If you knew the world was ending, what would you want your children to know about survival? What would you sacrifice to protect them? What secrets would you want to stay buried?

“Riveting, conversational, and real, A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse feels like a letter from the future, or a missive from that prophetic mother who knew too much, too late, and attempted to give everything she had: love. A warning whose time has come.”   Alison Stine, Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of Dust

Read the first three chapters of  A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse , on sale August 19th below!

OLIVIA

It took longer than it should have for Olivia Clark to recognize that the world as she knew it was going to end—which seemed foolish, since all the signs were there.

The news ticker on the TVs hanging above the hip Beverly Hills bars that she frequented for work lunches, happy hours, and dinners.

On the Today show, which played in the background on the flatscreen TV while her husband, Sam, and their identical triplet daughters, Rosie, Bettie, and Cassie, ate breakfast.

On her cell phone in the late-night hours when she should have been sleeping but couldn’t stop doom-scrolling.

California Faces Year-Round Fire Season.

27 Killed in San Antonio Riverwalk Shooting.

Government Shutdown Reaches Month Four.

17,000 Somali Die of Starvation.

Millions Left in Darkness for Days as New York’s Power Grid Fails.

As alarming as it was, Sam, in his reassuring and annoyingly calm British manner, would remind her to focus on the positive.

“These headlines are designed to frighten you so that you click more, read more, fear more. But, Liv, they’re not real life.” He would wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. “This is real life.”

Even with the challenges, Olivia recognized how wonderful her life was.

Real life was waking up to her alarm at six thirty like she’d been shot out of a cannon, pissed at all the people who insisted that once she became a mom, she would become a morning person.

Real life was slathering on enough concealer and foundation to cover the dark circles that had taken up residence under her eyes in the three years since she’d found out she was having triplets.

Real life was remaking three different breakfasts because Rosie didn’t want yogurt, Bettie’s eggs were too mushy, and Cassie’s waffles weren’t crispy enough.

Real life was wrestling three toddlers into Minnie Mouse dresses, taming three wild manes into ponytails, brushing three sets of teeth, putting on three sets of socks and shoes, and getting out the door for preschool drop-off without forgetting any of their three favorite stuffed animals.

Real life was slogging through forty-five minutes of traffic to her Studio City office, where she spent eight to ten hours reading scripts and meeting with producers, actors, and casting directors to find new and exciting ways to tell stories.

Real life was finally connecting with her husband after a hard day, only to lose her temper ten minutes later because he couldn’t remember where the girls’ pajamas were kept.

Real life was exhausting and messy and all-consuming, and Olivia loved it. She loved it so much that most days, she worried it would all fall apart.

With the help of her well-paid therapist, she attempted to keep her fears at bay, but it seemed like it was getting harder and harder. One night, after the girls went to bed, her younger brother, Lucas, dropped by to say hello and borrow money.

In typical Lucas fashion, he invited himself to dinner, joining her and Sam for takeout from their favorite Indian restaurant. As they dug into platters of tikka masala and saffron rice, Olivia recounted what she’d heard on NPR. “Y’all, it started as a story about wars and pandemics, and then they were saying we needed to give kindergartners bulletproof vests, and then there was another story about parasites in our water systems.”

Sam groaned. “One of these days, I’m taking away all your devices, so you have to live in the moment.”

Lucas, younger by four years and a self-proclaimed Luddite, agreed. “You’ve got a beautiful family, a job that people would kill for, and you’re obsessing over things you have no power to change. You’re such a fatalist, sis,” he said as he refilled his glass of Cabernet.

Olivia resisted the urge to tell him to slow down—it would only make him drink more—and laughed. “Word of the day toilet paper, baby bro?”

“If you spend your life waiting for the bad, it’s gonna come for you eventually.”

Her baby brother’s words would prove prophetic.

Olivia thought she could outrun the bad. She’d done it all her life. After their mother OD’d when she was seventeen and Lucas was thirteen, Olivia worked two jobs for six months until she had enough to buy a car and drive cross-country from Conroe, Texas, to Los Angeles.

She rented a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Mar Vista for the two of them, and six months later, once she’d established residency, she enrolled at Santa Monica College. She took classes by day and served overpriced cocktails on the Sunset Strip by night, all while struggling to raise a teenage boy who wanted nothing to do with her.

