Now she’s up in the kitchen again. She’s breathing hard. She’s trying to understand how a man could call himself part of any census. She’s thinking about what he said about someone catching a creature.

“Why did you have to say that in front of Tom…”

Because Tom will not only believe something like that, he’ll want to be near it.

She takes her steps slow on the way back to the common area. She pauses to listen between each. A thing she’s discovered in the new world is the brief intake of breath a person takes before speaking. And the sound they make when they shift their weight from one foot to another.

Does she hear any of this now?

Malorie waits. She thinks of the man’s voice and, while she doesn’t want to admit it, she believes his aim was true. She’ll never believe she’s gotten to the point where she can judge character from behind a blindfold. And she’ll never make the mistake Don made with Gary. But she’s open-minded enough to think perhaps a census has to start somewhere.

As she crosses the space, she resists a sense of guilt, for having denied the man his hour or two, for not listening to what he had to say, for not telling him her own stories. Maybe she knows things others don’t. Maybe she could’ve helped.

“No,” she says, as she reaches the lodge door. No, because no matter how much the new world improves around her and her teens, she will always, always rely on the fold and the fold alone.

She opens the door, takes a step, and bumps into a person.

She makes to swing the knife, but Olympia speaks before she does.

“Mom! It’s me and Tom!”

It takes Malorie a second before she believes it. All these thoughts of Annette and Gary, creatures and a man who says he’s one thing but could be another.

“What are you doing?” Malorie asks. Her voice sounds red. “You know the rules!”

“It’s an emergency,” Olympia says.

“Mom,” Tom says. “Seriously. You need to hear this.”

“It’s the man at the door,” Malorie says.

“No,” Olympia says. “Not exactly.”

Malorie waits. She listens.

“The man left the literature,” Tom says.

“What?” Malorie asks.

She imagines pictures of creatures. She imagines the teens losing their young minds by way of a photograph left on the porch.

“You didn’t—” she begins. But Olympia cuts her off.

“Mom. There are pages and pages, lists of survivors.”

Malorie feels something dark swirling inside her. Did they find Gary’s name on that list?

“Come on!” she says. “Speak!”

When Olympia does, she’s standing closer to Malorie, and Malorie knows it’s because her daughter believes she might need a stabilizing hand.

“In St. Ignace, Michigan, Mom,” Olympia says.