Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone)

enough to copy her smile.
    “After my mom and dad first split up, I didn’t see my dad for a long time. I’m pretty sure it was about three months, though it felt like forever. My mom was so mad she didn’t even want to let my dad in the house. One time she locked him outside in his underwear.” Mary turned her head toward the back seat, but Paola just shrugged. “It’s true,” she said.
    “Anyway, when he came back home to visit, there was this weird distance between us. And it wasn’t just that he’d been gone, or that he knew he’d ruined things by cheating on my mom.” Mary looked back again, but Paola just glared until she turned back around, then went on. “It was more that I had changed in that time. He didn’t know how to look at me, and in a lot of ways, I wasn’t the little girl from three months earlier. I could tell he wanted to cuddle me, and tickle me, and play with me just like before. But everything felt different to him. And he had missed all the things in between. Not just the school stuff like my fourth grade graduation from lower school and my violin recital. Other stuff, too. Like finding out about Santa Clause and my mom buying me my first training bra.”
    Luca could feel himself turning red.
    Mary kissed Desmond on the cheek, then turned back to Paola. “What really did it,” she said, “Was when he saw the stack of books on your nightstand. In his eyes, you’d gone from Harry Potter to Twilight overnight. That made him lose it.” She turned to Luca. “Luca, you’re unbelievably special, and we all owe you a debt we can never repay. We may not understand what’s happening to you, but we all know we owe you. Everything will be okay, and your insides and outsides will match soon enough.”
      Mary patted Luca on the knee and smiled. He smiled back.  
    The rest of the trip was mostly silent, though the air between Luca and Paola quickly thawed. They started exchanging stories and jokes like they had for the last three months, though there was a crackling current that had never been there before; a current which excited Luca.
    The winter trees started fading from the landscape and the passengers saw the first blossoms of pink and green dotting some of the branches outside the window. The driver turned to the passengers and said, “We’re almost here. Another 10 minutes, maybe.”
    Exactly 10 minutes later, the line of cars drove through a guarded gate, then into a compound that made the house they’d come from look like Anna’s My Little Pony Show Stable. There was a large farm, though Luca couldn't tell what they were growing, and a silo like the one back home. There were a couple of other buildings, too. A large one that looked like a garage, and another one that had a whole bunch of wires on top, along with something that looked like a flying saucer. Just past the gate, there were three large houses in a row, three stories each. A high brick wall that made Luca think of Humpty Dumpty encircled what the others had called “the compound.”
    John’s car drove into the large garage and all the cars followed. Luca felt butterflies flutter inside him as John stepped from his car and the other men followed. Luca looked up at the seat in front of him. Desmond’s face was mad, Mary’s was still worried. Luca took Paola’s hand, then followed Desmond and Mary from the car.
    They were met by a large group of strange looking people on the other side of the garage. The group looked nothing like the soldiers. Paola leaned into Luca’s ear and whispered, “I didn’t know the special place was Little House on the Prairie .”  
    There were four men and one boy, dressed in dark suits with hooks instead of buttons. Their pants had suspenders, like clowns, except not funny, just black. All their shirts were pretty colors. Light pastels that looked like Easter. Their boots were brown and scuffed, and their hats had wide brims, made of black felt. The men all had beards, but no mustaches, and their hair was long enough to brush the base of their necks. The boy’s hair wasn’t quite as long, but looked like it was cut with a bowl on top.
    There were two women as well, probably a mom and a daughter. They both wore long hair parted down the middle. The mom wore it in a tight bun, the girl in pigtails. Their dresses were solid blue and fell all the way to their ankles, and their shoes were a shiny black.  
    They stood in a semi-circle and said, “We’re well met to know