Two weeks Late

              Chapter Six

The receipt was still crumpled in Sharon's fist when she reached her car.

She sat behind the wheel with the engine off, staring at the name until the letters blurred. Vivian Cole.  The loops were round and cheerful, the same handwriting that had signed every birthday card Sharon owned.

She had kept those cards in a shoebox for years. Even in her last life, in the final days, she had thought of that shoebox and wished she could go back for it.

She remembered her parents' funeral. Her knees had given out at the graveside, and one pair of arms had caught her.

I'm here, Vivian had whispered into her ears.

I'm not going anywhere. For eight years, Sharon had believed it.

Her hands shook on the wheel. She had spent thirty-eight days building walls against Michael, her family, and the dead. She had never once built a wall against the girl who held her up at a funeral.

"Harbor Road, Unit 14," the delivery slip read.

She drove.

The wipers dragged back and forth across the glass, and every time they cleared the rain, she saw the same thing: Vivian's face turning into Michael's chest. She pressed the accelerator harder, as if speed could outrun a memory.

By dusk, rain was coming down in thin gray sheets. The old cold-storage yard stank of salt and rust. Rows of corroded containers loomed in the dark like gravestones, and floodlights buzzed overhead, throwing long shadows across the puddles. Three trucks sat idling with their tailgates open, and men in raincoats carried crates inside. Sharon saw the stenciled words on the sides: FUEL. FILTERS. GENERATORS.

That was her own generator and fuel.

And in the middle of it all stood Vivian under a black umbrella, cream coat spotless despite the mud, ticking items off a clipboard. She glanced up as Sharon's headlights swept across her. She didn't flinch. She smiled like someone who had been waiting for a long time.

"You're late," Vivian called.

Sharon stepped out into the rain. "Stop the trucks."

"Take ten minutes, boys." The men drifted off. The only sound was rain drumming on the umbrella.

"You remember," Sharon said.

Vivian's smile held for one more second, then slid off like a mask after a long party. Without it, her face looked thinner and older, as though she hadn't slept in weeks.

"Every second," she said. "The glass breaking. The sound they made when they were hungry." She laughed, and it cracked down the middle. "You think you were the only one who died that day?"

Sharon had never once thought of it. In all those nights of grief, she had imagined herself alone in the dark. It had never occurred to her that someone else might be counting the same screams.

"You stood beside him," Sharon said, and her voice shook. "You held his arm while I was dragged under."

"I was terrified!" Vivian's composure splintered. "Do you know what he did to me, Sharon? Nineteen days. We lasted nineteen days. On the nineteenth, the car ran dry, and your husband traded me to a raider crew for two cans of diesel." Her eyes shone. "He kissed my forehead and said, It's just one night, baby. I'll come back for you."

Rain ran down the side of Sharon's face.

"He didn't come back."

For a moment, neither of them moved. A bitter, ugly satisfaction flickered in Sharon's chest, and she hated herself for it. Right behind it came something smaller and far more unwelcome, something that remembered a girl who used to braid her hair at sleepovers.

"I'm sorry," she heard herself say, and she was horrified to find that she meant it.

"Don't." Vivian's lip curled. "I don't want your pity. I want your vault."

The softness died instantly. Sharon straightened.

"Think about it," Vivian pressed, stepping closer. "You have walls. I have fuel and a crew. Michael is a coward who sells women for diesel. We both know what's coming. Give me half your stock and the vault codes, and I'll stand beside you at the gate. We could survive this, Sharon. Together."

"Together." Sharon tasted the word. "You were my sister."

"I never wanted you dead."

"You never wanted me saved either." Her voice finally broke. "I looked right at you, Vivian. I reached for you. I begged. And you turned your face into his chest so you wouldn't have to watch."

Vivian's mouth tightened. For the first time, she had no answer.

"Eight years," Sharon whispered. "That's all I wanted to know, why. Why me? I gave you everything."

"Because you always did," Vivian said quietly. "Everyone loved you, Sharon, and you never even noticed. I was the friend who stood next to you in the photographs. I was the one they said 'and Vivian' after. Not once did you notice what that cost the rest of us."

The rain thickened. Somewhere behind them, a truck door slammed.

"No," Sharon said. "I won't help you."

"Then I'll take it the hard way." Vivian's smile returned, thin and sharp. "You think you came back first, don't you? Poor Sharon, waking up in her bed, so brave, so alone."

The hair on Sharon's neck rose.

"I woke up two weeks before you did."

The world seemed to hush.

"Fourteen days with Michael's passwords, your trust papers, and Helen's loose tongue." Vivian tilted her head. "That forged signature that moved forty million dollars? Mine. These trucks? Mine. By the time you opened your eyes screaming, I had already won the first round."

"I froze that money," Sharon said hoarsely. "I'll call the police."

"And tell them what?" Vivian laughed softly. "That your best friend came back from the dead?"

Sharon had no answer to that, and Vivian knew it.

"I always keep a second plan, darling." She lifted her chin toward Sharon's pocket. "Check your phone."

It was already ringing. Daniel was calling. He had never called her twice in one day with that tone.

"Sharon." His voice was hoarse with alarm. "Michael signed a sale agreement an hour ago. The house, the land, the walls, all of it. The buyer is V. Cole Holdings, and they take possession at midnight."

Sharon couldn't breathe.

She looked at her watch. 6:42 p.m. Five hours. Every steel plate, every water tank, every barrel she had paid for with her tears was about to belong to the woman who had turned her face away.

Across the rain, Vivian raised her umbrella in a mocking little salute. "Your walls are very impressive, darling. Thank you for building them for me."