Joe wanted a vacation someplace with snow. Is that okay with you, Allison? Can you see it in my head? Snow, okay? A lot of snow. It's January and it's hot and usually I like that, but right now I don't, and I could really use a vacation, and I don't care if I have to drive for seventeen and a half days, I want some goddamn motherfucking snow.

(God, Joe, it's fine. Snow. I get it. You don't have to swear.)

They almost planned a trip to Canada, a nice drive straight up, but when they approached the kids, Bridge didn't care (snow snow snow snow snowmen!) and Marie didn't care (car trip! caaaars, caaaars, carssssssssss vrooom), and Ariel wanted to go to Maine.

"I thought Ariel would give us the most trouble," Allison says to Joe that night. He takes off his watch and drops it on the dresser before he answers.

"I wouldn't second-guess this blessing too much, hon," he says, and kisses her on the top of the head before disappearing into the bathroom. First he pees, and Allison thinks about how she knows exactly what he sounds like and feels like while peeing, and it always makes her have to pee. Sometimes, during the day, she gets a weird feeling in her bladder, like when she was pregnant, but then it goes away; she is pretty sure that is always just Joe having to pee.

"I just..." she starts. Joe pokes his head out of the bathroom and there's toothpaste ringing his mouth.

"Seriously. Don't jinx us," he says around the toothbrush. He's laughing at her in his head, and she glares at him.

"Joe, I don't know, I get this weird feeling from her, like there's something waiting for her in Maine, and she knows it, and--"

"Is it dangerous?"

"She wants it," finishes Allison helplessly.

"Like she wanted camp?" Joe's mouth is washed off now. He sits next to her and puts his arm around her.

"More." Allison looks at him. Oh, Joe. Her Joe. She brushes his hair out of his eyes and leans into him.

"Well, then it can't be all bad. After all, camp had horses, right?" He grins and ducks when she tries to hit him with a pillow.

**

Allison chews her sandwich and stares at the man across from her. He has a grey beard and intense eyes. He is very very kind, she knows this. She looks down at her hands; they are holding a sandwich. They are pale, with freckles that are only slightly darker than the skin, and a dusting of fine blonde hair. They are a man's hands.

The man speaks to her: I know this isn't the life you would have chosen. But it is the life that has chosen you. And you cannot deny the possibility that some other force is guiding you. Choosing what you will see.

She knows instinctively that he is talking about visions. Visions. Oh, god, how does he know? But he's talking to this man, this man she's in, and as him she says--

Just say his name, Reverend. I know you're dying to.

He's a reverend. He's a minister. Of course he's kind, they usually are.

Destiny, Johnny, says the reverend. It is your destiny to help people. I truly believe that.

Allison believes it too, but whoever she's--whoever this is, he doesn't, because he says, I always thought destiny was a rosier word for fate, and he doesn't believe it.

The reverend is frustrated. Call it whatever you want. Every event in your life has been preparing you for this. Lessons. To make you ready.

God, Allison knows how that feels, wishes--wishes someone would say this to her. Who is this man, this man who doesn't believe in--in what? In helping people. She searches in him, to find something, to find anything, but the only person here is her. She can't feel him, can only listen. She's a rider, she has to ride this out.

Everything glows in a dull, eerie blue light.

Ready for what? asks the man she's riding. And the reverend is so intense, his eyes burning. It's almost creepy.

I will make it my mission in life to help you find out. Then he sits back, readjusts his bulk, and heaves up, uncomfortable. Think it over. Call me when you're ready.

And then he goes to leave, but touches her--the man--on the shoulder, and the world stops. Everything stops. There's a spinning sensation, and cold, so cold, and then--

A cloud of flame, a black column, and more flame. Mushroom clouds and fire, darkness and fire, emptiness and fire, black fire, black fire, the whole world--

**

Allison sits straight up, and before she's even back to herself, she feels Joe's body tick over from sleep to waking up, and he murmurs, "Al?" and she sucks in a deep breath.

"Bad dream," she says, "but it's nothing." And he believes her, he goes back to sleep, because he isn't psychic, and he doesn't know that whatever Ariel is looking for in Maine, it's at the end of the world. And--and she should tell him, but, god, the end of the world, or--or something, and Ariel wants it? Their baby? She wants that?

Explaining this to Joe can--it can wait. Until it's not 2 a.m. Because Allison can feel it, like the blonde man, she can feel that it's coming, but it's not there yet.

When she lays back down, Joe turns over, automatically, and pulls her to him, and even though she doesn't fall back asleep, she spends the next few hours smelling him, and feeling him, and listening in on his puppy dog Joe dreams about her hair and neck and eyes.