Crux

11 CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

Mid October

Sam almost opened herself to Jake three times that week. The first time was as she watched him work on the old truck, which had broken down again. She watched as he explained what he was doing to a curious Sarai, pointed out the parts and how they worked, handed her the wrench and showed her how to use it.

He’d make a great dad, Sam thought. But that night he was distracted and his mind felt troubled, his head buried in his slate dissecting the budget of the house, line items weighing on him like stones. She let the moment pass.

She decided again two days later, when little Kit fell from the tree he was climbing and his pain and shock lanced through all their minds, and somehow, even though she knew she was faster, Jake was there before she was, shushing Kit and sending soothing thoughts and gently probing the arm the boy had fallen on. She could feel Jake’s calm win the boy over, feel the fatherly awe Kit held Jake in, and it warmed her.

But that night, drunken village teenagers came to their gate and threw insults and stones and bottles. Sat pralat! they shouted. Monsters! You have monster children in there!

A bottle flew over the wall and crashed into one of the windows of the house, sending a spiderweb of cracks out. Jake winced. Sam’s anger rose, and she got up to go show these punks a lesson, but Jake put a hand on her arm.

“They’re just kids, Sunee. Just ignore them.”

Then she felt ashamed.

She decided a third time three nights later, while she waited for him to return from a supply run. She lay awake in the bed that she’d invited him into every night for weeks, and lost herself in the conjoined dream of the children, a riot of forms and shapes and thoughts and memories.

Sam drifted off to sleep, smiling, in love with these magical children, in love with her life, and maybe, maybe just a tiny bit in love with this man.

She woke two hours later. She was alone in the bed. Where was Jake?

She rose, pulled on an oversized shirt for modesty, and padded down to his room. The door was open. His bed hadn’t been slept in.

Frowning, she went outside. The truck was nowhere to be seen. The gate was still shut and locked. It was past midnight now. He was long overdue. A flat? A problem with the truck?

She went inside and tried his phone. It went straight to messages. She checked her own messages. Nothing.

It was probably something simple. A breakdown. A drained phone battery. A reception dead spot.

But Sam sensed trouble.

She pulled on boots and pants, threw water and food in a daypack, and left a terse note for Khun Mae and then a gentler, truth-evading one for Sarai. She slung the pack over her shoulders and headed out the door. Then, as an afterthought, she went back and grabbed one of the machetes they used to hack back the jungle, and slung that over her shoulder too.

She took the road from the hilltop house to Mae Dong at a jog, her posthuman eyes scanning right and left, picking out rocks and holes in the road in the darkness. She found him nine miles down the road, three miles from the village.

He was on foot, limping, a cut on his brow. His clothes were torn and one eye was black.

“Sunee!” His mind lit up with joy. Beneath it was shame, resignation.

“Jake!” She was on him and then she was kissing his face and holding him close. “What happened?”

He shook his head. “I was dumb. I forgot to fuel up earlier, so I stopped in Mae Dong. They were drunk. Four of ’em. And they recognized me.”

He stopped and leaned against a tree. “They took the truck… all the supplies… Beat the shit out of me.”

“Motherfuckers!” Sam exploded.

“Can you help me home?”

And some part of her wanted to wade into that village, and find those men, and hurt them. But the rest of her knew: that way was the past. She took Jake’s arm over her shoulder. Took as much of his weight as he would give her, and they started the long walk home.

“We’re done,” Jake told her on the walk home.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“The money’s gone. Apsara, the woman who started this place and left it to Khun Mae. She left money behind to run the home when she died. But it’s gone.”

“But we sell the meds from the greenhouse…”

Jake shook his head. “Not enough. There’s food to buy. Repairs for the truck and the house. The doctor’s bills for Aroon last year, for Kit the year before. The bribes…”

“Bribes?”

Jake snorted. “We run an unlicensed orphanage. Our brains are loaded full of a drug that’s still technically illegal. Yeah. Bribes.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want to know.” Jake snapped at her. His thoughts were rough, angry. Sam felt herself pull away. Then he gentled. “Sorry. I’m beat. I just… I never thought you were interested in that side.”

Sam nodded. They walked in silence for a while, Jake limping as they made their way up the road. Her mind worked through fantasies. Taking the children with her, going to Phuket, or starting a farm, or taking them back to the States somehow.

None of them made sense.

“So what now?”

Jake coughed. She could feel the pain in his ribs where one of the men had punched him.

“The Mira Foundation. The folks who pay me. They have their own orphanage, with other Nexus kids. They want to take ours in.”

Sam blinked. “That… That’s great! Other kids. You said they learn faster the more there are, right? They’d have more friends their own age. We could…”

“Sunee,” he cut in. “Sunee.”

She paused, and turned her face to his.

“They won’t take you. I tried. I tried hard. But they don’t know you. They only want the kids. And me.”