Hollow Bones

Chapter 1

An unexpected wind picks up from the north, and the wall of fire becomes a living thing, a dragon roaring toward the first responders who try to tame it. Molly Fitzgerald is frozen in place, watching this hellscape. The thirty-mile-per-hour gusts have arrived out of thin air. Flames lick the sky and swoop back against the crashed Southwest jet, making it harder to see the passengers still trapped inside. Smoke rolls across the tarmac. Heat beats against Molly's face. Her phone buzzes: Alert 3 at TF Green, plane has crashed on runway, on fire, evacuating passengers, plus calls to nearby police and EMS and fire departments for mutual aid. Sirens scream as two ladder engines from Warwick Fire Department join the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting Team, spraying chemical foam used to extinguish jet fuel. A dozen EMTs stand at a safe distance like runners at a gate, waiting for the go-ahead to treat passengers. There is no way to get them out until the fire is subdued. It would have happened by now if the wind had not changed direction. This is quickly becoming an even greater disaster.

As Chief of the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Rhode Island Department of Health, Molly was among the first to be notified about the crash. By the time she ran out the door to get to the Emergency Operations Center at the airport, she was already texting her team. Her deputy chief, Toby, put out the initial notification to all Rhode Island hospitals: a plane has crashed at TF Green, estimated 168 souls on board, EMS is assessing, please provide bed availability. The more time they have to determine capacity, call in trauma teams, clear emergency department beds, or prep the burn cart, the better.

A whip of wind blows some of Molly's hair out of her braid. By the time she brushes it from her eyes, the yellow tongue of the evacuation slide has deployed. Having passengers slide through an active blaze is a mistake, but the EMTs surge forward and passengers begin deplaning. The airport fire chief grimaces, then directs his team to pivot so they can create a physical barrier between the slide and the flames. Passengers reach the tarmac sobbing. A flight attendant shepherds a woman with a piece of metal protruding from her upper arm. One middle-aged man sees the fire and panics, racing in the opposite direction. Another stumbles toward the firefighters, hands clasped over his eyes, shrieking in pain. A pumper truck arrives, along with the first ambulances.

The triage coordinator at the bottom of the evacuation slide evaluates each passenger. Those who can walk get directed to the Temporary Reception Center, a tent where a Southwest rep will check them in and make them comfortable until law enforcement can interview them. Passengers who cannot move lie on the ground, moaning or, worse, in silence. Paramedics pinball between victims, tagging them with triage tape: red, yellow, and green. Although Molly has been doing this job for six years, every disaster feels like the first time. The minutes pass differently. It seems to take eons until the fire is subdued, foam coating the plane and the tarmac below. By then, anyone able to get off the plane by themselves has been evacuated, and firefighters have deployed ladders to rescue those who remain. Injured passengers litter the tarmac like a macabre quilt. An ambulance zooms into view, and two paramedics leap out with a backboard. They rush to a teenage girl, red-tagged and unmoving, her head haloed by a puddle of blood. Molly stares at the spill of red, at the horror it evokes. In situations like this, it is hard to remember what is real and what is not.

The Teams app on Molly's phone pings with a member of her department who has been monitoring social media. There was a very pregnant woman on board. Anyone have eyes on her? A flurry of responses scroll in, nos from the Temporary Reception Center and the transport officer. Has someone already found her? Is she still on the plane? Molly's gaze roams over the wounded, falling on a woman with her back to her, a yellow tag on her shirt and burns on her arms. When the woman rolls to the side, Molly sees a swollen belly. She lets out an unearthly groan. Before Molly can even text that she has found her, an EMT rushes over. He replaces her yellow strip of tape with a red one. "I need transport now," he shouts.

The Manifest

Molly's phone rings with the call she has been waiting for. "The manifest is in," says Sue, a Southwest Airlines rep, referring to the list of crew and passengers. "Meet at the EOC?" The Emergency Operations Center is located in a nearby maintenance building with windows that overlook the scene. The room is jammed with people. Molly takes a seat beside Sue. Sue pulls up the manifest on her phone as Molly pulls up the patient tracking system, which allows her to see who has been transported by ambulance, and where, for the last four hours. There are legal issues around turning over a list to Southwest, so best practice is to sit next to each other and read off names. A guy from EMS who only started a month ago, Robert or Roger, blusters in. "Sorry I'm late," he apologizes. "State police just showed up." He clutches the third master list, the dossier of who is or was sitting on the tarmac, and who has been cataloged at the Temporary Reception Center. By cross-referencing the three documents, they make sure everyone has been accounted for. Sometimes, it is how they figure out who is dead, too.

They start the reconciliation with Sue reading the names of the crew. The pilot and copilot are on Roger's list with minor injuries treated in the field. The flight attendants have all been accounted for, one having been sent to South County Hospital and the rest still in the Temporary Reception Center. "Alice Kennedy," Sue reads, and Molly scans the tracking system. "Sent to Roger Williams Medical Center," she replies. Roland Gresham. Chinara Adebayo. Alika Adebayo. "Minh Nguyen?" Molly scrolls and scrolls but cannot find that name. Roger is flipping through a spreadsheet on his laptop. "Negative," he says finally.

From the background chatter behind them, the deputy chief of EMS interrupts. "Sorry, did you say Nguyen?" Paul asks. "We have a Nguyen ID'd as a decedent." Sue checks her manifest. "First name?" He shakes his head. "Don't have it." "This one is a twenty-six-year-old female?" Paul hunches away, speaking into a radio before turning back to them. "Mine's an elderly man," he replies. Sue nods, moving down the manifest list and putting a check mark next to another Nguyen. "Ah, got her," Roger says. "Minh Nguyen. Her name was misspelled. Uninjured and checked in at 2:24 p.m."

