But the women kept on kneading and shaping, not seeming to realize this glaring truth. After a long, breathless moment, I started kneading again, too. My stillness would probably alert them to the situation sooner than if I kept working.

Jeb was gone for an eternity. Perhaps he had meant that he needed to grind more flour. That seemed like the only explanation for his endless absence.

“Took you long enough,” the salt-and-pepper-braid woman said when he got back, so I knew it wasn’t just my imagination.

Jeb dropped a heavy burlap sack to the floor with a deep thud. “That’s a lot of flour there. You try carryin’ it, Trudy.”

Trudy snorted. “I imagine it took a lot of rest stops to get it this far.”

Jeb grinned at her. “It sure did.”

My heart, which had been thrumming like a bird’s for the entire episode, settled into a less frantic rhythm.

The next day we were cleaning mirrors in the room that housed the cornfield. Jeb told me this was something they had to do routinely, as the combination of humidity and dust caked the mirrors until the light was too dim to feed the plants. It was Ian, working with us again, who scaled the rickety wooden ladder while Jeb and I tried to keep the base steady. It was a difficult task, given Ian’s weight and the homemade ladder’s poor balance. By the end of the day, my arms were limp and aching.

I didn’t even notice until we were done and heading for the kitchen that the improvised holster Jeb always wore was empty.

I gasped out loud, my knees locking like a startled colt’s. My body tottered to a halt.

“What’s wrong, Wanda?” Jeb asked, too innocent.

I would have answered if Ian hadn’t been right beside him, watching my strange behavior with fascination in his vivid blue eyes.

So I just gave Jeb a wide-eyed look of mingled disbelief and reproach, and then slowly began walking beside him again, shaking my head. Jeb chuckled.

“What’s that about?” Ian muttered to Jeb, as if I were deaf.

“Beats me,” Jeb said; he lied as only a human could, smooth and guileless.

He was a good liar, and I began to wonder if leaving the gun behind today, and leaving me alone yesterday, and all this effort forcing me into human company was his way of getting me killed without doing the job himself. Was the friendship all in my head? Another lie?

This was my fourth day eating in the kitchen.

Jeb, Ian, and I walked into the long, hot room—into a crowd of humans chatting in low voices about the day’s events—and nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

There was no sudden silence. No one paused to stare daggers at me. No one seemed to notice us at all.