Despite the odds, Olivia transferred to UCLA and graduated with a degree in film studies. Thanks to Bruce Miller, a fantastic film professor who took her under his wing and mentored her, Olivia landed a job as an assistant at one of the leading talent agencies. Six months into that job, she was poached by a top producer, and it was there that she met Mel, another assistant who became her best friend and producing partner. They found a script from a talented new female filmmaker and made it on a shoestring budget. A year later, that short won the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. By the time Olivia was thirty-three, she was one of the top film and TV producers in town. Meeting Sam and having her girls came later than she wanted, but she built a life that she loved.

She had to preserve it. Protect it.

But the acceleration of bad news kept coming.

US Airways Jet Explodes over Utah, Killing 190 Souls Onboard.

Rochester Snowstorm Leaves Thousands Dead, Hundreds More Buried Alive.

Voting Poll Raided by Freedom Fighters—Democracy on the Verge of Collapse.

One night after a particularly harrowing week, Olivia drove home from work through soul-crushing traffic, eager for cuddles from her three sweet babes.

Instead, she found chaos. The girls hated her homemade lasagna and demonstrated their displeasure by throwing it on the floor. While Sam was trying to clean it up, Bettie bit Rosie on the bum, and Rosie dropped her favorite penguin figurine, shattering it into a dozen pieces.

Sam and Olivia reacted like most jailers and turned on each other. After a harrowing bath and bedtime routine that lasted an hour but felt like ten, they wrestled the girls into bed and closed the door.

Olivia slipped on her sneakers and shouted, “I’m going for a run.”

She was not a natural runner by any stretch of the imagination, but thirty minutes of short sprints followed by five minutes of walking was enough to help her reset. Out of breath but feeling less off balance, she strolled through the predictably boring Woodland Hills subdivision. As she headed back toward home, she spotted a neighboring home with the garage door wide open. All the homes here had three-car garages, and most families, hers included, used the excess space for storage.

But this neighbor wasn’t just stocking his garage with extra supplies. He was stocking up for something big. There were giant floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods, and another wall of shelves all filled with gallon jugs of water.

On the opposite side of the garage hung a wall of what appeared to be weapons: knives lined up in size from small to hatchet. As she walked, she saw that he wasn’t the only one who had gathered supplies. Olivia counted at least half a dozen homes that had similar setups.

When she returned home, order had been restored and Sam presented her with a cocktail. It made her laugh that this tough bloke from the north of England preferred Aperol spritzes to hard liquor, but she appreciated his lack of pretense. Sam was so unapologetically himself. She took a sip of her cocktail of choice, a margarita, and sighed with exhaustion and relief as she slipped off her sneakers. She curled up on the sofa and leaned into him, ignoring his teasing about how sweaty she was as she recounted what she’d seen. “It was crazy the amount of supplies they’d accumulated. It’s like they were ready for the end of days,” Olivia said.

Sam laughed. “Are you surprised? Don’t you know doomsday preppers are having their moment?”

She laughed, too, but she didn’t find it funny. The more she thought about those fully stocked garages, the more curious she became. When Sam drifted off to sleep that night, Olivia googled “disaster preparedness.”

The amount of information coming at her made Olivia’s head ache. She could almost hear Sam’s teasing voice, “That stuff is bollocks, and you know it.”

She quickly put down her phone and went to sleep. The next night, she pulled up the search again and realized the process wasn’t that difficult. She was, by nature, a problem solver, so she did what she always did when something needed to be done: She made a list.

She wasn’t consumed by it. Not yet. It was little different than all the social media influencers who preached the importance of self-care. If you were willing to sacrifice time daily for your skin-care regimen, why wouldn’t you do the same for your well-being? At least that’s how she explained it to Sam and Mel when the first Amazon packages began to arrive.

Water was crucial, perhaps one of the most important means of survival. Most people didn’t realize how precious water was or how finite. Everyone acted like water was a limitless resource, even when the evidence showed otherwise. Other cities had already suffered from a lack of clean water, like Flint, Michigan, left to fend for itself after their water was poisoned with dangerous levels of lead. Literally, babies, children, women, and older people were drinking poisoned water, and no one cared.

