* * *
THEIR FIRST STOP was Emporium Max, where she and the kids caught stares for their wild dress. Vern, undeterred, walked up to one of the staff members and asked her where the accessories were. With a gulp, the worker pointed to a nearby aisle. “Let me—let me know if you need anything,” she stuttered.
Vern followed the woman’s finger toward the appropriate area and grabbed pairs of sunglasses for herself and Feral.
“Me, too,” said Howling, and he took a pair off the rack and put them on his face, then exhaled. “Much better.”
The shop glared, danced, warped, glittered. It possessed very little of value. Racks and rows of garbage. Vern cringed—not at the products, but at herself. The thoughts in her mind seemed ripped right from one of Sherman’s sermons.
But where did this stuff come from? Who made it? At the Blessed Acres, all clothes were made from linen that the Cainites processed from flax they grew themselves, or were hand-me-downs, decades old. There seemed enough items here to clothe the whole world multiple times over, yet most of them were so thin and flimsy.
Vern picked out some plain-colored sweaters and tossed them into the cart, gray and rust, forest green, black. Next, black undershirts, socks, underwear. After that, she grabbed black leggings and jeans, the tightest ones she could find, the items Sherman would hate.
On to the babies. She grabbed some clothes and directed them toward the changing room. “Put this on,” she told Howling, handing him a pair of black waffle-knit thermals, then a pair of leggings. Some tights, too. They’d need layers, without their hides and furs. Howling stripped and put on the clothes.
“You like it?” Vern asked.
He shrugged but seemed impressed. “They’re light. They’re soft.”
“Very soft,” said Feral.
She picked up a few plain black sweaters next, a couple sizes too big so the children could grow into them. They hung on the children like dresses, but the length would keep them warm, their bottoms and thighs nicely covered. All black everything—it was the Cainland uniform. Much as she hated to admit it—and she did, it bent her right out of shape—that place informed every decision she made.
Vern headed toward the shoe aisle next. Neither Howling nor Feral could fit their feet into any of the offerings, their toes too wide and spread from spending so much time barefoot or in nothing but roomy, soft bootees.
“It hurts!” Howling said once his foot was finally jammed into some boots, which lengthwise were too big, but way too narrow for his tree-climbing feet. He tried to walk in them, but tripped and fell. “They’re so hard. It’s like wearing a rock.”
In the end, she found them some velvety slippers, in the shape of bear feet, nice and wide, and one or two sizes too big to give their toes enough room to wiggle. They had Velcro she could tighten over the ankle. For herself, she managed with some wide-fit slip-on snow boots.
The world outside the woods was a strange, shining thing. In this shop filled with luxury and refuse alike, Vern felt she was an actress playing a part. A white suburban mam in tennis shoes and leggings like on one of the commercials or television shows she watched at Ollie’s house. Later she’d go running, put her kids Callum and Bruno into the jogger. Find a park. Find a woods. Get lost in it. Never return.
Till her husband called. Susannah. Where are you? Some things were the same in Cainland and out, and husbands calling to demand your presence was one of them.
Those women with their travel mugs, bulldog-sized handbags, and yogurt had always attracted Vern’s attention. They existed in real life as much as on TV. Vern had seen these Carols and Jens and Caitlins at gas stations and food shops. They had happiness for days. They had lunch plans with strawberry-cheeked friends. Wine. Margaritas! Their cars weren’t cars but mini-tanks, which they helmed while drinking green juice.
Problems plagued them, no doubt. Undevoted spouses. Bills. Dental work. But from outside looking in, they didn’t have that haunted-glow about them; that aura that came from knowing all the infinite ways the world was colossally fucked. It was a lot to envy, their happiness. When they went to their Jesus churches, she didn’t think any of them spent the sermons going, This is bullshit. Everything anybody has ever said is bullshit, but this, this particularly so.
“Howling, Feral, come on,” she said, though she’d almost let Callum, Bruno pop out from her mouth instead. Vern could do that. Slip in and out of people, identities. Think hard enough about a world and be away in it, darting to a reality where she was baking cheesecake-swirl brownies for the school’s bake sale. Back when she was a Cainite, it had been a hobby of hers, constructing imaginary worlds out of snippets of conversations she heard from her times off the compound on mission trips.