The whole way to Hanson's quarters, Shane hopes nothing happens to tumble the basic facts he's set up. Carol confirmed Lerner didn't ask any details other than the kids' names. It's not unusual for a female career cop not to take interest in an underling's family, but Hansen isn't so standoffish.
It means his story won't clash with anything Carol's said. The trickiest part, which Shane realized only when he was in front of the man, is Beth's age. At nearly seventeen, Beth being their child means Shane and Carol's relationship would have begun before his freshman year of college. It isn't a brush he wants Carol tarred with, and they've seen his ID, so he can't change his age.
Even so, both girls know to give their ages as younger than they are. He's hopeful enough old world prohibitions remain for the bastards that almost fifteen still carries the ringing pell of 'jailbait' it always has. If not, whatever asshole so much as looks at the girls sideways, he'll feed him his own balls.
"Hey, Dad?" Henry asks, slipping his hand in Shane's as they emerge from the stairs to Hanson's level. Lerner resides with the rest of the officers, but Hanson uses an old executive office suite as his domain.
Carol dressed the boys identically, playing on the old stereotype for twins with just a twist that Henry's polo is blue and Benjamin's is green. How she managed to cobble together outfits to make both girls look so demure and young on short notice, he isn't sure. Beth's knee length pastel green dress and darker blue cardigan look like they're headed to the most conservative church in Georgia, with Sophia's matching in shades of pink.
As for Carol herself, Jesus Christ, he might have lived with her for a few months now, but tonight is the first time she's not kept herself cocooned in shapeless layers. She's gorgeous in the elegant dress, the pale blue a perfect contrast to his uniform. He nearly commented in a way he would have to a date, before reminding himself the last thing he needs to do is make Carol uncomfortable around him.
"Whatcha need, buddy?"
"Will we get to go outside here?"
He's so mournful when he asks, it makes Shane regret what the kids were asked to give up to come here. The freedom of his property on the river, where they could run and play and be mischievous little boys, is something they never had before.
"We'll figure something out. The streets aren't safe, but all hospitals have places for patients to enjoy being outside." If nothing else, there's the roof itself, once Shane wrangles access.
"And we already have all those lovely windows in our rooms," Carol adds.
Windows which don't open, because hospital regulations worried more about accidents than fresh air in patient rooms. But those can be modified, because Shane's seen it done on other floors he toured which were in use during the summer. Grady may have power, but no one is foolish enough to spend the supply of diesel used in the generators for something as foolish as air conditioning. His biggest worry is they don't seem to be planning for winter, though, and Georgia's winter temperatures are notoriously finicky.
"Yeah. And we still have our chickens," Benjamin chips in. "We get to hatch more, remember?"
Even knowing one day the chickens will become part of their food, the boys still take innocent joy in the fluffy critters. Hell, they even like the obnoxious rooster. Shane wonders idly if he could find a stray dog or cat out there somewhere, and if he could convince the leadership it should be allowed inside. As he muses, they reach the door into Hansen's quarters and pause.
"Everyone be on their best behavior," Shane cautions, less out of necessity and more out of the formality expected if anyone is close to the door. "Remember that Captain Hanson is Dad's new boss, and it's like meeting the Sheriff back home, okay?"
After a chorus of agreements, Shane reaches out to catch Carol's hand, squeezing lightly and coaxing her to stand next to him. The girls each snag one of the twins' hands without being prompted. Pride at how easily they fall into the roles chases away a good portion of his nerves. When Carol meets his gaze, there's a sweet slyness there that reminds him he is most certainly not alone.
His knock gains them permission to enter, and inside, the evidence of Captain Hanson clawing some sort of normalcy out of chaos are even more clear. The elegant rosewood dining table is expandable, with leaves inserted to allow seating for ten. Shane isn't sure if it means they'll be dining with more than just Hansen, or if the man just doesn't want to sit as close as an eight seater would require.
Hanson steps out of a side room, surprising Shane with a smile that seems far more genuine than anything earlier. He assesses Carol and the kids with an approving nod.
"Captain Hanson, this is my wife, Carol. Our niece, Beth, and our children, Sophia, Benjamin, and Henry."
Hanson offers a hand to Carol, who lets go of Shane's to take it for Hanson to squeeze gently. "Mrs. Walsh, I must say I admire your resourcefulness. It's a rare quality to be so adaptable in the face of this level of adversity."
Carol smiles warmly. "We were lucky to be isolated and none of us get sick, Captain. It meant we did not face the level of strife that those in more populated areas did."
"You thrived beyond merely surviving, though, and that is admirable." Hanson motions toward the table. "If you'll do me the honor of sitting to my right, Mrs. Walsh?"
