The sides were rolled up now to let the air in. The storm preppers would have unrolled them to the ground and clipped the bottom edges to the sides of the outer raised beds.

She nodded vaguely into her row. “Newer covering, more flexible. It can balloon and flutter without tearing. I don’t know where we’ll get more when we need it.”

Another thing I’d taken for granted: the infinity of supplies in the upstairs storage rooms. But large rolls of plastic sheeting weren’t on the pickers’ list of stuff easily shoved into a grab bag. “Where did we get it?”

“Oh, a while ago. Rousseau saw the need and stocked up when it was still available.”

I felt bad that I might have passed such a valuable item by without thinking to tell anyone back at the den. Time to widen my focus. “I’m pretty much done over there. You need any help?”

“Certainly.” She straightened again to blot her temples with the long hem of her white shirt, held as delicately as a lace hanky. She was a head shorter than me and square, her legs set apart like sturdy posts. Her feet were bare and her crooked old-lady toes dug into the soil like they meant to take root. Her big hat threw her eyes into shadow but for a spark of reflected gleam. “There’s no such thing as too much help in a garden.”

Her tone was cheery but her smile was distracted, her voice low and rough, like she’d been yelling, which was hard to imagine. She gestured at the shreds of plastic scattered across the carrot rows. “Perhaps a bit of cleanup?”

I recognized her double message: Sure, you can help. Just don’t get too close. The same message I’d been sending out since I woke up in the Ward. But I was curious about Ellie Mae, and this was my best chance so far to get to know her. I moved a long step away and gathered up debris in silence, like I’d read in some book about taming wild animals: let them come to you.

After we’d worked a while, she began to hum softly, a long, complicated tune I didn’t know. I was sure she’d forgotten me when she said, “It’s young Glimmer, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her old-fashioned talk was catching.

“You’re on the mend, I see.”

“Yes, thanks, I am.” I folded a larger sheet of plastic into a bundle to be reused. Ellie Mae worked her way down to the end of the carrot block and started up the kale row across the aisle. Maybe ten minutes later, she was opposite me again. “Was there something else you wanted?”

“No, um . . . well, yes. I’ve been watching how you work so fast, like, without even looking. How do you decide which ones to pull?”