All Chapters of This Time I Keep the Keys : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Disaster day forty July 12Rory didn't try to drive out.That was the first thing Nessa noticed, and the first thing that kept the afternoon from becoming worse.The depot worker kept her van back while Merrit came to assess the utility vehicle. Its wheel had dropped into the shallow drainage margin where the surface had broken. The vehicle was leaning, but remained still.Nobody was asked to jump from a high side or gather behind it and push.Merrit and the worker checked the ground and arranged a clear place for the passengers. Rory waited for their direction before anyone moved. Leila stayed with Ada. Tamsin brought her own bag. Gideon got out without using his injured hand to take another person's weight.Nessa's van reached the depot's sound standing area by the alternative entrance Merrit indicated. Owen chose to remain in his seat until there was a clear, ordinary place to get out.Only then did she join the others.Ada was crying without much sound.“Did we break it?” she aske

Disaster day forty July 12The room smelled of wet coats and somebody else's onions.Nessa stood just inside the doorway while Merrit explained what he could offer. The mess room could take eight overnight resting places after the evening workers cleared it. The existing heating period would end before midnight. They could keep their dry bedding there until the morning decision, provided the doors and working passage remained clear.“It's one night,” he said. “If the road's closed tomorrow, we make another arrangement. Don't assume this is a room I can keep giving you.”Nessa thanked him and repeated the limits back.There was already someone else's mug beside the sink. Someone had written a name beneath a child's crooked drawing on the noticeboard. The depot hadn't been empty, waiting for her need to give it a purpose.A woman collecting the last supper bowls showed Leila where the drinking-water allocation was kept and what visitors could use. Nessa recorded their actual share with

Disaster day forty-one July 13At first, the pickup was simply another vehicle on the same road.Nessa kept it in the mirrors without turning every glimpse into a conclusion. The upper route was open to other travellers. They weren't the only people trying to get past yesterday's damage.Then it closed the gap she was leaving behind her.Owen looked from the mirror to her hands.“I see it,” she said.She told Iona over the radio. Rory confirmed the next staffed holding point before the crossing. They would follow the checked route there. No one would stop alone to ask a following driver what he wanted.The pickup's horn sounded.Nessa could feel the noise in the back of her neck. She kept her eyes on the road ahead and let Rory's current report guide the distance between their vehicles.At the next bend, the pickup moved out as though to pass, then dropped back before the narrow section. Its passenger pointed at the rear of her van.She couldn't tell what he was saying through the gla

Disaster day forty-one July 13Nell was holding the door against the wind when they arrived.Nessa had imagined recognizing the packing building with relief. Instead she saw the loose weather panel beside its window, the muddy unloading passage and the woman bracing her shoulder against a door that still needed another pair of hands.She parked where Nell indicated and waited for the utility vehicle's movement to finish before getting out.“Everyone?” Nell asked.“All eight.”Nell looked past her at the occupied seats, then nodded. “Bring the people in first.”There was room to rest temporarily in the day space while the allocated staff room was finished. Its ordinary work would continue around them. The glasshouses beyond the yard remained cold, damaged places, however pretty their frames had looked from the road in June.Owen got out after the passage was cleared. Leila brought Ada, who had stopped asking whether they were nearly there. Tamsin carried the bags Owen wanted beside him

Disaster day forty-two July 14In the morning, Nessa counted what had arrived.The list took longer than the one she'd made at Highwater. Some containers were open now. Bedding had been used twice on the journey. A damaged piece of the crew vehicle lay at the depot instead of beneath its wheel arch. Food she'd packed for waiting had actually fed people who had waited.She recorded what was left rather than copying the old totals into a cleaner notebook.Tamsin checked the water with her. The joint eighteen liters remained intact: twelve from Nessa's van and six recovered from the depot store, now placed in their agreed accessible locations at Alder. They had received no replacement for the general six liters earmarked weeks earlier.The travel drinks, meals and cleaning uses belonged on their own records. Nessa didn't turn a successful arrival into permission to make those deductions disappear.“The food at Highwater?” Tamsin asked.“Still recorded there. Availability unknown until so