They named it Stockton, after Simon. Jacob Ievvi made up a bit of metal with Simon's story on it, which he hung on the window outside the mess hall. Stockton grew in size by five people in the first six months.

One of them, much to Celia's surprise, was her niece Virginia Landis. Calhoun had been correct in his prediction. The other four were people who wandered in from the Vault, after the doors were finally sealed. The reports from the Vault were terrible to hear, and Celia had left the town meeting in the mess hall once Dorothy Woods started describing how her infant son had died in his cot from smoke inhalation.

Mike and Sally married, after two years of engagement, with a small celebration. Celia hadn't attended, neither had she gone to the party when Jason Knowles married Susan Easton. She'd gone off to practice with a hunting rifle purchased from the lone trader that Stockton had seen in the entire six months.

She was amicable to farming and occasionally shooting at ants lurking on the dry lake bed near Lionel's shack. She spent a lot of time with the ghouls, chatting about whatever was going on in Grayling and Stockton. Lionel found her spare parts for the hunting rifle and helped her learn how to fix it, but didn't talk much about anything.

With the first major inventory, Calhoun organized a purchase of five Brahmin, which soon exploded into several more, once Celia proved that she could help with the calving. It wasn't pleasant, but she enjoyed the animals' company. She was also grateful that Calhoun no longer showed up while she was alone to embarrass her with tender words. Whatever that had been about, she didn't know.

She was still lonely, on her own in Stockton. She'd moved into the women's dorm, with a couple others. A few people had organized a search for appropriate building materials to construct metal shacks around the walls, for guard posts. Celia would look out the window of the dorm and see the faint light of a guard's lamp on the wall, while trying to figure out how she could leave and survive the wastes on her own.

She didn't sleep very much. It was hard to sleep when she was so unhappy with her situation.

Lionel told her not to be stupid, to stay in Stockton. Lilian said she should start a family, but didn't suggest who she should start it with. Celia rolled her eyes at the woman and said she wasn't particularly interested in either a family or a mate.

Besides, she kind of considered the ghouls to be family. For lack of a blood relation, they were as close to it as she'd ever come. Lilian and Lionel never turned her away and were very fond of her, or at least she thought that they were.

Lilian hadn't run off since her return on that fateful night that Celia spent alone in the car. Lionel said she'd "beat the spread," but Celia didn't know what that meant. She ran food stores up to them every week, collecting caps and occasionally taking the goods that Lionel found into Grayling to sell. He clammed up tighter than a Vault door when she showed him how much she'd managed to get from the first haul, and afterwards had not talked about it at all. She wondered if he was angry; she was a good bit better at getting good prices for scrap than he was.

On occasion she would drop off electronics for Lionel to fix. He could fix almost anything. She never told them that she bought the electronics from people in Grayling, with her own money made from salvaging and whatever Calhoun paid her to farm.

Once, when Celia had stayed too long at the shack and was forced to spend the night, Lilian opened up about her family. "I had three girls," she said. "Patricia, Jennifer, and the last one died at birth. She never had a name. I think I would have called her Linda."

"And Patty died, too?" Celia asked, wiping down the plates from dinner. Lionel was outside, off doing something.

"My poor Patty," Lilian said, her eyes glazing over for a moment. "Yes, after she met that no-good trader man who spirited her off into the wastes." She smiled. "You've met Jennifer, though. She does me proud."

"What was your married name?"

Lilian sighed, and ripped up more rags. She was planning to re-stuff a teddy bear for Virginia's first birthday. "We don't like to mention Max around here," she said. "Too many bad memories. And Lionel never liked him."

"My dad died on the very first scouting mission into the wastes," Celia said, changing the subject. "Ed said I wasn't even born when he left. My mom died when an electrical fire broke out in our living quarters. I was four." She wiped down another plate. "Ed and Ann were married right after I started school." She felt like she'd been denied a family or so many years.

"Are you content, Celia?" Lilian asked her. "With things the way they are right now?"

She paused, the plate in her hand hovering over the shelf. "I don't know. Are you?"

Lilian gave her grating little laugh, and smiled. "Want to know a secret?" she said.

"I guess," she said, and put the plate down.

"When I 'run off' like certain people seem to think I do," the ghoul said, "I go up to Toskey, and sit in the shallows of the bay, watching the barges skim across the water."

"Barges?" Celia asked.

"Well, they're really little more than a floating hunk of wood with an engine," Lilian said. But I like to watch them on the water and imagine what life was like, back before Lionel became the irate old coot that he is today."

"For three months?" the girl asked, before kicking herself. She oughtn't have brought that up.

Lilian sighed. "I got lost. It happens," she said. "And I ended up too far east."

"What is east of Grayling?"

"There used to be a town, out near the water," Lilian said, picking up the teddy bear and stuffing rags into it. "On-the-Bay, I think it was called. I went there once as a small girl, with my father."

Lionel opened the door roughly, slammed it shut, and walked to the mattress in the corner. "Cold out there," he grumbled. He laid down, obviously not looking to join the conversation.

"Lionel," Lilian said. "Stay up. Celia and I are talking about On-the-Bay."

He just grunted, pushing himself backwards into the wall.

"Anyway," the woman said, ignoring Lionel, "one day, On-the-Bay got quiet. Traders who came through said the whole place just up and left. That was, oh, about three years ago? It was like the people had just disappeared, and anyone who stays in the town goes missing, too." She finished the bear and asked Celia to thread a needle.

"Just gone," Celia said. "No reason why."

"Yes."

"Creepy," Celia said, sewing the bear up for Lilian.

"It's not creepy," Lionel rasped, from the bed. "There's too much damn radiation out there. Go to sleep."

Lilian snorted at him, and Celia finished up the bear. She handed it back to Lilian and went to the corner where Lionel had a bedroll laid out. He'd had her buy it and then given it to her for when she was stuck somewhere in the wastes. She'd left it at the shack. Because where else would I go, she laughed to herself.

Lilian turned out the light and Celia stared into the darkness. She could hear the raspy breathing of Lilian, and a crackling snore from Lionel after a moment or two. She curled up in the bedroll and wondered how an entire town could just up and go like that, without any notice, any evidence of why. She could end up like that, if she left Stockton.

I am not happy there, she said to herself. I do what I'm supposed to do, but I don't like any of the people. Except maybe Calhoun, he wasn't as bad as others, didn't insult her or pretend she didn't exist. Living in Stockton wasn't same as in the Vault; she had less to eat now, and her skin was more brown. But everyone still treated her like silly old Celia.

After that night, Celia watched her caps more diligently, and sold more than her fair share of scrap to the traders in Grayling. When she had enough money, she bought some meds and more ammo for her hunting rifle, and planned trips out into the wastes, to find a place she felt more at home.