As soon as Heather stepped through the front door, her mother asked her to take a seat in the living room. A bad sign.

At school, she’d read what the news was saying about Larkspur’s demise: Homeroom’s gossip had about summarized it, and by lunch period, the urgency of the event had been smothered. Just a non-radioactive industrial accident, local police said. A little embarrassing, but nothing to worry about.

A hard knot sat in the pit of her stomach as her parents settled down on the adjacent couch.

“I had a meeting with my team and my boss today,” Richard began quietly. “There’s no way to recover anything from the remains of the facility, and we don’t want to kick up any more dust. It’s looking like it would just be better to relocate, instead of trying to rebuild.” He adjusted his broken glasses, and met her gaze. “We’ll be moving operations to the west coast.”

Heather straightened up, indignant. “No way we’re making that move.”

“We’re leaving in a month,” Richard said. “I’m sorry.”

“There have to be other buildings around here that would work,” Heather pleaded.

“The situation is too precarious. Discretion is safer right now.”

“The government can cover for you better if you’re closer to them, you mean,” Heather snapped.

“What?” Richard said. “No—I mean, sure Larkspur is federally funded, but it’s just we already own that other facility. There would be no property hunt, no paperwork, no down payments and fees on top of replacing all our equipment—”

“Oh, yeah, it’s cheaper to just destroy my whole life,” Heather scoffed bitterly. “Didn’t anyone else on your ‘team’ protest? Did you?”

Richard just looked at her, troubled, at a loss for words.

“You just do everything they tell you, then,” Heather said. “Why won’t you tell me what’s really going on?” Her life was here. If they took that, she would have nothing but old secrets and a whole new barrier of alienation to suffocate behind. “Did the Conxence destroy Larkspur?” Her question startled him. “You can tell me. Dad, this isn’t protecting me from anything.” 

“We’re not in danger,” he insisted. “What happened at the lab last night was just an accident. Nothing more.” His tone slowed, as if wanting to make sure she heard and understood every word, 
“My job requires secrecy. That’s why I haven’t been forthcoming. No political conspiracies. Please, believe me.”

Heather glanced aside, glaring at the far arm of the couch.

“I know asking you to give up your life here for something I’ve kept from you is incredibly unfair,” Richard went on. “But this is how things are right now, and I need you to trust us that things will be okay. Maybe things will even change for the better…” 
Heather sank further into the couch, hunching her shoulders, refusing to look at him. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself too.

“We can find a nice house in a quiet area, maybe out in the country,” Su offered, attempting a reassuring smile. “You can choose whatever school you want. What about private school? The west coast has some really great schools, and we know how bored you’ve been this year.”
Heather glanced at her, warily.

Academia she could get behind was tempting. She didn’t have close friends here anyway. But this wasn’t just about moving away. Dunesborough was what she knew. For so long, Heather had ached to be a part of her parents’ world, but they had refused to let her in. They had created this one for her instead. And now, as soon as it was convenient, they were ripping this from her too. 

Her dad looked exhausted, gently kneading his pulled shoulder.

Heather stood up and grabbed her backpack from by the door. She hoisted it over her shoulder as she headed for her room. “If you’re going to leave me out of this, just leave me all the way out of it.”

The night was far too warm. James opened every window in his apartment, intending to spend most of the night under the largest of the four. Glaring at the broken air conditioner on his way through the living room—its revival waiting for a part in the mail—he planted a box fan in the window next to his desk.

Bombarded by its raucous hum, James set to work on his desktop computer sifting through the files on his backup external hard drive. He was relieved to find he’d kept it up to date with data related to their errant generator. He combed through endless lines of code having to do with the project’s regulation systems and failsafes, searching for typos, faulty logic pathways, anything.

He heaved an exasperated sigh, and cradled his head in his hands. They’d tested and re-tested the system’s integrity before building it to scale and employing it to power the facility. It had been functional in the shorter tests in the two weeks leading up to the night it perished.

He could still picture every detail of Larkspur’s last few minutes. Checkup, rise in temperature, malfunctioning screen…

There was nothing wrong with his and Chelo’s program.

The investigation into the accident had turned up nothing helpful, as expected. Nothing salvageable remained. No trace of an explanation. James knew he was alone in thinking it was anything other than an accident.

Trying to convince them any more would only work against him. Sabotage or not, the facility’s destruction was senseless, and they were already going to increase security just in case.

He wasn’t at Larkspur to defend its interests, anyway. He was only there to create, to manufacture progress.

So, James could let it go, he told himself. He had to. He already had a certain reputation for being overzealous about his work, so he might as well keep that from bleeding into straight up neurosis. He was beginning to doubt himself about the generator, anyway. Gut senses could be wrong. He had too many unresolved feelings about losing his work. That was probably corrupting his ability to reason. Immaturity rearing its head yet again.

But, painfully, accepting it also meant accepting his colleagues still wondered if it was his fault.

And considering what Eve and Richard must think of him in that light made James sick to his stomach.

Heather knew this was a peacemaking gesture.

She peered out the car window at the yellow, two-story house and the looming cherry trees. A large white storage pod blocked the driveway at the edge of the verdant yard.

“Are you sure about this?” Heather asked as Richard killed the engine. “This seems like a breach of code to me.”

