After that conversation, the first of many, they’d never come around to each other’s way of thinking, and ultimately they’d stopped discussing it, but by then she loved him. Hannah knew Harry had lost both his mother and his brother as a child, and he’d witnessed atrocities in the Middle East during his deployments. She didn’t know—he wouldn’t say—which of these things had affected him the most, because he wouldn’t talk about any of them. Or perhaps something else had happened that he’d never told her. Still, he never said anything disparaging about her faith. She’d long ago made her peace with their differences, but she’d always harbored hope that one day Harry would come to share her belief. She’d pictured this event occurring in a blast of cinematic glory; a dramatic declaration, a literal come-to-Jesus moment in which faith would explode like a bomb into Harry’s soul and instead of devastation he would experience the peace and grace and thankfulness she felt at the touch of God.

“Why do you ask me to pray?” she whispered now, hopeful.

He met her eyes and she saw his love for her.

“Because,” he said, “it will comfort you.”

This wasn’t what she’d longed for, but she took his hand and began to pray.

18

Fragile and Exquisite

KIRA

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

236 Days After Patient Zero

Four days after Beau’s birthday, I’d finished putting him to bed—ignoring Rorie, who’d gone to her room, still refusing to speak to me—when Wally called. For months, Atlanta had dodged the metaphorical bullet, and now in the waning days of the last wave, I’d almost—but not quite—been ready to heave a sigh of relief. Other cities had gone down; New York first, certainly, with its population density and its mass transit, but other less comprehensible places too: Laredo in Texas, and Spokane in Washington, and a slew of random small towns in Nebraska. Some places seemed to escape almost unscathed. It was an unfathomably weird virus, but, in the end, it appeared we had it in the grip of a slow strangulation, forcing the R0 ever downward. Not only that, but approval of the first vaccine could be days away. I expected Wally to comment on the vaccine news, but when he spoke, his voice was anything but exultant.

“We’ve got a surge,” he said. “A big one.”

“What? Where?”

“Here. Here, Kiki. I got a call a few minutes ago from the county public health director, who’s been monitoring the situation at Emory. You saw the local admission numbers yesterday.”

“Yes, but—”

He didn’t give me time to finish. “We’ve had dozens of artiovirus admissions in the last few hours.”