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Newcomers in Jackson are not a common occurrence. Delilah, as disinterested as she likes to seem, made several passing comments about the older man’s physique in small giddy whispers to Eva, who while she wouldn’t lie and say she hadn’t looked herself, only cares that this means that her peace is disturbed.
Eva likes to spend her evenings in the makeshift plant nursery that she and Delilah had set up in one of the spare rooms in their less than humble abode. The house is far too large for the two sisters, and so they managed to fill it with things. From salvaged books, cracked Winnie-the-Pooh snowglobes, and the old cuckoo clock that still worked to other odds and ends such as Delilah’s abstract paintings and woven straw creations. Their home is largely cluttered with the Bauer sisters’ knick-knacks, scavenged finds, drawings from Delilah’s students, and anything Eva could grow indoors. Plants, while they could poison or they could nourish, couldn’t talk back and wouldn’t disrupt her reading time.
The muffled sound of a door slamming in the house next door with the shout of a teenage voice breaks Eva out of her nightly escapism, the words on the page of her latest read reverting back to just that, words, instead of the intricate scene of only seconds before. Eva lets out an aggravated sigh, knowing that her foolish hope that the night would be quiet was dashed yet again.
Delilah, ever nosey, had made the mistake of giving Ellie the open invitation of coming over whenever she needed space from Joel in their initial months of settling down in Jackson. Unsurprisingly, the teenage girl ended up at their front door more often than Eva appreciated. Delilah, who should have been named Cathy for all the idle chatting she could get up to, was always happy for the company and for any tidbits of information that Ellie might share about Joel. Delilah could make a conversation with a cardboard cut-out if given the opportunity. Eva, on the other hand, never felt she had the right words to say and opted not to say many at all. Unless she was bickering with Delilah. Or drunk. Though usually the former would always accompany the latter. Unfortunately for Eva, she also had a soft spot for angry teenagers, all too freshly remembering the last of her teenage years in the beginning of the end.
Thus, Ellie was a frequent guest of the Bauers. And now, Ellie sat on the area rug on the floor in front of their couch, talking animatedly to Delilah, who also sat on the floor next to the teen, while flinging her hands exaggeratedly as she talked, only pausing to muss the fur of the fluffy orange cat who was comfortably splayed in Ellie’s lap. The teenager hadn’t always been so jovial and emphatic when she arrived in their settlement, but something about the magic in Delilah’s contagious smiles and bubbly demeanor had done the trick. The brooding and the thousand-yard stare Ellie had mastered from being around Joel too much was just as often replaced with long dramatic monologues and fits of giggles during her visits to the Bauers. It also helps that Delilah has a master’s degree in Astro-Physics, something that was supposed to get her farther in life than a quaint farm town, but was now a fun conversation starter and likely a rotting piece of paper somewhere back in upstate New York. Ellie was enthralled by whatever Delilah might have to say about the stars, and Eva could not blame her.
As the younger sister of the two, Eva knew what it was like to be captivated by Delilah. The need to be near her, to follow in her footsteps. Eva spent most of her childhood yearning to be like her older sister. However, the cool air of a college girl often dissipated when her seven-year-old sister constantly demanded to be in her lap. It took many years and then the end of the world for the Bauer sisters to forge a sense of friendship and amicable companionship. Their father had been good with a rifle and made sure that each of his daughters was as well. By the time Eva was 17, Delilah had all but rescued her younger sister from the heart of no-man’s land in the Adirondacks before they meandered down to the Hartford QZ before it fell, having to pick back up again and head out west. In Eva’s mind, Delilah had it all: the brain, the kindness, and the smile that could melt the ice walls around the hearts of even the most angsty teens, and apparently, their parental figures too.
In the present, nearly twenty-one years later, Eva notices the small moments where Joel notices Delilah. To be fair, it was hard not to notice Delilah. The strawberry blonde marred with white streaks, with bottomless brown eyes, and an even larger smile that almost feels like heresy in the face of the apocalypse; she's captivating. Eva often finds herself longing to have Delilah’s laughter lines. It means that not only had she lived long enough to become middle aged, but she had a good time doing it too. Eva, well, Eva had permanent lines between her eyebrows from what Delilah would call her “angry-eyes,” quoting Toy Story when she didn’t feel the nostalgia of a world long since passed would be too overwhelming.
Eva startles back from the recesses of her mind with a loud grown from Ellie as a knock taps on their front door. Ellie flops forward and buries her face in orange fur, earning a crackled and offended meow from Mr. Butters and a light bap-bap-bap from his paw to her head before scampering off, cleaning his fur once at a comfortable distance. Delilah giggles and Ellie sinks further into the floor. A small smile rests on Eva’s lips, taking in the scene.
