Page 31 of Evolved
“You wrote.” She puts the lid back on the pot with a cast iron clatter and wipes her hands on a dishtowel.
“Yes.”
“Gina had cancer.” That word echoes like we were just transported to the tunnels.
I have the same sense of yawning cavernousness. “Why didn’t tell me?”
Gran tosses the dishtowel onto the counter. “She was scheduled to have surgery in January, but it was postponed. She had no chance of surviving in this world, and she knew it. She didn’t want you to worry, and yes, we assumed she might be exposed, and she understood.”
My memories have painted the old world in rosy hues, making it hard to imagine Gina being sick. I keep thinking of the time before a place of order, where things made sense.
I pull out a chair at the table and sag into it. “Why tell me know?”
Gran folds her arms, resting a hip against the counter. “Apparently you’ve been worrying that I’m about to send you or Knox off to your deaths.” She makes acome-on, Ottilieface. “What is the point of any of this if I let people I love die? You’re the only two people in the world I trust. You’re the most valuable humans on the planet to me. I assumed you knew that.”
My arms cross on my own, and she puffs out an exasperated breath.
“Things have truly deteriorated worse than I ever imagined if you truly think I’m lying now.”
I force my arms to unfold. “It’s not that I think you’relying.I just … where did you send her?”
Her chin lifts. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
“Why keep it a secret?”
“Because you’ll be a stronger writer if you don’t know.”
I look gloomily out the window where her target from earlier sits in the dim dusk light. More dark holes near its center from shots she landed.
“Do you ever worry no one will follow you? That you’re not the leader we need right now?” She flinches, and I decide to keep going, the vision of Mustache Man fresh in my mind. “That they won’t listen to a sick elderly woman when there’s a big angry man with a gun barking orders? He’d be so much easier to listen to.”
“Every night before I fall asleep.” She sighs, looking away. “I wonder if after the apocalypse. Will they cleave to a general? Someone hardened and stoic? Or will they turn toward a zealot? Someone shouting about fire and brimstone. And I arrive at the same answer every single time.”
“What’s the answer?”
“They need someone with a strong plan. And I have it.”
A bunch of guns hidden away, a bunch of food, and plans to bury bodies, and get water processing going. It’s the same plan anyone would have. Politics isn’t about the plan. It’s why politicians rarely talk about policy. No one cares and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the tone they set.
And she knows it.
It’s why she wants my words so badly.
It’s my turn to lift my chin. “Someone answered the post-its in the Capitol.”
She takes a seat. “Who?”
“Lavinia Hope. And she didn’t just answer. She took down your name and replaced it with hers.”
Gran’s eyes gleam.
She knows the name, too.
“What do you remember of her?” she asks.
“Air Force during the war. Ran a hardline campaign, defending our shores, rebuilding, bringing our focus back to home. She won in a landslide, along with a lot of other senators running on isolationist rhetoric.”
“Yes,” Gran agrees. “They were able to ride in on post-war exhaustion, economic fears, and grief. I remember her as a redhead with a blunt way of speaking that many voters interpreted as authenticity.”