We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another. I will be paying my penance—to Lena, for failing her; to her family, for helping her—every day of my life.
I close my eyes and picture the Old Port: the textured streets, the boat slips, the sun breaking loose of the water, and the waves lapping against the wharves.
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
I mentally trace a route from Eastern Prom to the top of Munjoy Hill; I see all of Portland spread vastly below me, glittering in new light.
“Hana?”
I open my eyes. My mother has stepped onto the porch. She holds her thin nightgown close to her body, squinting. Her skin, without makeup, looks almost gray.
“You should probably get into the shower,” she says.
I stand up and follow her into the house.
Lena We’ve moved to the wall. There must be four hundred of us, massed in the trees. Last night, a small task force made the crossing, to prepare last-minute for the full-scale breach today. And earlier this morning, another small group—Colin’s people, hand-selected—got over the fence on the west side of Portland, close to the Crypts, where the wall has not yet been built and security has been compromised by friends, allies, on the inside.
But that was hours ago, and now there is nothing to do but wait for the signal.
The main force will breach the wall at once. Most of Portland’s security will be busy at the labs; I’ve gathered that there is a large event there today. There should only be a limited number of officers to hold us off, although Colin is worried that last night’s breach didn’t go as smoothly as planned. It’s possible that inside the wall, there are more regulators, more guns than we think.
We’ll just have to see.
From where I am crouching in the underbrush, I can occasionally see Pippa, fifty yards off, when she shifts behind the juniper bush she has chosen to conceal her. I wonder if she’s nervous. Pippa has one of the most important roles of all.
She is in charge of one of the bombs. The main force—the chaos at the wall—is meant mostly to enable the bombers, four in total, to slip unnoticed into Portland. Pippa’s end goal is 88 Essex Street, an address I don’t recognize, probably a government building, like the rest of the targets.
The sun inches up into the sky. Ten a.m. Ten thirty a.m. Noon.
Any minute now.
We wait.
Hana
The car’s here.” My mother rests a hand on my shoulder. “Are you ready to go?”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod. The girl in the mirror—blond tendrils of hair pinned and pulled back, eyelashes dark with mascara, skin flawless, lips penciled in—nods as well.
“I’m very proud of you,” my mother says in an undertone. People are bustling in and out of the room—photographers and makeup artists and Debbie, the hairdresser—and I imagine she is embarrassed. My mother has never in her whole life admitted to being proud of me.
“Here.” My mother helps me slip into a soft cotton robe, so my dress—sweeping, long, and fastened at the shoulder with a gold clip in the shape of an eagle, the animal to which Fred is most often compared—will remain spotless during the short drive down to the labs.
A group of journalists is clustered outside the gates, and as I emerge onto the porch, I am startled by the glare from so many lenses turned in my direction, the rapid-fire click-click-click of the shutters. The sun floats in the cloudless sky, a single white eye. It must be just before noon. I’m glad as soon as we make it to the car. The interior is dark, and cool, and I know that no one can see me behind the tinted windows.
“I really don’t believe it.” My mother plays with her bracelets. She’s more excited than I’ve ever seen her. “I really thought this day would never come. Isn’t that silly?”
“Silly,” I echo. As we pull out of the subdivision, I see that the police presence has been redoubled. Half the streets leading downtown have been barricaded, patrolled by regulators, police, and even some men wearing the silver badges of the military guard. By the time I can see the sloped white roofs of the laboratory complex—where Fred and I will be married in one of the largest medical conference rooms, big enough to accommodate a thousand witnesses—the crowd in the streets is so dense, Tony can hardly inch the car along through it.
It seems as though all of Portland has turned out to watch me get married. People reach out and knuckle the hood of the car for good luck. Hands thump against the roof and the windows, making me jump. And police wade through the crowd, moving people aside, trying to clear a space for the car, intoning, “Let ’em through, let ’em through.”