Twenty-Three
Brave New Friend
Catrina and I spend the entire afternoon going door to door, making sure everyone who fell ill is recovering, stopping every half hour so I can sit in her car and sip ginger ale and nibble Digestive cookies for quick sugar. During these breaks, I field emails from Rupert, mostly cc’s for the statements and press release he’s sent out, as well as a few texts from Finan checking on me and sending a video of Humboldt gleefully frolicking in the sloppy mud pile in front of vertical farm B.
“I think that’s the first real smile I’ve seen from you,” Catrina says, sipping from her insulated coffee mug. I hold up the phone to show her what my inherited canine child is doing. “Your cabin has a bathtub?”
“Ugh.” This muddy mutt in my pristine bathroom? I don’t think s
