When Joy had mostly stopped crying, Derek took her to get some soup. He wouldn't listen when she said she wasn't hungry and forced her to eat every bite.
She felt bad for burdening him. "I'm sorry. Thanks for the food. I shouldn't have cried all over you like that. I just…it's been a while since anyone hugged me. I've been dealing with this all by myself."
"You don't have anyone willing to give you a hug in the middle of something like this?" he asked incredulously.
"No. My husband was all I had and he died a couple of months after she went missing."
Derek cursed. "You lost your whole family so fast? Seriously?"
Joy couldn't do anything but shrug helplessly. He muttered under his breath and when she asked him to repeat that, he did. "I said I can't believe you went through something similar to me. It explains why you're a zombie though. I've been there."
She experienced her first flicker of curiosity in months. "What happened to them?"
