The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

The Longest Night

I LEFT THE ROOM SLOWLY, SO AS NOT TO WAKE COLE, AND ASCENDED the stairs to the Flathead Inn's restaurant, which Everett had (civilly) broken into. Its homey interior was familiar to me. From the top of the stairs, I saw a corner of Flathead Lake glistening out beyond a balcony. The space was covered inside and out in rows of tables, but off to one side, there was a living room sort of set up in front of a giant old oak bar from way back when that wrapped around itself, an aging mirror in the back, the sturdy bar counter and brass foot railing in front.

A few feet in front of it were two oversized leather chairs on an oriental rug, poised to look out over the lake. Flathead Lake was as beautiful tonight as any night I'd seen it. Clear and still, it perfectly reflected the moon on the surface, so that it seemed a spotlight trailed down the water, lighting a path to nowhere.

Everett was behind the bar, alone. "Where's Mark?" I asked.

"Beats me," Everett said.

I took a seat in one of the leather chairs. He handed me a glass with an inch of amber-colored liquid over ice cubes before he took a seat in the chair next to me. I put my nose to the top of the glass, but smell was foreign. He spun his a little in his glass before taking a short sip. I looked at him perplexed.

"Scotch," he said. "Figured you could use a drink."

"But I can't—"

"I know," he said. "I can't feel it either. But somehow it helps." I stared into the bottom of the glass for a while, remembering watching Cole do this when I met up with him in New York before my trip to Salem. I was searching for answers in the bottom of this glass, a terrible place, I realized, to look. Cole had been too. "Trust me," Everett said again, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eyes.

I took a sip and sunk back in my chair, my posture mirroring his. Everything still felt surreal. The tragedies had made it so even the most mundane things seemed foreign, impossible: The feel of the leather against my skin. The condensation from the glass in my palm. My hair weighing against my shoulders. The places shoes put pressure on my feet. I still wasn't sure it was really happening.

"What are you thinking about, princess?" he asked quietly after we'd been silent for a while.

"Salem," I said.

"Anything in particular?" he asked.

"Yeah, actually. You know, when Mark and I visited there, I kept thinking about how it all seemed off to me somehow. The way they described Puritans, the day-in and day-out rituals of the culture, the worship, the attitudes. And, really, the way they talked. Lizzie never talked that way, you know. I think if I'd spent my life in a place where people acted and spoke like it was still Massachusetts in 1692, which, theoretically, is how the elders raised us, I would have had even more trouble adjusting than I've already had," I said.

Everett pulled himself forward in the chair. "What are you getting at?"

I swallowed hard, scared to admit aloud what I was slowly realizing. "They weren't as terrible as I thought, were they? They weren't tyrannical. None of them except John, anyway. The rest weren't so rigid at all. We didn't spend all day farming or making clothes. They didn't treat the girls any differently than the boys. They didn't tell us why God wanted us to live in fear and guilt. Instead they talked about His love, about why faith was important to us. We had music, dancing. They let kids be kids, sent them to school, let them fall in love with one another. And, short of just the fourteen of them, we didn't have any kind of hierarchy. We lived together as one. Everyone with the same opportunity. Everyone with the same power. They thought so beyond their time, so beyond what they were taught themselves. They were . . ." I paused, searching for the right word, "progressive."