This morning, she’d crawled out of the tent before the sun. Adam assumed she’d gone out to pee, so he fell back to sleep. When he awoke, the sun was up, and brighter than it had been since the war. Emma had stoked the fire and was cooking a pot of water on the grate. She sat close to the flames, her sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes were red and wet.

Adam wrapped himself in his own sleeping bag and hobbled out on bare feet to join her. “Hey,” he said. “You’re upset.”

“What was your first clue?”

He sat down next to her. “What’s wrong?”

She looked at him with eyes that were sadder than he’d ever seen on her. “Do you love me?” she asked in a choked voice.

This was not a question he’d been expecting. It wasn’t even on his radar. “Um . . .”

“Please tell me that you love me.” She started to cry again.

“Sure,” he said. “I guess. What’s wrong, Em? You’re scaring me.”

“Good. Because I’m terrified. I think I’m pregnant.”

* * *

Victoria leaned into her tree-root lounge chair, eyes closed. McCrea sat next to her, and together they stayed silent. It had been that kind of day. Lots to think about, little to say.

Caleb had lost a prodigious amount of blood—that was Doc Rory’s term for it—but not so much as to cause serious complications. The pain of the wound itself would get worse before it started to get better in a few days. Rory prescribed some hydrocodone, which Caleb made a show of refusing. Victoria wondered if he knew that she’d take custody of the pills on his behalf because he hadn’t been back in St. Tom’s for an hour before he asked for one. He was sleeping now, and last time she looked, Luke was curled up in a pew overlooking his brother and reading a book by lantern light.

McCrea and crew had met the El Camino in the road as Ty Rowley was racing Mike Underwood into town. McCrea asked Paul Copley to go with them and to tend to Mike as best he could. Combat medic skills weren’t universally applicable, but for gunshot wounds, they were a better choice than your average family doctor.