“You turned out even more beautiful than I’d imagined,” she whispers. She, too, is crying.
The hard casement inside me breaks.
“Why?” is the only word that comes. Without intending to or even thinking about it, I allow her to draw me against her chest, let her wrap her arms around me. I cry into the space between her collarbones, inhaling the still-familiar smell of her skin.
There are so many things I need to ask her: What happened to you in the Crypts? How could you let them take you away? Where did you go? But all I can say is: “Why didn’t you come for me? After all those years—all that time—why didn’t you come?” Then I can’t speak at all; my sobs become shudders.
“Shh.” She presses her lips to my forehead, strokes my hair, just like she used to when I was a child. I am a baby once again in her arms—helpless and needy. “I’m here now.”
She rubs my back while I cry. Slowly, I feel the darkness drain out of me, as though pulled away by the motion of her hand. Finally I can breathe again. My eyes are burning, and my throat feels raw and sore. I draw away from her, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand, not even caring that my nose is running. I’m suddenly exhausted—too tired to be hurt, too tired to be angry. I want to sleep, and sleep.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” my mother says. “I thought of you every day—you and Rachel.”
“Rachel was cured,” I say. The exhaustion is a heaviness; it blankets out every feeling. “She got paired and she left. And you let me think you were dead. I’d still think you were dead if—” If it weren’t for Alex, I think, but don’t say. Of course my mother doesn’t know the story of Alex. She knows none of my stories.
My mother looks away. For a second I think she will begin to cry again. But she doesn’t. “When I was in that place away, thinking of you—my two beautiful girls—was the only thing that kept me going. It was the only thing that kept me sane.” Her voice holds an edge, an undercurrent of anger, and I think of visiting the Crypts with Alex: the stifling darkness and echoing, inhuman cries; the smell of Ward Six, the cells like cages.
I persist, stubbornly: “It was hard for me, too. I had no one. And you could have come for me after you escaped. You could have told me…” My voice breaks, and I swallow. “After you found me at Salvage—we were touching, you could have shown me your face, you could have said something….”
“Lena.” My mom reaches out to touch my face again, but this time she sees me stiffen, and she drops her hand with a sigh. “Did you ever read the Book of Lamentations? Did you read about Mary Magdalene and Joseph? Did you ever wonder why I named you what I did?”
“I read it.” I read the Book of Lamentations at least a dozen times at least; it is the chapter of The Book of Shhh I know the best. I looked for clues, for secret signs from my mother, for whispers from the dead.
The Book of Lamentations is a story of love. More than that: It’s a story of sacrifice.
“I just wanted you to be safe,” my mother says. “Do you understand that? Safe, and happy. Anything I could do…even if it meant I couldn’t be with you…”
Her voice gets thick and I have to look away from her, to stop the grief from welling up once again. My mother aged in a small square room with only a bit of eked-out hope, words scratched on the walls day by day, to keep her going.
“If I hadn’t believed, if I hadn’t been able to trust that…There were many times I thought about…” She trails off.
There’s no need for her to finish her sentence. I understand what she means: There were times she wanted to die.
I remember I used to imagine her sometimes standing on the edge of a cliff, coat billowing behind her. I would see her. For one second, she would always remain suspended in the air, hovering, like a vision of an angel. But always, even in my head, the cliff disappeared, and I would see her falling. I wonder if, in some way, she was reaching out to me through the echoes of space on those nights—whether I could sense her.
For a while we let silence stretch between us. I dry the moisture from my face with my sleeve. Then I stand up. She stands with me. I’m amazed, as I was when I realized that she had been the one to rescue me from Salvage, that we are roughly the same height.
“So what now?” I say. “Are you taking off again?”
“I’ll go where the resistance needs me,” she says.
I look away from her. “So you are leaving,” I say, feeling a dull weight settle in my stomach. Of course. That’s what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: They leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.