They continue methodically for over an hour, tuning out the updates from the field when the plane is fully evacuated and cleanup of the firefighting foam has begun. The foam has been linked to PFOS in groundwater, which is a battle they will have to fight another day. An alert comes in that Rhode Island Hospital is at capacity. Finally, they each scan their lists to make sure all 168 passengers and crew have been checked. "I only have one sixty-seven," Sue mutters. "Let me count again." And then: "There's a lap infant. Twenty-three months."

The Missing Passenger

"Who was the child with?" Molly asks. "Elisabeth Abbott," Sue answers. "Age twenty-nine." For a moment they are all lost in their silos, trying to find something, anything, about an infant. "Elisabeth got transported to Kent Hospital," Molly announces. Roger's eyes are on his screen. "Youngest kid I've got is five." Molly dials Kent Hospital and the Emergency Department picks up. "Hi, this is Molly Fitzgerald from Emergency Preparedness and Response," she says. "Do you have an Elisabeth Abbott registered?" After a brief conversation, she turns back to Sue. "The patient is in open-heart surgery, but there's no record of an infant coming in with her. And no unaccompanied toddler in the ED."

Her fingers start flying, texting in the Teams app. They have accounted for 167 of 168. The missing person is a child, age 2. Can everyone please check for a 2-year-old child? One by one the responses trickle in: No minors. No children. Negative. Hasbro Children's Hospital, which is part of Rhode Island Hospital, responds with the name of a six-year-old patient, but with a different last name and two parents present. Molly's mind revs into overdrive. Is the toddler deceased and so small that the firemen sweeping the plane missed it? Was the toddler safely evacuated and kidnapped? It seems ridiculous to even think it. She turns to the airport fire chief. "Can you get eyes inside the plane?" His radio crackles as he sends one of the firefighter EMTs onto the plane.

Here is the most important thing Molly has learned about her job: You cannot stop a disaster from occurring, no matter how much you prepare. But if you cannot keep everyone safe, you can damn well make sure they are all accounted for. The alternative, the not knowing, is untenable. She should know.

A burst of static bleeds through the radio. "Chief," she hears, "we found the child." More information is relayed: the final passenger was tucked inside the cubby where the drinks cart is usually stowed. Through the windows of the EOC, Molly can just make out a firefighter in full gear, standing in the open doorway of the plane. He holds an American Girl doll in his arms. The doll wears a neon T-shirt identifying it as a character in their extensive training drill, the same neon shirt worn by the 167 adult actors hired to play the parts of airline passengers in this simulation. "This is the exercise director," she hears over the radio. "We are calling End Ex. The exercise has ended at 5:57 p.m. Hot washes will begin at 6:30 p.m. in parking lot B." And, whew. The drill that has taken three years to plan has been successfully completed. All the adrenaline rushes out of Molly, leaving her shaky on the seat between Sue and Roger.

After the Exercise

Rhode Island is a small state, so everyone in Molly's field knows her. But when people meet her for the first time, they are always surprised that the head of the department is only twenty-five. As a kid she was a brainiac, skipped a grade, and graduated from Columbia with a combined B.S. and master's in public health at nineteen. In college, she worked summers at the Rhode Island Department of Health as a scholar, their fancy term for an intern, studying how much time they would actually have to evacuate a nursing home that lost heat or air-conditioning. The summer after her junior year, she collected data that helped emergency managers locate residents who used electricity-dependent medical equipment. She graduated midyear and was officially working in the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response by February 2020. If not for Covid, her career might not have advanced so quickly. There would not have been such burnout turnover, and by 2023 she likely would not have been made the acting deputy of the department, frantically getting a crash course in management. Maybe her boss would not have retired to the Keys last year. But three months ago, she officially became the permanent chief of the department, who, with a staff of thirteen, oversees the public health of all Rhode Islanders.

When Molly says she works in public health, most people nod, though they rarely know what it encompasses: all the things happening behind the scenes to keep you safe. Making sure you do not have lead paint in your house. That your food and water are not going to make you sick. That it is safe to swim at the beach. That if you are in a car accident, the best technology keeps you from getting injured. Vaccines, of course, are another polarizing example. It is all of these things and more: communications, lab and epidemiology preparedness, chronic disease prevention, acute disease management, all wrapped into one. Preparedness is the crystal ball of public health. They have done enough training for that muscle memory to kick in on the day you need it.

Her business is held to an incredibly unfair standard, survival, because acceptable loss is an impossible concept. But public health is not what is best for every person; it is the greatest good for the greatest number. If you run out of ventilators during Covid, who gets one? The child with Down syndrome, or the sixty-five-year-old epidemiologist who might find a cure for the virus? It is the famous moral dilemma of the trolley problem over and over. Luckily, they do not do it alone, though it was not always like this. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, there was less coordination and communication between agencies. Back then, New Orleans had a more traditional emergency plan for if the levees were breached by a big storm: commandeer the Superdome, use generators, bring in MREs from the military to feed people, set up cots. This would have worked if every resident of New Orleans was a healthy eighteen-year-old. Unfortunately, some were elderly, obese, and diabetic. The rations were full of sugar and salt, great for soldiers sweating in a desert but less great for people susceptible to heart attacks and strokes and diabetic comas. They had a plan for the wrong people. That is where public health comes in. During an emergency, you need stuff, but you also need staff, people trained in exactly these issues. That is who will participate in the hot wash today.