“Eve and Jida are excited to see you.” Richard opened the driver’s side door.

“Please put the attitude away, Heather,” Su said. “Your dad’s trying to include you, like you asked.”

Heather sighed and got out of the car. “Fine.”

Arms crossed, she followed her parents up the driveway, and past the pod. Helping strangers move two days after final exams ended felt like the most unpleasant version of “being included.” But as they climbed the porch steps, she tried to tell herself she had to take what she could get.

She was meeting one of her dad’s colleagues, so maybe he had taken her feelings seriously.

The door opened to reveal a woman old enough to be her grandmother, with dark brown skin and salt-and-pepper coiled hair. She wore roomie, cuffed jeans and a short-sleeved collared shirt, and her brown eyes smiled from behind square glasses.

“Hello there, Knights!” she greeted. Her warm, husky voice sounded like it came straight from an old radio show. A petite woman wearing roomy overalls and a bright pink shirt appeared in the doorway beside her as Eve extended a hand to Heather's mother. “Nice to see you again, Su.”

Su shook it, and then Eve’s smile rested on Heather. “And you must be Heather! It’s great to meet you in person. I’m Eve, and this is Jida, my wife.”

Heather put on a smile and shook hands. They both had firm handshakes. She tried to imagine her dad working with Eve, building the generator that had exploded, and doing whatever else it was that engineers at secret government labs did. The pair of them were surprisingly warm and sociable, given Eve’s clandestine occupation.

“Thanks for coming over,” Jida said, glancing back into the house. “We can definitely use the extra elbow grease.”

“Our pleasure,” Richard said, as Eve waved them inside.

The jovial camaraderie grated on Heather’s nerves. She had occasionally caught her parents actively stressing over the particulars, but for the most part, it felt like all the adults had tidily moved on, laughing and socializing over helping each other prepare to explode their lives.

Despite her telling them to just continue making all their stupid selfish adult decisions without her, her parents had still showed her houses and tried to get her input, showed her digital brochures for high schools, talked about fun things they could do on the west coast that were less available in her hometown. And though she shut them down most of the time, at the end of another horrible day of studying for final exams while preparing to leave her home, she had crept into the office after her parents went to bed and reopened tabs on the family computer, clicking through high school class lists and images of house interiors, urban skylines, and foggy hills covered in evergreen trees. Of the ocean beaches she had never seen in person.

She hadn’t told anyone at school she was leaving. She didn’t think they’d care. She had tried to text her best friend about it, and while she got an occasional belated text back, her friend’s responses were just a written equivalent of acknowledgement noises. Moving to the west coast was going to be like moving to a different planet, and apparently, none of it mattered to anyone. She felt utterly alone.

Now, with five days between her and their one-way flight to Worthing, she just wanted to get the transition over with.

Heather’s gaze wandered the emptied walls of Eve and Jida’s entryway. They passed a pile of boxes stacked in the living room as Jida headed toward a sunny doorway at the back of the house.

“I’ve been packing up the kitchen,” Jida said, “if Su and Heather would like to help me with that.” She glanced at her spouse. “Did you and Richard want to start hauling furniture to the pod?”

“Yes ma’am,” Eve said. Richard nodded.

Heather wordlessly followed her mom through the city of boxes to the kitchen, pulling the top half of her thick, curly hair back into a tiny puff of ponytail with a hairband around her wrist.

While Heather helped Jida and Su wrap dishes in newspaper, pack them into boxes, and label them, Richard and Eve launched into moving furniture outside. The engineers filtered in and out of the main room with dressers and bookshelves, having jumped to a completely different subject every time Heather saw them from the doorway.

She was taping up a box when they came back in for the eighth time.

“I guess the others are leaving too, in a few days,” Eve said. She and Richard disappeared down the hallway. “Haven’t heard much from James, though.”
Heather strained to hear, trying to keep the tape in her hands as soundless as possible. Her mom was talking with Jida, which made the engineers’ conversation in the other room even more difficult to make out.

“I talked to him yesterday,” Richard said. “He hasn’t started packing yet.”

Eve scoffed. “That so?”

A thump interrupted their conversation.

“Watch that corner—” Eve said.

Heather pushed a box aside and pulled another in front of her, a dull flutter of amusement behind her ribs. At least it sounded like there was one other person in this situation that wasn’t happy to uproot.
She knew she was being uncharitable. She knew her parents would have preferred to stay. But, they had also decided to nuke their lives in favor of her dad’s job. Sometimes, her parents made it sound like she would understand when she was older, but Heather remained convinced that even as an adult, she would not make the same choice.

“So Heather,” Jida spoke up, making Heather jump. “Your mom tells me you just finished the ninth grade?”

Heather nodded, still listening for further mention of James or others, but they weren’t talking much anymore.

“How are you liking high school so far?”

“It’s okay.” Heather took a plate from a stack on the table and wrapped it in newspaper.

She wanted to ask Jida about Larkspur to see if she would offer any more details, but Su was there and might shut it down. And Eve was near her dad. Heather didn’t dare broach the subject with her parents within earshot.

But as she continued packing, an idea took shape. Her dad wouldn’t like it, but if everyone else was trying to make the most of the situation, then maybe she would too.