“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” he said. “That power of yours is meant for something. Do good with it, Ellie, but be careful with it, too. Do you understand?”
She lowered her gaze and nodded.
Gently, she pulled away from him so that she could see his face. Then Ellie did a strange thing—she reached out and caressed the side of his face. It was something Kathy had done a million times in their marriage. “Daddy Spoon,” she said. Just as he closed his eyes, he heard Ellie say, “You’ve been a good dad. You’ve done your best. I love you.”
“I love you, baby.”
He tried to wrap her up in his arms, but his body refused to obey him all of a sudden. Perceptive as always, Ellie intuited his intention, lifted his arms for him, and wrapped them around her waist. He drew her into a hug.
“I don’t want to keep running and hiding,” she said into his ear. “I want to help the good people, not hurt the bad ones. I want you to let me go. I want you to let me do it.”
He managed to summon enough strength to squeeze her tightly. He could instruct Tim that she was to stay here in the farmhouse and remain hidden, and Tim had already agreed to do whatever David thought was best . . . but then what would happen if Tim got sick? Ellie would be left alone. He thought of those terrible bugs that had uprooted themselves from the molehills in the yard—and even now, he wondered if they had been real or merely a hallucination brought on by the Folly and his own deteriorating brain—and imagined the farmhouse surrounded by them, swarmed by them, and Ellie trapped inside. Alone.
We have come to the end of the line, said the head-voice. Bright swirls capered behind his eyelids. This is it, David.
When they separated, he kissed her on the forehead. Her eyes were planets, her eyelashes like butterfly wings.
“All right,” he said. “You’re a big girl. You make your own decision. I trust you.”
She squeezed his hand in hers.
“I don’t want to go to those doctors who have been looking for us,” she said.
“No?” This surprised him.
“No,” she said. “I want us to go back to Goodwin. I want to find those people living in the firehouse, and the man who can heal the sick. Do you remember that story the man Turk told us about those people?”
“Yes,” David said.
“I don’t know why, but I think that story is true, and that there is a man there who has abilities like mine. Only he’s older and his powers are . . . stronger. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I think I even saw him that morning in the street, and it was like he wanted me to follow him, to go find him. And I think maybe he can show me what I need to do to make my powers stronger, too, and use them the right way. There might even be other people out there like me and him, too.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I don’t know. I just do. I feel like I might be part of a puzzle, one piece that needs to come together with other pieces to stop the world from dying.” She looked down at her hands and said, “Maybe it’s not the cure in my blood that’s supposed to save the world, but the mystery of my power.”
“You’re such a smart and wonderful girl,” he said.
“And this man, whoever he is,” she said. “He can help you, Dad. I can’t cure you, but he can. I know he can.”
He just smiled wanly at his daughter, taking both of her hands in his. He brought her hands to his mouth, kissed her knuckles.
“What?” Ellie said. “What is it?”
“Ellie, I’ll never make it back to Kentucky. I’m very sick.”
Her face seemed to change in subtle increments before his eyes until she was crying again. She withdrew her hands from his. “No,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“It’s okay,” David said. “I’ll talk with Uncle Tim. He’ll take you. It’s a good plan, Ellie. You need to do it. And you need to get on the road right away.”
She shook her head. “No. No, Dad.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she said.
“I can’t make the trip, Ellie. I’m at the end here, sweetheart.”
“Then I’ll stay with you until the end. I’ll make it better for you in the end.”
“No. I don’t want you to see me like that. I don’t want your last memory of me to be . . . to be whatever is going to happen.”
“I can make it better for you,” she sobbed. “Like I did with the girl on the highway.”
“I don’t want you to do that,” he said. He leaned toward her so that their foreheads touched. “Now, you go and save the world. You hear me? You go and save the world, Eleanor Arlen.”
She closed her eyes and nodded, her forehead still against his.
“That’s my girl,” he said, closing his eyes and smiling to himself.
His head was full of locusts.
64