It is a debrief on how the exercise went. Miguel, Molly's exercise coordinator, will run the session with an airport administrator. The mood is jovial but tired, the mental and physical ache of a job well done. When they are all assembled, Molly is surrounded by EMTs, fire department chiefs, state police, Rhode Island Airport Corporation reps, Southwest Airlines officials, and colleagues from the Emergency Management Agency. Only one of her staff, Katani, is

Chapter 2

2 October–November 2026

In Rhode Island, "comma," "karma," and "calmer" sound exactly the same, and Molly Ambrose uses all three before lunch. She arrives late, her to-do list runs a mile long, and she is on-call tonight, so she is already harried when Soo-Yun appears in her doorway. Molly refuses whatever it is before Soo-Yun can ask, but Soo-Yun sits down uninvited anyway. In the middle of the exchange, Molly slides a bottle of folic acid pills into an open drawer, a parting gift from this morning's ob-gyn appointment. She has not told anyone at work that she is pregnant, not even her family. She and Jesse agreed to wait until the first trimester is safely behind them. Molly believes that speaking a disaster summons it, and for her, pregnancy has become another disaster to keep unspoken.

Soo-Yun has come about the plane crash in Philadelphia. 60 Minutes wants to feature their department in the aftermath, and Soo-Yun argues the press is too valuable to pass up: renewed interest in emergency preparedness, national attention, and a governor who loves the spotlight enough to maybe cough up state budget money while federal funding hangs in the balance. Molly points out the crash happened weeks ago and wasn't in her jurisdiction. Soo-Yun tells her most chiefs of emergency prep are old white dudes, and Molly will make better TV. Molly invokes the one-favor-a-year rule, but Soo-Yun counters that she is doing Molly the favor and notes the reporter, Adelaide, will arrive in an hour. She didn't tell Molly earlier because Molly wasn't there, and because then Molly would have had time to back out. She backs out of the office with a little wave. Molly closes her eyes. "Shit," she mutters.

The morning's appointment had almost made her and Jesse late because they could not stop arguing. Since she told him about the pregnancy, Jesse has insisted she needs to back it down a gear at work to protect the baby. Molly accuses him of stifling her and insists she will not sit home for seven months knitting booties. He tells her to stop putting words in his mouth. She fires back that this child has two parents, and if she has to limit the danger of her job, then he has to take nothing but desk assignments for the next eighteen years of this kid's life. They drive to the doctor's office in steaming silence.

In the exam room, waiting for Dr. Mantillard, Jesse blows up a rubber glove into a balloon, and Molly thinks he is going to be such a good father, if their marriage survives the pregnancy. She tries to broker peace. "Bad things are always going to happen," she says. Jesse snorts, calling her an optimist. She tells him her whole career is about weighing danger against necessity, and he didn't mind her doing her job until now. "Because now you're pregnant, Molly." "Yes. I'm pregnant. Not dying." Jesse's eyes shutter, and she realizes she used the wrong metaphor. He is always one leap away from thinking of his two sisters, one in remission, the other lost to him through a freak accident. Most people who meet Jesse consider him a hell-raiser and a wiseass, walls he built to protect his heart from bruising again. Molly says he won't be able to keep their child safe all the time. "Her," Jesse corrects. "And that doesn't mean I can't try."

Dr. Mantillard arrives: small, birdlike, frizzy-haired, with eternally cold hands. She confirms Molly is incontrovertibly pregnant and offers monthly check-ins and prenatal vitamins. Molly immediately asks what she can't do. Eat oysters, the doctor says, no smoking or drinking. Molly interrupts about toxins and nerve agents. She'd avoid anthrax even if she weren't pregnant. Jesse asks about lifting: Molly drags around a sixty-pound knapsack. Not a great idea. Molly asks about splitting it into two thirty-pound packs. Jesse appeals to the doctor for help. Dr. Mantillard's lips twitch; it is not uncommon for dads to be overprotective of their pregnant wives. "Ha!" Molly pokes Jesse. The doctor also notes that pregnant people are sometimes not the best judges of their own safety. Jesse smirks. "Told you so." The doctor tells Molly to listen to her body. Molly asks the doctor to tell Jesse she can still drive a forklift. Jesse sets his jaw and asks the doctor to tell Molly that delegating is not giving up control. The doctor sighs and tells Molly to lie down.

On the exam table, Molly stares at a poster of marine life on the ceiling. She was running out of pants that fit. As the doctor pushes down the waistband and squirts gel on her belly, Molly mutters that she does delegate. She fixates on the illustration of a black sea devil anglerfish, with its bioluminescent lure suspended over its own head. The deep-sea creature, not long ago, made it to the surface and was filmed before it died. Male black anglerfish fuse themselves, several at a time, to the female until she decides she is ready to have offspring. Molly suspects whoever hung the poster didn't realize it was reproductively subversive. Then the doctor's wand finds a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh beat, and Molly's hand moves along the waxy paper until it finds Jesse's. "That's…her?" "Or him. We'll know the sex after the NIPT test." Molly stares at the wand. Jesse stares at Molly in awe. She suddenly understands: it isn't that Jesse is overly fearful. Life is such an unlikely miracle, and he wants to protect it. When she'd started dating Jesse, she asked Evie how you know if you're in love. If he left, Evie said, there'd be a hole in you shaped like him that nobody else could fill.

The doctor turns off the monitor and wipes the gel, telling Molly she will see her in a month. The door closes, and Jesse stands between Molly's legs. "Shit just got real," he says softly. She reminds him it was pretty real when she was throwing up that morning. He rests his forehead on hers and offers an olive branch: he'll try to make peace with the risks she takes. She curls her hand around the nape of his neck and concedes that if she has to use the forklift, she'll be extra careful. But mitigating danger isn't eliminating it, and they both know it. You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness and have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.

