“Hestia. Her name’s Hestia. Can you say Hestia?”

“Hech-a.”

“Pretty good,” Izabel said.

The girls ran off again.

“What are you doing about the killer?” Izabel asked.

“What do you mean what am I doing?”

“Like we applied to move away. Everyone’s been applying. It’s all over the news.”

“I saw that. You applied?”

“Yeah. I almost thought that all they’d have to do was look at who didn’t apply and that’d be the killer.” Izabel had raised her voice and people were looking at her.

“I didn’t apply and I’m not the killer,” Andy said.

“No, I’m not—I just—”

“I get it.”

Izabel took a few short breaths until she calmed down. “Why’d you call me?”

Andy didn’t understand.

“Do you like hanging out with me?” Izabel said.

“I do. I’m sorry if—”

“No, it’s fine. I have trouble reading people sometimes.”

“I like talking with you. I talk to Hestia all day, and she’s great and all, but she’s still four.”

Izabel laughed.

When they got out of the pool, all of their toes were wrinkled. When they got into the changing rooms, Izabel felt the sharpness of the drier air returning to her lungs. She knew the others felt it, too, even if the children couldn’t articulate that feeling yet.

Late that night, Izabel told Kaito, “I’m not sure we made the right choice about the application.”

“I think we did.”

“I think we’re acting out of fear.”

“We are acting out of fear,” he said.

“Like everyone else, like herd behavior.”

“No,” Kaito said. “It’s rational behavior. We have Cami to think about.”

Nearby Cami was saying, kind of singing, “A nice sleep . . . a nice sleep,” over and over to her toys as she was putting them away on shelves.

“I know,” Izabel said. “When I think of her, I think it’s the right choice.”

“Because it is the right choice.”

“Look, don’t minimize it. We hardly have anyone left that we care about to begin with. We’d be leaving them. And maybe leaving them to die here. And maybe we could stay and do something to help. Maybe there aren’t enough towns left not to be fighting for one.”

“I don’t disagree, Izzie. I just hope there are enough people that we don’t have to be the ones. Other people can fight. And we can take care of Cami.”

“But maybe there aren’t enough people left. What kind of probabilities do we need, to have enough people that want to, like genuinely want to, put up that kind of a fight?”

“I’m not a statistician.”

“And I’m not asking you to literally solve the problem, Kaito!”

“What do you want me to say? It’s black and white to me.”

“So you can’t empathize with me for two seconds?”