Alana slowly broke away from the pair of them as Brannon's story was over and had a seat at the little table again. Fingers flicked the leather journal closed and then ran over the smooth surface while she continued to absorb it all. My God, she thought, He should have been dead a dozen times already. A crease lingered on her frown, a tug of concern for the whole matter. All lay in the past now and nothing should ever occur like it again, but still, it was unnerving that such had happened to her brother. Both of hands clasped together, fingers interlocked as if she were about to pray, but instead looked between her relations again.
"I--I think, four, maybe," she gave in agreement and looked down at her journal just once. Much of her inner turmoil had been put down onto paper to aleviate the pain. A lot of trees were going to have to die to clear it all out, but writing did help. Goodness, what she would have to write about tonight, after Brannon would surely have to leave. Even that reality made her cringe.
"It took us a few days to get down here. The way I remembered, well it was a little fuzzy to say the least." Alana was really in no good state of mind immediately after the siege and pretty much up until yesterday. She was there, but, sometimes it was though she were on auto-pilot. Talking, barely eating, seemingly able to sleep, but not all there. Luke had kept her from going off the deep end.
Then she sighed, and with a shake of her head, "I can't believe we missed each other like that. We weren't traveling on the same roads, obviously, but. Unbelievable." A short pause, before she thought she ought to tell him where she had been. "Michael and I went to Mom and Dad's for a good while, when things started to fall apart. But his parents only had Michael, so we eventually made it to Rhode Island. Stayed there until weeks turned into months. I wanted to go back home so badly, but, I couldn't ask Michael to just leave his parents without much of anyone, either. We were in Rhode Island for a few years before his parents both died--not because of the outbreak. By the time we went back, though, things had really changed. The roads most of all. The people we ran into..." Her voice trailed off and a shudder made her shift uncomfortably.
"We looked for Mom and Dad again. There wasn't any sign that they, you know, came to harm at the farm but there wasn't any sign where they had gone, either. No notes. We even checked the O'Malleys and a few of the neighbors and couldn't find anything. Then we came back to Rhode Island to find Luke." Alana smiled broadly at her nephew. "And then, well, circumstances lead us here. It wasn't easy getting down here and it was one of the reasons Michael didn't want us to try for it before. I really didn't know if I'd ever find you again, Bans." Her eyes shifted from her nephew to her brother as she fought back fresh tears.