Page 32 of Evolved

I say, trying to remember a single moment of any of Lavinia Hope’s speeches and failing. “Was it authenticity?”

“Maybe. She’s clever, determined, and good with a crowd. All of which is an asset. She’s another one who’d make a formidable enemy but a more formidable ally.” She makes a couple of notes in her notebook before shifting her focus to me. “You’re growing more confident, my Tilly. I can hear it in your voice.”

My cheeks warm.

“Is it because of him?”

The side door opens at that moment, and Knox walks in with a five-gallon water jug in each hand.

He sets them on the counter.

“Just be careful.” She makes awe-can-finish-that-conversation-laterface.“News, Knox?”

Knox fills a glass at the water jug we set up on the counter, and swallows it down in three gulps, then refills it again.

“Last of the guns from Hoover Building are moved.”

“Thank you,” Gran says.

He finishes a third glass of water and sets it down on the counter. “Someone is breaking into police and federal cars.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Guns. Precinct weapons lockers are almost impossible to get into. Even we don’t have those access codes.” Only officers in charge of those lockers would have had them. “But the trunksare easy to break open.”

“You think it’s Hope?” Gran asks musingly.

It would make sense. Once of our first moves was to begin gathering the guns to keep them out of the wrong hands. Hope could have had the same inclination.

“Or the people at the White House?” I offer.

Knox does one of his universal shrugs. “I’m sure we’re going to find out at some point.”

More unknowns.

That’s part of life now, getting used to unknowns.

Though, Gina was sick.

Maybe the difference is just that after the plague, there are more of them.

“I’m going to go edit,” I say, standing up.

IEDIT UNTIL MIDNIGHT,words flowing like water coming from my fingers, all my constipated emotions uncorking, arguments emerging, barely pausing to eat the soup Gran brings me.

I write speeches about gathering children to protect them from predators, and about putting the dead to rest, about rebuilding the parts from the past we liked, and scrapping the things we hated. I write about hope and a beautiful future—like Gran said.

We have a clean slate here. A fresh start.

We’re free,I write in my favorite final burst of inspiration.We’re free of all the things that held us back in the past—greed and bureaucracy, hate and division, oversight, red tape and even speeding tickets—it’s all gone. But that freedom came a terrible price. And we cannot waste it. We must honor the dead by building a better, brighter future.

I leave the laptop at her spot at the kitchen table.

She’ll read them over breakfast.

And then I creep silently through the house.

The floorboards in the hallway creak as I tiptoe past her door and hesitate just outside Knox’s.

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