Adelaide McCann is a 60 Minutes journalist known for hard-hitting interviews with Pentagon whistle-blowers and disgraced rappers. She once allegedly made Elon Musk cry on set, though the White House scuttled the footage. She looks perfect when she arrives. Soo-Yun has hired a makeup artist for Molly, which means a trowel-full of foundation is smeared onto her skin that everyone assures her will look perfect on camera. She wears Soo-Yun's blazer over the top she'd chosen that morning before she knew about the interview. The production team has redecorated her spartan office, shoving the real furniture against a wall you can't see on camera, while Adelaide and Molly sit on upholstered chairs that materialized from somewhere. A potted geranium sits between them. Where did they get a potted geranium in October?

Adelaide starts with the easy one: so her job is to prepare for the worst. Molly agrees. What makes her different from a doomsday prepper? Molly laughs and says, for one, she doesn't stockpile weapons. Soo-Yun, watching from the sidelines, tells the producer they'll have to cut that. Adelaide asks for a typical day. There isn't one, Molly says, that's why she loves this job. God, could she sound any more clichéd? She usually doesn't sweat speaking in front of a crowd, but this is not bringing out her best. She wishes for Jesse's effortless charm, which he swears is just the by-product of giving zero fucks. She starts listing the department's programs, and the words come out as a dry inventory: distributing pills and vaccines in emergencies, running training exercises, coordinating with hospitals and nursing homes, tracking people with disabilities who might need help in a crisis, managing volunteers, overseeing the state's field hospital assets. Adelaide's smile grows tighter as Molly speaks. Somehow she has made a dynamic job sound as boring as watching paint dry. Molly recovers: they spend their days preparing for what might happen until an actual emergency interrupts and they shift into action. A pipe bursts at Hasbro Children's Hospital, or mpox breaks out, and the storm risk assessment falls to the wayside. Her job is to make sure that if a potential disaster turns into a real one, people are safe.

Adelaide crosses her legs and points out Molly hasn't been chief here very long. How did that come about? Everyone remembers where they were the morning of 9/11, and where they were the week of March 2020, when the world shut down. Molly had been in her job two months, still learning, when the biggest emergency of most lifetimes hit. Her boss appointed her Healthcare Coalition Coordinator the day before she turned twenty-one. By April, the department was meeting on Zoom with the rest of the world. Hospitals were overrun, medical equipment became an issue, and they watched news from Italy, which had been hit so hard and so fast. Her department modeled needs on that: thousands of ventilators when they had hundreds. One morning, on a Zoom meeting at her kitchen table, Molly realized her socks were wet. A pool of water spread under the kitchen sink cabinet. She turned off her camera, grabbed every dish towel she could find, threw them into the puddle, and turned the camera back on to find everyone arguing about running out of vents. Someone asked if you could turn a car into a ventilator. What about a vacuum cleaner? Her boss suggested the midlevel vents they use in the field. Could you make a CPAP or BiPAP into one? How about doctoring an anesthesia machine? The head of public health held up her hand. There was no time for any of that. Everyone fell silent. Molly's boss cleared his throat and said they would have to teach hospitals how to triage who gets a vent and who doesn't. The words escalated into an ethical debate: prioritize someone younger over older, even though the elderly were often the most severe cases? Rule out anyone with a preexisting condition or give them preference? Say a person can only be on a vent a certain number of days, and if recovery doesn't occur, they have to be disconnected? At Columbia, Molly had known public health sometimes comes down to sacrificing individuals for the greater good. She hadn't known how viscerally she'd react to being complicit in those choices.

When the Zoom ended, she wiggled into the tiny space beneath the sink. The leak came from where the water line split into two separate pipes. Her gaze narrowed on the Y-shaped connector, and she sat up so fast she banged her head. A couple summers before, she'd dated a guy who went to the University of Rhode Island and worked with a professor who ran the school's 3-D printing lab. She pulled up his contact information and texted him. Within an hour he introduced her to Professor Walker over email. Two hours later she was on the phone with the state's head of public health. The professor could design a Y splitter, but he needed the tubing to make sure it would work. A Y splitter, she explained, using Walker's exact words, is like a wishbone. It would use a single ventilator but direct the oxygen flow to two patients instead of one. Risky, the head of public health said; you'd have to have similar-size patients, and even then their lung capacities might be totally different. Molly interrupted: if an ER is slammed, wouldn't it be better to try this before denying someone a ventilator completely? It took Professor Walker a week to design a splitter after Molly hand-delivered the tubing circuit he needed to his house. As instructed, she left it in the mailbox. His wife was immunocompromised, and he was being extra cautious about social distancing. When it was finished, his brother-in-law, who worked for the police department, would bring it by Molly's apartment.

