Page 57 of In Her Own Rite

“Okay,” she says, and gives a small smile. “Be careful. Don’t push too hard. Andtekanni,” she says, turning to Gabe.My son. “You should be very careful with the leg. Don’t do too much. It won’t heal as fast as your other wounds, and you can’t put weight on it for the next few weeks.”

“Yes,Ama,” Gabe says. “You told me.”

“You kids be good,” Dagmar says. “They’ll catch the rebels in a few days, and then you can all come home.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll see you guys soon.” And we hang up.

“Well,” Seb says, leaning back onto the couch as I turn the phone screen off. “I’ll go to the gym in the morning and set it up for your first day. You all can meet me there around nine. Em, make sure you eat at least an hour before so you don’t get sick.”

“Okay,” I say, and I glance at Kieran in the doorway, still not looking at us.

“It’s late. We should get to bed,” Gabe says. “Which rooms are you guys in?”

“Kier’s in the master. I’m in the blue room,” I say.

“You guys aren’t…” Seb asks.Sharing a room, I assume he wants to ask.

“No,” I say firmly. I hope it hurts Kieran to hear it.

“Okay. Then I guess Maren and I can take the room next to you, and Quinn can have the green room. We should set up a bed downstairs for Gabe, so he doesn’t need to use the stairs.”

I nod. “You figure out the pull-out couch, and I’ll go find some clean sheets.”

I stand and brush past Kieran without another word.

That night,when I fall asleep, I slip into memory.

It’s a carousel of greatest hits. My dad shouting at my mom while I cry under the dining room table. Him slamming her into the wall while I watch. Us at my school, when my mom says something to the teacher I see instantly he doesn’t like. The cold realization that he’ll make her pay for it when we get home.

“You can’t be mine,” he says to me through the closet door as I hide on the ground, behind my own clothes, hoping he won’t find me. “Any child of mine wouldn’t be soweak.”

The sound of him shaking the closet door. The smell of my own fear as I try as hard as I can to make myself invisible. And just as he manages to open it—

I sit up in bed with a gasp. I can feel the anxiety in my chest, the rattling in my bones.

I’d always wondered if it was true, what he said. I wondered if maybe I didn’t belong in our family: if maybe there was a mistake at the hospital, and I should be with different parents, with a dad who loved me. Who didn’t see my mom as yet another porcelain thing in our house he could break.

But if I wasn’t his, I wouldn’t be hers either. And, half asleep, too tired to stop it, I think about my mom. Her painting watercolors at the dining room table in the early hours of the morning. The hydrangeas and rhodoras she kept in the front yard; the book of poems by her bed, by the poet she named me for. The old Fakari song she sang to me every time it rained. Whenever it rains, I still think of her.

I wrap my arms around myself, and it’s at that moment that Kieran comes through the bedroom door, groggy and still half-asleep.

“Hey, you’re okay,” he says, approaching me and climbing onto the bed. He wraps an arm around me, but I push him away.

“I’m good,” I say. “I don’t need you. Go back to bed.”

“Em—”

“No. Go,” I say.

The air between us grows soft and sad, and I can scent his hurt in the air. But he’s hurt me too, and I don’t have the energy to protect him from the consequences of his own actions. Without another word, I wrap the blanket around myself, and I listen as he walks out of the room, closing the door behind him.

22

EMERSON

When I wake up the following morning, it’s practically still dark outside, the first traces of sunrise just starting to paint the horizon. I get out of bed and head downstairs, where I find Kieran in the kitchen, making scrambled eggs with vegetables.

“You’re still here,” I say, walking into the kitchen and leaning against the island. “I’m surprised.”

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