"Call me Carol, please, Captain."
"Then I invite you to call me Robert."
If there wasn't so much honest sadness in Hanson's expression, Shane might consider the man flirting with Carol. Instead, it's as if there someone else Hanson is remembering. With an uneasy jolt, Shane recalls none of the officers here have families in residence, and Hanson still wears a wedding ring. Cops tend to be mixed on the practice, and Shane's skipped out on the custom by his history as a firearms instructor. But Hanson's been off the streets for at least a decade, so rings aren't the danger they can be to a street cop.
For the first time, Shane wonders when Mrs. Hanson died, and if it makes Hanson safer or more dangerous as a leader if his grief is fresh and recent.
As Hanson leads Carol to the table, Shane ushers the kids to seats, with Beth and Henry on Carol's side and Benjamin and Sophia on Shane's when he sits to Hanson's left. At a signal from Hanson, an older woman pushes a cart in, settling plates in front of everyone to join the cloth napkins and cutlery already set at each place.
"Would you like wine?" Hanson asks Carol. "I did not want to presume."
Carol shakes her head. "I've never been fond of drinking."
Remembering how she sipped at a single glass of wine during all the merrymaking at the CDC, Shane wonders if Carol only took the glass not to look prudish among the rest. He can't help but be glad she was clearheaded then, because the lifeline she threw him is one he can never repay her for.
"Nadine, could you bring sweet tea for Carol and the children and bourbons for Officer Walsh and me?" Hanson smiles at Carol's open curiosity when she glances toward the room Nadine disappears into. "She was the head dietician at the hospital here, who bravely stayed to the end of evacuations to assist us. Since then, she's looked after me."
"How lucky for both of you," Carol muses, thanking Nadine softly when the drinks arrive. What she's looking for when she pats the woman's hand gently, Shane isn't sure, but he notes to ask her later.
"Tonight's bounty is courtesy of your arrival," Hanson explains when Carol compliments the pasta pomodoro, which features the fresh zucchini they harvest on the way to Atlanta. "To be honest, we haven't seen fresh vegetables at all lately. The gardens inside our range were plucked clean by early summer."
"We could set up gardens here," Shane suggests, drawing Hanson's attention. "Even with winter coming, greenhouses on the roof or aligned to the windows on the upper floors we aren't using would produce vegetables year round. Canned goods won't last forever."
Hanson's expression turns a bit grim as he reaches for his tumbler. After a drink, he sighs. "The officers here want to believe that help is still coming. Do you disagree?"
Shane remembers his insistence on going to Fort Benning. Time and logic tell him if the base is still viable, they'd have seen soldiers by now. He tells Hanson that. "Maybe there's government out there somewhere still, or military, but it's not anywhere in Georgia. I doubt it's on the east coast at all. If they're out west, it could take a long time for them to regroup enough to start seeking survivors."
"So we should plan for the long haul aside from that freakish guinea pig project?"
"It can't hurt to prove we have skills to contribute."
Hanson surprises Shane by nodding thoughtfully before returning to his food and then changing the topic entirely, quizzing the kids about favorite books and games as if it were any other 'meet the boss' dinner. Watching the conversation, Shane firms up his initial assessment Hanson was a family man before. No one pays this much attention to an underling's children if they weren't. It's a good sign, especially compared to what he's heard of Lerner's bare bones approach to life.
Once Shane is more settled, he'll figure out just how much Hanson is aware of the corruption beginning among his officers. For now, at least, Shane doesn't think Hanson is irredeemable.
Returning to their floor is a relief in some ways, Carol finds. Hanson retains enough of old world etiquette to entertain them as a family, and he wasn't the sort of hardass who expected Carol and the kids to be seen and not heard. Still, the expectation Hanson might decide a single cop wasn't worth the extra baggage had Carol on tenterhooks all night.
Once everyone changes out of dress clothes, and in Shane's case, his Carol-distracting uniform, it's still early enough for the boys to drag Shane around to inspect the alterations they made while he was on duty.
"You should relax, Mama," Sophia says, distracting Carol from sorting another of their boxes. "We unpacked all the necessities, right?"
"We didn't get all the beds made, though, did we?"
At the reminder, Sophia giggles and takes a stack of sheets Joan fetched for them earlier and wanders off, calling for Beth. All the kids are using the twin hospital beds already on the ward, the boys sharing one room and the girls another. She hadn't considered those back at the boat house until Lamson suggested they bring Shane's bed along. They had enough space with the trailers, so now the room set aside as theirs has the juxtaposition of the comfortable queen sized bed among the hospital furniture Carol appropriated from unused rooms.