“Not yet, old man. The sound of your voice is still annoying.” Ellie groans, unmoving from her position. Eva eyes the girl in a small amount of wonder and jealousy, knowing that her back would not allow that if Eva flopped in such a way. Oh, to be young. Eva doesn’t allow herself to think about what would have been if the world didn’t end when she was too blindsided by rage and teenage righteousness to know what she was losing.
Delilah opens the front door to reveal Joel, who for all the time his surrogate daughter spent in their house, had only been inside once, the first night of Ellie’s visits, to make sure that she wasn’t being kidnapped with a few gruff, rushed questions, a terse handshake, and then fleeing.
“Just checking in on you. Y’know, since you never seem to want to spend any time at our house. Y’know, the one we live in, next door?” Joel prods in response to the teen in question, leaning against the door frame with crossed arms.
Delilah tuts and motions him in, as it becomes clear that Joel won’t make the decision as to staying or leaving on his own. She frowns at the tall, flannel covered man with a certain scorn and gleam that could only be mastered by schoolteachers and exasperated parents as Delilah gestures at the mat next to the door, pointedly ushering him to take his nasty, muddy, old boots off before he tracks any dirt on her hardwood floors. Eva rolls her eyes as Joel raises his hands defensively and kneels to take his shoes off.
As Joel walks into the living room proper, Eva looks down to the amber liquid she’s swishing back and forth in an old ceramic mug, the colored glaze chipped off in some places. Ellie suddenly bursts up from her place on the floor and launches to her feet, announcing to everyone that she needs to take a piss before running off to the other room. Joel partially deflates, pinching the bridge of his nose as he chuckles in equal parts amusement and irritation. Eva laughs derisively, earning a glare from Delilah. The unspoken words of use your manners settling in the air between the two sisters. Eva rolls her eyes again.
“Well, it sure is nice to have some company that isn’t a bunch of eight-year-olds trying to impale each other with scissors or huff expired glue and climb into the walls.” Delilah announces, in an attempt to clear the awkward tension in the air after Ellie’s sudden departure. After a beat in which neither Eva nor Joel responds, Delilah sighs with a shake of her head. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go get a board game. We can all play when Ellie is done.”
The older Bauer sister leaves the room and Eva’s eyes narrow, watching her sister leave with disdain. Alone, with the company. This betrayal won’t go unnoticed. Eva quickly finishes the rest of her drink and clears her throat, hopping up from her spot on the worn-down sofa in an effort not to feel minuscule compared to the behemoth of a man she is now alone with.
“Um, whiskey?” Eva offers, wanting the awkward silence in the air to die a quick death before she feels like crawling out of her skin and hiding underneath the floorboards. Joel looks almost too relieved.
“Yes.” He says quickly, in a low monotone that strikes Eva in a way she cannot shake nor discern.
Eva turns on her heel, mug in hand, heading to the moderately sized kitchen in the back of the house, complete with wall decorations Delilah likes to call eclectic but Eva just calls ugly, but in the sense that it’s so ugly that it sort-of horseshoes and comes around the other end. Pretty-ugly.
Joel follows Eva with a quiet stealth that puts her on edge, though any guest would probably put her on edge, if they had any other than Ellie. Eva tip-toes and pulls another chipped mug out of a cabinet with the quintessential late-90s early 2000’s yellow wooden finish. She turns around and startles at how close the man is behind her, not wanting to note how his flannel is rolled up his forearms just so, and pushes the mug into his hands wordlessly, not particularly liking that she is directly eye-level with his armpit. Eva turns again, grimacing slightly as she thinks how what she is about to do might be just a bit embarrassing, this time hopping up onto the counter and standing on it as she reaches over the tops of the cabinets.
Joel hears glass bottles clink against one another as he watches Eva peruse for the right one, thinking that, had she asked, he would have gladly spared her the trouble she is going through now. He notices that Eva is barefoot and that the skirt of her sundress sways and gently brushes her calves as she reaches, but makes no comment of it, fingering the chip marks in his mug to keep his idle hands busy. After a moment Eva hops down with an ungraceful thud and an old bottle of Jack Daniels. Joel finds his eyes widening slightly, surprised at the prospect of a bottle of Jack surviving over twenty years.
“S’not Jack anymore.” Eva murmurs, trying not to take much notice of the small changes in Joel’s face. “Something homemade from one of Lilah’s coworkers. We reuse the bottles.”
