Chapter 165: Ruth

Chapter 165: Ruth
The next day, Ruth came alone at ten in the morning, which was later than usual, and without food, which was also new.
Del was sitting on the cot with her back against the wall when the knock came. One knock, then the door opened. Ruth had a way of entering spaces like she'd already been invited into them.
She sat in the wooden chair and looked at Del with the warm attention that Del had learned to receive without reacting to.
"Carl's taken your young man out to look at the water tanks on the south side," Ruth said. "We've been having a pressure issue."
"He's handy," Del said.
"He seems to be." Ruth tilted her head slightly. "He's also very watchful. You know that, of course. Carl notices. He mentioned it. Some people come through here, and they're so tired they stop paying attention to things. Others stay alert." She paused. "It usually means they're carrying something that hasn't let them rest."
Del looked at her. "Or it just means they're alert."
Ruth smiled. "True enough." She looked around the shed without taking in the basin, the cot, or the mug on the floor. "How long have you two been together?"
"A while."
"You have the look of people who've been through something together."
Del said nothing.
"That's a bond," Ruth said. "A strong one. Hard to build and harder to walk away from." She looked back at Del. "You love him."
It wasn't quite a question.
"It's complicated," Del said, which was the truest thing she'd said to Ruth yet.
Ruth nodded like she'd expected that answer. "It usually is, with people like him." She didn't elaborate on what she meant, and Del didn't ask. "Love that's complicated is still love. Sometimes it's the most real kind because it's survived something."
Del looked at the high window. The rectangle of sky it framed was a flat, washed-out blue. "You and Carl," she said. "Is that how it was for you?"
Ruth was quiet for a moment. "Carl and I found each other after a long time of not being found," she said. "Before this place, before any of this, we were both very lost. In different ways. This life we've built — it came from knowing what it felt like to have no direction. We wanted to offer something to people in that same position."
"The people who stay," Del said.
Ruth's expression stayed warm. "Yes."
"How many have stayed?" Del asked. She kept her voice easy and curious.
"Over the years? Quite a few." She smiled. "Mara is with us now. She came in the spring. Wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she knew she needed to stop."
"She's in the small building," Del said.
"She prefers the quiet. Some people do." Ruth looked at her. "You'd understand that, I think."
Del did understand it. She thought about her old apartment, her sketchbooks, and her headphones. The life she'd built around the specific pleasure of being left alone.
"What happened to the others?" she said. "The ones who came before Mara."
"Some moved on."
"And some didn't."
Ruth looked at her with an almost gentle expression. "Everyone finds their place eventually."
Del held her gaze.
"Ruth," she said. "The crates in the barn."
Something moved through Ruth's expression. She was quiet for a moment.
"You've been looking around," she said. Not accusatory.
"I was restless," Del said. "My side was better, and I needed to move."
Ruth looked at her for a long moment. Del looked back and kept her face open and waited. This was the thing with Ruth — she didn't respond to pressure because she didn't feel pressure the way other people did.
"The people who stay here," Ruth said finally, "sometimes reach a point where the body is done, where they've completed what they came here to do. We honor that. We keep a record."
Del sat very still.
"The names on the crates," Ruth continued, "are people we've known—people who were part of this. Their things are kept because they shouldn't be discarded. They meant something to someone." She said it calmly. "We're careful about it."
Del thought about twelve crates. Nine years. A woman named Mara was standing at a window waiting for something she believed was coming.
"How did they die?" Del said.
Ruth tilted her head. "Peacefully," she said. "Everyone here dies peacefully. That's the point."
The shed felt smaller than it had a minute ago. Del kept her hands still and her breathing even and thought about the medical supplies on the barn shelf.
"That sounds like something you've thought about a lot," Del said.
"We've had a long time to think about it," Ruth agreed pleasantly. "Carl and I both. The world outside is very loud and very careless with people. We're not careless here."
Del nodded slowly, like she was taking that in. Considering it. "When you looked at us the first night. When you came to the door and saw us. What did you think?"
Ruth's expression warmed further. "I thought you were tired," she said. "Both of you. The kind of tired that doesn't go away with sleep. I thought you might be ready."
"For what?"
Ruth smiled. "To stop running."
Oliver was back by noon.
Del heard him coming across the dry ground before the door opened. He came in and stopped when he saw her face.
"What?" he said.
"Sit down."
He sat on the cot. He'd been in the sun all morning, and his hair was disheveled, and there was dust on his forearms.
Del told him what Ruth had said. She kept it in order, the way she remembered it, without adding interpretation because he'd interpret it himself, and she wanted his reaction uncontaminated by hers.
When she finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"Peaceful deaths," he said.
"That's what she said."
Oliver looked at the door. Then he let out a breath through his nose and rubbed the back of his neck.
"They're killing them," Del said. "With consent, the people don't fully understand what they've given. Mara...she doesn't know."
"She might know something," Oliver said. "Just not everything. Not yet."
Mara was standing there with the patient quality of someone who had been convinced that waiting was the same as arriving. Del thought about how long it took to build a person. The patience Ruth and Carl must have. The warmth required to do what they did and have it look like what it looked like.
Oliver leaned forward on his knees and looked at her.
"I know what you're going to say," Del said.
"Do you?"
"You think they're rotten."
"They've killed at least eleven people," Oliver said.
"By convincing people they chose it." Del looked at him.  "I think they're rotten, Oliver."
Oliver said nothing.
"But that's not permission," Del said. "I'm not giving you permission for anything. I'm telling you what I think about them. We need to talk to Mara," she said. 
"Yes." He stood. "I'll figure out the lock."