The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [200]
When everyone else was taken care of, Jimmy came to her and she took his hand, getting to her feet wearily. They walked out to their terrace and sat close together in the two-person glider George and Manuzhai had built, Sofia nestling under Jimmy’s arm, her small hand on his thigh. Jimmy set the chair in motion and for a while, they rocked in companionable quiet. It was clouding up. Moons that had been bright only half an hour earlier were already reduced to hazy glowing disks in the sky. Sofia felt the baby move and drew Jimmy’s hand to her belly and watched his face light up, his red-rimmed eyes unfocused as he listened with his fingers to the dance within her.
They spoke then, with the dear and ordinary intimacy of the well-married in the eye of a storm. George was doing okay, considering. Marc was getting his bearings. Emilio seemed stunned but had been able to cry a little.
"And you, Sofia? You look so tired," Jimmy said, worried about her and the child. My God, he thought suddenly. What will we do without Anne? What if the baby is breech? Please, God, let it be a girl, a tiny girl who takes after Sofia and my mom. An easy birth, please, God. And he wondered if they could get back home before the due date if the lander fuel could be manufactured soon enough. But he said, "Do you want to tell me about it tonight or wait until later?"
She had sworn she would never again keep anything from him. Her vow to herself and to him: she would not carry burdens alone. So she began, voice pitched low, to tell him of the past two days.
"SANDOZ? I’M SORRY." She watched him struggle awake, feeling terrible for waking him. "I’m sorry," she repeated as he sat up blinking.
Emilio looked around him, a little confused yet. Then his eyes opened wide and he asked anxiously, "D.W.?"
Sofia shook her head and shrugged. "It’s only that I heard something a while ago. I’m probably being an alarmist, but Anne and D.W have been gone a long time. I think we should go find them."
Still thickheaded, he nodded agreeably: Sure, absolutely, if you say so. And looked around for his clothes, his hand dropping onto his discarded shirt, where he looked at it for a moment, as though he had no idea what to do with it. Finally, he seemed to come fully awake and Sofia said, "I’ll wait outside."
As he dressed, she berated herself for timidity. "I should have gone out myself," she called. "I shouldn’t have gotten you up." Emilio was showing the effects of broken nights spent nursing D.W. and needed all the sleep he could get during the day. She felt like a caricature of a pregnant woman, scared of noises, apt to burst into tears for no good reason. The early weeks of her pregnancy had been an embarrassing emotional roller coaster.
"No. It’s okay. You did the right thing." A minute later, Sandoz appeared on the terrace, reasonably alert. He’d had perhaps four or five hours of sleep.
They went first to the hampiy and saw the cup with its dregs of soup. Stepping back outside, Sandoz looked around. "It’s quiet out there," he drawled, squinty-eyed, like an old-time cinema cowboy. "Too quiet." He said it to make her laugh, and she smiled but wished she could see Anne and D.W. somewhere.
"They usually walk off that way." He waved vaguely toward the south. "You stay here. I can manage." D.W. was so thin now that Emilio could almost carry him alone. He and Anne could lock hands and make a sort of sling for him.
"No," Sofia said, practical even about her own emotional upheavals. "I’ll only sit and worry. I may as well come." He looked at her doubtfully so she added, "It’s all right. I feel fine. Really."
They were still north of the lander when they began to know something was wrong. The wind must have shifted because their first indication of what had happened was the odor, the unmistakable smell of blood. Emilio went