Joel nods as Eva gathers his mug from him and sets it next to hers on the green faux-granite countertop, the laminate slightly raised off the corners and edges of the plywood underneath, pouring little more than a shot in each. Eva silently hands him his mug, leaving the bottle of whiskey on the counter as they both move to sip their drinks. She startles and accidentally snorts her own when Joel lets out a surprised gag and sets his mug down rather quickly and loudly on the counter.
“Now why the hell would you do that to a perfectly good whiskey.” Joel grunts, wiping his mouth with his other hand.
Eva is busy wiping her own face, her nose burning from the sting of the alcohol while her face burns with embarrassment. Eva’s eyes peer abashedly down into her mug, refusing to look back up at Joel, feeling as though she could just curl in on herself and disappear with a pop right then and there. She could understand if he didn’t like it, but did he have to act like that?
“It’s, it’s only honey whiskey.” Eva grumbles, not purposefully adding the steely edge to her voice but not holding it back either. She takes what was Joel’s mug and downs his portion too before pouring another one for herself, sniffing. She rather liked this whiskey; it is Eva’s go-to evening friend. “It you didn’t like it, coulda just said so.”
The sounds of Delilah and Ellie returning to the living room provide just enough of a distraction from the current interaction that Eva books it without looking at Joel’s face again, back to the safety of not being alone with the rugged Texan.
Joel watches Eva flee, sighing at himself. Well, shit. That could’ve gone better.
A moment or two later, Joel rejoins the sisters and Ellie as Delilah explains the rules to the game she has picked out. Headbanz. He suddenly realizes he is outnumbered by women, but that thought is cut short when Joel could swear, he could practically see the loathing emanating from Eva to her sister for picking such a game. He keeps an amused snicker to himself when he feels Ellie lightly elbow his side.
“I know right?” Ellie says softly, but not softly enough, gesturing to the two sisters as they begin to bicker. “It’s like a free show. That’s you,” gesturing to Eva “and that’s me” the teen continues, gesturing towards Delilah, who is now wearing the most shit-eating grin to have ever grinned.
“All that’s missing is your godawful pun book.” Joel finds himself agreeing, the corners of his mouth threatening to pull up into a small smile.
Eva, now a few drinks in and mildly tipsy, demands to know what both Joel and Ellie are looking at, to which Ellie responds with a self-satisfied chuckle.
“Nothing man. Just waiting to start the game.”
By the fifth or sixth go around, in which Ellie and Delilah had already guessed several of their own words and had collected quite the card pile to be proud of, Joel is only working on his second, and Eva, to her dismay, is still wearing the word she started off with, the blue plastic band constantly slipping from her forehead.
“That’s it.” Eva hisses, throwing the band and word card down with a smack to the coffee table the group sat around. She doesn’t even bother to look at the word she spent the last hour or so guessing before she scurries upstairs, the slamming of a door and the sounds of water rattling in the old pipes of the house fill the room as the shower starts. Delilah lets out a heavy sigh, shaking her head.
“Well,” Joel ponders, rubbing his chin a little as he takes off his own headband. “I think it’s getting late anyway. What d’ya say, kid? Time to head back?”
Ellie hands her headband to Delilah as she stands up, Joel following suit, though with a small groan and the quiet pop of a few joints here or there. Delilah nods as she takes all the game pieces and starts putting them back into the worn box.
“Night!” Ellie announces as she puts on her shoes and heads out the door without another word and without waiting for her adoptive father. It is now Joel’s turn to sigh as he moves to help Delilah clean up.
“I want to say thanks.” He says, broaching the silence with a voice a bit more terse than he intended. Delilah looks up at him questioningly. “For letting her come over. And keeping her company. Means a lot.”
Delilah’s face softens and melts into one of her winning smiles as they finish picking up and meander towards the front door, Joel lacing up his boots and preparing to head back out into the cool summer evening air.
“S’nothing.” She replies with a small yawn. “Eva and Ellie are not so different. Reminds me of when she was a kid, before this whole mess started.”
Joel pauses for a moment as he steps out the door, trying to picture a young Eva, passionate about something, eyes glowing with a dramatic gleam as she tells a bad pun. He shakes his head. He knows that everyone changed when the infection started, but he can’t quite see it.
“I’m, uh, hoping that Ellie can be a little happier than that.” Joel manages before he immediately regrets it. What is it with him putting his foot in his mouth tonight?
Delilah bristles.
“You, Joel Miller, know far too much of the world to judge my sister for her sadness.”
She promptly shuts the door without another word and leaves him standing by himself on the front porch, old white paint of years gone by peeling off or having already peeled off in most places. Joel thinks about how, in another life, he could probably fix it up. Maybe replace a plank or two where the wood is rotting. For now, he stares at the front door of the Bauer sisters home before shaking his head and heading to his own.