that had been forbidden since the day she came home from the hospital.
“You are not a cripple,” Mama said.
“You say that, but you don’t act like it,” Red said.
She hated the way her mother could make her feel like a little child, the way only Mama could make tears clog up her throat and her hands form helpless little fists.
Red shouldn’t have stayed home and attended her parents’ college. She knew that—she’d been accepted at better universities than Adam (much better, actually, and she’d been very mature about not rubbing it in his face, no easy task when she’d been seventeen) because her grades had been outstanding—but she’d been worried about them being alone.
Her parents were older than most of her peers’ parents—Red’s mother hadn’t had Adam until she was thirty-eight—and while they were hardly feeble they were approaching the age when little things started going wrong and getting more difficult. Red’s father took pills for his blood pressure, and Mama seemed to tire more easily. It was just part of aging, nothing especially unique about it, but Red had worried about the two of them in that house so far out of town, especially when winter came and their quarter-mile driveway would need to be plowed before anyone could even run to the grocery store for milk.
It had been easy for Red to say she would take her degree at the place where they were both on the faculty, and let them think it was because she still needed them to take care of her when it was actually the other way around.
Unfortunately, that meant that she’d never outgrown her childish relationship with them, never established herself as an independent adult. And so Mama persisted in thinking Red was, well . . . if not helpless, then certainly not entirely capable. Never mind that Red did most everything around the house and ran almost all the errands, too, and all while maintaining a 3.8 GPA. Not that her GPA would ever mean anything again, she realized. Nobody needed a good GPA when the world was ending—or if not ending, then at least changing beyond all recognition.
So the two of them narrowed their eyes at each other across the table because one of them believed Red was still a baby and the other knew she wasn’t.
“Enough with the deep freeze, you two,” Dad said, frowning. “Whether or not Red can make the journey is irrelevant.”
“I can—” Red began, but Dad held up his hand.
“It doesn’t matter if you can, because you’ll have to. And so will I, and your mother, and Adam. And one thing Delia’s right about, Shirley—she’s in better shape than any of us for a long walk.”
Mama cut her eyes away from Red and to her father in a way that made Red think there would be more Words later on the subject in the privacy of their bedroom. And sure enough, late that night, Red heard the rolling music of their argument from the room down the hall, the way their voices rose in frustration and then hushed again when they realized they were getting too loud.
* * *
? ? ?
So it was decided that they would walk, but nobody was as prepared as Red was to leave, and so it was also decided (over Red’s strenuous objections, because she wanted to go now that going had been decided upon) that they would depart three days from that first family meeting. In the meantime, Mama started coughing.
Red knew exactly when it happened, when her mama got sick, almost down to the minute. There was plenty of food—mostly in cans, but other shelf-stable things like granola bars and whatnot— in the pantry. Living outside of town instead of in it meant that they kept their house better-stocked than most—you never knew when a snowstorm might keep you from the grocery store for a few days.
They also had plenty of that most precious of emergency resources, bottled water, for the same reason. But what they—meaning Red’s mother and father—did not have was appropriate footwear or clothing for such a long hike.
When Red and Adam were young, Mama had occasionally gone camping with them, but she’d given it