“Well, at least we have the raft if we need it,” George said.
Elizabeth stared at him. “Yes, I suppose.”
George could almost feel the panic coming off of her. The idea that they might shove off and leave her with her crazy aunt was scaring her. “Well,” he said, “not like we’re going anywhere right now anyway.”
“I’d like to go to France,” Aunt Else announced.
“Maybe in the summer,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, I hear it’s nice there in the summer,” George said.
Cushing looked at him, suppressing a smile.
“You never mind, Captain,” Aunt Else said. “France is not where you’ll be going.”
“Please, Auntie,” Elizabeth said. “Just drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
Else rapped her cane against the table. “And you would think, wouldn’t you, in this day and age, that someone would invent an olive without a pimento stuffed in it. Is that too much to ask? Is it really too much to ask? A pimento-less olive? My husband refuses a martini with a pimento-stuffed olive in it. Can you blame him? Can you honestly blame him?”
“Auntie gets confused,” Elizabeth said under her breath.
George nodded. “That’s okay, we-”
“I heard what you said, young lady. I would have thought you were brought up better than that. What would your mother think? What would she say if she saw you dressed like that?”
Cushing helped Elizabeth make their breakfast, which was just canned fruit and dry cereal. But there was oatmeal and bacon, too. And Cushing made some scrambled eggs from the MRE pouches. It was simple fare, but it tasted like a gourmet meal after being on the raft so long eating crackers and petrified survival bread.
Chesbro and Pollard showed soon enough. They looked better than they had in some time after a real sleep in a real bed. It did wonders. Chesbro was still taciturn, but Pollard seemed to be in good spirits.
“Well, I see we finally roused you boys,” Else said. “Well, eat up and then off with you. Is there school today? No, oh well. Go out and play. Eat up! Eat up!”
“She thinks you’re her sons,” Elizabeth told them. “They died years ago.”
Pollard and Chesbro looked like a couple of actors who’d just walked out on stage and couldn’t remember their lines.
“Just play along for the time being,” Cushing told them.
As she ate, Aunt Else would pause from time to time, gesture with a fork full of scrambled eggs. “I’m trying to remember all the details, trying to keep it fresh in my mind. I think it’ll be important at the trial.”
“What trial?” Pollard said.
George just shook his head. “Never mind. She thinks I’m Captain Hook or something.”
Which got him another one of those acidic looks from Elizabeth. He supposed he could have been more understanding, more compassionate. But the truth of the matter was that he’d seen too much, experienced too much by that point, and things like sympathy were hard to come by. He was just making friends all over the place. Chesbro wouldn’t even look at him anymore since he’d punched him out. Thing was, George didn’t give a shit. He honestly just didn’t give a shit.
He thought: Give me another six months of this bullshit. Give me a year. By then there won’t be much human left in me… or in any of us.
Pollard, who seemed relaxed now, at ease for the first time since George had met him, finished his food. “It was nice to sleep in a bed. I can’t tell you how nice it was to finally sleep in a bed. I was beginning to think there weren’t such things as beds anymore. I know how stupid that sounds, but, shit, that’s exactly what I was starting to believe. Maybe… maybe once we’re settled, we can start giving some serious thought to where we are and how the hell we can get out.”
Cushing raised an eyebrow at that.
Elizabeth just said, “There’s no way out.”
“She likes it here,” George said. “She never wants to leave.”
Which got him yet another evil look from her. “Did I say that? Did I ever say I liked it here? That I wanted to stay?”
George was loving it. The old ice queen was beginning to thaw a bit. Apparently, there were some decent human feelings under the permafrost.
“Yes,” Aunt Else said, carefully counting the tines of her fork over and over, “but what you say, dear, and what you mean might be two different things.”
Elizabeth was looking really pissed-off now. They were forcing her into a corner and her claws were coming out. It had been a long, long time since she’d had to answer to anyone, to justify her actions or her lack of them.
“All right,” Cushing said. “Let’s take it down a notch here.”
“Prisoners,” Pollard said. “I don’t think I can live like that.”
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Aunt Else?”
“How long are you going to keep us here as prisoners?”
“Aunt Else…”
“Don’t deny it,” Aunt Else said, shaking a finger at her recalcitrant niece. “You’ve kept me here under lock and key for far too long. I think I’m within my rights to ask how long you intend to keep this up. Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”
