Page 64 of The Sin

After a while, she pushed out of her chair and crossed to the threshold of the kitchen. She leaned against the doorjamb, her arms folded, staring into the living room…at her baby asleep in the cot, I realized, when she spoke again.

“That’smybaby girl,” she said fiercely. “My boys aremine. I grew them in my womb. I love them with every fiber of my being, and then some.”

I got it.

I really did.

I’d once been totally blasé about the concept of biological families. I’d accepted that my children would never be of my flesh and blood. I would love them, of course I would, just as so many mothers who’d come before me…just as so many women had done throughout history, women who hadn’t been able to conceive even before the plague.

As fiercely as she’d spoken, when Rose turned to me, her eyes were haunted by the loss of that other child, the one she would never have.

Thatwas the same loss I carried in my bones.

Because this was different.

This wasn’t God or Mother Nature at play.

This was the manmade hand of five men sitting around the council table.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and it was a heartfelt apology swelling up in my throat.

I wasn’t apologizing for what Capra had taken from us. But I’d made this decision to not be silent. I’d made the conscious choice to give her all this hurt over something that could not be changed.

I didn’t regret my decision, but I was prepared to own the fallout.

Her gaze swept from me to the living room, and then, when she turned and joined me at the table again, her eyes were still sad, but she was smiling. “It’s happening. It’s finally happening.”

“What’s happening?” I asked, confused.

“The future I promise my daughter every night as I rock her to sleep.”

A thrill shivered my spine. “You mean the rebellion?”

“That, and everything,” she said. “We will rise up and fight for this. My daughterwillhave the choice to harvest her eggs before they rot,ifthey rot. Those girls in The Smoke have a year or two. As you pointed out, it’s entirely possible we’ve progressed way beyond that here in Capra. All the hard work put in by the generations of women before us is paying off. We’re making progress, our bodies are healing. My daughter may well be in the catchment year of the First Couple.”

That was a little too much optimism for me. The rebellion was about as much as I hoped for. It was enough.

“What will we do?” I asked her. “How do we rise up and fight?”

I wasn’t being blood thirsty. Burning Capra to the ground wasn’t the Sisterhood’s style. Our rebellion was always going to be a gentle rebellion, a war of words and reason—in a town where women had no voice and weren’t exactly encouraged to stretch their brains. That, of course, was the challenge.

“Wearen’t going to do anything,” Rose said firmly, her face hardening as she reverted to her usual dismissive manner. “I will pass this up the chain, and meanwhile, you will not share this information with anyone. Is that understood?”

I didn’t nod my agreement, and I certainly didn’t understand. “There’s been too much of that, secrets and silent nothings. That’s how we’ve landed up here. Truth is a powerful weapon. Andthistruth, this truth needs to be whispered along the arteries of this town, from mother to daughter, until there is no place for the lies to hide.”

“That’s how they stamp you out.” Her palm slammed the table. “That’s how the rebellion dies before it even starts. You are young and impatient. But we’ve been waiting for a spark for a long time, and this is it, I can feel it. Don’t ruin it by thinking you know who to trust, by foolishly believing that you can light that fire on your own, and it will dance only to your tune.”

My mouth pulled down at the corners. How arrogant and naïve did she think I was? It wasn’t like I wanted to climb onto the bandstand in the square and kick start a revolution.Whisper.I’d said whisper.

Besides, I’d already told Jessie some of it. And I planned a heart-to-heart with my mom later, and had no intention of cancelling.

“Think of this as a deck of playing cards,” Rose went on. “Right now, we’re holding all the cards. We control the game. But every card you dish out is one less for us, one more that could find its way to our opponents and give them the winning hand.”

She paused a beat, drilling a look into me, as if she could drill her will into mine. “You are a Sister of Capra. We stand together. That’s how we rise, else we all fall.”

I couldn’t decide if she was being dramatic or passionate.

Dramatically passionate?

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