They heal us of things we're carrying. She literally just told him about the virus and logically she knows that's what he means but it's not where her thoughts are, so for a moment it's not what she hears and she actually flinches ever so slightly and a muscle in her jaw tenses so hard her teeth grind together.

She jumps on the question to move past it, definitive: "Yes and no. He's not from one of the communities I know. His group stays out on the road." It would be all she had to say to anyone from her world - all Jesus had to say to her - but she grasps after how to explain it. "We have an alliance here. If anyone he has a closer alliance to turns up, or if we all go back home, that's over. We all know it."

It's a precarious kind of trust, but one that's entirely doable even to wary, standoffish Rosita Espinosa. She understands the ways in which Carver has lost his grip, mostly, and why. She can work with that.