When Molly went downstairs to meet him, a tall man leaned against the brick facade. He was in plain clothes, a badge clipped to his belt, scrolling on his phone, and she realized he must be a detective instead of a street cop. He held a canvas bag printed with the logo of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. "Jesse?" she said tentatively. He was masked, like her, so she could only see his eyes: an unearthly blue she'd seen once before, on vacation as a kid in Puerto Rico, in a bioluminescent bay. They kayaked through it in the black of night, and every time her oar dipped, the water lit up with blooms of aqua and peacock. When she swiped her hand through the water, the light slipped between her fingers. "I'm Molly Ambrose," she said. His brows drew together. "You're not what I expected." A frisson of annoyance went through her. She may have been the youngest person in her department, but she was also the only one who had found a potential solution to a devastating resource shortage. He thrust the canvas bag toward her, and they were careful not to touch. He told her there were three different prototypes inside so she could figure out what worked best, that Gary also made a filter that slows the release of Covid molecules when the patient exhales, and, drifting off, picked up his phone and read verbatim: there were other ports for oxygen and exhalation and a one-way valve. She thanked him and asked him to thank Gary again. He offers to run it to the hospital so she won't have to worry about decontaminating before going home to

Chapter 3

Molly arrives at Dr. Mantillard's office for her twenty-week ultrasound, and Jesse is already there. He jumps up when he sees her. She hugs him, apologizes for being late, and says it has been a crazy day. At the receptionist's desk, Georgia passes Jesse a dollar bill. Molly asks what that is about. Jesse says he cannot take payment for a bet he knew he would win. He told Georgia that Molly would be late. Georgia insisted no first-time mom is late to the second trimester ultrasound because it is too exciting. Jesse grins. Molly punches him lightly on the arm. Georgia laughs and says the good news is Dr. Mantillard is also running late, so they can get into the exam room.

In the room, Jesse and Molly talk about baby names. Dr. Mantillard flusters in, apologizes, and boots up the ultrasound machine. She pushes Molly's leggings down, squirts warm gel onto her abdomen, and moves the wand. A wha-wha-wha-wha sound fills the room. The doctor says that is the heartbeat. On the screen, a grainy black field is cut by a shifting white shape. The wand stills, and the image fixes into a profile: tiny nose, stubborn jaw, bent knee. Dr. Mantillard says, "There you are." All the breath punches out of Molly. Until this moment, the baby was not real. Here she is in black and white, the pearls of her spine and her little fists boxing at shadows. Molly gasps that she is moving. Jesse murmurs that he is perfect. While they stare, the doctor clicks a mouse to take measurements.

Dr. Mantillard says the baby is indeed pretty perfect, scientifically speaking. She asks if they still prefer not to know the sex until delivery. They could have found out from the NIPT blood test but chose to be surprised. Now Molly cannot wait anymore. She raises her eyebrows at Jesse, who grins and nods. She says they have changed their minds. The doctor shifts the wand deeper, trying to get the fetus to move. "It's a girl," she confirms. She says they will print some pictures and congratulates Mom and Dad. Mom. The word washes over Molly, and she thinks of her own mom at her own prenatal appointments. When Dr. Mantillard slips out, Jesse brushes his lips against Molly's and says, "We made a human being." He covers her abdomen with his palm and tells her she can be as late as she wants for the rest of her life, he will wait. Molly cups her hand over his. She is smiling so hard her cheeks ache. She suggests Anna Eloise. He grins back. "Eloise Anna."

Normally, Molly and Jesse negotiate family holidays with the delicacy of a UN resolution. This year, Molly's parents will be in Hawaii for Thanksgiving with her dad's airline points, and Jesse's parents are doing a Christmas cruise. So they will spend December 25 with Molly's dad and Evie, and Thanksgiving at Kate's with Jesse's family. Jesse and Molly bring wine and nonalcoholic sparkling cider. Kate spends most of the day in the kitchen, basting, mashing, and whisking. Every time Molly offers to help, Kate makes the sign of the cross like Molly is a vampire and shoos her out. Jesse plays a spirited game of Go Fish with Anna. Gary uses all his engineering skills to safety-proof the deep-frying vat where the turkey will be cooked. That is how Molly winds up on the couch between Jesse's parents, Brian and Sara, watching a Netflix movie.

The movie is about a kid with cancer whose illness is tearing her family apart. It would be depressing enough on Thanksgiving, but Molly cannot imagine why the Fitzgeralds, who experienced this situation, do not just watch The Great British Bake Off. Near the end, the girl has dark circles under her eyes and an IV line in her thin arm. Her mother sits on the edge of her hospital bed. Molly glances at Brian. He still has the build of a fireman, broad and strong, and his arms are crossed tight across his chest. He says that is bullshit. She would have a port-a-cath. He hates when they mess up the details. Molly turns toward Sara, then back to the television. She thinks: How do you do it? How do you let a child into a world where terrible things happen? She lurches up from the couch and pushes through the first doorway she can find: the kitchen.

Kate is not there. She and Gary are visible through the window, peering down into the vat of oil. Molly uses a dish towel to mop her face. Sara walks in and explodes about the pizza party. The kid is dying, and they had a pizza party. They read the novel in book club, but the movie is nothing like the book. She cannot watch the rest. Then she stops, noticing Molly's tears. "Molly?" Molly says onions. Sara says she might believe her if Molly were actually chopping onions. Sara touches her arm and asks if she is all right. Molly says she cannot watch kids dying. She chokes on a laugh and says hormones. Sara looks at her with sympathy and asks if she wants to talk. Before Molly knows it, she is spewing out every panicked thought in her head. Am I a terrible mother if I bottle-feed? Is it cruel to sleep-train when it means letting the baby cry? Why would anyone do baby-led weaning if it means the baby chokes on food at the start? Jesus, how do I know what I am doing is right?

Sara puts her arms around her. First, she says, taking the dish towel gently out of Molly's hands, stop doomscrolling. Second, you do not know what you are doing is right. Molly has forgotten that Sara has her own cross to bear about bad parenting decisions. Sara says you can make all the informed choices; you can convince yourself you are putting your child's welfare first. But sometimes the world just decides for you, and there is nothing you can do about it. Sara folds Molly into her arms, rubbing circles on her back. She smells like vanilla. Although she is small and slight, she is strong. Molly whispers into her neck, "What if she grows up to hate me?" For a moment, Sara's hand stops moving. Then at least, she muses, she grew up.

