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“Listen,” Piper says, piled almost on top of Nora in a dingy broom closet, “have you thought about what happens after? I mean, what’s your endgame?”
They’d been in Somerville picking the bones of a bodega clean when the radiation storm hit. It had forgone any warning—greenish-black clouds rolling in, far-off flashes, ominous rumbling, the like. They would have had a better choice of closet than this, approximately two square feet of space with a door that shut and no windows.
Nora knocks her head against a tin of turpentine and sighs. Trust Piper to ask the hard questions.
“Am I making things uncomfortable?” Piper asks again, bracing her arms on either side of Nora, a performance of making space that does all but.
“Well, it is your job,” teases Nora.
“More like I took an annoying personality trait to its logical extreme and made it my line of work,” Piper shrugs. “Not so great for self-preservation, but it pays the bills.”
“What’s great for self-preservation post-apocalypse?”
“Maybe a place in Diamond City, if you’re not stirring the pot. Okay, and not with the incumbent mayor, but we can do something about that. After.”
“After I find Shaun.”
“Sure. My sister’s got a flair for interior decorating. Fixed our place up real well. And we could get you one of those fancy couches that pull out. Have all your friends over.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah, me and Codsworth.”
Nora laughs. Piper looks delighted. “It’s a plan.”
“Really? Because I could help you with the caps—”
“Piper, I,” Nora hesitates, reluctant to admit it, but recognizing the need for honesty. “I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Because you’re focussed on Shaun.”
“Right, but putting everything on hold for some at-best shaky eventuality isn’t right. I could never find him. He could be dead. He could be anyone. I know what everyone else thinks. I’m not so self-involved that I don’t.”
“You’re such a lawyer.” Piper’s belly is pressed against hers. Nora can feel the reverberations up through her chest when Piper speaks. It feels like the purr of an engine under her on a long, dark drive. Another thing she hasn’t felt in too long, and may never feel again. “What I’ve read about them, anyway.”
Nora’s amusement is slow, but sure. “What exactly have you read?”
“Atticus Finch, Sandy Stern, Sydney Carton,” Piper lists in a breath. “Golden-tongued champions of reason, truth, and justice. God, if we had due process…”
“The legal system wasn’t perfect. Far from it, in fact.”
“Ask anyone alive today, the old days were as close as it gets.”
“It’s futile romanticizing.”
“It’s fun,” protests Piper, unfazed. “You talk a lot. I do too, and I know how easy it is to make it sound like you’re fine. But if scouring the wasteland for Shaun is what you need to do right now, I think I get it.”
Piper looks softer up close. Less like she’s known the agony of loss. The apocalypse has spawned an entire generation of sturdier folk. Hard faces, hard edges, hard sensibilities. Even Piper, kind and compassionate, is sun-dark and merciless with a pistol.
The rest of her life, with or without Shaun, in a world like this. Someday soon, it won’t seem like an effort of gargantuan will. Nora doesn’t think about it yet. Instead, she imagines the texture of Piper’s cheek, full and rosy this morning. “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”
“There you go again.” Piper grins, wide as a dream. “I’ll be here. Not here, here, in the closet. But around, you know.”
“I know, Piper. I know.”