Lives We Lost,The Read Online Free PDF

missing something,” I said.
“We’ve argued a couple times,” he said. “About—she was writing e-mails to me, while I was at school, you know? Before the epidemic was big enough news that people were talking about it in New York. And she pretended everything was fine. Never mentioned people getting sick, or the quarantine, or any of it. . . . The last time I talked to my mom, I had no idea it might be the last time. We had a fight about whether she’d cook turkey or just a chicken for Thanksgiving. So that’s my last memory of her.”
I waited for the right words to come. When they didn’t, I leaned forward and squeezed his hand the way he had mine.
“Tessa didn’t know how bad it was going to get. No one did.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But you’d have told me. If everything had been normal with us, you’d have told me right away.”
It felt like betraying Tessa somehow to admit it, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I would have,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled at me for a second, less forced than before. “It’s the past now,” he said, reaching for the map book. “We’ve got the future to worry about. Let’s get your route figured out already.”
    When I went upstairs a half hour later, Tessa was in the master bedroom.
“Hey,” I said. “How’re you doing?”
She turned, brushing her overgrown bangs away from her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said. “I should probably finish up with those seeds.”
“You know,” I said, “I’ll look for your parents on the mainland. Ask around. Maybe I’ll be able to find them.”
I didn’t realize how much I wanted her to smile and say she was sure they’d make it back someday, until her face fell. “You don’t need to, Kaelyn,” she said. “I know they’re dead.”
“You don’t,” I protested. “They were smart—they knew about the virus early on—they’d have protected themselves. You can’t assume they didn’t make it. My brother Drew is still out there somewhere, and yeah, I know the chances aren’t great, but I haven’t given up on him.”
“That’s different,” Tessa said, so calmly I felt suddenly cold. “Your brother could be anywhere. My parents were right there on the other side of the strait the last time I talked to them. They wouldn’t have left, they’d have been there on the ferry if they were still alive. Which means they’re not.”
“Tessa . . .” I started.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve known since Leo got back. I knew it might be true for weeks before that. Nothing’s changed, not really. So it’s better not to dwell on it.”
That was Tessa. Practical, unemotional. Maybe she’d talked through the grief with Leo, gotten out all the pain she must have felt when neither of her parents stepped off the ferry that day.
Or maybe she was just pushing it down so deep she could almost forget it was there.
“If there’s anything you want—or need—me to look into while I’m gone . . .” I said.
“I know.” She touched my elbow as she walked past me into the hall, which was as close as Tessa got to hugging. “Thank you.”
    I drove out to the research center in the SUV, getting used to how it handled, the wipers swishing back and forth over the windshield with the gusts of snow.
    Inside, I went straight to the second floor and rummaged through the offices for books I thought might be useful. Unless we kept the samples in viable condition, there was no point in leaving at all.
    One of the manuals had a chapter on vaccine transportation. After I read through it, I searched through the lab room until I found an industrial-grade cold-storage box in the cupboard beside the fridge. I grabbed a smaller plastic box too, to prevent the vials from touching the cold packs and freezing. Beside the cold box, I stacked the three notebooks of Dad’s that were dated after the virus appeared, and added a box of petri dishes, a container of syringes, and a pack of microscope slides I found in one of the