This wasn't just four people traveling together anymore. It was something with weight, with expectations, with a future he couldn't see clearly. A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts. Sani stepped inside, carrying a tin basin and a cloth. "Thought you might want to clean up," she said. "I can manage."
"I know." She set the basin down on the small table near the window. "But you don't have to." Cole sat up slowly. "Sani, we need to talk about this."
"About what?" "About how this is supposed to work. You, me, Kaya, Lyra, all of this." Sani sat down in the chair across from him. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything. How do we split a life four ways? Who decides what? How do we keep from..." He stopped, searching for the right words. "How do we keep from tearing each other apart?"
"The same way anyone does," Sani said. "We talk, we listen, we argue when we need to and compromise when we can. We figure it out as we go." "That's not a plan." "It's the only plan that works."
"You can't predict every problem before it happens, Cole. You just have to trust that when problems come, we'll face them together." Cole rubbed his face. "I don't know if I'm built for that kind of trust." "You've trusted us with your life a dozen times over."
"That's different. That's survival." "So is this." Sani leaned forward. "What do you think marriage is, if not survival? Just a different kind."
Cole didn't have an answer for that. He stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the dirty streets of Gravel Springs. People moved like ants below, working, trading, living their small lives in the shadow of the mines. Most of them probably had the same fears he did, the same doubts. "I'm going to mess this up," he said quietly.
"Yes, you will," Sani agreed. "So will we. And then we'll fix it. That's what people do." She stood, moved to the door, then paused.
"One more thing." "What?" "Stop thinking of this as something you're enduring. You chose this. We all did."
"That means something." She left before Cole could respond. He spent the next hour washing off the road dust and trying to organize his thoughts into something coherent. By the time he finished, the sun had dipped below the hills and the town was settling into its evening rhythm. He found the others in the boardinghouse common room, seated around a scarred wooden table with a map spread between them.