"Ingrid."
Her eyes came round and met mine through the bars.
"How do you know my name?"
The first words out of her.
The tone should have worried me. It didn't. Anything was progress.
"Becky. Your sister told me about you."
She looked away, out at the infected flowing past the cart. Then she stood up and looked forward over the top of them—the pale head rising above the mass for a second, oriented on Max's position somewhere ahead, or on the road, or on nothing that required explanation.
The cart dropped into a pothole and came back up. Her legs took it without a wobble. The welded chair waited. She sat down again.
"How do you know Becky?"
"We're friends. Good friends." I shifted my back against the bars. "She told me you weren't a bad person. That's a direct quote. And so far I can confirm it."
She looked at me for a moment and then put her eyes back on the road, the way you close a door without slamming it. The attention withdrawn.
