Swirling thoughts mingled with exhaustion. There are still a couple of hours left on my guard shift, so I might as well make the best of it and try to write everything down.

We're all worn down beyond belief. Despite my best efforts, my feet are a mess of weeping blisters. At least I had the sense to ensure everyone brought along every single item we could muster to cover up from the sun, because my supply of zinc cream is dwindling even though I've rationed it to the tiniest slivers of exposed skin. If only I'd also had the sense to get in shape long before now...

Johnson and Judah are old soldiers. The most complaint I've heard from them was a muttered joke about Daisy having the right idea, but it's clear they're suffering too. I feel a renewed appreciation for all the determination and sacrifice that carried me out of Navarro when I was a boy.

Veronica and Ignacio are often in their own world. I've overheard her peppering him with questions about life as a Follower more than a few times now. As for me, I'm the coward who avoids them. What do I say to Ignacio? How can I bridge the gap between the fact that I once abandoned him and the fact that he walked away from everything to be here? How do I even begin to understand the longing I feel when I imagine that some part of it was faith in me? As for Veronica, my heart breaks for her. All her idealism, all her devotion, to an organization that would want no part of her now.

Melody and Nicole are already joined at the hip, though I haven't missed Nicole's gentle efforts to include me in ways that won't scare her. Rationally, I understand that Melody needs Nicole right now and that she might never really want anything to do with me. I like to believe I'm a rational person. I don't believe in fate. Yet I look at her and... there it is. She's taking this better than any of us, and I loathe that I know why.

Where do I even start with Ruth? I knew some of her story before now, of course. But we've had nothing but time and space out here, and maybe she can sense how much I yearn to understand.

I knew about what little is left of the New Canaanites, the tribes, and the man who brought about their downfall finding redemption from them all the same. It seems impossible. The things he's done... yet she speaks of him with plain affection.

As we've walked, she told me about the Divide, that Joshua's the reason she survived realizing what she'd done. Not even the wildest rumors could have prepared me for the reality of who she had been before her grave in Goodsprings.

It doesn't even make sense. How could the NCR have been so ignorant in handing her that package from Navarro and directing her to deliver it to the one place it could unleash horrors? Could it have been... why do I hesitate to write this, even now? I'm no stranger to my father's atrocities anymore. Suffice it to say, it would be entirely in character and fitting with the mission for the Enclave to have had an unseen hand in ensuring that package reached the Divide.

I tried to reason with her that maybe she hadn't done it, maybe she hadn't known what she was carrying, although my words rang hollow to my own ears. If I hadn't been certain that she was well on her way to full conversion to Joshua's faith, I am now. She recited doctrine in response, looked at me with this expression that makes me feel like I'm missing something critical. The rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow; for their iniquities shall be spoken upon the housetops, and their secret acts shall be revealed. Told me that people lived in the Divide. Families. A community that prospered, that governed itself. If they were fortunate, they met a brutal end. If they weren't, they remain in torment. That their stories deserve to be told.

Decades later, I can barely grapple with my father's evil, much less my jumbled feelings about it. Yet here she is, refusing to look away from the worst within herself.

There's something else that's scratching at the back of my mind, thinking about that package. The ration bars from the bunker. There's no date stamp, but I found a torn and faded fragment of a sticker on one. It could be the end of a date, it could be nothing. 269. I haven't said anything. I want to protect Johnson and Judah from the possibility that they were passed over yet again. I checked every single bar we brought with us after that, nothing.

Lastly… Daisy. Words fail me. It's all I can do not to choke up when I think about where we left her. No headstone, no grave marker, no funeral, no eulogy. She is alone. It feels so insufficient.

In every sense of the word, I yearn for rest. Ruth says she expects we'll reach the Virgin River tomorrow, although she doesn't know how far up the river we might have to wander to find them. There's worry etched on her face that I don't even want to think about.