Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [929]

I let out a breath and drew another through my mouth because I could get more air with less sound that way. I couldn’t go back to the fires and the pain. If Cory and the boys were there, they were dead or worse, captive. But they had been ahead of me. They must have gotten out. Cory wouldn’t let them come back to look for me. There was a bright glow in the air over what had been our neighborhood. If she had gotten the boys away, all she had to do was look back to know that she didn’t want to go back. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 929

Note

The paragraph’s engine is the sentence ‘They must have gotten out’ — an inference the narrator needs to believe rather than one the evidence supports, and the reader can feel the strain in it. The final move, converting the burning neighborhood into an argument for why Cory would stay away, is cold consolation delivered as a proof.