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already.”
    “Fine,” Rebecca grumbled, “but I’m not watching some giggly chick thing, either.”
    Melissa settled the discussion by choosing a goofy comedy. We managed to put aside the uncertainty and anxiety associated with the many ways our lives might soon change. We chatted and laughed and ate homemade potato chips—of which Skip had more than his share—before heading off to bed to await the coming day’s news.
     
    ***
     
    Bethany had an early shift and was already gone when I awoke. I found Melissa and Rebecca in the kitchen, eating scrambled eggs and some of the leftover biscuits Melissa had brought home the day before. Melissa pointed to a plate she’d fixed for me. I grabbed it from the counter and sat at the table. Rebecca had even made us instant coffee. I wondered where she’d been hiding that particular luxury.
    Melissa took a sip of her coffee, grimaced, and poured in a healthy dose of goat milk. Satisfied with the result, she dunked a piece of biscuit in it and popped it in her mouth. “What if they don’t pick us?” she asked, still chewing.
    I shrugged. “Stay here and do our part, I imagine.”
    “We’ll go,” Rebecca said. Her matter-of-fact tone said if the council thought she was staying here, they had another think coming. And possibly a beat-down, if necessary.
    Melissa clutched her mug in both hands, staring into its milky depths. After a moment, she took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “They have to let us go. I can’t stay here now.”
    Rebecca looked as confused as I felt. “I gotta say, peanut, I didn’t think you’d want to go. I figured you’d be happier staying here, where things are at least familiar.”
    Melissa tried to snort, but it caught in her throat. “Familiar.” She thumped her mug down on the table and gave the rest of her biscuit to Skip. “Familiar can be a big ol’ trap, but it feels so nice you don’t know it until it’s too late.”
    I tried to apply this theory to my own life, but it didn’t quite fit. My pre-outbreak life had been familiar. And safe. I realized this was a very personal declaration about one particular event, something from Melissa’s experiences during the early days of the plague. I knew I had to tread carefully. “You might be right, but can you explain? I’m not sure I get what you mean.”
    I shot a glance at Rebecca, who gave me a slight nod. She felt Melissa had something she wanted to say, too. We had to let her work her way up to it.
    Melissa fed Skip half of another biscuit—that dog was going to get fat—before folding her hands in front of her on the table and looking at us. “Ells, you know Mason killed my mom, right? When he abducted me?”
    I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed so, just from things he said, or maybe how he said them.” We had never, not in two years, discussed our captivity in any but the most general terms. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but Melissa seemed to feel it was important.
    With a nod, Melissa said, “Well, let me back up a little. When things started happening and we figured out what was going on, my Aunt Jenny came to our house. We lived out of town, maybe five miles, but Aunt Jenny thought we needed to run, go somewhere harder to find, maybe up in the Smokies. She had this big motorhome.”
    I thought that might have worked, but you would also cut yourself off from a lot of potential resources. And you never knew who else might be taking refuge in the mountains…if you could even get there.
    “Mom wanted to go, but Dad said no, absolutely not. I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, but it scared me to hear them disagree about it.” Rebecca gestured for Melissa to give her the biscuit plate, and Melissa handed it over. “That word kept coming up—familiar. Dad thought we needed to stay in familiar territory, where we knew the area, the people. Familiar people. And he said nobody who wasn’t familiar