Francis glanced at Mary, but she could not respond. It was as if she were frozen in place.

“Everyone starts with half a piece,” Francis decided. Then he warned, “And anyone who gets grabby gets nothing.”

“Mary, there’s enough for you and your workers to have some, too,” Quinn said.

Mary nodded. She couldn’t. Not for herself. For the others, yes. Of course.

“You okay?” Quinn asked her.

Mary gritted her teeth and forced a shaky smile. “Of course. Thanks for bringing this. The children haven’t had . . . they need the protein . . . they . . .”

“Okay,” Quinn said, obviously nonplussed.

“Save some for the babies,” Mary urged Francis. “We’ll purée it in the blender.”

The sounds of gobbling filled the room. Many of these kids probably hated fish. Back in the old days. Even two weeks ago they would have turned up their noses. But now? No one would turn away protein. They felt the need way down inside. Their bodies were ordering them to eat.

But Mary’s body was ordering her not to.

It would be a sin, she told herself. A sin to consume the fish only to vomit it back up later. She couldn’t do that to the littles.

Mary knew there was something wrong with the way she was behaving. She was surrounded by hunger that kids couldn’t avoid, and she alone was the cause of her own hunger. A warning sounded, but distant, barely audible. Like someone shouting to her from two blocks away.

“Come on, Mary, you have to try this,” Francis urged. “It’s amazing.”

Unable to manage a reply, Mary turned away, silent, and headed for the bathroom pursued by the slavering sounds of hungry children.

THIRTEEN

45 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

SAM KNOCKED AT the front door. He didn’t usually do that. Astrid had told him many times he could just walk in.

But he knocked, anyway.

It took her a while to answer.

She must have just come from the shower. Astrid worked out after dinner, when Little Pete usually liked to watch DVDs. Her blond hair was plastered down her neck, strands of it swooping down across one eye to give her a vaguely piratical look. She was wearing a bathrobe and carrying a towel.

“So. You came crawling back, eh?” Astrid said.

“Would it help if I were on hands and knees?” Sam asked.

Astrid considered that for a moment. “No, the abject look is enough.”

“I didn’t see you all day.”

“It would have been surprising if you had. I wasn’t interested in being seen.”

“Can I come in?”

“Are you asking if you may come in? ‘Can’ is meant to suggest ability. ‘May’ is proper when the question is one of permission.”

Sam smiled. “You know you just get me hot when you do that.”

“Oh? Then maybe I should go on to point out that both ‘can’ and ‘may’ are considered ‘modal verbs.’ There are nine modal verbs. Would you like me to tell you what they are?”

“You’d better not,” he said. “I can’t take too much excitement.”

Sam put his arm around her, drew her close, and kissed her on her lips.

“Wimp,” she teased when he drew back. “Well, come on in. I have some delicious canned okra, a burned homemade graham-flour tortilla, and half a head of Orc’s cabbage left over from dinner if you’re hungry. If you wrap the tortilla around some shredded cabbage and a bit of okra and microwave it for thirty seconds you have something really disgusting but kind of healthy.”

Sam stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Little Pete was camped out in front of the TV watching a DVD of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jim Carrey, completely obscured by makeup, was rubbing his hands gleefully.

“It was one of his Christmas presents,” Astrid explained.

“I remember,” Sam said.

Christmas had not been a great time for anyone. Christmas without parents. Without older siblings. Or grandparents. Without all the weird relatives you saw only at holiday time.

Astrid’s parents had an artificial tree that Sam had found in the attic and hauled downstairs to set up. It was still set up, although they’d taken the ornaments off and put them back in boxes.

Everyone had done what they could. Albert had put on a feast, though nothing to rival his great Thanksgiving production. By Christmas there were no pies to be had, no cookies, and fresh fruit or vegetables were all in the half-forgotten past.

“We can’t fight over . . . you know . . . politics,” Sam said.

“You mean you want me to just agree with you on everything?” Astrid asked, her voice signaling readiness to start it all over again.

“No. I want you to tell me what you think. I need you,” Sam admitted. “But that’s kind of the point: I need you. So when we disagree, we can’t get mad at each other. As people, you know?”

Astrid seemed ready to argue. Instead she exhaled a long, weary breath. “No, you’re right. We have enough to deal with.”

“Cool,” he said.

“Did you get any sleep last night? You look tired.”

“I guess I am,” he said. “Long day. Hey, did you know Quinn is fishing? He caught something big this morning.”

“I didn’t know. That’s good.” She looked troubled. “We should have thought of that. Fishing, I mean.”

“We’re not going to think of everything, I guess,” Sam said wearily. That was the problem with having one person in charge. People expected you to come up with all the answers. They stopped coming up with answers for themselves. Quinn had opened up a new possibility all by himself. And now he was turning to Albert for help, not to Sam.