EMP Catastrophe - Hamilton, Grace (best books to read for beginners txt) 📗

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Jade said, and gave a sharp nod to Matthew.

Matthew grudgingly gave her a nod back in agreement.

“I’m not a child,” David grumbled and began to stack their used cereal bowls. “I don’t need to be watched.”

“Not sure about that, old man,” Jade said.

“Just watch out for each other,” Matthew said and put his cereal bowl in the pile. Ruth shooed David away and picked up the dishes, heading for the kitchen. David and Jade stood and the two of them began to head for the back door.

“I’m gonna grab my backpack,” Patton said, “so I can bring back all the treasure we find.” He bolted up the stairs toward his bedroom.

Matthew stood up and pushed his chair in. Allison hadn’t budged from her spot. She poked at the remaining cereal. He touched her shoulder gently. “Can I talk to you?” he asked. “Outside?”

She glanced at him as if still in a daze and then slowly got out of her chair to follow him. She moved as if she were doing things against her will and all she really wanted to do was lie down and sleep. “What is it?” she asked.

Matthew motioned her outside and shut the broken front door behind them. Standing on the porch, he studied his daughter and didn’t like what he saw. “I wanted to ask you about your journey here. You learned a lot about what Grandpa and I went through yesterday. But how was yours? Did anything happen?”

Allison refused to meet his eyes. She shifted from side to side. “I don’t feel like talking about it,” she said. “You should just ask Mom.”

“I tried to,” he said and leaned in to try to catch her gaze. “She said she didn’t feel like talking, either.”

“Well, there’s your answer.” Allison kicked the toe of her shoe against the floor. “If anything important happened, Mom would’ve said something.”

Once Matthew had felt concern about his daughter, but now it transformed into alarm. Allison was retreating further inside herself. She felt so out of his reach. “Honey, you know you can confide in me,” he said. “If something happened, I’m here for you. For whatever you need. But I need to know what happened to you and your mother.”

“Mom will tell you,” Allison repeated.

Matthew was about to push her more when Patton burst through the front door. He bounded down the steps with his backpack slung over his shoulder. “Allison, what are you waiting for?” he demanded. “Let’s go.”

“I gotta go,” Allison mumbled to Matthew. “I’m sure we’ll be back with weird stuff instead of things that are actually helpful.”

Matthew didn’t smile, even though he knew she was pretending to be her old self. “You can talk to me whenever, you know,” he said, hoping this last bit of reassurance would help her open up. “It can stay between us.”

“I know,” Allison said. Her tone didn’t inspire much confidence.

“Okay, then,” Matthew said and looked at Patton who was watching their exchange with interest. “Listen to your sister, Patton. Don’t fill that bag full of rocks or dead insects or something.”

Patton began to list off reasons why dead insects were helpful while Matthew walked off the porch and toward the property line. “No bugs!” he shouted over his shoulder and turned back toward the tree line.

Better get started.

As Matthew reached the tree line, he felt a moment of calm wash over him. Finally, he had a moment to himself where he wasn’t worrying over his children or his father, or concerned with Kathleen’s aloof attitude. It was just him and nature.

Birdsong and the chirping of insects filled the air. He looked up to watch big fluffy clouds float by. The mountains looked like a touchstone in the distance. Immovable. Always there, even when the things he’d once thought were immobile had disappeared. As he walked around the property’s edge, he began to make notes and look for flat spots of earth that would be a good place for a garden.

This was something he would never have done before. He’d most likely have been too busy setting up the hotel with social media accounts and calculating profit versus loss on promotional costs. Assessing the property would be something he would have hired someone else to do. It would have been a task that took too much of his precious time.

Now, it was one of the most important things he needed to do. He felt as though he were connecting with the land in a way. Surveying what was his and what was part of the wilderness. It filled him with a certain kind of pride.

The old fence mainly acted as a property marker. Still, the posts seemed strong, if a bit weather-worn. He didn’t notice any rot. They could also cut down some of the trees, or perhaps make use of their branches, if they needed wood. It would help them fix the door and reinforce the fence to make it stronger and sturdier.

A secondary shed stood apart from the main house, near the back of the property. Matthew knew it was where the lawn maintenance tools used to be kept, back when the hotel had a full staff with gardeners.

The door was stiff when he tried to open it, but finally he was able to push his way inside. The shed was dim and full of dust, but a big riding lawn mower sat in the middle, covered with a sheet of rough burlap. He figured the mower was most likely dead. Puttering around the shed, Matthew was happy to find canisters half-full of fuel. He mused that the mower might also have diesel inside of it that he could siphon if needed.

He also found shears, a rake, a shovel, and a myriad of other gardening and landscaping tools. That would be helpful for when they got the garden off the ground. He decided to leave the tools where they were