BEFORE WHAT WOULD BE THE most important day of my life could even begin, I was summoned to the Women’s Room. My mother could have held court anywhere, and I still didn’t understand what made some massive parlor her favorite place to do it. All the same, she had called, and I was coming.
Miss Lucy was there, and so was Aunt May. I didn’t know who let slip the news to her, but I was so thrilled I nearly bolted across the room to her. But then I saw that my beloved aunt was not the reason I’d been called. Miss Marlee was weeping into Mom’s shoulder.
She looked up and zeroed in on me. “If you didn’t want to marry him, fine, but why—WHY—did you banish him? How am I supposed to live without my children?”
“Josie will still be here,” I reminded her gently.
She held up a finger at me. “Don’t get smart. You may be queen, but you are still just a child.”
Mom’s eyes darted between us, unsure what to do: defend a daughter who was old enough to defend herself but her daughter nonetheless, or comfort a friend whose son was leaving her with very little warning—a pain she understood intimately.
“Miss Marlee, you have to let me explain.” I crossed the room, watching her crumple into a chair. “I love Kile. He’s become more precious to me than I ever could have expected. And the truth is, he would have stayed for me. He might have even stayed for you. But did you really want that?”
“Yes!” she insisted, looking up at me with red eyes.
“It almost literally broke my mother’s heart when Ahren left. It broke mine. Does that mean he should have stayed here forever?”
She didn’t answer that. I saw that Mom’s eyes were downcast, and she pursed her lips, like maybe she was only understanding this herself now.
“I know we’re not supposed to talk about the things that make us uncomfortable. Like how your hands ended up covered in scars,” I said, staring Miss Marlee down. “But we need to talk about it. It’s remarkable what you did for love, and I am jealous of and awed by you.”
Her face pulled together, tears spilling again, and I fought to keep myself together. I had too many people counting on me today.
“We all know what you did, and we all know how you were restored, and I understand that you think you are somehow permanently indebted to our family, but you’re not. Miss Marlee, what else do you think we could want from you?”
She still said nothing.
“Ask my mother. She doesn’t want you trapped here. You can go with your son if you want to. You could travel the world as dignitaries if you like. To think that because your life was spared it is no longer yours is a lie. And to pass that burden on to your children? To make a gifted, talented, passionate young man spend his best years cooped up behind these walls? That’s cruel.”
Miss Marlee’s head fell into her hands.
“You could have gone,” Mom whispered to her. “I thought you knew.”
“It didn’t feel like that, not for me. Carter and I would have died years ago if it wasn’t for you and Maxon. I didn’t feel like I could ever not be in the process of thanking you.”
“You befriended me when I was a stranger. You talked me down from walking out of the Selection. You held back my hair when I had morning sickness. Remember, because it always happened in the afternoon?”
They both laughed.
“When I was scared of this job, you told me I could do it. You helped stitch up a bullet wound, for crying out loud.”
I was about to ask about that one but chose to let it go.
Miss Lucy walked over and knelt beside Miss Marlee, taking her hand. “We have a very tangled past, don’t we?” she said. Mom and Miss Marlee smiled. “We’ve made mistakes and kept secrets and done plenty of foolish things along with the good. But look at us. We’re grown women. And look at Eadlyn.”
The three of them did just that.
“Should she be looking at herself twenty years from now bound by every little lapse in judgment? Feeling chained by them?”
I swallowed.
“Should we?” Miss Lucy concluded.
Miss Marlee’s shoulders slumped, and she pulled Mom and Miss Lucy close.
I watched this, feeling a knot in my throat.
A day would come when my mother would no longer be here, when my aunt could no longer visit, and these ladies would move away. But then there would be me and Josie and Neena, with daughters and cousins and friends. We would live together and weave our lives into one another’s and hold on to a sacred sisterhood that only a handful of women ever experienced.
And I was glad that my mom had chosen to come here, across the country, to the home of a stranger, and trusted a girl on a plane and befriended the girl who drew her baths, and that no matter if and when they parted, they would never be separated. Not really.
