“What is it?” she asked. Not a word about my restraining her by force. About everything she’d screamed at me. She looked up. Looked at me. And waited.

I waited too. Were we testing each other’s resolve?

No. We were starting over, my child and I.

I drew a breath. “We’re going to build a tank,” I said. “A water tank.”

She nodded slowly.

“For what water?”

“Salt water. From the ocean. We’ll fill it up completely.” I pointed to the tank I had drawn. “The water will be pushed through the pipe. Through this material.” I held up the raincoat.

“And then it will be fresh water?” she asked.

“Then it will be fresh water,” I answered.

My clever little girl. She knew about this.

“And we can drink it?”

“Yes.”

“When we’re on the ocean.”

“When we’re on the ocean.”

She nodded. “Then we won’t need water. We’ll just need the ocean.” She smiled faintly. The pressure in my chest relented.

“And then we can stay out there for weeks,” I said. “For months. As long as we want. We can eat fish and make our own water. We can live on the ocean for the rest of our lives.”

“I want to,” Lou said. “I want to go all the way to the end of the ocean.”

“Me too,” I said.

For a moment she was silent. Her smile disappeared. “But first we have to get there,” she murmured. “To where the ocean starts.”

I took a step toward her. I wanted to hug her but felt that it was too soon. Instead, I smiled as broadly as I could. “If only the rain comes,” I said. “If only the rain fills up the canal.”

“Yes,” she said. “If only the rain comes.”

“And sooner or later, it has to start raining again.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. Sooner or later the rain will come.”

In the days that followed, Lou didn’t ask any questions, not a single one. She just worked by my side. She went with me to the neighboring farms where we searched for food and materials. Carried as much as she could manage, more than I thought she could.

She ate what little I served her, without grumbling. No complaints when it tasted bad. When there wasn’t enough.

On the whole, she said very little. But she was there, with me, beside me.

She didn’t even ask questions in the evenings. We sat on deck and watched the light over the trees, the lights from the camp. Sometimes we heard sounds from there. They reached us from across the silent landscape.

Shots.

Screams.

I shouldn’t have allowed her to see the lights, hear the noises. But initially during the evenings I sat watching as if transfixed.

Then I started putting her to bed earlier. Lying down beside her. Slipping out when I thought she’d fallen asleep.