Tears rolled down his face and Marla gave in to an overwhelming urge to hug him.
After Harlan went back into Sarah’s room, Marla returned to her seat. She picked up the iPad and set her hands across the keyboard. It was time to post her final blog entry for the day. But her fingers did not move, and she remained stationary for some time.
Everything Phillips said was inarguable; she knew that. This wasn’t merely another story to cover — this was the first chapter in a new life for everyone. The fact that she couldn’t return to her home to retrieve her things was bothersome, but she had never been particularly materialistic. Other people, however, would be much more upset; they would be losing not just possessions but the records of their lives — photographs, carefully preserved schoolwork, countless other mementos gathered over decades. The history of their dreams, desires, victories, and even their failures.
Her own cherished dreams had been of achieving global recognition — and yes, she admitted to herself, a modest measure of fame — in her chosen profession. To do that, one had to establish a distinct identity. This disaster would be hers; going forward, she would be known as the woman who stood in the middle of the worst nuclear accident in American history and not only reported it in real time but also uncovered the corrupt practices that precipitated it. There was a certain dignity, Marla felt, to using the immense power of the media to inform the public of the dangers created by people whose influence outweighed their ethics. She’d always felt great pride about that facet of her work — and on a personal level, the delight that came with exposing the “bad guys” never lost its allure.
Her editor had told her there was already Internet chatter about a possible Pulitzer. Though she felt that was probably a long shot, it seemed likely that she’d earn some of the industry’s lesser accolades, and in anti-nuke circles she was on the fast track to deification. That would lead to more fertile opportunities and greater respect and a much bigger paycheck. All those things were terrific, no doubt. But Harlan Phillips was right—what now?
The answer finally came, as it so often did, from something she’d learned in childhood. Specifically, a little instruction she’d received on a hot summer afternoon while visiting her grandmother in North Carolina.
You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” That has endured because it’s true, Marla. Remember — anyone can sit on the side of the road and cry. But those who keep on going are the ones who make the deepest mark in this world.
Marla Hollis knew what she had to write next. Could see the words in front of her as clearly as if she was reading them. Because she had, earlier in the day.
Reaching into her bag, she took out Corwin’s letter.
EPILOGUE
The gates rattled and squeaked as the guard pulled them back together and replaced the chain and then the padlock. The limo moved away from him in a cloud of dust.
Sarah Redmond, now just two months shy of her sixty-third birthday, sat alone in the vehicle’s backseat. She had not returned to Silver Lake since the night she’d been dragged kicking and screaming down this very road, and she’d sworn she never would. The fact that the place had been federally quarantined, inside an eighteen-mile exclusion zone, until six months ago, had nothing to do with that vow.
Though she’d been forced to abandon the town, she’d never abandoned the residents. Driven by the certainty that Emilio would turn up at any moment — perhaps he’d gone on a rescue call several towns over, or been swept up in one of the western flood zones and forced to seek shelter in Kimson Forest — Sarah had established her headquarters at a Holiday Inn twenty miles away.
The binder-clipped sheaf of printouts she’d been using as a makeshift town directory became her bible, and she had been determined to ensure that every person found a new home and some way of generating income. She oversaw their insurance claims — health, life, and property — which eventually totaled more than a billion dollars. Over time she created a massive database where she tracked huge amounts of information about every person in her care, a file which she backed up regularly and moved from computer to computer as she upgraded, in addition to storing it in the cloud.
Emilio was found seventy-two days after the evacuation, when some bright young government decrypter, who knew that radiation poisoning often caused blurred vision, decoded his final text message to reveal his location. Sarah attended the memorial service — his body could not be displayed due to its ongoing radioactivity — in proper black. Then she disappeared for three weeks without a word to anyone. Many people were certain she would never return, and no one ever found out where she went.
When she came back, she quietly resumed her duties. It would take another year and seven months before every name on the list was crossed off. The day after that, she packed her meager belongings into her car and headed southeast.
She had an undergraduate degree in political science from George Washington University, and she’d always dreamed of returning there to get her master’s. Worth nearly two million dollars after her insurance claims were settled and Emilio’s life insurance paid out, she did just that. If they’d been asked, her classmates would have described her as pleasant but distant, focused on her studies, which also included a variety of environmental courses plus numerous classes at the Institute for Nuclear Studies. Despite earning top grades and honors, she did not attend graduation.
With characteristic thoroughness, she submitted more than a hundred résumés to environmental NGOs with decidedly anti-nuke positions as well as plenty of connections and funding. She received eleven offers within the first month and an additional twenty-one by the middle of the second.
Three years into her new position, she returned to school for her doctorate. Her thesis, “An Argument for the Abandonment of Nuclear Energy,” caused a minor stir in political circles, with some on the left using it as a battle cry while the right denounced it as anticapitalist tripe. When New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand was elected president in 2024, she asked Sarah to head up the Office of Nuclear Energy. Sarah leveraged the president’s emphasis on corporate accountability to ensure that safety violations at nuclear plants garnered the maximum penalties. She defeated legislation that would have paved the way for public subsidization of new nuclear plants even if the plants weren’t supported by voters who lived within close proximity of them. She traveled extensively, studying the energy policies and industries of other nations that were closer to atomic independence than the U.S., and channeled millions of dollars into R & D for safer energies such as wind, solar, and hydro.
At the conclusion of Gillibrand’s presidency, Sarah accepted a teaching position at the University of Virginia, but quickly realized her heart wasn’t in academics and returned to the private sector. One evening about two years later, she received a phone call from Marla Hollis. In the intervening years, Marla had written two bestsellers: Over-Reacting: The Nuclear Industry’s Secret Plans to Build as Many Reactors as Possible (Regardless of Public Health) and Particles of Truth: Everything You Need to Know About Nuclear Power (But the Nuke Industry is Afraid You’ll Ask).
The two women soon joined forces as a powerhouse consulting firm, GreenWave LLC. They and their associates exposed thousands of safety violations as well as backroom efforts by the nuclear lobby to smother attempts to make solar and wind solutions more affordable or to sway government officials through favors, bribes, or outright threats. Sarah’s revolutionary idea for a reactor built deep underground so as to greatly reduce the incidence of fallout in the event of a breach gained so much traction that some aging plants adopted it rather than risk being decommissioned.