A few years back, Olivia’s assistant talked about how petrochemicals had poisoned the water in his hometown of Corpus Christi. Even though there were orders not to drink or bathe in it, most people ignored the warnings, content to shower in the toxic water. Those were examples in the States. Countless countries had never and would never have clean water. Everyone thought water shortages or toxic water couldn’t happen here, but Olivia wasn’t taking any chances. Water storage and purification became her first mission.

She’d always hated the taste of LA tap water, so she hired a water delivery service when they moved into their new home. Each month, a delivery driver would drop off five-gallon jugs. After a month, she tripled the order.

She purchased bottled water by the case when she went on her monthly Costco runs. Sam initially found it amusing, laughing each week when she made him haul the pallets in, until there was a giant wall of water assembled in the garage. She told him he wouldn’t be laughing if the big earthquake struck and it took weeks or even months for water to be restored. She was about to launch into her monologue about the Turkish earthquake and how little help they received, but Sam cut her off.

“I’d rather not think about it, luv,” he said, an early sign of the disagreements that lay ahead.

Her research made it clear that bottled water wouldn’t be a solid long-term solution, so she purchased bleaching tablets and storage containers for rainwater. She studied purification techniques on YouTube and wrote down the instructions for Sam and the girls in a large binder in case the internet was hacked, they went offline, or something happened to her.

She used Costco to build their food storage as well. Experts recommended enough canned goods for three months, but Olivia had a family of five, six if she counted Lucas, so six months seemed ideal.

She also relied on the dollar store to boost her grocery supply. There was one located next to the Starbucks where she got her daily oat milk latte (the world wasn’t ending yet), and she would pop in and buy twenty dollars’ worth of canned goods at a time.

Other times, she would buy half a dozen boxes of rice, pasta, cake and brownie mixes, sugar, salt, and flour. If the worst happened, they’d at least have dessert. It wasn’t perfect, but if something happened, she could keep her family safe.

At least, that’s what she thought before the great LA blackout changed everything.

Before they had the babies, Sam coached some of the country’s best high school and college golfers, which meant quite a bit of travel. When Olivia went on bed rest during her pregnancy, he stopped traveling. She hadn’t wanted him away when the girls were really little, but one of his top students had a big tournament in Palm Springs. They decided it was the right time for Sam to get back to work.

It was Olivia’s first overnight alone with their daughters, which felt like a big deal. She asked Lucas if he wanted to come over and keep her company, but he said he wasn’t sure since he had a catering gig in Pacific Palisades.

Sam couldn’t hide his amusement. “No way Lucas shows. The last thing he wants to do is be your manny for the weekend.”

Olivia couldn’t deny that. Her brother was the fun uncle but couldn’t be counted on to pick up milk, much less care for three demanding babies. Sam suggested that Olivia hire weekend help. “Don’t be a martyr. Ask Serafina to stay over.”

Olivia adored their nanny, but the poor woman worked fifty hours a week. Besides, it was two days. She told herself it would be fun.

Of course, she hadn’t expected a historic heat wave in November. The temperature reached a record-breaking 105 degrees, nearly maxing out the state’s power grid.

The heat was debilitating. By eight o’clock that morning, the air outside was suffocating, and she knew she’d have to get creative to keep the girls entertained. She loaded them in the car to go to IHOP for pancakes and bacon.

Inside the restaurant, Olivia embraced the stares, listening to people murmur, “They’re triplets,” or “Look at how identical they are,” and she happily accepted the compliments over how well behaved her girls were.

It wasn’t quite eleven o’clock and the temperature had climbed to almost a hundred degrees by the time they left the restaurant. The car-seat buckles were so hot that she had to run the air-conditioning and sit in the car and sing “Wheels on the Bus” for ten minutes before she could strap the girls in. When they returned home, Olivia unloaded everyone, cranked up the air-conditioning, and made blanket forts in the living room, where they played until nap time.

When they woke up, she distracted them from going outside with chocolate pudding and the bubble machine. By the time the sun began to set, it was still ninety-five degrees, but the girls didn’t care. They exploded into the backyard in a toddler frenzy and shouted with joy as Olivia turned on the sprinklers.

