Free The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 2) by Perrin Briar

you.”
    Bill turned and looked Liz square in the eye.
    “You don’t scare me like you can the boys,” he said.
    “If the way I say it doesn’t scare you, then what I’m saying should,” Liz said.
    Liz’s glare faltered. Her shoulders unwound, like a knot on a climber’s rope.
    “You used to be afraid of my glare,” she said. “Or at least pretended to be. Maybe I don’t have the same influence over you the way I once did.”
    Bill’s expression softened, but did not break. There was still steel in his voice.
    “I care about you more now than I ever have,” Bill said. “Isn’t that obvious? It’s the reason I work so hard. For you and the boys. Without you I’d be dead already.”
    “Then why won’t you let us help you?” Liz said. “What are you so afraid of?”
    “I can do this,” Bill said. “Trust me. I’ve always managed before.”
    “Is that what this is all about?” Liz said. “Being a provider? Going to work every day in a surgery isn’t the same as farming an alien land that has never known human settlers, Bill.”
    But Liz could see that wasn’t Bill’s motivation at all.
    “Tell me what’s really wrong, Bill,” Liz said. “Why are you acting this way?”
    Bill looked into Liz’s eyes. She saw a ten-year-old boy, afraid to go to school for fear of the school bully. It was not a look she was used to seeing in her husband’s eyes.
    “Bill…” she said.
    “I have to start working,” Bill said. “The ship isn’t going to harvest itself. I’m not risking the lives of our children for a piece of fruit or to complete a task fractionally faster. We go everywhere together or we go nowhere.”
    “I’m not asking you to risk their lives, but to trust them,” Liz said. “Trust them to make their own decisions, to do what they think is right. They need to learn. We can’t shelter them their whole lives on this island.”
    “We won’t forever,” Bill said.
    “But we will today,” Liz said flatly.
    Bill’s jaw muscles tightened. He smacked the tree stump table with his open palm, making Liz jump. His eyes bored into her.
    “Don’t push me, Liz,” he said, his tone flat and joyless, eyes cold and hard as iron.
    He turned and walked away, leaving Liz shocked and afraid.

Chapter Twenty-Four
     
     
    “Finally we have enough seeds to plant!” Liz said.
    Liz wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and looked over her handiwork. The dark earth lay in long furrows. She handed a fist of seeds to Francis, who pressed them delicately into the dark soil, one at a time with his index finger, and then covered them over.
    Birds of all colours and sizes perched on low hanging boughs cawing and singing and whistling, watching as Liz took more seeds out of the pouch at her waist. The birds flapped their wings and ruffled their feathers.
    Liz watched them. Her head cocked to the side in thought. Liz put the seeds back in her pouch and leaned the shovel against the fence.
    “Come with me,” she said, taking Francis’s hand and leading him away.
    She got to a tree halfway across the clearing and crept behind it. She watched the birds on the bough. They cheeped and cawed, staring down at the soil below. For the first thirty seconds they did nothing.
    Then a handsome bright blue bird with yellow wingtips swooped down onto the furrows’ soft mounds. He cocked his head and moved his jerky way across the soil to the location where Francis had planted the seeds.
    He pecked at the soil once, twice, three times, and then stopped, turning to look about himself, and then used his tiny foot to dig at the soil. He chirruped and lowered his head into the hole to extract the seed, holding it with the tip of its beak.
    He flapped his wings, but before he could take off a dozen tiny white balls similar in appearance to cotton buds fell upon him, squawking until he dropped the seed. One of the smaller birds seized the seed and took flight, two dozen birds giving chase.
    Liz growled under her