Only rarely, when I climb to the platform to look at my brother, my betrothed and my best friend, do I wonder if they are living a life like mine, a domestic tranquility that belies the threat so immediate outside our doors.

Once I almost ask Travis why he didn't come for me back at the village. I'm sitting across from him at the table and there's a break in the conversation and I want so badly to know the answers, to know what my life would have been without the breach. I am gathering my thoughts, the pain of the waiting fresh in my throat. But then he smiles at me and takes my hand, the pads of his palms rough against my skin, and I realize that it no longer matters.

Because we're together now. And I don't want to mar the harmony that we have found.

We settle into rhythms. Argos spends his days napping in various locations. Travis keeps our house fortified and I keep our bodies fed. The outside world ends at our door and this includes our commitments to other people. Here, in our house, it's only us and our life together and for a while it's bliss.

Until one day when I find myself coming in from the porch on the roof and facing the trunks lining the other end of the room. For the first time I'm drawn to them and I pass my hand over the smooth wood, the smell of cedar invading my head.

Even though I know there can be no one behind me, since Travis can't climb the ladder that leads here, I turn to make sure I'm not being watched. And then carefully I lift the latch from one of the trunks sitting on top of the stack.

It's filled with clothes and I break into a smile, happy to have found a diversion for the afternoon. One by one I pull out dresses that are intricately beaded and decorated with fancy stitches, each one very carefully folded for storage. They are all different colors, some bright and some muted—some shades I have never seen before. The material is soft and gauzy; fine stiff netting is stitched into the skirts to give them more bounce, more thickness and spin.

I hold each against my body, wondering what it must be like to be covered in such beauty until I'm compelled to try them on. Initially I feel a rush, a giddiness at the foreign material against my bare skin.

But then I start to wonder what woman once wore these dresses and why. For days I've lived in this house and have forbidden myself from imagining its former occupants. Since I dropped the baby from the window I haven't allowed myself to speculate about the children who once ate at the table downstairs, the men who crafted the weapons, the women who preserved each fruit and vegetable, meticulously planning for a siege they would never live long enough to endure.