“There were maybe twenty of us at most,” he said, gripping my hand. “All in bad shape. Liv and Mike found a working car and piled the ones that were scary bad into the back, to go find a hospital, but…”

“What about the rest of them?” I asked.

“They split.” Liam rubbed at his eyes and winced. The skin there was still tender, blooming to black.

“And why didn’t you?” Chubs demanded. “What the hell is the matter with you that you’d come back here, knowing that there could still be PSFs?”

Liam only snorted. “You think that mattered to me for a second when there was a chance the two of you were still here, too?”

We didn’t have time to waste; we all knew the PSFs well enough to know that there was a chance they would double back and check for survivors. The two of them went to work immediately in the supply closet, trying to figure out how much food we could carry with us. I tried to be useful, too, but I could feel my attention drifting upstairs, to Clancy’s desk.

I finally gave into my restlessness and left the two of them locked in an argument over canned food. I made my way back upstairs, patting the inside pocket of Liam’s jacket to make sure Jack’s and Chubs’s still-damp letters were there.

There were two minutes left of the laptop’s battery. The power icon was flashing, warning that reserves were low. The screen dimmed and the lights in the keyboard switched off. I typed as fast as I could, searching the online White Pages for Ruby Ann Daly, Virginia Beach.

No results.

I tried again, just with her name but no location. A listing did pop up, but it was for Salem. I hadn’t lived there in close to a decade, but I recognized my parents’ address when I saw it.

A minute and fifteen seconds. I looked in the Web-site history for the site Chubs had talked about, the one that let you make calls, and typed in the phone number. I lost two seconds with each ring.

I don’t think I wanted to talk to her so much as to hear her speak. Going to her wasn’t an option for me anymore. There were more important things to take care of. But I needed to know that she was still out there—that there was one more person in the world who remembered me.

It clicked. My heart jumped up into my throat, my fingers curling against the desk.

My mother’s voice.

Hello, you’ve reached the residence of Jacob, Susan, and Ruby Daly…

I don’t know why I started to cry then. Maybe I was exhausted. Maybe I was tired of how hard everything had become. I was happy that the three of them were together, that Mom and Dad had fixed their family and replaced one Ruby with another. The thing I’d realized most over the past few days was how important it was for us to take care of one another and stick together. And they were taking care of each other. Good.

Good.

But it didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to close my eyes and pretend, if only for a few minutes, that I was the Ruby who still lived on Millwood Drive.

THIRTY

HOURS LATER, when it was just the three of us back on the road, we finally had a chance to tell Liam exactly what had happened to us the night before.

“Thank God Chubs found you,” Liam said, shaking his head. “You knew him better than any of us, and you still went.”

“I really thought I could control him,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool window. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, you are,” Chubs agreed. “But you’re our idiot, so be more careful next time.”

“Cosigned,” Liam said, hooking his fingers over mine on top of the armrest.

We’d found the car abandoned along a side road a few miles west of East River, and picked it only because it still had a quarter tank of gas. Driving in this car was nothing like driving in Betty. Chubs’s long legs dug into the back of my seat, and the car smelled like old Chinese food. Still, it was running. After a while, it would become ours.

“There’s another one,” Chubs said, tapping on his window.

I opened my eyes and craned my neck back, catching a quick look at the white pole. On top of it was a white box, and on top of that was a small antenna. Cameras, everywhere.

“Maybe we should get off the highway,” Liam suggested.

“No!” Chubs said. “We’ve seen two whole cars since we got on the sixty-four, and it’ll take us twice as long to get to Annandale if we get off again. They’ll be watching for Betty, anyway, not this car.”

Liam and I shared a look. “Tell me again what your mom’s message said?”

“She said to make a reservation at my aunt’s restaurant and wait for them in the kitchen,” Chubs said. “I did that from East River, so we should be set to meet them there tonight. My aunt will probably even feed us.”

“Let’s drop you off first, then,” Liam said.

“No,” Chubs said. “I want to deliver Jack’s letter.”

“Chubs…”

“Don’t Chubs me,” he snapped. “I owe Jack a lot. I want to do this.”

The address for Jack’s father was a Days Inn motel, far away from Annandale’s neighborhoods of sprawling homes. Liam seemed to think that the motel had been converted to a temporary housing complex for the workers rebuilding D.C., but there was no way to prove his theory until a rickety old bus pulled up alongside our car in the parking lot and unloaded a dozen dust-covered men, clutching neon vests and hard hats.

“Room 103,” Liam said, leaning over the steering wheel. He squinted with his good eye. “The guy in the red shirt. Yeah, that’s him—Jack looked a lot like him.”