Cameron says:

Dad was silent and tense as he drove the family out west. He turned the radio off as my sister and I held each other’s hands fearfully.

It seemed like forever but dad brought us to a side road out in nowhere. He got us into the cabin quickly.

Mom looked around in shock and the food and ammunition stores kept there. “Sweetheart…this-”

“This was what I was spending our money on. I’m sorry to have kept it a secret but it was necessary.”

We stayed for a few months. Mom forgave him for buying the cabin without telling her.

Leigh Kimmel says:

Elaine looked over the shelves full of food, matching the containers to the line items on the inventory. It ranged from staples like flour and sugar to jars of imported preserves made from Siberian berries that didn’t even have English names, just the local Russian and indigenous names and their scientific names. But all of them were important to the maintenance of Sparta Point, both as her family’s home and a base of fighters for the Sharp Resistance.

Now down to the wine cellar. Some of them were ordinary Napa Valley wines, familiar labels she remembered from her time with the Alandales in Santa Clara. But there were plenty of Georgian wines from Kakheti — and because Spartan could never resist the joke, three bottles of peach wine from a winery outside Atlanta.

She still needed to check the storage room where household supplies were kept. Had it been just yesterday that they’d left Las Vegas after their wedding? Spartan had wasted no time in sitting her down beside him in his office and introducing her to her duties as lady of the house, Gorgo to his Leonidas.

Everything had seemed so much simpler when she’d just been helping Tamara the housekeeper, trying to make herself useful for what she thought would be a brief retreat until the feebs’ interest in her died down. But now this was her home, her future.

And soon enough, our children’s.