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“I know. We will. Tonight, we’ll go out in the woods, like we planned, and we’ll destroy it.”

“What if it doesn’t work? What we’re going to do?”

“The only other option would be to give it to them, and as tempting as that is, your dad and grandfather clearly didn’t think they should have it.”

“But it’s different now. The device doesn’t bring people back.”

“That we know of. Maybe we’ve been using it wrong. I know what the note and the journal said, but, El, I’m sure people working on this project now, if that’s who’s coming after it, could reverse-engineer something. I don’t want to be responsible in some way for people who should be dead being brought back to life.”

“I know. I read the journal, too. The risks are too high. We need to destroy it.” Eliza sighed. “Are we ready? Do we have everything?”

“We just need the sun to go down,” Lydia said. “Let’s lie back and take a nap. We have a few hours, and we haven’t slept in days.”

“I don’t think Icouldsleep.”

“I know. We should still try, though.” Lydia moved to lie on the bed but didn’t pull back the thin excuse for a comforter.

Eliza moved to lie her head on her wife’s chest, and she listened to Lydia’s steady heartbeat.

“You don’t regret it, do you?”

“Regret what?” Lydia asked as she ran a hand through Eliza’s hair.

“Marryingme.”

“What?” Lydia asked. “What are you talking about?”

“All of this stuff we’re going through is because of me.”

“No, babe. It’s not because of you. Stuff happened long before you were even born.”

“But I pressed the button. I saw his face and remembered he was at the funeral. They found him because of me.”

“You pressed it accidentally, just like I did, and we finally told each other how we felt after years of not saying it because of that thing. Hell, those kids we want to protect more than anything – we might not even have had them without that device. You were holding on to your dad’s death and your mom’s inability to move on. You could hardly move on yourself. You thought you needed to push me away, that you didn’t deserve me, and that you needed to save me. You were an idiot, by the way.”

Eliza laughed against her wife’s chest before she asked, “Do you really think we wouldn’t have ended up together?”

“Would you have told me how you felt?”

“You could have toldme.”

“You wouldn’t have been ready to hear it,” Lydia said. “I thought about telling you a million times, but I didn’t think you’d want to know that I was still right there, where I was when we were teenagers. I never stopped loving you. And I never will. But you weren’t in a good place, and until you found the guy who had haunted your life, I don’t think you would’ve heard me. Or, if you would have, you would’ve just pushed me further away.”

“You’re probably right,” Eliza agreed. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You haven’t,” Lydia replied. “I have the best life, El. You’re my best friendandmy wife. I’ve known you since I was fifteen years old. I’ve seen you through the good and the bad, and you’ve done the same for me. We had a beautiful wedding. There are also three kids probably driving my mother nuts right now because of our love for each other. Everything we went through has brought us here, and I regret none of it. I want my family to be safe. That’s all I want right now.”

“Me too,” Eliza replied. “God, that’s all I want.”

That Night

“Are you sure?” Eliza asked.

“If they come back, they’ll need proof. I want to have it, just in case.”

“Are we far enough back? The journal said the janitor was in the building, but not how big the building was or how far away from the old device he was when they destroyed it.”

“I don’t think this is an exact science,” Lydia replied. “And we’re a mile away. I don’t think that building was a mile long.”