I couldn’t turn around because I might stay if I looked in his eyes, and I couldn’t stay when I knew how he felt, despite whatever he was about to say to me. Whatever he wanted to say, he would only be saying it because he was a good guy, and that was what good guys did. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he’d honor his commitment to me, but that was all he’d be doing—honoring a commitment. His heart would always be with her.

It always had been.

KATE

THEN

“Is this a phone?” I asked Abner as he handed it to me. We didn’t use phones. They were one of the ways that the darkness had taken over the rest of the world. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one.

“It is, and now it’s yours. Feel better now?”

He searched my face for approval as I took it from him, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t need a phone. Or want one. Its presence had already brought heaviness into the tent.

“It’s for when I’m away with the children. I have one too. Do not use it unless it is an emergency. I do not want to be interrupted during this critical period,” he said. “If something should happen to one of the children, then I will call you. Write both of these numbers down.”

I scurried to the corner, searching through my backpack for my notebook. My movement woke Shiloh, and she immediately started crying. She always went from dead asleep to ear-piercing shrieks in two seconds. I paused, torn between finding the paper and comforting her before her cries irritated Abner.

“Give her to me,” Abner ordered, as if he could read my mind.

“It’s okay. I’ve got her. This will only take a second,” I said, willing her to quiet herself. He found her crying intolerable.

“I said give her to me.” There was no room for argument.

I stood and unwrapped her. Her tiny body was curled into a ball, face scrunched up beet red. He took her from me in one swift swoop. I hurried back to my backpack and found my notebook.

“422-3876.”

I scrawled down each digit. “Can you say it one more time?” It was hard to hear over her cries.

He repeated himself, and I double-checked each one. Shiloh had worked herself up to the point where she was going to be too frustrated to eat. Abner was circling the room with her. “Quiet, now, child. You be quiet,” he said in the same voice he used to command us all.

“Abner, she’s just a baby. She doesn’t understand what you’re saying to her,” I said.

“Nonsense. She knows exactly what’s going on. She’s willfully disobeying.”

A knot of anxiety balled in my stomach.