Page 9 of Mistaken

She used the toe of her hiking boot to nudge the shattered device closer to the rocks, just so it wouldn’t be so obvious.

And then she kept going.

The landscape didn’t materially change once she’d passed through the entrance to the ranch — the same chaparral on either side, the same scrubby shapes of junipers and piñon pines. As she’d already noted, the landscape was much greener than it normally would have been at this time of year, but still, her surroundings felt mostly familiar, with only the contours of the hillsides different from those that surrounded Española.

Despite the loss of her device, that same sensation of lightness from a few minutes before filled her, a sensation she’d only been able to experience during the times when she was away from the people in Los Alamos. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her fellow survivors — well, most of them, anyway — or that she didn’t want them all to thrive and be happy.

No, it was more that, even after all this time, she didn’t want to talk about her past, about what the Heat had taken away from her. Saying it out loud would only make her concerns sound selfish and petty compared to all the losses everyone in her community had suffered.

Here, though…here, she was completely alone. And that meant she could do the thing she always consciously avoided when she was in Los Alamos. She only allowed herself to be utterly free during the times when the duty roster sent her foraging in Española on her own, with no one else around.

She began to sing.

The song was an old, old English folk tune she’d learned a million years ago when she was in her high school’s madrigal group.

Early one morning

Just as the sun was rising

I heard a maid singing in the valley below

O don’t deceive me

O never leave me

How could you use a poor maiden so?

True, it was late in the afternoon and not early in the morning, and at twenty-eight and with a couple of long-term relationships under her belt, probably no one would have ever referred to her as a “maid,” but still, Sarah couldn’t help thinking the song somehow fit her situation anyway. She was definitely in a valley, and she was certainly singing her heart out in a way she very rarely had a chance to.

The wind seemed to catch her voice and carry it along, allowing it to echo off the canyon walls. Not so long ago, it hadn’t been so strong, had been soft and breathy after years of ignoring her instrument, but now it was almost back to what it had been five years earlier, when she thought she’d gotten her big break at last and everything was going to change.

Oh, it had changed, all right…just not the way she or anyone else had suspected.

In late August, only a month before the Heat came along, her agent had called her with the big news. The producers of the revival touring company ofThe Phantom of the Operahad listened to her tapes, and they wanted her to come to New York to audition in person.

No time to think about anything except booking a flight and a hotel room, using the money she’d earned from one of the commercials she’d filmed six months earlier. A week of auditions and callbacks and waiting, and then she got the news.

She’d been given the role of Christine’s understudy, and would sing and dance in the chorus as well. It was a lot more than she’d been expecting, considering she’d only performed in local productions and dinner theater before that. Even better, she’d be able to perform the lead role in alternating Sunday matinees…and the producers had hinted she might be given an even bigger part if their regular Christine had to drop out for some reason.

A mad rush to rearrange her life so she could be in New York for a month of rehearsals soon followed. And then, only two days before she was due to board her flight, she got a call from the hospital at UNM. Her father had collapsed at work, and she needed to come see him right away.

Of course she’d rushed over, even as a small, selfish part of her kept praying that it was something minor, maybe low blood pressure or low blood sugar. Patrick Wolfe had always pushed himself too hard, had never questioned the sometimes punishing hours required for his high-level job at Sandia Labs. Sarah still didn’t know exactly what that job involved, except it was nuclear in nature and highly classified. The work had allowed him to provide a good home for her, to make sure there were always nannies and caregivers to be at the house around the clock, to drive her to school and piano lessons…and later, voice lessons…and anything else she needed or could possibly desire.

What she’d really wanted was for him to be there for her, but she never made the request. Even when she was very young, she understood that when her mother died, she’d taken a piece of him with her, and he would spend the rest of his life trying to compensate for that part of himself he’d lost.

The test results came back quickly.

Stage IV pancreatic cancer.

Even now, she couldn’t completely piece together what had happened after the diagnosis. More tests, discussion of possible treatment…the realization that hospice was the only thing anyone could truly offer with his disease so advanced.

No thought of going to New York after that. She’d called the producers directly and let them know what had happened, made her apologies. They’d sounded sympathetic and had even told her that perhaps there would be a place for her in the production later on.

Maybe that had been a kind lie, and maybe it hadn’t.

All Sarah knew was that none of it really mattered, because several weeks later, her father passed while she sat at his bedside and held his hand. And a few days after that, stories of a terrible fever began to circulate on the news, and within another thirty-six hours, most of the world’s population was dead.

But she wasn’t.

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