A few weeks later, Jesse gets a call that his services are needed in California. Even as Jesse insists he should not be leaving Molly alone, he is tossing clothes into an overnight bag, and his eyes are bright with anticipation. He says ninety percent of wildfires are caused by human activities. Brush burning, campfires, cars without mufflers. Molly points out that does not mean they are intentional. Jesse agrees, but says it also does not mean they are not. The call came from a contact at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who had chased down over two hundred leads, reviewed a hundred hours of video, and interviewed sixty people of interest. After narrowing their theory about how the fires started, the L.A. fire chief told them about a polygraph guy in Rhode Island whose expertise included arson. Because of his success, Jesse has been certified in several states, including California.

Jesse suggests Molly stay at Kate's. She says she is a grown adult. Kate and Gary left today for New York, taking Anna to see the Rockettes. Jesse says he does not like the idea of her being alone. Molly touches her belly and says she has company. Rising on tiptoe, she kisses his jaw and says, "Go, already." Jesse zips the suitcase. He slips a carry-on over the handle, the protective briefcase into which the polygraph machine is carefully packed. At the front door, he tells her to lock behind him. She says yes, Detective Sergeant, and tells him not to drive over the speed limit. She says she will even stay off the booze while he is gone. She sees the war playing out on his features, the reluctance to leave her despite the thrill of the intellectual challenge ahead. She says he is literally heading into a raging wildfire, and she is not the one they need to worry about.

The irony does not escape her. Hours after Jesse's transcontinental flight takes him into the heart of a fire, Rhode Island is blanketed in snow and ice. Mid-December is early for a blizzard, but not unexpected. Molly's team is mobilized because in situations like this, an emergency is practically guaranteed. Toby and Molly have been in constant contact, revisiting what happened in 2013 during Blizzard Nemo. Feet of snow and biting wind are devastating enough, but they inevitably lead to power outages. It is late afternoon, and Molly is stationed in front of the television, watching breaking news reports about the storm, when Jesse calls.

It has only been a day, but his absence feels like a punch. He tells her there is so much devastation, and the air quality is so bad he is masked up. He watched the fire cross the highway, just whipped over the asphalt, three cars ahead of his Uber. Molly says Jesus. ATF took him to the place they think the fire started. She asks if he thinks that is where it started. Unclear. In about three hours, their main suspect is coming in for his polygraph. The man had a vehicle that went off the road. They think he revved his car to get it free, and that ignited an engine fire, but he denies it. Jesse wanted to let her know his cell will be off for a while. He always turns off his devices when he is in the thick of a test so he can focus all his attention on the suspect.

Molly thanks him and tells him there is a bona fide blizzard. They have about four feet already and it is coming down like crazy. Jesse gives a low whistle and says he is glad he is not flying in that. Molly says so is she. Her phone beeps, and she sees Toby's name. She has to go. Jesse says be safe, love you, and she echoes the same. Then she swaps calls. Toby asks if she remembers The Pines in Smithfield. It is a nursing home with a young new director, one who has ninety-eight residents in a facility without a working heat system. The temperature is dropping. Molly turns off the television. She guesses it is easier to get the power restored than to evacuate ninety-eight people. Toby says he called the electric company. They sent a truck, but the road is not plowed and the driver cannot get there. A message was sent to the company that plows, but they have not gotten through. Now he cannot reach the nursing home because phone lines are down. Molly presses her fingers to her temples and asks where he is. Toby is in the EOC, finding beds for ninety-eight residents and running point for everything else. Miguel is next to him, dealing with a ten-car pileup on I-195. They run through the rest of the team, but in a storm of this magnitude, all hands are already on deck. Literally the only member of the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response who is not deployed is Molly. Toby does not have the cell number of the new nursing home director because the file was not updated when his predecessor left. Someone needs to be in contact with him so he knows they are going to take care of his residents.

Molly decides she will go to Smithfield. Toby shouts into the receiver. Absolutely not. Jesse will cut off his balls and serve them to him for dinner. Molly says that is graphic. She puts Toby on speaker so she can pull on a sweater and step into her snow boots. She puts on Jesse's coat, which no longer zips but still covers more of her than her own. She says she will drive slowly. They need eyes on the situation. Toby says do not go out in this. He is not kidding. If you... Molly holds the phone away from her ear, says bad service, and disconnects. Toby is not wrong. The roads are glassy with ice, riddled with drifting snow. But Molly cannot in good faith sit in her living room while ninety-eight elderly people freeze to death. She creeps twenty miles an hour on Route 44. When she turns onto side roads, she is thwarted by fallen trees and downed power lines that snap with sparks. A few times, she seeks an alternate route. Finally, as she approaches the road that leads to the nursing home, she sees the electric company's truck creeping toward her. The driver raises his hand in greeting as she gets out of the car. The snow reaches her knees, even though it is obvious the road has been cleared. A moment later, all the lights in the nursing home blaze to life.

Molly sighs and trudges up the steps to the front door. A man, definitely on the younger side, stands holding a flashlight. She introduces herself as Molly Fitzgerald with the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response. He holds out his free hand. Luther Grenault. He was not expecting personal service. She assumes the power is on again. Luther nods. It turns out the plow company they hired went out of business in July and did not tell anyone. So National Grid came and could not get to the building because of the snow. Molly closes her eyes for a second and counts to ten. This was a simple failure of communication. The reason the plow company did not respond was because they were out of business. Had they known that, they could have sent the National Guard or a neighboring town's plow. She asks if he is good now. He says yeah, except that he needs a new plow company. Molly turns on her heel and walks out, gripping the railing carefully.

