FOURTEEN

“What are you writing?” Seth asked Natalie.

He had awoken just minutes before in a state of disorientation so profound that he wondered if he had died after all, if the day’s bizarre events had been a last-gasp death dream. But eventually his mind cleared and he discovered, by flickering candlelight, his two sons sleeping in the bed beside him. They were facing away from each other, probably because Brandon was a snorer and Ben hated it.

Once he felt stable enough to stand, Seth wandered back to the room he’d be sharing with Natalie. Only instead of sleeping, she was bent over a stack of paper, writing something. Naturally he was curious what had captured her attention, but when his wife looked up, she immediately turned the paper over.

“Nothing. Just some notes about …”

Seth watched, amused, as she struggled to invent a lie.

“All this is so huge, Seth. Life-changing. World-changing. Someone needs to write down what’s happening.”

“But I can’t read it?”

“Maybe later. This is also how I feel inside, about us and what you did. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable sharing it. The whole point of keeping a journal is to work through your feelings.”

“That’s all behind us now, Nat. I’m sorry for what I did, but we have a chance for a fresh start because of all this.”

A little while later they crawled into bed, and when Seth put his arm around Natalie, he tried not to notice her body stiffening beneath him.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?”

“The static. Or maybe it’s like a ringing. Or both.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“I heard something like it this morning when I was in the golf cart,” Natalie said. “I thought maybe it was stress.”

“You’re hearing it again?”

“I’m not sure it ever stopped. Maybe it got quieter or I didn’t notice it for a while.”

“Probably it’s stress,” he said. “What could be more traumatic than this?”

“I’m scared, Seth. I know we made it here, and I know Thomas has lots of food and supplies. But if this is how it is now, like if the power doesn’t come back on, what are we going to do?”

“We’ll survive. We’ll do the best we can for our boys and ourselves.”

“But I want to go shopping. I want to travel to Europe. I want the boys to go to college and become doctors or engineers.”

Seth understood what she meant. The idea of never being able to set foot inside a working casino again was horrifying.

“Maybe it won’t be like this forever,” he said.

But honestly, Seth hoped he was wrong. He hoped things never went back to the way they were.

After all, he wasn’t cut out for the real world.