Chapter 176: She Wasn’t Stealing Somebody’s Vacation

Nolan’s warning changed her plans. A vehicle for sale wasn’t somebody’s stored home. She wanted useful goods, not a frightened family staring at her through a motorhome door she had decided to open.

At the gate the next morning, she asked about occupants before road conditions. A recent patrol had seen two men at the dealership entrance. They were trading parts and had marked the sales office as occupied. Private storage stood behind a separate fence.

"Then we ask at the office," she said.

Edrik nodded as though that had always been the obvious answer. Thorne checked the return route and asked which low streets were still wet. They left with a map that meant something, rather than a confident intention to wander west until the world became convenient.

Earlier that morning, Dove had washed with her pond water, eaten a full breakfast, and practiced in their shared rear yard. Edrik caught her turning into his reach instead of away. She asked him to show her again, got it right twice, then made him admit she was improving. His pleased smile followed her all the way to the gate.

She chose household goods, and Sprout offered folding stools, four sales for fifty-eight normal coins. Six stools were available. Dove pictured hotel workers, roadside traders, and her own men sitting on crates that looked personally offended by their weight.

"If these collapse under a beastman, I’m returning your entire personality."

Sprout showed a suitable weight limit and warned about uneven ground. Dove checked the feet before trusting the label.

They secured the smaller cart and a sample stool in the pickup bed. Food and drinking water rode behind their seats, with the charged lights and tools where they could reach them. The other five stayed in the packed storefront. She checked the coffee lid herself; if anything leaked on her new clothes, she wanted it to be somebody else’s fault.

Edrik drove them along the empty road, with their cart secured in the bed. The pickup had given them seats; Dove wanted to know whether a motorhome could give them a bedroom too. At a discount store before the western turn, they stopped, and she found intact packs of hair ties.

Thorne looked at the small fistful. "That’s all it took?"

"You don’t have to keep your tail out of a mop bucket while running a shop. Respect the discovery."

He kissed her temple and asked where to look next. She sent him toward the visible household shelves while Edrik checked the rear room, then worked through sound soap, trash bags, towels, and sealed snacks herself. Three stored items came and went. She kept collecting what they could actually use.

In the clothing aisle, she found a loose summer dress that made her stop. The color was warm yellow, nothing like the practical dark clothes she had been wearing. It had pockets, which improved its chances considerably.

Edrik saw her hold it against herself. His expression changed before he tried to control it.

"That one," he said, with enough certainty that she checked the dress for a second opinion.

"You haven’t even seen whether it fits."

"I can wait until you try it on," he said. "Some things deserve my full attention."

Thorne came around the shelf and looked at the dress, then at Edrik. "Can you?"

Dove folded it into her personal bag before they could turn shopping into a contest. She kept a second practical shirt too. A woman could want a pretty dress and a clean thing to sweat through on the same day.

They ate in shade behind the store, with the cart in sight and the empty building checked. Nobody had to guard her by wandering out of earshot. Edrik sat close enough to take the drink she almost knocked over, and Thorne handed her the sandwich he had kept wrapped while she sorted the finds.

She leaned into him after eating, enjoying a full stomach and the fact that nobody was asking her to be grateful for having one. His hand moved slowly over her shoulder while Edrik checked the map.

Before driving on, she sorted the finds by the open tailgate. Thorne shaped a snagged metal hook smooth with his thumb while Edrik held its base, reinforcing it for the brief pull of their loaded strap. Then both checked the strap under ordinary tension. Dove asked whether practicing on small things helped.

"I can see what I’m doing without bending the next bit too," Thorne said, showing her the hook.

"Good. I would like to stay married to men with all their fingers."

She checked that the yellow dress was safe in her personal bag, apart from the stock. Thorne held the bag open and asked whether she’d found somewhere to wear it yet. She hadn’t, which suddenly seemed like a problem worth solving.

The dealership appeared beyond a row of shuttered repair businesses. A faded sign showed families smiling beside vehicles much larger than anything Dove had intended to own. The occupied office sat beside the sales yard, while a separate fenced lot held covered vehicles farther back.

A man with striped badger ears stepped out when they called. He looked at Dove, stared for half a second too long, then noticed both husbands and made a visible effort to recover.

He took an involuntary breath, then looked embarrassed. "You smell like the coffee my mother used to make," he said before apparently remembering that was a strange greeting for a customer. Dove had never met the woman and had no idea what her coffee smelled like. Her pond water was making first impressions awkward again.

"Unfortunately, I’m not selling that," she said. "We can start with what you have."

"Parts or a vehicle?" he asked.

"Looking first," Dove said. "Then deciding whether to make a terrible choice."

He laughed. He and his brother had worked there before the disaster and stayed to watch the office stock. They traded parts and sound sales vehicles when they could agree on a price. The private-storage lot remained closed to outsiders, and they had left notes for returning owners.

Dove liked the answer. She asked to see the smaller sales stock and anything useful for a household that still needed to carry its purchases home.

With the brothers’ permission, she summoned the shop on level concrete beside their office. She returned the sample to its slot after they tried it. The brothers and two workers bought the four stools needed for her target. The remaining pair sold to men repairing a service shed. Dove watched one customer sit with obvious relief and decided larger stock had been worth all that swearing.

She packed the empty storefront before the dealer led them toward a compact motorhome parked near the workshop. Its body was dusty, one window had been replaced, and its tires needed inspection before driving.

Inside, beyond a narrow kitchen, Dove could see a fixed bed and two proper seats facing a small table.

The dealer handed her the key to look around, and she was suddenly afraid it would feel like home before she had learned what was wrong with it.