“You know the Crossing as a simple matter of sailing across the ocean,” Tear murmured. “But it was more complex than that. I have to be on the ship.”
Katie didn’t understand this, but she thought it explained at least one thing: why, in the large, illustrated atlas in the library, she had never been able to find the new world, the Town. From all she understood, the new world should have been right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but there was nothing there, only tiny archipelagos. None of the adults would talk about it, and Katie knew now that she’d been right: the Crossing was a secret, deliberately kept.
“A long time ago,” Tear continued, “I made a great mistake, an error of judgment. I didn’t even know how large it was at the time.”
“What error?”
“We put all the medical staff on the same ship,” Tear replied. The pallor that Katie had noticed earlier had deepened now, and his face looked ghastly, almost skeletal, in the candlelight. “I assumed that all of the danger would come before the Crossing, not after. When the storm hit us, I knew. I knew. But it was too late. We all watched the White Ship go down. I couldn’t save them.”
Katie nodded. Everyone knew about the White Ship.
“Now the Town suffers for my mistake.”
“We’re not suffering!” Katie protested. All her life, Mrs. Johnson had taken care of her, through illness and injury, and she had done fine. People died of illness sometimes, but they were usually old. The Town’s population had doubled since the Landing.
“We suffer,” Tear repeated, and Katie wondered if he had even heard her. His hand gripped the tablecloth, twisting it. “I failed, and my mistake has come back to haunt me.”
“What do you mean?” Katie demanded. Normally, she would not have dared to demand answers of William Tear, but in this moment he seemed almost like a child in a daydream. If he had been anyone else, she would have slapped him to snap him out of it.
“Lily’s pregnant.”
Katie stared at him, startled. She had always thought of Jonathan’s mum as young, but she had to be at least forty, maybe more. That was old to have a baby, but not impossible. Many women in town had done it.
“Nyssa says she’s three months along,” Tear continued. “She’s healthy right now, but it’s going to be a difficult birth, and dangerous.” He swallowed. “She may not survive it, either way. But she’ll have a better chance if we have an obstetrician.”
Katie narrowed her eyes. The Town didn’t need a doctor; Lily needed a doctor, and now William Tear—the same William Tear who had always told them to think of community before themselves—was going to charge off in search of one, leaving the Town behind.
Selfish, she thought, watching him narrowly. And do you know it? Are you lying to me, or to yourself?
Tear didn’t answer, but Katie thought that some of what she’d been thinking must have gone through, because he dropped his gaze.
“I see what you’re thinking,” he told her. “You think this is about me.”
Katie wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t bring herself to go so far.
“You don’t understand, Katie. The White Ship has been with me for almost twenty years. You’re young, but smart enough, I think, to understand the need to right a wrong.”
Katie didn’t, but strangely, in that moment, her anger faded. It was no small thing, to see an idol teetering, but Tear’s lessons were still true, and no one had the right to judge the pain of another. Katie had learned that long before she ever stepped foot in Tear’s classroom.
He doesn’t need to be perfect, she decided suddenly. The idea is perfect, and the idea is bigger than the man.
“Don’t go,” she begged for the last time. “Not now, not when the Town is so weak.”
“I have to go.”
“The religious people . . . they’re getting worse—”
“I know that.”
“Why don’t you stop them, then?” she blurted. “Why don’t you make them stop?”
“Then I would be a dictator, Katie. I can discourage, but no more.”
Katie paused, furious. Her first thought was that the Town needed a dictator, needed someone to step in and stop the bad behavior . . . but that was Row’s voice again. She swallowed the words, looking down at her lap.
“When will you leave?”
“Next month,” Tear replied. “As soon as the harvest is finished.”
“Alone?”
“No. Madeleine will come with me. I’m leaving your mother in charge.”
“Then let me come too.”
“No. You need to stay here. Stay here and protect Jonathan.”
Katie frowned. She didn’t like to think of Jonathan in danger, but the idea of many people protecting only one, or even two, seemed to go against the very grain of the Town.
“You pick your own people,” Tear told her. “Anyone in our classes. I would say five or six at most; any more will be unwieldy.”
“When do we start?”
“When I leave.”
“What about the people who don’t make the cut? How do we keep it a secret?”