The Last Town on Earth. Thomas Mullen

made him his wife’s opposite. Most customers saw his face only on the rare occasions when she wasn’t manning the place.

      “Fine, ma’am, and you?”

      “I’m two days older than when you saw me last. That ain’t good.”

      “But you look at least two days younger.” Something about Flora Metzger brought out Philip’s brash side.

      She smiled and put her hand to her breast in mock flattery. “You always know how to make a fat lady’s day.” This was part of why Philip had wanted to visit the store, so Flora’s forceful personality could make him forget about the soldier for a few moments.

      “You look taller,” she said. “You grown in the last two days?”

      “Haven’t checked. My pants still fit.”

      “Well, when they stop fitting, you come in here and I’ll get you furnished right. I want my favorite customer looking sharp, you hear?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Now, what do you want?”

      Philip enjoyed this banter. One of his tasks as mill accountant was to visit the general store to collect production numbers and sales slips; trading goodhearted jabs with Flora certainly beat discussing volume with the laconic foremen.

      “Flour and cornmeal, please.”

      She sighed mightily as she lifted herself from her chair. “How many?”

      Philip thought. They really needed only one bag each, but with the town closed off, the store wouldn’t be replenishing its shelves anytime soon. “Two bags each, please.”

      She heaved the bags onto the desk one at a time, then reclaimed her imperial position on the chair. After Philip signed his name by the cost in her book, she eyed him. “You preoccupied with something? You’ve already been in my store a full two minutes, and you haven’t asked after my daughter yet.”

      Elsie Metzger was fifteen years old and one of the best-looking girls in town, as far as Philip was concerned. He tried to make his smile disappear, but it was impossible. “I … don’t always ask after her.”

      “Oh, she’s not good enough for you?”

      “No, that’s not what I—” He shook his head again, realizing he couldn’t win. “So how’s Elsie?”

      “Lazy. She needs fresh air.” Flora leaned her head back and called out, “Elsie! Come help Philip Worthy carry his purchases home!”

      Philip shook his head. “No, please, I’ll be fine.” Could there be anything more insulting than needing a girl’s help carrying groceries? He heard movement from one of the back rooms, so he started stacking the bags of flour and meal.

      “Oh, hush. She’s just back there twiddling her thumbs anyway. The walk’ll do her some good.”

      “Mrs. Metzger, really, I don’t need any help carrying this.”

      Flora raised one eyebrow. “I think you need help in more ways than you realize.”

      She’d barely finished saying that when Elsie came through the side door. Philip knew that most of the other young men in town didn’t share his high opinion of the tomboyish Elsie, but that didn’t make him question his judgment in the slightest. He knew her well because she was Laura’s best friend. He knew what types of jokes she found funny and which made her blush; he knew that when she was playing cards, any faint wrinkles on her forehead meant she had a good hand and that a strangely serene expression meant she was trying to mask a bad hand. She hadn’t been one of the prettier girls when she was younger, her thick eyebrows casting too dark a shadow over her eyes, her curly brown hair too disheveled. But she’d reached the age when some of the formerly overlooked were beginning to take their rightful places as the beauties they’d always been meant to be. Elsie’s eyes glowed with an intelligent, mysterious light, and she was becoming vain enough to keep her hair more or less under control. She’d always had an uncommonly deep voice, but nowadays it seemed softer.

      Philip had started to lift the sacks from the counter when Flora clamped her hands upon them. “I said Elsie’s helping you, and that’s final. I don’t want anything falling and tearing open and going to waste—especially not while we’re under quarantine.”

      He had once dropped a sack of flour, more than a year ago, and Flora had never forgotten it. But this was the first time she’d gone so far as making Elsie help him.

      He finally accepted the inevitable. “I’ll get the flour,” he told Elsie, who lifted the meal.

      “Tell Charles I said hello, and tell Rebecca she’s not giving my daughter enough homework,” Flora called after them.

      With her back to her mother, Elsie rolled her eyes at Philip.

      After Philip had followed her out the door, Alfred’s voice rose from deep in the aisles. “You playing matchmaker, Flora?”

      “Do you have a problem with Philip Worthy?”

      “I only have a problem with your meddling.”

      “I don’t meddle. I instigate. Big difference.”

      “My mom likes teasing you,” Elsie said as they walked along Commonwealth’s main street, dark except for the light emanating from people’s homes.

      “She likes teasing everybody.”

      Elsie nodded. “True, but you especially.”

      “Why’s that?”

      “I don’t know. ‘Cause you aren’t a logger or millworker, maybe. You’re not like most of the other fellows in town.”

      Philip’s fingertips were already starting to tingle—they did that sometimes, a legacy of his accident five years ago. Damage he would have to live with, the doctor at the Everett hospital had said in an uninterested tone. At least the tingling meant they were still there, as opposed to his left foot, which had been amputated. The longer he carried the sacks, the more his fingertips tingled; soon the sensation would spread to his hands and up his arms, reaching his elbows. It didn’t happen as often as it used to, partly because he was stronger and partly because he had learned how to function within his new limitations. The feeling was something between pain and numbness, but he knew from experience that if he pushed himself too far, his arms would grow unresponsive and the bags would come crashing down.

      “I really can take those sacks for you,” he told her. “You can head back if you want.”

      When had he started getting so nervous around her? He’d known her for five years: when he’d first been adopted by the Worthys, he had wasted many afternoons with Laura and Elsie, playing card games and taking bike rides, wandering along the river to collect driftwood. The three of them would sit on the stones at the water’s edge, watching the river drivers walk across the gently bouncing logs as they floated down the river, calmly riding them like Aladdin on his carpet.

      “Hey, this is my way to get away from my mother for a few minutes. Don’t deprive me of it.”

      Philip nodded. “So my mom’s not giving you enough homework?”

      “Don’t you dare tell her that. My mother calls me lazy if she catches me being idle for two seconds. Between school and the store, I do more work than she does, sitting there gossiping with everyone who walks in her door.”

      Although he liked working with Charles at the mill, Philip missed school, because he missed being around Elsie. He missed talking to her, missed looking at her while she concentrated on a test or stared out the window, lost. There were few girls her age in town, but even if Commonwealth had been overrun with young maidens he still would have plotted ways to accidentally cross paths with Elsie.

      “So what happened out there this afternoon?” For all her criticism of her mother, Elsie did share her mother’s hunger for gossip.

      “What