The sun was harsh today. Rachel wore a wide-brimmed hat to protect her eyes and face from the dizzying rays. The heat was particularly brutal this summer, and she already had two scares from her youngest daughter, Sarah, who had fainted from heat exhaustion. Sarah was only five, and hadn't seen a doctor in three years. She wasn't well.
But they all fainted from time to time. She couldn't let herself worry about these minor incidents.
She worried more about Leona, her ten year old. Leona had been talking to herself, sometimes even working herself into an argument with some unknown person in her head. Leona remembered life before the world's oil supplies had run dry, leaving them helpless as they watched civilization swiftly collapse. She remembered her father while he was still alive, before he had become an inanimate tombstone in their back yard--a large flat rock shoved into the ground, bearing the epitaph Rachel had carved into it with a hammer and a homemade chisel: "I'll keep them alive."