Chapter 130: Her Family Was Not Staying in a Puddle

They packed while the floor was dry. Dove stored the washstand and table separately, resting between them. Thorne tied the bedding while Edrik drove the pickup onto the higher apron and loaded their handcart. Nobody waited for water to enter the office before believing the warning.

They stayed one last night only because the raised apron and rear exit remained clear under watch. At dawn on Day Sixty-Five, Dove took her pool wash in the emptied office, dressed, and ate hot sandwiches while the men checked the road report against their map.

"The higher road reaches the freight contact point," Edrik said, showing her the marked turn. "After that, we ask about B before choosing another week of travel."

"Ask about rooms, customers, and whether leaving is allowed," Dove added. "If anyone starts explaining how lucky I should feel, we’re still allowed to turn around."

Thorne kissed her cheek. "We know."

Dove smiled at him and finished her sandwich. Edrik folded the map along its worn creases, then tucked it into the pickup’s glove compartment. The three of them were getting annoyingly good at packing up a room. She wanted the next place to last long enough that she forgot where she’d put a few things.

Sprout supplied four packs of mesh food covers. Would they keep anything cold? No, just insects out. Three needed buyers; the shaded table on offer could wait. She kept the covers ready for travelers. She wasn’t opening the packs on a floor she needed to clear.

Edrik tied the named road bag beside their load, its label facing out so the freight staff could see it. Dove had kept the traveler’s suggested contact with it. She hoped someone at the yard knew the owner; carrying a stranger’s belongings through half of Michigan was becoming a bigger good deed than she’d planned before breakfast.

Thorne checked the straps over the truck bed while Edrik checked their fuel. Dove climbed into the passenger seat with her fan switched off in her bag. At the next trading stop they would need more gasoline; she wasn’t treating a running engine like an endless gift.

Edrik drove out by the higher service road, keeping well away from the soft edge. Water shone below the slope in places that had been ordinary gravel yesterday. A half-buried stop sign leaned over the flooded edge, and strips of dirty snow collapsed where the current reached them.

Dove loosened her collar and looked at the green tips showing along a roadside fence. She had wanted the cold to ease. Watching water take the lower road made her feel foolish for imagining weather ever had to stop at the convenient amount.

At a small hardware store above the junction, they stopped to check supplies. The front glass was already broken, but a painted claim on the locked back room matched the salvage seller’s mark from the service shop. Dove left that door alone and searched only the open public shelves after confirming no one occupied the building.

She found unopened trash liners, a sound screwdriver, and two clean rolls of cord in a sealed bin. The road task cleared, but she kept looking. After Edrik checked the roof, Thorne reached down two boxes of nails and a sealed pack of six paintbrushes. Dove stored those by touch, rested on the dry step, then sent Thorne back along the open shelves while Edrik stayed beside her. Someone would want tools when the floodwater went down.

She wasn’t leaving good stock because Sprout had stopped counting. They swept the remaining open shelves together and found only split containers and wet cardboard. Dove left those, then helped tie their recovered mop along the pickup bed before lunch.

Outside, two drivers bought mesh covers after seeing the pack she’d displayed on the lowered tailgate. A third took the last sale pack for his kitchen crew. They traded canned fruit, coffee, and wrapped towels. Dove kept one pack for four Favor, thinking of flies already gathering near the wet ditch.

Sprout settled the rewards after her active searching and sales. Her men had spent lunch laughing at how fiercely she defended the last piece of pie a driver had traded them. She’d earned Favor while refusing to surrender a single bite. The system could count that however it liked; she considered it an excellent lunch.

She shared the pie after making both men ask properly. Edrik asked for the corner with the most filling, and Dove gave it to him, complaining that his standards were getting expensive. Thorne simply opened his mouth and waited until she threatened to put a napkin in it.

At their next rest stop, Dove made both men sit in the shade before discussing the base again. She wanted to know what they would miss if they stayed somewhere with walls for longer than a few nights.

Thorne wanted room to shift without frightening somebody’s clerk. Edrik wanted exits he had checked himself and work that didn’t give a stranger control over his time with her.

Dove wrote those beside her own questions. "Fine. A bathroom, a shop, space for a very large cat, and nobody owning the bear. A completely reasonable apartment search."

They laughed, but she kept the list. She wasn’t the only person who had to live with whatever she chose, and she wanted them to know she’d remembered.

They reached the freight contact point in late afternoon. It occupied an old highway maintenance yard with a chain-link fence, a sliding gate, and a low brick office. Trucks stood nose-out beside an unloading pad. A covered waiting area held benches, a water station, and a board listing departures toward the western base.

Edrik parked in the visitors’ row, and Thorne opened Dove’s door. The guard stared at a woman climbing out beside her own trade goods. She waited for him to remember his question about cargo, then asked where they could unload and buy fuel.

"Merchant inquiry," she said. "Three travelers. We’d like the entry rules before we buy a place on anything."

The clerk who came from the office introduced himself as Ellis and offered her a chair inside. He wore a freight-office badge, not a uniform that made every promise official. Dove asked who he could speak for before sitting down.

He arranged transport and introductions, he said. A sponsor connected to the inner district was interested in helping female arrivals find better accommodation. She could avoid the ordinary waiting process if she accepted an introduction.

Dove looked at the two chairs he hadn’t offered her companions, then at the forms on his desk.

"Sounds convenient," she said. "What happens to my husbands while I’m enjoying this wonderful offer?"