“I’ll be right back,” he said, and got up. “You sit tight.”
Thankfully, the restroom was deserted. He clutched the tiny porcelain sink and steadied himself. He’d been feeling vertigo for the past several minutes now, ever since they pulled into the restaurant parking lot. Gazing up at his reflection in the narrow rectangular mirror above the sink, some pale, wax figure version of himself stared back. There was an abrasion along the upper part of his nose already beginning to scab. He tugged down one eyelid and saw that the flesh beneath looked darker than before. Irritated. The blood vessels there had also darkened so that they resembled miniscule black hairs veining the soft tissue. It was exhaustion. Or maybe that was just his imagination.
It was then that Dr. Kapoor’s voice ghosted back to him: You’re sick, David. Your last blood test. You’ve got it.
But it was a scare tactic, an underhanded attempt at getting him to go running back into their hands. With Ellie. He’d know if he was really sick.
He took a few deep breaths, washed his face and hands, then returned to their table.
“Are you okay, Dad?” Ellie asked upon his return. She was scrutinizing him.
“Sure thing.” He tried to sound upbeat.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She spit a wad of food into her napkin then said, “Those people. The family back in Kentucky.”
“What about them?”
“Were they bad?”
“They were confused. They were sick.”
“With the Folly?”
“No, honey. They were sick with something else.”
“With what?” she asked.
Sick with madness, he thought. Which, in the end, really, is just the same thing as the Folly after all.
“They lost touch with reality. With humanity.”
“But what they wanted to do to us,” she said. “Was that wrong?”
He frowned at her. “Of course.”
“But they were just trying to help the boy,” she said. “The boy who was sick.”
“They were going to hurt us.”
“You shot that man.”
“Yes. To save our hides. To get us out of there.” He folded his hands atop the table. “What’s with all the questions?”
“I guess I just don’t see the difference,” she said.
“The difference in what?”
“In what they’re doing from what we’re doing,” she said.
David shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“They were just trying to help their kid,” said Ellie. “Isn’t that what you’re doing for me?”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“Because we’re not hurting anyone. We’re not killing people.”
“But we sort of are,” she said. Her voice was steady and her gaze stuck to him, unwavering. Almost accusatory. “We’re sort of killing the whole world.”
He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Hey,” he said. “Listen to me. It’s different.”
“Tell me how.”
“It just is.”
“But that’s not an answer. And it’s really not different. It’s selfish for us to watch everyone else die if I can save them.”
“There’s no guarantee you can save anyone.”
“But there’s a chance,” she said.
“Ellie, I don’t know if there is or not.”
“Of course there is,” she said. “They wouldn’t be looking for us if there wasn’t. You wouldn’t be so scared that they’ll find us and take me away if there wasn’t a chance.”
“The rest of the world isn’t our responsibility,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Then how does that make us the good guys?”
He reached out, touched the top of her hand. “Can I tell you something I learned almost nine years ago? On the day you were born?”
“What’s that?”
“I learned that when you become a parent, you become a secondary character in the story of your own life.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that above all else, I’m your father. And that means my ultimate responsibility is for your well-being. That is most important above all else. You take a silent oath when you become a parent, and you pledge that, no matter what, you’ll never let anything bad ever happen to your kid. Ever. Do you understand?”
“But what about all the other people’s kids?”
“It’s unfortunate, but I won’t allow something bad to happen to you.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be bad.”
He slid his hand away from hers. “Where is this going?” he said. “You want to turn yourself in? Go back to Maryland?”
“I’m not scared of going back,” she said. “Not if I can help people.”
“Well,” he said, “that’s very honorable of you. But let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
She blinked at him. “Of course.”
“Do you realize that if anything ever happened to you, I’d just die?”
Her lips parted but she didn’t speak.