Monday, August 8, 11:00 PM. Amy.

Where to begin?

Brewer suggested we all keep diaries. It’s a good idea. I haven’t kept one since I was a girl, but with recent events I think I’m going to need to talk it all out. Otherwise I’m going to go insane.

We haven’t seen or heard from anyone for over a week.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. I keep thinking we must be dreaming or in some kind of Truman Show prank. I keep picking up my phone to call someone, Kelli or Angel or Mom—mostly Mom—and then my heart sinks and I remember the phones aren’t working, nothing is.

I made pancakes for breakfast this morning, using powdered milk and powdered eggs, yum. I couldn’t remember how many tablespoons are in a cup, so I asked Alexa. She stayed completely silent, and it brought a lump to my throat.

I’m hiding it from the kids pretty well. They’re scared enough on their own. They don’t need to see me scared too.

Brewer says we’re going to come through just fine. When he says it—with that long, sharp face and those deep, faraway eyes—you can’t help but believe it. It’s what I love about him. It’s what I hate about him. I need him to do that, to look at each of us and tell us we’re going to be okay. At the same time I hate his calm, his serenity even in crisis, his skimming over the surface of problems. I’m afraid that in his hopefulness he will overlook real dangers.

And yet I trust him. I do trust him.

After supper tonight we had a family conference. Brewer asked each of us in turn for our input. What do we do next? How do we make it through this? I was impressed and proud at how the kids responded.

Trevor said it’s all about the water. That kid is so smart. He pointed out that we have plenty now—it pours from the tap like always—but when the tower runs out we’ll be in trouble. He’s right: we can’t take water for granted.

Claire suggested we go get our van back from Dallas. I think we all had this pretty high up on our list of things to do, but once we talked about it we realized: what do we need our van for exactly? There are something like seven cars sitting on the street outside of our house, including a van a lot like our own. Claire’s afraid she left one of her stuffed animals under the seat, and Garrett and Trevor both have game cartridges missing that are probably in there somewhere. But even they agree these are not our biggest problems right now.

Garrett’s suggestion was interesting. That boy! He says nothing for three months and then when he finally opens his mouth… Who knows what goes on inside that curly head.

Cows. He thinks we should find and tend a herd of cows. Not only cows—chickens too, and horses and goats and pigs. I was about to tell him to stop daydreaming, that we weren’t about to start a petting zoo, but Brewer asked him to explain.

He pointed out that most of the things we need will either spoil right away or keep for a long time. All the meat in every supermarket in Texas is already rotten and foul. But trees aren’t going anywhere: they’ll keep. Water is disappearing all around us, especially with it being 102° outside. But we’ll still find corn and wheat heaped up in granaries and farm stores for months if not years. They’ll keep, at least for a while.

But cows, Garrett pointed out, have neither rotted already nor will they keep forever. They’ll start dying very soon—some will have died already—and will get a lot harder to find over the next few weeks. They need food and water just like we do. Some herds are out in fertile fields and have plenty to eat. Others are in muddy stockades calling for their owners to let them out or bring them hay, but nobody’s coming. Some have stock ponds they can drink from. Others have died from thirst already. And it’s the same for chickens and horses and all the other livestock.

Once they’ve dwindled down, he said, it’ll be much harder to find them, catch them, move them, and tend them. And if we don’t have animals, where are we going to get fresh meat, milk, or eggs?

He said all that in about a fifth of the words I used. He said it, and then his mouth clapped shut and he went back to looking at his knees. We all stared at each other and smiled bigger and bigger until we couldn’t help but laugh. He blushed, and was about to apologize, but Brewer reached over and shook his shoulder and Claire put both her arms around him. We told him he was a genius, and thank you for speaking up, and please do it again.

Brewer asked my opinion.

I told him I thought we needed to attend to the water, and get the van back, and put together a little farm somehow, like the kids had said. But the most important thing to me is to find out if there is anyone else left. “Why don’t we go to Florida?” I suggested. “Or up north? Maybe there are people still in Washington DC or New York or even in Canada. If there’s anyone left, we need to find them. I can’t live like this, all alone, not knowing what happened to our family, our friends, without searching first to see where everyone has gone, whether anyone’s still alive.”

Tears were flowing down my face. I was afraid Brewer would say no right away, that he’d trot out some logical argument for why we needed to stay put, something that made perfect sense but left me bearing this ache that’s been haunting me since Friday, the ache of too few answers and too few faces.

I guess he saw that, because he came over, sat beside me, and held me as I cried. The kids came around too, and for the second time in the last three days we held each other and wept.

This was never our way before, but it has to be our way now. And maybe it’ll have to keep on being our way until…until whatever comes, comes.