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

drive. She was shiftless, a wanderer. She had no purpose except to survive on her own. She had no idea what it was like to put yourself behind the needs of your children.

Kathleen also couldn’t understand how Jade seemed so put together. Kathleen craved that calm, as if killing a man didn’t mean anything at all, or as if her actions to safeguard herself were more important than the life of a cruel man. Kathleen just wanted to be able to look in the mirror again and not see her regrets. It didn’t seem fair that both she and Jade had been in a similar position and yet somehow it was Jade who was outside making the hotel safer, while Kathleen cowered inside and fought off nightmares.

It wasn’t fair.

If Jade was gone, Kathleen wouldn’t have to feel so guilty. She wouldn’t have to feel so…replaceable. So weak.

Ruth didn’t respond to Kathleen and instead tapped her fingers against her cheeks as she evaluated the drying meat. “Do you think I could can the meat?”

Kathleen shrugged and picked at the tomato seeds that Ruth had excluded from her salsa. “Why not?”

“I’ve never done it before. It might save some more meat from spoilage than this method. Should I try it?”

“Knock yourself out,” Kathleen said as she picked up a seed and held it in her hands. “Ruth, what do you think about gardening?”

Ruth chuckled. “Oh, I have a certified black thumb,” she said. “Once, I tried to start an herb garden. I had rosemary and thyme on the windowsill of my first apartment. The plants all died within the month, of mold. Then I tried my hand at squash and zucchini. One of them got this strange white fungus over it. I only ever grew flowers from my zucchini plants. Never any veggies. Then everything just died on me.”

Kathleen laughed. “Same with me. I had a fern in college, and one day I came home and found it withered into this brown husk.” She sighed and held up the tomato seed for Ruth to inspect. “Maybe we should try our hand at it again. Maybe both of our black thumbs might equal one green one. We could plant some of these and see if they would grow.”

Ruth smiled brightly at her. “Kathleen, that’s a wonderful idea. You can water them and put them in soil and then hopefully, they might take root.”

“It’s a long shot,” Kathleen said, feeling a sudden despair overwhelm her. She put the seed back on the counter. “This whole hotel was kind of a long shot too, wasn’t it? So stupid. I don’t even know why we decided to buy a place in the middle of nowhere. I can’t even keep a fern alive. How do I expect to keep a garden healthy? Sometimes I wish we had never left Chicago.”

Ruth rubbed her shoulder. “It wasn’t a stupid decision. This was something we all thought long and hard on. It was a dream that became a reality.”

“This isn’t a dream,” Kathleen said, feeling on the verge of tears. “It’s a nightmare. Not one of us is outdoorsy. Except for maybe David when he was in the Army.”

“That was twenty years ago,” Ruth said.

“Exactly.”

Ruth sighed. “If we were in Chicago, we would be worse off than we are now. At least here, we can all live together comfortably under one roof. We have land that we can learn about. Maybe one of the books in the library can tell us about any edible natural plants around here. We can learn and adapt. We can grow.”

“Library?” Kathleen asked, momentarily at a loss. “Oh, those bookshelves?”

She barely recalled those dusty old books with their outdated cover art and yellowing pages.

“Jade found it,” Ruth said. “She was the one who suggested we make the compostable toilet after reading some of the books.”

Kathleen gritted her teeth. “What a gem,” she said and turned her back on her mother-in-law to study the rest of the goods.

Slowly and methodically, she catalogued everything they had in the kitchen while Ruth set up some meat to pressure cook and can. Then she helped inspect and sterilize the glass mason jars, finding their appropriate tops and organizing them by size for Ruth. She got lost in her own thoughts. A terrible ache clawed at her stomach like a trapped creature trying to get out. Tears stung her eyes, and she tried to hold them back as much as possible. Usually, she and Ruth could carry on a good conversation, but now tension filled the air and made her want to scream. She didn’t even notice or hear Matthew’s voice as he came down the stairs until he was standing right in front of her.

“How’s it going?” he asked and looked at her with those soft eyes that used to make her knees go weak.

She looked down. Her throat felt tight. “It’s good,” she said. “We have enough supplies for a week, maybe two if we can stretch it. Ruth is canning everything that she can.” She looked over to the remains of fat and bone that sat to one side. “Maybe we can try to make a broth or soup out of that,” she suggested.

Ruth’s face brightened. “That’s a great idea. I’ll start on that next.”

Matthew looked at her like she’d just solved world hunger. “You have the best ideas,” he said and leaned in for a kiss.

She dodged to the side without thinking. He let out a soft hurt sound. She reached out and touched his arm in apology. “Our food stocks aren’t going to last,” she said, desperate to erase the moments before.

“We’ll need to think about reaching out to others who live around this mountain,” Ruth chimed in. “We need to make connections with others. Like your father suggested.”

Matthew looked annoyed, and Kathleen watched as he tried to hide his concern for her. “I’d rather wait on that until we get the house better fortified,” he said. “We can talk about it tonight.”

He reached out