She trudges through the snow toward the white lump of her car, unlocks it, and fumbles in the back for an ice scraper. She has just finished clearing the front headlights when a snowplow passes, throwing up a tsunami of slush. She steps quickly out of the way. But somewhere under the snow, there is a curb. Her foot catches it, and before she can stop herself, she falls forward, landing hard on her belly. She scrambles to her hands and knees and uses the car door to leverage herself upright. She is shaking so hard her teeth are chattering.

Chapter 4

The Wedding

Mercedes is a beautiful bride. Ximena and Alejandro walk her halfway down the aisle on the beach near the marina. Alejandro kisses her hand, and Ximena walks her daughter, alone, to the groom. David is calm where Mercedes is impulsive. They complement each other. David reads his vows from his phone. In the ER, he says, they see devastating accidents. But every now and then there is a happy accident that changes your life forever. Mercedes is teary. She pulls a handkerchief from her bodice and says, “That’s more words than I’ve ever heard you say at once. And you had to do it in front of everyone and make me cry?” The crowd laughs. Georgia glances at Ximena and recognizes relief in her glow, the knowledge that her chicks have left the nest successfully.

Molly

When Molly gets married, Georgia won’t be there. Maybe she will see an engagement photo on Instagram, which she has stalked for years. She will not go bridal gown shopping or throw her a shower. She won’t be there to fasten the back of her dress or hear her promise to love someone forever. Adam will walk her down the aisle. Evie will flank her other side. Together they will give her away. Because Georgia gave her away first. Molly rarely posts pictures of herself. Instead there are cute dogs, blurry Providence photos, the occasional fancy dish. So when in June she posts a picture of herself and two girlfriends in graduation gowns, Georgia drinks it in like an oasis. Molly looks like Adie. Her long strawberry-blond hair is in a French braid with a red ribbon, and Georgia’s chest aches. She touches her own short, dyed chestnut bob. Molly is graduating early. Her cap reads: PREVENTION IS THE BEST MEDICINE. NEXT STOP: COLUMBIA U SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH! She is headed back to New York City to study how to prepare for disasters. Georgia hopes she will be better at it than she was.

The Church Website

Georgia learns of her father’s death from the church website. The Church of the Living Word has embraced technology. Reverend Ezekiel Owens was called home to the Lord on May 31, 2017. He was born to Zachary and Martha Owens on March 12, 1946. As a child he loved to hike and fish. He attended Cedarville University, was ordained a Southern Baptist reverend in 1970, received a vision from God to spread the gospel in Alabama, and created the Church of the Living Word. He met Euphemia in 1971, married her two years later, and they were blessed with a child. He held unwavering faith in Jesus. He joins his daughter Adie in Heaven. He is survived by Euphemia. Exodus 23:20 is quoted. Just like that, Georgia is elided from her past. They were blessed with a child. He joins his daughter Adie. There is no record of her.

The Rabbi

Restless, Georgia leaves her apartment into Atlanta heat. She walks past businessmen texting, teens sharing earbuds, kids eating Popsicles. When the heat gets oppressive, she stops in front of a synagogue. Inside it is cool and dark, with wood paneling and Hebrew carvings she cannot read. Unlike a church, she is the only person there. A man in a small knit cap asks if he can help. She apologizes and asks if she should not be there. He tells her to stay, it’s hot out. She says she isn’t Jewish. He whispers, “I am the rabbi.” He says he is a good listener. She blurts that her father died, an Evangelical preacher. He says, “May his memory be a blessing.” She laughs and says it won’t be. He says complicated relationships are difficult. She didn’t know he died months ago. She ran away at seventeen. He asks if she feels guilty. She says if she hadn’t left, she wouldn’t be here today. He says sometimes we sit with discomfort and know God sits next to us. She doubts God, who has been absent when she needed Him. The rabbi suggests the miracle isn’t God showing up but trusting Him when He doesn’t. He notes Genesis says God made man in His own image. Is she infallible? She shakes her head. Perhaps God has flaws too. Keep an open mind. His words stay with her in a way her father’s sermons never did.

Rain and Kai

She doesn’t want to go home. At night she sits in Piedmont Park trying to think of a happy memory of her father. She has none. What surprises her is how little she feels. No pain, no loss, no ache, no relief. You’d think a child would know when a parent dies, but nothing seems different. Does Molly not feel her absence? Is she a footnote? She buries her face in her hands. She doesn’t give a damn about the first person she ran away from, only the second. It starts to pour. She lets the rain soak her, like the tears she cannot cry. She thinks of all the times her father found her lacking, and it seems she proved him right. “Ma’am?” A police officer stands in the moonlight. Bronze skin, dark eyes, no Southern accent. He asks if she’s all right. She says she lost someone. He quivers and asks, “A child?” She realizes he thinks her kid dashed off. She says her father died. He softens. “Let me help you.” She remembers police are busiest on holidays because of loneliness. She can tell he sees her as a charity case.

The Diner

He drives her to a diner. His badge says Yazzie, but his first name is Kai. She drinks hot tea, wrapped in a blanket from his cruiser. He says he finished duty when it started to pour. He hates rain, not much where he comes from: T’iis Nideeshgiizh, Newcomb, New Mexico, if not Diné. Navajo. He kept moving until he got tired. She says she transcribes medical records. He finds it fascinating. She starts to explain but catches herself. It is easy to talk to Kai, but he is a cop. She pulls off the blanket and says she should go home. He tells her to keep it and drives her. He turns up the heat. Without directions, he turns toward her house. At her curb, she thanks him and asks how to say goodbye in Navajo. He says there is no word. Goodbye means gone. They say hágoónee’, I’ll see you again. No one ever really goes away permanently. Something they said or did sticks. She thinks of Molly, the red ribbon, singing “You Are My Sunshine,” and wonders if Molly feels peace hearing it. Kai says yes.