Finding the sheets she needed buried under spare winter clothes for the boys, Carol rolls her eyes in amusement at the packing. She should probably be happy Shane at least kept it to a theme that everything was clothes or linens. Halfway through making the bed, she hears footsteps and looks up to see Shane looking perturbed.
"I should be helping you with that."
"It's easy enough," Carol replies, but she smiles for him offering.
He reaches for the pillows anyway, shucking the pillowcases the pillows traveled in to replace them with fresh ones. Putting one on the bed, he heads toward the recliner with the other. She pauses in smoothing the lightweight blanket over the sheets, smile fading.
"There is no way that thing can be comfortable for sleeping in more than a night or two, Shane." His couch back home was expensive and quite comfortable, so sharing the bed with Beth was fine. But considering the physical nature of his work, there's no way Carol wants him spending all his nights in the torture device the hospital calls a visitor's chair, recliner or not.
Pausing, Shane looks so hesitant she puts her hands on her hips. "I'm fairly sure you don't bite by now, Shane. Put that pillow back on the bed."
Exactly as she expects from seeing how he reacted when Lori stood up for herself, Shane puts the pillow next to its twin.
"You sure?"
The boyish hesitance in his voice makes her want to hug him, but she settles for reaching out to pat his cheek gently instead. "I'm sure. I'd make you sleep in the shower stall if I thought you couldn't behave yourself, you know."
Shane covers her hand with his, pressing her palm closer to his skin for a brief moment before moving away. "If you change your mind about it, we'll figure something out." He clears his throat. "Lamson sent a tool for me to unlock the windows so we don't smother in here."
Used to the outdoor heat in summer at the quarry, Carol and the kids were okay today, but she knows she'll appreciate the ability to open them. Atlanta's weather is temperamental, and they'll have heat waves even in official winter. It only takes Shane a few moments to unlock each of their windows and test to see if the mechanical arm that stops the window's outward swing at six inches or so works. A breeze tickles its way across Carol's skin, making her smile.
"I'll go get the rest of the windows open. Then we can get a cross breeze going, maybe."
"It's too bad we aren't higher up," Carol muses.
"Yeah. Be careful. We're on the lowest floor declared livable, if Shepherd didn't tell you. They cleared the lower levels, but no one ever cleaned them."
The declaration makes Carol shiver. The maternity ward was dusty and pristine when they entered today, but she imagines it was the first one evacuated. Not for the first time, she wonders where the evacuated patients actually were flown to. Shane told her about the executions in King County, but those were at the very end, with only the sickest and hardest to move patients left. If she asks, she bets she'll hear a similar story about Grady's evacuation priorities.
From their place on the fourth floor, she can see the I-85, with abandoned vehicles clogging both sides, as if people couldn't figure out which direction to evacuate. This deep in Atlanta, she imagines it wasn't an easy decision. They wove through the snarl earlier, along a path the officers cleared carefully to provide a gauntlet of protection. Nothing moves anywhere in sight, not even a random bird.
"I don't mind avoiding anything lower down," she says, rubbing her hands along her arms, cold despite the warmth of the September evening.
Turning away from the window, she follows Shane out, wanting to keep busy. The kids eventually coax her away from her fluttering, settling into their makeshift living room adjacent to the old nurse's desk. All the board and card games they collected came with them, and it's a little eerie how easily they settle back into the routine of family game night.
Not knowing for sure what sort of schedule they might be on the next day, Carol does shoo the kids off to bed at a decent hour. She isn't surprised when Shane booby traps the entrance into the ward. It won't stop an intruder, but there will be plenty of noise to alert them to the security breech.
Settling into bed is easy enough, probably because they've slept in the same room for so long now. The tension of the day bleeds out of Shane as he relaxes into sleep, coaxed by habit she knows he gained with the sheriff's department of sleeping whenever he can. Curling on her side to face him on the bed, Carol studies him, noting how all the worry lines he carried at tonight's dinner smooth out, making him look even younger than the nearly thirty-six he's told her he'll be on his next birthday.
It makes her feel old and plain in a way Ed's criticism never did, with her prematurely gray hair and a body that only managed womanly curves during pregnancy. Her own inner pessimism is harder to silence, even it's mostly a strong echo of Ed. But then she remembers his heated gaze when he first saw her dress, and how right his hand felt in hers when they approached Hanson's quarters, and she feels the ghost banished by the memory.
To make sure it stays away, she eases across the gap between them on the bed. She isn't surprised at all when laying her head on his chest means even in sleep, Shane manages to reassure her. His arm settles around her, big hand against one hip as if keeping her close settles ghosts for him, too.
Listening to his steady heartbeat and comforted by his warmth, Carol allows her to fall asleep with a new sort of hope.