“We all die at the end,” Mama said. “What we do before the end is what counts. And you are strong, my Cordelia. You’re a fighter, and I know you’ll get where you want to go because you won’t have it any other way. But I won’t get there just because you want it to be so. I’m going to die right here in my house, Delia, in the place where I loved your father and raised you and Adam and built my life. My happy, happy life.”
Red’s fingers stopped moving over the objects on the table, clenched into fists. “I knew we shouldn’t have gone into town. I knew it.”
“Red, if your mother was going to get sick it could have happened anywhere,” Dad said.
“Don’t give me that hand-of-God bullshit,” Red said angrily. Mama winced, because she didn’t like swearing and she definitely didn’t like anything close to taking the Lord’s name in vain. “I don’t believe in any God guiding all this. We could have avoided this. We could have kept her safe.”
“Red, I know how you feel . . .” Dad said.
“No, you don’t,” Red said. “She’s your wife but she’s my mother, do you understand that? She’s my mother. I’m not going to get another mother. And I could have kept her safe if I’d insisted we stay here. We should have stayed here but nobody ever listens to me. It’s just paranoid Delia talking crazy talk about the government and killer bacteria.”
“Delia,” Mama said. “You have to let me go. You and Adam, you have to take your things and go because I am not going to make it. But you still can.”
“And you’ll stay here, too. Is that how it is? The two of you stay here and die while Adam and I go skipping into the woods like in some fairy tale, hand in hand with our bread crumbs,” Red said to her father, and she hated the way she sounded, so accusing.
If this was the last time she saw her parents, this should not be how they spoke to each other, but she couldn’t help it. It felt like they were giving up and that made her so angry, because they had a plan and they weren’t supposed to give up. Giving up was something for other families, not hers.
“How can I leave her?” Dad said, his face long and tired. “I don’t want to live without her.”
“I don’t want to either,” Red said. “But you’re telling me to do what you won’t do. You’re telling me and Adam to go on living and abandon you.”
“Do as I say, not as I do,” Dad said, with a little half-smile. “Isn’t that what parents always say? And I’m probably going to be sick soon, too.”
Red gave him a long, steady stare. “And what if you’re not? Are you just going to stay here by yourself and desiccate slowly? Or are you going to follow us?”
“No,” Dad said.
“No to which?” Red said.
“No to both.”
The unspoken hung there in between all of them, binding Dad and Red and Mama together. After Mama died, if Dad wasn’t sick, he would kill himself.
“This was not supposed to be how it would go,” Red said. “I knew the rules. I knew, and we were going to avoid all the stupidity that kills people in a story. We were not going to be like those people. We were all going to get to Grandma’s house safely. We were all going to live.”
“You can’t write this like a story, Red. This is life, and it doesn’t follow your rules.”
“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” Red said.
It just came out, a thing she had unconsciously memorized. She’d always liked Macbeth the best. She liked horror movies, and Macbeth was a proper horror story, with ghosts and witches and blood.
“I didn’t know you read Shakespeare, Delia,” Mama said, a