Later, she heated up pizza and veggies, and the girls sat on a blanket in the grass in their damp swimsuits and devoured the food, their laughter filling the air. It was one of those memories that Olivia wanted to time-stamp, a moment she wished she could replay instead of the terrible events that followed.

As the sun set, Olivia ushered the girls upstairs and bathed them, put on lotion and pajamas. They read three books, and by the time she turned off the lights, the girls were already dozing off, as though they knew their mother needed an easy night.

An hour later, the rain began to fall. Slow at first, and then in heavy sheets that sounded like jackhammering outside the windows. She poured herself a glass of Cabernet and read two chapters of her favorite romance novel, then put herself to bed, knowing that if the girls were good today, tomorrow could be a disaster.

At three o’clock in the morning, Olivia jolted awake, startled by the overwhelming silence. She was so used to the ever-present white noise coming from the baby monitor that when she didn’t hear it, she knew something was wrong. She reached for her phone but found she had forgotten to plug it in.

She could hear Sam’s scolding voice: “Damnit, Liv, why is it so impossible to keep a phone charged?” She tried to turn on her bedside lamp, but that didn’t work, either.

Shit! The power is out.

Olivia fumbled for her glasses, cursing under her breath when she realized she had no candles or flashlights on her home’s second level. All that planning and preparing for the worst and here she was—literally in the fucking dark with three toddlers.

The girls were just as used to their sound machine as she was, so it was no surprise when she heard the first baby cry. She could tell it was Cassie by the hiccuping sounds she made when upset—sounds that twisted at Olivia’s insides, as though her baby were still connected to her. Unfortunately, Cassie would have to wait. The last thing Olivia wanted was to be fumbling around in the dark with three tiny people crawling over her.

She rushed into the kitchen and searched through the drawers for the matches. This was ridiculous. How did they not have a single matchbook or lighter in the house? She let out a relieved sigh when she located a lone matchbook in the back of the drawer. She lit half a dozen scented candles she found in the living room and placed them high enough so toddler hands couldn’t reach them.

She wanted to go to the garage and look for flashlights, but the chorus of wails and cries for “Mama” was unbearable. She grabbed a box of Goldfish crackers and her iPad, relieved that it still had fifty percent battery life. She prayed that snacks and Daniel Tiger would calm them down and give her time to find more lighting sources.

The first thing she noticed when she rushed into their room was the suffocating stillness. All three babies stood in their cribs, sweat covering their hair, hands raised as they whimpered “Mama” and demanded to be picked up. She went one by one, taking them out and setting them on the carpet. Then she flopped down beside them, fumbling to open the crackers while starting their favorite show.

It took fifteen minutes to calm everyone down, but at last, there was a comfortable silence, and by silence, she meant the musical stylings of an animated tiger.

Her heart rate had settled into a normal rhythm when she heard the sound of glass breaking. Goddamnit, she thought. Why wasn’t Sam here? She closed her eyes, remembering the technician from the security company asking if they wanted reinforced patio doors, because the ones they had were quite easy to break in the event of a robbery.

She’d weighed the cost and thought their overpriced alarm system was enough.

Wrong again, Olivia.

The only way to protect her children was to leave them alone in this room, and doing that would scare the living hell out of them. But there was no other choice. She slowly stood up.

“Stay right here and keep watching Daniel. Mama will be right back.”

The screaming began instantly. Olivia ignored their desperate pleas as she hurried toward the door. Her daughters trailed after her, like three panicked ducklings, but she slammed the door before they could slip out. She was grateful for childproof door covers but wished the door was soundproof so she wouldn’t have to hear their desperate wails.

Trying to tune them out, Olivia inched forward. It was still pitch-black, and she had no light to guide her. She stopped in the hall, eyes wide as she looked for a makeshift weapon.

She spotted the closet and prayed that Sam hadn’t gotten rid of the golf clubs she’d purchased when they were first dating and she was still trying to impress him.

The squeak of the closet door was drowned out by the triplets wailing. Olivia almost cried from relief when she found one of the clubs and pulled it out. She held it tight and inched forward. Halfway to the living room, she spotted a man in her kitchen, a hoodie covering his head as he rifled through the drawers. She took a ragged breath and raised the club.

“Get out! Get out of my house!” Her voice came out part growl, part scream, as though something had possessed her. He turned.

