“Yes,” Margaret said slowly.
“If that’s how it happened, then the Ashfords must have had a hand in it.”
She sat back in her chair, her gaze gone distant.
“Think about it.
He kept urging you to leave them for the Whitmores.
Sooner or later, the Ashfords would have found out.
A man going around telling their most valuable asset that she was being used?
They would have wanted him gone.”
Her mouth tightened.
“And by then, I wasn’t there anymore.
He had no way to prove he was working for me, no one to vouch for him, no one to protect him.” She let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Well.
Thank God everything gets to start over.”
She turned to Neve and took her hand.
“Sweetheart, listen to me.
From now on, no matter what people say, watch what they do.
And ask yourself whether it’s actually good for you or whether it’s hurting you.
Words are cheap.
Actions tell the truth.
Do you understand?”
Margaret studied her granddaughter’s face as she spoke.
She had sheltered this girl for twenty years.
Was it too late to start teaching her how the world really worked?
Could she still learn it now, with only three months left?
“I understand, Nana.” Neve nodded seriously.
Then she leaned forward.
“Did you send someone to Highcrest County yet?”
That was what worried her most.
Sylvie had come back too, so the Ashfords would know about the floods.
When the time came, they would go to Highcrest and grab all the land they could.
“Don’t worry.
Wyatt left this morning.
We should hear something within a few days.”
“Miss.” Silas spoke from the window.
“If we do get the land, how do you want it built?”
“Oh!
I’ve already thought about that.”
Neve pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from Nana’s desk and began to draw.
First, she drew one very large circle that filled almost the whole page.
Inside the thick outline of that circle, she sketched a long chain of small boxes, one after another all the way around, like beads on a necklace.
Then, at the four compass points inside the circle, she drew four small circles.
She held it out to Silas.
He took it, turned it sideways, then turned it back.
“That’s it?”
He was completely baffled.
He had planned perimeters for embassies and private estates, and this looked like something a child might doodle on a restaurant placemat.
Walter leaned over, studied it for a moment, and passed it to Margaret.
She looked at it carefully, then raised her eyes.
“Neve, I understand the big circle is the wall.
But what are these four little circles?”
Neve smiled.
“Those are four public bathrooms, Nana.”
Silas made a sound that might have been a cough.
“No, really, let me explain.” Neve took the paper back and tapped each small circle.
“After the apocalypse, insects get dangerous too.
They mutate, just like everything else.
They’re bigger and faster, and some of them are poisonous.
They swarm wherever there’s waste and dampness.
So we need to keep the bathrooms separate, in fixed places, and have people exterminate the bugs around them regularly.”
She traced the circle with her finger.
“And for the first three years, there’s hardly any water at all.
If waste isn’t handled properly, the bathrooms turn into the most dangerous places in any settlement.
People get sick.
Things come crawling out of them at night.
I’ve seen whole camps fall apart because of it.”
Silas had stopped looking amused.
“Now the wall.” She tapped the thick outline.
“It needs to be ten to thirteen feet thick.
These little rooms, see?
They’re built inside the wall itself.
They’re for people who can’t earn many crystal cores.
After the apocalypse, there will be a lot of people like that.
They’ll need somewhere to live.
This way, they have shelter, and every room makes the wall even stronger.
The wall protects them, and they help protect the wall.”
She set down the pen.
“The houses inside, I’ll leave to you.
I don’t really know how to design those.
But the wall and the bathrooms have to be like this.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then Margaret nodded slowly, and there was something like pride in her eyes.
“Walter, write down the key points and put the drawing somewhere safe.
For the interior, find a designer, someone we can trust completely.
Once Wyatt has the land, you’ll go to Highcrest yourself.
When Robert and the others finish with the company sale, they’ll follow you.”
“Yes, madam.
I’ll see to it right away.”
Walter rose, folding the paper carefully into his breast pocket.
Silas stood as well and moved toward the door.
“Silas.”
He stopped.
“You don’t need to worry about any of the rest of this,” Margaret said.
“Your job is to watch for the Ashfords.
Every hour, everywhere.
Do you understand me?
I don’t want anything to happen to my granddaughter.”
“Madam, you can rest easy.” His voice was calm and certain.
“I’ve already recalled more than two hundred people from the security company.
They’re on the estate as of this morning.
Nothing is getting through those gates.”
He didn’t know whether the Ashfords would really try to kill the young miss, as the madam claimed.
It still sounded half unbelievable.
But he had learned long ago that it was better to prepare for a threat that never came than to be caught unprepared by one that did.
He nodded to Neve and followed Walter out.
The moment the door closed, Neve grabbed her grandmother’s hand.
“Come on, Nana.”
The study vanished.
They were standing under that same soft, sourceless sky, on that same dark earth.
But even before Neve had fully found her footing, she could feel that something was different.
Margaret felt it too.
She turned in a slow circle, her eyes widening.
“Why does it look different from before?”
The space was bigger.
Much bigger.
The first time they came in, they had been able to see the wall of white mist ringing everything at the edges, swallowing the river and the base of the mountain.
Now there was no mist in sight.
The land simply rolled on and on, black and yellow and patched with green, until it disappeared into a soft blue haze at the edge of vision.
Even the mountain seemed farther away and taller, as if the world had stretched in every direction while they slept.
“When I woke up this morning, I could already feel that it had changed,” Neve said.
“That’s why I came looking for you after lunch.
I wanted us to see it together.”
She was smiling.
She couldn’t help it.
“Nana, since we have a little time, let’s explore.”
“Yes.” Margaret was smiling too, which Neve hadn’t seen in days.
“Let’s.”
A bigger space meant more room for supplies, more room for people, and more room to survive.
It meant more of everything.
“Let’s go to the spring first,” Margaret added, already turning toward the river.
“I’ve felt so much better since I drank that water.
My shoulder hasn’t hurt once.”