The Year Before The Dark.

Ruby POV

"Cesare, open the door."

I hit the glass of the loading office with the flat of my hand, and the glass shook under my palm. The office was built into the gatehouse, with one window set in the outer wall facing the road and another looking back into the hall.

Cesare was standing three feet away on the other side of the glass, close enough that I could see steam rising off his mug. He looked at me for a long moment, then drank from it.

Above the docks the sun was a pale smudge behind the dust. It had looked like that every day since the Dimming in March, when the radio blamed a volcano somewhere in the far north that no one ever managed to find. Even the snow came down grey, and a fine film of the dust had already settled over the tracks I made walking out to the north fence an hour earlier.

Behind Cesare, the depot was lit from end to end. I could see the long tables I had dragged in from the old canteen in August, the queue lines I had painted on the concrete in yellow road paint, and the two big heaters I had traded two months of diesel for in November. My ledger lay open on the office desk with my pen still sitting in the fold.

Four hundred and twelve names were written in that book, and every one of them was in my handwriting.

"Cesare." My voice came out cracked, so I swallowed and tried again. "Cesare, the gate's locked. Open it."

He set the mug down on top of my ledger.

The door at the side of the office opened, and my sister came in out of the warm hall.

Vittoria's hair was loose, and around her neck was our mother's grey wool scarf, the one I had left on my chair that morning. She walked up beside Cesare without looking at him, and she held a sheet of paper flat against the glass with both hands so that it was level with my eyes.

It was a transfer of ownership for the depot, made out from Ruby Lovato to Vittoria Lovato. At the bottom, in blue ink, was my signature.

I had never signed it, but the loops of the R were mine, and so was the way the tail of the y ran out past the edge of the line. Whoever had copied it must have practised for weeks.

I put my palm against the glass over the signature, as if I could cover it up.

Vittoria's mouth moved, and I watched her lips shape two words. I'm sorry. Her eyes stayed dry and steady on my face while she said it, and she held the paper there until I had read every line.

Then she lowered it, folded it in half, and slid it into the pocket of her coat.

Cesare turned around to face the hall.

Through the inner window I could see the people in the hall: the families from Via Sarto, the old men from the harbour flats, the twins from the bakery who always fought over the bread crusts. They had stopped eating. Every face in that hall was turned toward the office.

Cesare raised his hand and pointed toward the north end of the yard, toward the fence where I had been walking an hour ago. I could not hear a single word through the glass, but I saw Signora Ferraro nod slowly, and I saw the man with the bad leg shrug and pick up his spoon. One of the twins pressed her hands flat against the window and looked straight out at me in the snow. She lifted one hand and waved.

Her mother came up behind her and pulled the blind down.

I backed away from the office and ran along the fence toward the side gate. I fell twice in the drifts and pushed myself up on hands that had gone white at the knuckles. When I reached the side gate I grabbed the chain, and the padlock swung against my wrist.

It was my padlock, the brass one I bought on Via Marino in September. There were two keys for it. I had one in my coat pocket. I had given the other to Cesare in November so he could let the night deliveries in while I slept.

I dug out my key. My fingers would not close properly around it, and the key slipped twice before it went in. It turned halfway and stopped. Someone had jammed the lock from the inside with a twist of wire.

I went back to the main gate and hit it with both fists. I hit it again and kept on hitting it, shouting Cesare's name and then my sister's, until my voice cracked in the middle of hers and did not come back.

The light in the loading office went out.

I stood in front of the gate for a long time, with my hands pressed against the bars. After a while I stopped being able to feel the steel under my fingers, and then I stopped being able to feel my fingers at all. My breath came out in short white puffs that grew smaller each time, and the shaking that had started in my shoulders spread down into my legs until they folded under me.

I sat down in the snow with my back against my own gate.

My eyelids felt heavy, and every time they closed it took longer to open them again.

Light swept across the snow in front of me, and a truck door slammed somewhere close by. Boots came crunching through the drift, and then a man was crouching in front of me, close enough that I could smell diesel and wet wool. I had never seen him before. He had dark hair cut short against his skull and deep shadows under his eyes.

He slid one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, then lifted me out of the snow in one movement.

The cab of his truck smelled of old coffee and engine oil. He set me down in the passenger seat, pulled the seatbelt across me, and reached over to turn the heater dial all the way to the right. Warm air roared out of the vents against my face.

His jacket was too big for him. The shoulders sat wide on his frame and the cuffs came down over his knuckles. When he pushed the sleeve back to work the dial, I saw that one knuckle on his right hand was crooked, bent sideways as if it had broken once and been left to set on its own.

"What's your name?" he asked quietly, with his hand still resting on the dial.

"Ruby," I whispered, and saying it emptied my lungs.

His hand went still on the heater.

"Lovato," he said softly.

He looked through the windscreen at the dark depot and the chained gate, then back at me, and said nothing else. He pulled off his own gloves and wrapped my hands in them.

I could not feel the gloves. I could not feel the warm air on my face anymore either. I kept my eyes on the frayed edge of his jacket cuff where it lay against the gear stick, on one loose grey thread moving a little in the air from the vents.

I watched that thread until I could not see it anymore.

My eyes flew open.

I was hot. Heat pressed down on me from above and up from the mattress beneath me. Sweat ran down my neck into a pillow. Somewhere outside the window a firework cracked open, then another. Voices in the street below were laughing.

I dragged my hands out from under a heavy duvet and held them up in front of my face. My fingers moved when I told them to. I closed them into fists, and they closed.

The mattress shifted beside me.

I turned my head.

Cesare lay on his stomach next to me with one bare arm thrown across my pillow, breathing slow and even with his mouth a little open, the way he always slept when he was deep under. The grey hollows under his eyes were gone and his cheeks were full again. His hair had grown back down to curl against the back of his neck, the way it had before the dust.

He looked years younger, and he was smiling a little in his sleep.

On the nightstand beside his head, his phone buzzed and lit up.

The lock screen read December 31, 23:41, more than a year before the morning I walked out to the north fence. Under the time sat a new message from a contact saved as Dentist.

Isn’t she asleep yet? Come over so we can have fun… I miss you.