Olivia froze. It wasn’t a man at all. It was a young woman in her early twenties. Eyes wild and desperate, wearing a UCLA hoodie, she stared at Olivia, and then at the golf club clenched in Olivia’s hand.

“What are you doing in my house?” Olivia shouted. “I have children. Small children. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Later, when she replayed the events, she hated that she had mentioned her daughters.

The intruder didn’t blink. There was a giant butcher knife in her hand—one of Olivia’s knives, the one she used to chop veggies. The one she always told the girls, “Never touch this or it could hurt you.”

The girl gripped the handle so tightly, her knuckles were white. “I can’t find work. No one will hire me. I went to college. I studied and worked. I did what I was supposed to and I have nothing. I need… something,” she said, an eerie flatness to her tone.

She moved toward Olivia, who raised the golf club as the girl came at her, a feral dog in attack mode.

“There’s nothing out there! Nothing,” the girl said again, as though the only way she could get Olivia to understand what she was experiencing was for Olivia to suffer.

The girl slammed into her with shocking force, the two of them landing hard on the white tile floor. Olivia’s golf club flew across the room, yet somehow the girl held on to her knife. She lay on top of Olivia, eyes almost translucent with rage.

Olivia’s breath came out in short spurts, her throat tight from screaming. This was her first time being in a fight, and she wondered how she was going to overpower this girl. As the young woman raised the knife, Olivia heard a scream.

She looked over to see Rosie standing a few feet away, dressed in her favorite pink puppy-dog pajamas, tears and snot pouring down her face.

“Mommy!” Rosie screamed. Olivia let out a guttural cry and flung the intruder off her as she kicked her in the stomach. The girl let out a pained cry, and at last her knife clattered to the floor.

Olivia picked it up and scooted backward, holding the knife out in a defensive stance as she tried to keep Rosie away. Her attacker didn’t care about Olivia’s screaming child. She came for her again.

Olivia slashed at her. Once. Twice.

Blood dripped from the girl’s hand. Olivia raised the knife again, the same disembodied sound coming from her: “Get out of my house or I will kill you!”

She would never know whether it was the knife or the tone of voice that made the girl realize Olivia was serious. Thankfully she turned and raced through the broken patio door and disappeared into the darkness.

Olivia studied the blood-splattered floor, trembling, sweat pooling down her back, despite the cold air blowing in from the broken patio door.

Rosie’s uncontrollable wailing pulled Olivia back to the present. She scooped her daughter up and raced back to the nursery. As she stepped inside, Bettie and Cassie launched themselves at her, tears and snot pouring down their heart-shaped faces.

“Mama, Mama, Mama,” they cried in unison, climbing on her and over one another, their desire to be held and comforted so intense, they knocked her onto her butt.

She held them close and whispered into their ears, “It’s okay. Y’all are safe. You’re safe. Mommy’s here. You’re safe.”

But that wasn’t a promise she could keep. That’s what that night proved.

The break-in was the turning point: the moment she realized the world and the people in it could not be trusted.

The moment she acknowledged that people were going to grow more and more desperate and the systems meant to protect them would fail.

The moment she realized that water storage and food prepping weren’t enough. And that no matter what came next, she had to be ready.

Of course, she had no clue what was coming for her.

No clue how much damage joining that damn prepper group and meeting Joey would cause her and her marriage.

There was no way she could know what would happen when Sam discovered how far she’d gone down the prepping rabbit hole, or how she would feel when her best friend betrayed her.

All of that was before the earthquake, floods, and fires.

Before the Collapse.

Before the countless decisions she could not take back.

Despite Olivia’s desperation to hold on to what mattered most, six months later she was dead.

EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER

ROSIE

If there was one thing Rosie hated about being the oldest triplet (one and three minutes, thank you very much), it was being the responsible one. Rosie didn’t like giving orders. She definitely didn’t like spending her Friday night purging the attic of their father’s belongings, but the new owners of the house were set to get the keys in less than a week.

She kicked a box in frustration. She had been her sisters’ keeper their entire lives. Even at five years old, when they went to primary school for the first time, Rosie picked out their clothes and packed their lunches because their father was too emotional and overwhelmed with managing the house.

