It was night, but they sat there by the door, leaning up against the side of the couch. Laura held the jug. Every hour or so, they took a little sip. It was like a tonic. Eddie felt bright and reflective. He felt that they would live. That they would leave here. There were maybe four cups of water left. It seemed enormous, but precious—the most precious thing.

“Just don’t think about her,” Eddie said. “Put it out of your mind.”

“I see her when I close my eyes.”

“Concentrate on something else. We need time to let this settle.”

“It was so fast,” she said. “I thought she was just going to walk back up her steps. I can see it with my eyes open, too. I was looking right at her when she did it.”

“We’ll leave,” Eddie said. “We’ll get away from here and come back when the power’s back.”

“Evacuate.”

“Yeah, but not with the neighbors. Not into the city.”

“We’ll go to my parents’ house,” Laura said.

“Your dad will know what to do,” Eddie agreed. “We can take the trail. That will keep us off the road for a few miles at least. We’ll walk over the bridge.”

“I’ve never done that.”

“We’ll leave tonight.” He gathered himself as if to stand, but didn’t.

“What about Mike Sr.?” she asked. “We’re leaving him here?”

Eddie was silent. Then he said, “What are we supposed to do? It’s up to him. We’re not leaving him anywhere.”

He watched Laura stand on shaky legs. She went into the kitchen and came back with an empty plastic water bottle. When she bent to take the jug from Eddie, he held on to it tightly.

“What are you doing?” he said.

She pressed down on the jug, locking her arms. She stared at him. “Don’t be cruel,” she said.

Eddie stared back. “There’s no such thing as cruel right now. It’s just us. The only people you can be cruel to is us.”

“He won’t make it.”

“It’s thirty miles to your parents’ house. If we don’t take all the water, we won’t make it.”

She nodded. “When the fire department comes, they’ll help him.”

“Right.” Eddie looked at the black window. He couldn’t imagine anything good coming from out there anymore.

“How fast can you walk right now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll get the tent, then. We’ll need to camp out.”

Downstairs, he found the tent in the furnace room, and stuffed it into his backpack.

“You’re packing?” she said.

There was dry ramen in its plastic bricks in the back of the cupboard and Eddie took those, too. He packed the flashlight and a tarp and rolled a kitchen knife in newspaper so that it wouldn’t cut the fabric. He took a raincoat. The pack was as tight as a beach ball when he zipped it, and the two canisters of wasp spray bulged from the side pockets.

“Let’s go,” he said. “It’ll better to walk at night. We won’t need as much water in the cooler air.”

They stood there in the middle of the living room. The starlight didn’t make it down to the ground outside their windows.

“We could stay till morning,” she suggested, “and then go.”

“The sooner we get there, the better.”

“We’ll go twice as fast in the morning,” she said. “We’ll get lost in the dark.”

“I have the flashlight.”

She sat down on the sofa and touched the spot beside her. “Rest,” she said.

“Come on,” he urged, but he sat down and she put her legs onto his lap. Eddie didn’t mind that they were hot. After a little while, he squeezed her thigh and woke her up.

“We’re going to be okay,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. He held the jug at his side. “This changes things.”

“Yes.”

Eddie looked at her. She’d lost the pleasant firmness in her features. Instead, her face was soft with daydream.

“When this is over,” he said, “it won’t even feel like part of our lives. It’ll feel like a dream. Or a story we heard about someone somewhere else. What happened yesterday and the day before … I can barely remember it now. It’s like I didn’t do any of it, not me.”

Laura remained silent.

“I’ve been in a fog,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “But don’t keep talking about it.”

“None of this counts against us. Whatever you did when you were walking home from your car, whatever you saw …”

“It happened if you keep talking about it.”

“Whatever happened to your little girl …”

She swung her legs out of his lap and sat up straight. He could barely see her face in the dark but he could tell something had changed inside her.

“It all happened,” she insisted. “All of it. You can’t turn it off. You can’t start over. Can’t you see that?”

“We’ll get out of here. All that matters is right now.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. “Don’t fool yourself. I’ve been fooling myself for years. It all happened. Everything that happened happened. I’m different now.”

“Just try. Just try to do this with me.”

“I know what it feels like—like you’re in a cloud, like your brain isn’t working. I’ve felt that way for a long time. Like nothing I did mattered. But it does. I’ve felt that way since Philadelphia, but I wouldn’t let myself feel it.”

“You met me after Philadelphia,” he said. “That’s when we fell in love.”

She looked at him, as if only then had he discovered the heart of it.

“Do you regret that?” he asked. “That you were like that when we met?”

“That part of me was clear.”

“How can you know that for sure?”

“It’s all so terrible, but I don’t regret it. It’s just my past. It all happened, but sometimes I can’t believe it happened.”

“Like us. We happened.”

“You didn’t know me when I was different. You didn’t know who I was when I was young. This is who you fell in love with.”

“But who will you be after all of this is over?”

“Who will you be?”

He thought about that question. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s impossible to tell.”

“Just let it happen,” she said. “Then we’ll go from there.”