Page 4 of The Flame

Maybe she wasn’t wrong, butthischange flowed through my veins. I was the spark of this change. I was the flame. And while I did not approve of all of Geneva’s methods and decisions, I found I wasn’t ready to give up on the Sisterhood.

I was borrowing from Roman’s philosophy.The system is bigger than the individual.

I still fully believed in the cause, and I’d work within the system to right any wrongs I came across—starting with the incarceration of Daniel and the heirs.

Jessie and I drank our coffee in silence. The ice between us had thawed, but she hadn’t totally forgiven me.

I’m not sure she ever would, but I would keep trying. “If you or Harry have any trouble, you know you can come to me, right?”

“Do I?” Jessie shook her head slowly, side-to-side. “We were supposed to be best friends, Georga.”

“Wearebest friends.”

“How can we be, when it feels like I barely know you?”

“You know me.” The hurt was a physical pain in my chest. “The secrets I’ve had to keep don’t make me who I am.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” She put her mug down and stood. “But it’s like you’ve had this second life and alternative personality all this time.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

She cocked her head, studying me. “There are many things we don’t get a choice in. This isn’t one of them. You chose this.”

“You honestly think it was a choice?” I said to her. “You and Harry are happy. You are the lucky ones. What about Carolyn? She’s married to a man she will never love, a man she feels nothing for. Do you remember that woman we tried to help a while back?”

Jessie’s face was blank.

She didn’t remember.

I did. “Her name was Beth. Her husband was cruel. He abused her physically, mentally and emotionally. He made her feel worthless, less than human because she’d miscarried their baby. He treated her worse than a wild animal.”

“That woman who was made to stand outside the Blue Fish in the cold while her husband was inside drinking?” Jessie said, finally remembering.

I nodded. “When she tried to get help, the Guard didn’t believe her word against her husband. She had no voice and no one to turn to for help. How many other women are in the same situation? You and I, we’re both the lucky ones.”

My voice developed a tremor, but I swallowed and hardened it to steel. “So don’t tell me I had a choice.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Jessie looked at me without anger or any sharp edges, but with a kind of hopelessness—a sadness. “I’ve been living in my little bubble, happy and content and safe. My small, little life, while you’ve been risking rehab and Heaven knows what else to charge ahead, making our world a better place.”

I pushed to my feet. “Jessie.”

“No.” She walked around the table. “You’re the better person here, Georga. When I look at you, that’s what I see. And it’s great. It really is. That doesn’t change the fact that when I look at you, I see this stranger, someone I don’t really know. I don’t see my best friend…because you never let me see her before.”

With that, Jessie walked out. I wanted to run after her. I wanted to beg and plead. I’d already lost Brenda. I couldn’t lose Jessie, too.

But I didn’t.

I sank back into my chair and sat there, blinking away tears.

Jessie was right.

And so was I.

I hadn’t had a choice. That’s how the Sisters of Capra operated, in secrecy, in a total blackout.

And if I had to do it all over?

That’s exactly what Roman had asked, when my truths had unknowingly been used to fuel the uprising.If you had known, would you have any regrets?

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