Flowers and a Phone Number

Three days later, Kai rings her doorbell in uniform, holding wilting daisies. She hesitates, and by the time she opens the door, he has left the flowers on the mat and is halfway down the drive. He says he came to make sure she’s all right. She asks what the flowers are for. He says because he didn’t think he’d get lucky enough to find her home. He tips his hat and leaves. The handpicked flowers are wrapped in pink tissue. A card falls out with a phone number and: Sildo bich’i’ hdlne’! She searches the words. Call the police! She laughs. It’s been nearly twenty years since a man brought her flowers, especially a man her fingers ache to draw. She knows what this means and figures it won’t end well. If Edward researching Georgia Gilligan was bad, why date a cop? She throws the card and daisies in the trash, transcribes three records, then fishes the flowers out. She puts them in a vase and retrieves the card. Kai answers on the first ring. “You’re clever,” she says. “Call the police.” “And you’re smart. Not to mention excellent at following directions.” She smiles. “I don’t have a crime to report.” “No? Then I better work harder to steal your heart.” She groans. He says he’s workshopping it. His voice gets smokier. He calls her k’aaldgii. She asks what it means. He says say yes to dinner and find out. This is a terrible idea. “Yes,” she says.

Kai's Contradictions

Kai is a study in contradictions. He loves technology and gets the new iPhone on release day, but burns cedar in his apartment for cleansing. He grew up on a reservation with his mother, who weaves traditional blankets, but dreamed of settling in a city. After being shot by a drug dealer, he had hospital surgery and a medicine man chant a healing ceremony. He straddles two worlds without losing balance, and this draws Georgia in. He kisses like a summer storm, leaving her electrified. Ximena asks on FaceTime how she hasn’t slept with him yet. Georgia knows they are headed there. Her body craves him; her mind says Very Bad Idea. For now they trade pieces of themselves. She sketches him; he tapes it in his locker. He says k’aaldgii means butterfly. She gives the usual story of her past. He tells her about his ex, Deena, who gaslit him, saying she was out with the girls but coming home smelling of aftershave. Honesty is a low bar. Georgia changes the subject.

The Shooting

One day Kai shows up mid-workday in a police T-shirt and sweatpants, drenched in sweat, dried flecks of blood on his arms, eyes dazed and wild. She asks if he’s all right. He doesn’t speak, just holds her so tight she struggles to breathe. He says they got a call about a person shooting inside a house. The mother ran out screaming, said the kid was in his room. Kai and Vernon went inside. Kai was point man. Upstairs, he opened the bedroom door. A kid, maybe thirteen, sat on the bed with a Glock. Kai tried to keep him calm. The kid said, “Good try,” pointed the gun at him, then turned it around, put the barrel in his mouth, and blew off his head. Georgia panics. He says he’s faced guns before, but this was the first time he thought: I don’t want to leave her. He changed out of uniform, gave his statement, drove eighty miles an hour to her. Everything can change on a dime. His words unmoor her. She says, “You don’t have to leave me. Don’t leave me.” She pulls him into the bathroom, undresses him and herself, leads him into the shower, lathers soap and lets water and touch cleanse him. At first they are a feral collision of teeth, lips, nails. They stumble out, slick, fall onto the quilt, leaving damp ghosts. Then his touch gentles. His breath travels her body, his hands never leave her skin. He feels like home, and that scares her to death.

The Butterfly

After, Kai tucks her against his smooth chest. He tells her the Diné have a constellation called the Butterfly, visible in summer. It was carried into the sky and carefully placed first, before Coyote got impatient and threw the rest of the stars at random. Yes, that’s why he calls her k’aaldgii. It’s the first star he looks for at night. When Kai sleeps, Georgia creeps to the kitchen, trying not to panic. Once again a man has fallen for an illusion. A man with tools and training to discover she lied. She logs into Facebook, pulls up Evie’s profile. Evie and Adam are in the Caribbean for their anniversary, sharing a tropical drink with two straws. Love, the caption reads. Georgia blows up the photo until Evie is out of the screen and Adam fills it. Gray at his temples, lines at his eyes. Like a beloved photograph put through the wash, familiar but faded, soft at the edges.

The Confession

The bedroom door opens. Kai wears her silk robe, barely covering his butt, looking ridiculous. She slams the laptop shut. He wraps his arms around her waist. “Mm. What don’t you want me to see?” His voice is easy, sleepy, but her breath catches. “Nothing.” “Just being mysterious, then,” he says, spinning her. “I like solving mysteries.” His hand skates up her ribs, then draws back. “You okay? Your heart’s a jackhammer.” She swallows. “I’m not mysterious. I’m afraid you’re going to find things out that make you not want to be with me.” He jokes about toilet seats. She says it’s not funny. He asks if she’s killed someone. Her mind floods with Evie holding a slick, screaming infant. Eloise, what are you doing? But almost doesn’t count. She shakes her head. He says, “Then we’re good.” She says, “I’m bipolar, Kai. I didn’t tell you sooner because I didn’t want to scare you.” He doesn’t blink. His father died of genetic heart disease at forty. He never thought he’d make it past that age, every year borrowed time. He didn’t tell her because he didn’t want to scare her. She says it’s not the same. He agrees, but says we’ve all got our demons. She says sometimes her demons are real and whispering in her ear. She braves a glance, wondering if he will leave. Instead he cups her cheek. “For as long as I’m around, then,” Kai says, “let me be here to send them away.”