As they got older, Dad worked nonstop to build their food supply and keep the family safe from the extreme temperature changes. So it fell to Rosie to make sure their school field trip forms were signed, their uniforms were pressed, and they signed up to take their A-levels.

She was the one who put up the Christmas tree and decorations and bought all the presents. She didn’t mind being the one they all relied on, but now that Dad needed them, they were all so bloody useless. Why couldn’t they step up after Dad’s diagnosis? Why did she have to manage it all?

Even now, she was the one responsible for the big decisions. There was simply no way they could afford the upkeep of their home and the adjacent greenhouse, in addition to Sam’s care. Selling was the only option if they wanted to provide him with a comfortable retirement.

It had been over a month since she’d broken the news, inviting them to the local pub for a “sister talk.” Sister talks had begun a decade ago when the girls were ten. After a neighbor kid was swept away during a storm, Dad said it was no longer safe to ride their bikes around the village. The girls decided they needed a strategy session to change his mind and said it was time for a “sister talk.” Despite their best efforts, Dad held fast, but sister talks became a regular occurrence. If you scheduled a sister talk, that meant you had something urgent to discuss, and no one could refuse you, no matter what was going on.

When Rosie arrived at the Bay Horse Tavern for dinner, Bettie and Cassie were waiting, concern etched on their faces. Rosie got right to it. “We have to sell the house. We need the money for Dad’s care.”

Cassie was mid-bite of a chip. She slammed it down, splattering ketchup all over the table. “No bloody way. We’re not selling our home because of a far-off future some country doctor predicted.”

Rosie looked over at Bettie, who chewed her lip nervously, revealing the small scar above it, a remnant from when Cassie dared her to ride through the village forest on her bike and a branch attacked her. “Bettie?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t… I mean, Dad is sick, but he’s fine. But of course, we’ll need money one day,” Bettie said.

“For fuck’s sake,” Rosie said with a groan. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Bettie wouldn’t have a strong opinion, since her entire persona was Don’t rock the boat. This was ridiculous. Dad wasn’t okay. Finding his car keys, his house keys, and his wallet had become a full-time job. Then there was the night he left his truck in town, engine still running, and returned home with no clue as to how he got there. But the onslaught of bad days wore on them all. A few weeks later, Dad grew confused as to why angry clients kept calling to complain. Rosie realized he was delivering groceries to one house, not the ten houses on his route. That was when she insisted Dad stop driving.

It got worse when Dad started to struggle to tell them apart. They were identical triplets, so people mixed them up all the time. Not Dad. He might call them by the wrong name when he was in a hurry, but never because he was confused. Now it happened frequently.

One morning, he came to breakfast, and in between bites of toast, he went quiet, his sun-wrinkled face regarding them with confusion. “I don’t understand. You all look alike… All three of you have… you have the same face.”

Rosie didn’t know what to say. Bettie burst into tears and ran out of the room. Cassie stayed calm, but Rosie could see the pain in her eyes. “We’re identical triplets, Dad. Remember? Isn’t that cool?”

Her words brought Dad back from wherever he disappeared to. He laughed.

“Of course. I’m amazed by my girls. I have been every day for twenty-one years.”

Later that night, after Dad went to bed, Rosie brought up the care home again to her sisters, but Cassie resisted. “After all he’s done for all of us, what kind of arseholes would we be to throw him in a home?”

It irritated her how dramatic Cassie was, but she didn’t want to be the bad guy when it came to something this big. Still, they had to know it was coming.

“There’s going to be a point when we can’t deny it.”

A week later, Sam went for a walk, and no one could find him. With a storm on the way, they called the police. It took another two hours to locate him, lying in agony in the middle of a nearby field. He’d tripped over his walking stick and sprained his ankle. Dehydrated and cranky, Sam had no understanding of why the girls were upset. “I got a bit lost. No need to kick up a fuss.”

They were overdue for a fuss. This time, Rosie didn’t call a sister talk or take a vote. “We’re selling the house and moving Dad into a care home,” she announced.

There were no arguments. Not from Bettie or Cassie.

Dad was another story.

Telling him was the hardest thing she’d ever done; her sisters had insisted they didn’t have it in them. “It’s not safe for you here alone when we’re all at work and school,” Rosie said gently.

She braced for outrage or anger, but to her surprise, Sam gave them a pained smile.

