“I guess they are, Billy,” she said. “I never thought of that, before.”

She knelt to put her arms around him, thinking: Tears and fear are futile weapons; they can never bring us any tomorrows. We’ll have to fight whatever comes to kill us no matter how scared we are. For ourselves and for our children. Above all else, for our children.⁠ ⁠…

“I’m going back to find our clothes,” she said. “You wait here for me, in the shelter of that rock, and I won’t be gone long.”

Then she told him what he would be too young to really understand.

“I’m not going to cry any more and I know, now, what I must do. I’m going to make sure that there is a tomorrow for you, always, to the last breath of my life.”