“Hey, Thom.”
“Heeey.”
It was funny how a single word out of her brother’s mouth could drive Aubrey right up the fucking wall and down the other side. Just the way he’d say “Heeey” in that low, sympathetic register one uses when speaking to someone they pity. It was a hey that said, “Sister, I get it, you’re broke, divorced, loveless, pushing forty, and presiding over a failing business, but I do not judge you at all.”
She played past it. “I was just thinking about you,” she said.
“Don’t worry about me. What about you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just laid in a bunch of groceries.” She felt her initial irritation with him easing. They’d been through hell together, and his personal faults, annoying ways, and galactic ego aside, she knew he only wanted to help. It was just the way he did it that was maddening.
“Did you fill the freezer?”
She headed into the kitchen, glancing at the still-opened door to the basement and pictured the enormous freezer now maybe ten percent filled.
“Yep. I can hardly get the lid closed.”
“Good. Don’t open it unless you have to. But don’t overreact and throw everything out too soon either. Aside from meat, almost everything frozen can be eaten unfrozen.”
Aubrey wondered how to prevent a discussion of her failure to plan for disaster, as Thom had repeatedly implored her to do. He’d gone so far as to send a team of three handsome and muscular men to her house one day, offering to assess her wants and needs and return in three days to Take Care of Everything. They were from some sort of Chicago-based concierge apocalypse-supply firm, but she’d sent them away. No, she hadn’t filled the freezer, no, she hadn’t let the survival warriors stock her house, and, no, she hadn’t filled the fucking rack in the fucking basement, OK?
“Where are you?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“On the plane.”
“On your way to the Fuhrerbunker?”
“May I ask once again that you please not compare me to Hitler?”
“I don’t compare you to Hitler, I compare your bunker to his. But I take it back. I’m sure yours is much nicer.”
“This is serious,” he said. “This is happening. I was on the phone with the National Science Board not twenty minutes ago.”
“What did they say?”
“Ninety percent outage worldwide. Four-to-eighteen-month repair time.”
“Do you believe that’s true?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. I believe they believe it.”
On that she knew he was right, and it was one of the things she’d always admired about him. Her brother’s ego was the iceberg into which his ship would one day crash and sink, but, intellectually, he was able to put it aside when he was in the presence of people who knew more about their own field than he did. The ability to admit ignorance, to shut up and actually listen, was something Thom had acquired early in life, and it was, to Aubrey’s mind, the single greatest reason for his enormous success. But he was the last person she’d admit that to.
“Please let me send for you.”
“No, thank you.”
“There’s a place here I’ve set aside for you. You need to at least see it.”
“I’ve seen pictures. I know what it is. I don’t want to live there.”
“Two weeks.”
“I don’t want to live there at all.”
“No, no. I mean I can’t fly for two weeks. That’s not just me, that’s all planes, everything will be grounded until they’re sure the energy’s dissipated in the magnetosphere. Just too dangerous. But I can have you picked up in two weeks.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine right here.”
“This could be turned into a positive. It could be the perfect opportunity for you to get out of Aurora for good.”
“It’s my home. It was yours too.”
“Yeah, but I left. I assumed you would too. That’s what rational people do.”
“I’m not rational. I’m a woman.”
He groaned. “Once. I said that one time.”
“And I wrote it down.”
“No one else in my life is as hostile to me as you are.”
“Sure, they are, just not to your face.”
There was a pause.
“Please let me help you,” he said, softly. “I owe you.”
“Ancient history, Tommy. We’re OK now.”