Surely Theo had known that; that was the largeness inside him, inside all the men of the Long Rides. Peter had made up his mind, long ago, not to hold it against Theo, what his mother had said on the morning she’d died. Take care of your brother, Theo. He’s not strong, like you. The truth was the truth, and as the years went by, Peter discovered that knowing this about himself was bearable; at times it almost came as a relief. It was a difficult and desperate thing their father had attempted, built on a faith that flew in the face of every fact, and if Theo was to be the Jaxon to shoulder this burden—shoulder it for the two of them—Peter could accept that. But telling Arlo that there was no point, that the only thing left to do was keep the lights on as long as they could—saying this to Arlo, of all people, who had a Little in the Sanctuary—this was not the Theo he knew. Something had changed in his brother. He wondered what it could be.

They stayed at the station five days. Finn and Rey spent the first day restoring power to the fence, then got to work on the west field, regreasing the turbine housings. Arlo, Theo, and Alicia took turns escorting them, in shifts of two, always returning well before sundown to lock the place down tight. With nothing else to occupy his time, Peter resorted to playing solo from a deck with three missing cards and leafing through a box of books in the storage room. A random assemblage of titles: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, A History of the Ottoman Empire, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (Classics of Western Literature). In the back of each book was a cardboard pocket, printed with the words PROPERTY OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, and tucked inside it a card with a list of dates in faded ink: September 7, 2014; April 3, 2012; December 21, 2016.

“Who got these?” he asked Theo one night, after the group had returned from the field. A pile of books was stacked on the floor by Peter’s bunk.

Theo was rinsing his face at the washbasin. He turned, drying his hands on the front of his shirt. “I think they’ve been here a long time. I don’t know if Zander could read much, so he put them away. Anything good?”

Peter held up the book he had been reading: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure this is English,” Peter said. “It’s taken me most of today to get through a page.”

His brother gave a tired-sounding laugh. “Let’s see that ankle.”

Theo sat on the edge of Peter’s cot. Gently he took Peter’s foot in his hands and rolled it on the joint. The two of them had barely spoken since the night of the attack. None of them had, really.