Page 40 of The Sin

“But Jenna is a teacher.”

“Where?”

“The community center.”

“Ah, the community center offers reading and writing, and some basic math,” he explained. “But it’s optional and most parents don’t make their kids attend. There are adult classes for people who show promise as a factory foreman or some other positions that require elementary education, but that’s it.”

“So there are no formally educated people here, like scientists and doctors?” I said in disbelief. “But they do IVF treatments here, right?”

“The Protectorate recruits their qualified staff from Capra.”

“Scientists and doctors are exiled?” I’d never heard of anything like that.

“They volunteer.” Roman hesitated, then added, “There are incentives here for men who haven’t found wives in Capra.”

I processed that. Then it hit me, what was so wrong with some of the scenes I’d witnessed today. The ratios were all wrong.

“There are more women here.” I played that thought through to the end. “I mean, the ratio of women to men, it’s not as unbalanced as in Capra.”

“It’s not,” he confirmed. “The imbalance comes from natural selection. I don’t know all the scientific details, but the IVF treatments here use sperm sorting to pre-select the gender. They can determine the baby’s gender at the point of fertilization.”

“They can actually do that?”

“Apparently.”

“Then why wouldn’t they do it in Capra?”

“The end goal of Capra is to fix nature,” he reminded me. “They try to keep everything as natural as possible there.”

There were so many other questions on the tip of my tongue about the world at large, but for once I was more interested in my little world.

Amelia.

Every time her name came up, we got distracted. As if the universe was sending me a warning.What you don’t know can’t hurt you.Like everything else, that popular saying was a big, fat lie. Amelia stood between me and Roman, whether I knew about her or not.

“Tell me about Amelia.” That came out too direct, too prickly. I sucked on a breath and smoothed my tone. “You were about to, in the apartment.”

Roman sipped on his wine. He wasn’t looking at me, and he didn’t start talking.

“It’s okay,” I relented, and then immediately changed my mind. It wasn’t okay. “You may think it’s none of my business, and maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. You’re in love with another woman, and that puts her right here into this marriage between you and me.”

That got his attention.

“It’s not like that.” He frowned at me. “It’s not what you think.”

“You literally just told me that you’re still in love with her.”

“Not in love,” he growled. “I love her…I don’t know. It was so long ago. I was a boy. I didn’t know the difference, and I don’t know how to judge it from here. I haven’t seen her since I was fifteen years old. But she was my world. My family. My only friend.”

His voice darkened, but this time I recognized that darkness as angry pain.

“She was everything to you,” I murmured, lifting my glass to my lips and sipping.

“I vowed to always be there for her, to keep her safe in this fucked up world, and I couldn’t.”

Tears stung my eyes. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing adequate.

“We grew up together,” Roman said after a brief pause. He dragged a hand through his hair and held it there, looking at me, but I got the feeling he wasn’t really seeing me. “I don’t remember how old I was when Amelia came to the orphanage, but it was young. She was always there. That’s how I remember her.”

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