when she’d decided something. Though Shannon had a directness that was slightly different in texture, less calculated, more pure impulse.
I understood now, clearly and fully, why everyone around here treated her like a small and beloved force of nature. She didn’t give you a choice.
"Don’t worry." Maribel appeared beside me, falling into step behind us. "I’ll keep an eye on things."
I looked at her sideways. "You mean you’ll keep an eye on her."
"Someone has to make sure she doesn’t do anything weird," Maribel said, completely straight-faced.
"I agree with that," Summer also joined from behind. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
"Summer, I think that boy can handle it alone, no need to accompany them, Maribel is there."
From behind, Marlon called out with a frown.
"Dad, it’s not your business," Summer said.
"You are my business—"
Before he could shout out, Summer walked off.
"Do you like or not your father?" I asked Summer.
Sometimes she seemed completely upset at how embarrassing Marlon was but other times she was protective as well defending him.
"He’s my father, of course I love him," she sighed.
Well, I have a father and I hate him so it’s not really a reason valuable.
"I don’t like uncle Marlon getting close to my mom, Summer," Shannon said suddenly sulking.
"You are misunderstanding," Summer shrugged.
"I don’t want to lose my mom," Shannon added quieter.
"You won’t lose her, are you stupid?" Maribel sighed.
Shannon just sulked and looked away.
Or rather back to me with a smile.
"I am so glad you are back, I thought you would never come again back then," she said.
"Well, as I said plans changed," I replied.
"Then stay with us from now on!" Shannon said with sparkling eyes. "You are strong, I am sure you can easily join us. Everyone will accept you."
"Summer, he is already in another community," Maribel said.
"He could always switch communities," Shannon offered brightly.
"Why do you want him to switch so badly?" Maribel’s voice pitched upward slightly. "You’ve known him for barely a week. You’re being clingy."
"Jealous, Maribel?" Summer said from the doorway, grinning.
"Jealous of what?!" Maribel turned on her. "I’m being serious, Shannon, get off him. Don’t attach yourself to a man you barely know like that. It’s not safe and it’s not appropriate and—"
She was right, technically. Completely right. Under normal circumstances, in a world with any kind of functioning social framework, latching onto a near-stranger with this level of enthusiasm would have raised flags. But Shannon was a type of person, I’d recognized it almost immediately. The same category as Sydney. The kind where once they’d made up their mind about you, once you’d passed whatever internal threshold they used to judge people, the decision was final and the attachment was total.
The key difference was that Shannon didn’t weaponize it. Sydney had a gift for turning her energy outward in ways that put everyone in the room on the spot simultaneously. Shannon’s version was more self-contained. Warmer. Less explosive, more pure as well, so why I couldn’t just push her away.
Behind me, I heard Summer exhale quietly, not quite a sigh, not quite amusement. Somewhere in between. She didn’t say anything.
"Hmph." Shannon’s response to Maribel’s entire speech was a smirk and a look in the other direction. Then she tightened her grip on my arm and pulled me through the nearest doorway. "This is my room."
I stepped inside awkwardly. Shannon’s room was small but lived-in. A few books. A jacket hung over the back of the chair. And on the shelf near the window, lined up with a carefulness that was different from the rest of the room’s casual arrangement, photographs.
She let go of my arm the moment we were inside and crossed directly to the shelf, picking up one of the frames without hesitation, like she’d been waiting for the right moment to show it to someone.
She held it out toward me.
It was an older photo. A younger Shannon, maybe a few years back, grinning at the camera with the same unguarded energy she had now. Carmen beside her, younger-looking, relaxed in a way that spoke of a normal afternoon rather than survival. And next to them, a man and a boy a few years older than Shannon, with a face that shared enough of hers that the relation was obvious at a glance.
"My brother," Shannon said, her finger resting lightly near the boy’s image. "And my father."
I looked at the photo. Both of them were gone. I’d heard it in passing — that they’d been lost during the early outbreak, that they’d tried to protect them and hadn’t made it out the other side of that attempt.
"That’s a beautiful family," I said, and I meant it simply, without decoration.
Something in the photo caught me, the way they all looked in it. At ease. Present. Whatever had brought Carmen and her husband to eventually go their separate ways, whatever the weight of that had been, it wasn’t visible here. In this frame, in this moment, they just looked like people who were glad to be in the same place at the same time.
"Right?" Shannon’s smile came back. She looked at the photo for another second, then back up at me. "Sometimes I miss them so much it’s like, I don’t know where to put it."
Behind her, Maribel and Summer had gone still in the doorway. Whatever sharp edges the last few minutes had carried between them dissolved quietly into the air. They watched Shannon with a bittersweet smile.
I reached out and rested my hand lightly on top of Shannon’s head, just for a moment.
"They’re still with you," I said. "They don’t go anywhere."
Shannon looked up at me. Her smile held, a little wobbly at the edges, but real. Then she stepped forward and wrapped both arms around me, pressing her face against my chest, hugging me.
I think I get it now.
She wasn’t clinging to me because I was a stranger she’d decided to trust on a whim. She was clinging to me because I was the closest thing to a brother she’d had standing in front of her in a long time.
I put my arms around her gently and held on.