“My loves, the last thing I want is to be a burden. This will be good for all of us.”

They hadn’t realized they would have a version of that terrible conversation half a dozen times.

Some days, he battled them.

Other days, he wept or lashed out and called them names. They told themselves it wasn’t him, it was the disease, but it didn’t make it any easier. Rosie did her best to involve him in the packing process. She wanted him to understand and absorb the reality of leaving the only home he had known for almost two decades.

“Dad, we have to figure out what we can put into storage and what we can sell.”

Sam agreed wholeheartedly when they told him they needed to purge the attic. “I’ll get it done today,” he promised as he shuffled outside to his beloved greenhouse.

Hours later, when he returned, covered in dirt and grime and satisfied as always by physical labor, Rosie would ask if he wanted help with the attic. “Oh no, I’m knackered. Remind me tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came and went. The girls offered to do it themselves, but Sam would snap, “You’re already locking me up like a convict. At least give me the privilege of handling my belongings myself.”

So they waited, and now the clock was ticking. Next week, Rosie and Cassie were moving to a flat near Newcastle University where they would finish their courses.

Bettie was moving in with her partner, Max (God help her). Sam would relocate, not to a prison, but to Sunny Gardens, a lovely care facility.

Realizing that as usual, she would have to take charge, Rosie organized the purge. Bettie and Cassie had promised they’d be here, but she was all alone with a box of bin bags and a bottle of scotch.

She put on a vintage Taylor Swift CD on Granny’s vintage CD player and got to work, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the piles of boxes. She focused on a stack near the back of the attic, a random assortment of old power cords for technology that no longer existed, and moth-eaten baby blankets hand-knitted by Granny.

Rosie grabbed one of the blankets and winced as a giant black binder tumbled out and landed on her foot. She cursed as she picked it up. Gold letters painted on the front of the binder read, FOR MY BABY GIRLS. She froze.

This binder belonged to her mother. She wasn’t sure how she knew this. Rosie had never seen her mother’s handwriting. In fact, she had very little to remember her mum by. She used to ask Dad why that was, and he would grow quiet, a grim, faraway look in his eyes.

“I took what I could carry. My most important cargo,” he would say as he ruffled Rosie’s hair.

She understood the sacrifices Dad made over the years since they left California. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, but there was this deep ache inside her, a longing to know her mum.

Rosie took a deep breath and opened the binder. On the first page was a handwritten letter in the same elegant cursive as the cover.


To Rosie, Bettie, and Cassie, my precious girls.

I owe you an apology, though if you’re reading this, it’s likely too late. The truth is, I knew before you were born that our world was broken but I ignored it, because my desire to be a mom… to be your mom… clouded my judgment. I wanted to believe that my love was enough to keep y’all safe.

But that is not true. Half the country is underwater, the other half is burning. There’s an irreparable fracture in our government that is about more than politics, and the ugliness it’s unearthed terrifies me.

But the growing panic I feel is about what all of that means for your future. I have failed to prepare you for what’s coming. What’s worse is I am unprepared. My entire life I pursued a profession I loved, and though I still believe telling stories is a noble calling, it has made me useless. I have no applicable survival skills (neither does your father), and the people who can fend for themselves are the only ones who will survive.

Late at night, I lie awake, wishing I couldn’t see what was coming. Wishing I didn’t know how bad it would get. Some days I want to go to sleep and not wake up. I want to give up.

But then the sun rises, and I go to your room, and I open your door to see your bright, smiling faces. I hear each of you asking in your sweet, high-pitched bird voices for “Mama hugs” and “Mama kisses,” and I know that I must keep going. For you. For my sweet babies. I want you to be ready. So I must be ready, too.

I am preparing our food, our water, and our supplies, and I’m training myself. None of this comes easy. There are people, including your father, who think I am overreacting. Maybe they’re right and one day they will forgive me for my obsession. If I’m right, I hope I can forgive them for not listening.

I’ve considered the possibility that I might not be there for you one day, and enclosed in this notebook are survival tips you will need. (Your father jokingly calls it “A Mother’s Guide to the Apocalypse.”)

It is a guidebook. It’s all the things I want you to know how to do when there is no Google or internet or anyone who has this knowledge to pass along to you. I tried to be thorough, but I am sure there are things I have missed. Please know that I tried.

