She leaned forward. Tears sparked in her eyes, her voice husky with emotion. “When I was ten, I found a garter snake in the yard and put it in your bed as revenge. You called me a scaredy cat because I was afraid to jump off the embankment at the lake. I showed you, though. When it was your turn, you screamed like a little girl.”
Merry laughter burst from the mic. “Little sister, it’s good to hear your voice. After everything, the whole world falling apart…I didn’t believe something good could still happen.”
She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. “There’s still good in the world, Oliver. I promise.”
“Damn! How I’ve missed you! If only Mom and Dad could see us. I wish—I wish they’d lived to see this moment.”
She blinked the wetness from her eyes. “Me too.”
For the next hour, they reminisced about their childhood and shared memories of their parents, who hadn’t survived the day of the EMP. They caught up on each other’s lives while Dave sat at the other end of the desk and busied himself repairing a broken receiver.
Hannah gave Oliver the shorthand version of her captivity and escape from Pike. She told him how Liam had found her in the woods and saved her. Charlotte’s birth in a cabin in the middle of a blizzard. How Pike had hunted her. How she and Ghost killed him.
Some parts were painful, but with every word she spoke, it became easier and easier. The act of telling her story was freeing—and powerful—in a way she hadn’t expected.
When she’d finished, Oliver was in tears. So was Dave.
“And Noah?” Oliver asked.
So, she told him about the militia and Noah’s death. It had been almost two months since Noah had died, three months since her return to Fall Creek. She still grieved for him, but in a different way.
She’d come to terms with his actions, both the bad and the good. He had spent his life protecting their son. Though they’d disagreed on the methods, she could forgive him for it.
She did forgive him.
And with that absolution, that small mercy, she could move on.
Next, it was Oliver’s turn. He explained how his fellow Yoopers, natives of the Upper Peninsula, had come together to survive the brutal winter. The EMP had affected the entire United States—sans Hawaii and Alaska—and the lower parts of Canada.
Like the residents of harsh, remote Alaska, Yoopers were tough, independent, and hardy. They had to be; the winters were long and cold, the towns small and scattered amid miles of rugged wilderness.
The Upper Peninsula, or the U.P. as Michiganders called it, hadn’t experienced the same level of anarchy and lawlessness ravaging the rest of the country.
Survival was difficult but possible.
“Things are tough, but I’m making do.” Oliver hesitated. She could almost feel him thinking through the radio, a little tentative; not daring to hope but hoping anyway.
“What is it?”
“There’s room for you here at Mom and Dad’s place. For you and the kids.”
Their parents had owned a farmhouse on thirty acres just outside of Brevort, a tiny town close to Mackinac Bridge separating the upper and lower peninsulas. The property was nestled at the tip of Lake Michigan, surrounded by the Sault Ste. Marie National Forest.
“We can make it here, Hannah. We can.”
Her heart squeezed at the hope in his voice, the eagerness and passion as he spun a vision of a tiny house deep in the woods, of gardens, a well, and prime hunting grounds. Remote and isolated. A safe place sheltered from the world.
“Would you consider coming here?” she asked instead. “To Fall Creek?”
Oliver didn’t answer right away. She could imagine him hunched over his desk, blond brows scrunched in a frown, his lank overgrown hair spilling into his brown eyes as he scratched at his goatee.
She didn’t know whether he still had a goatee—whether he was clean-shaven, or whether he’d given in and grown a mountain-man style beard like their father.
An ache opened deep in her chest. She missed him intensely. She missed her dead parents.
“Someday, maybe,” he said. “There are so few people up here. They know how to live off the land. You know how it is. It’s different. I belong here.”
Hannah bit her lower lip, pushing down her disappointment. “I know. I understand.”
“I’ll keep adding to the supplies, you know, in case you change your mind. You’ll always have a home here.”
“We’re in the same state, but it feels like we’re oceans apart.”