Lean on one another. Embrace one another’s strengths, and remember I am always with you… forever and always.

Love, Mama Bear

Rosie read and reread the letter, taking in every line. Her mum loved her so much. It was all there on the page.

She didn’t realize that she was crying until she heard her sisters’ panicked voices.

“Rosie, what is it? What’s wrong?” Bettie asked.

She looked up to see Bettie and Cassie staring back at her, heads tilted in concern. Rosie rarely cried, but tears streamed down her face as she handed Bettie the binder. Cassie stood beside her, the two of them reading quickly, eyes widening in disbelief. Thy were so engrossed, they didn’t notice as an old photograph fluttered to the ground.

Rosie bent down to pick it up. Staring back at her was a five-by-seven photo of her mother. Olivia stood on a red carpet, a banner behind her that read THE ACADEMY AWARDS, the words Getty Images superimposed on the image. Olivia’s jet-black hair was shiny and long, her makeup flawless. She wore a slim-fitting black floor-length gown that showed off her figure.

Beside her was an equally stunning Black woman with long blond braids, wearing a white satin tuxedo, the two of them grinning as though they owned the world.

Rosie knew from a school project that she did in year eight (much to Sam’s dismay) that her mum had been nominated for an Academy Award for producing a short film, along with her partner, Melissa Warren. Rosie studied her mum’s smile, and saw they shared a plump bottom lip and slightly smaller top lip and the same button nose. She wanted to absorb every detail. This was only the fourth photo of her mother Rosie had ever seen.

After the sisters had spent years hounding Granny for any information, she’d secretly presented them with three family photos, insisting they not show them to their father.

“The last thing we want is to upset him. He’s so sensitive when it comes to your mum.”

One of the photos was of Rosie and her sisters wrapped in red Christmas stockings on their first day home from the NICU. Her mum held two of them, her father one, their grins so wide with joy, it radiated from the photo.

The second picture was when they were a year old, the whole family wearing fuzzy matching Christmas jumpers, and the third during Easter, all five of them sporting bunny ears, looking ridiculously happy.

Rosie once asked Dad why they didn’t have family photos. “I wish I could see what Mum looked like, and what our house looked like.”

“We used to have hard copies of everything, and then tablets and computers made it unnecessary. It was all right there in the palm of your hand. Until it wasn’t. It was a reminder that some things are impermanent, and why this way is better.”

Dad was always going on about how much better it was that there were limits on who could access technology. Global safety measures had been put in place to prevent what had happened during the Collapse from ever happening again. Even if the average working-class person could afford to use the internet or to buy those devices for their homes—and most couldn’t—Sam was adamant that they would never own them. “We all learned the hard way that too much information is dangerous. Trust me, the simple life is the best life.”

This photo Rosie now held seemed like a gift from her mother from the afterlife. Rosie turned it over and saw a note scribbled on the back.

Different handwriting. Sharp and sleek, like the woman in the picture.

Sammy, Sam, Sam, I tracked you down. Can you believe how young and beautiful Liv and I were? Every day I think about you and the girls, and I want to know how you’re doing. I’m not sure this letter will find you, but I found your address and with the borders opening up, I’m taking a chance. Life here is different and hard, but Dom and I are alive and that makes us two of the lucky ones. I haven’t given up on finding Olivia. Survivors are being discovered every day. What if she’s out there somewhere? I know things were complicated when it all went down, but we both know how fragile life is and that what we all shared is special. My number is below. Please know that you and the girls are always in my thoughts, and I’ll never give up on finding you or Liv. All my love, Mel.

Rosie stared, her gaze lingering on the date on the note. This was sent three years ago. Three years. She let out a gasp. Cassie put her hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Rosie. This is a lot to take in.”

Bettie clicked her tongue, her trademark signal that she was annoyed. “We should all take a moment and process what we’ve learned.”

Rosie wanted to scream. “Would you two shut up? You’re missing the point.” She held up the photo for them both to see. “It’s Mum. She’s not… I mean, she didn’t…”

Rosie was never at a loss for words, but no words came out. She cleared her throat. “Don’t you get it? Mum might still be alive.”

For once, Rosie’s sisters were stunned into silence, the revelation that life as they knew it would never be the same.