“Of course,” she says, and I fol ow her into her bedroom. The framed bit of fabric sits on a little shelf inside the closet she shares with my father, along with two silver boxes—hers and Papa’s—that held their microcards and, later, the rings for their Contract. The rings are purely ceremonial, of course—they don’t get to keep them—and they give the microcards back to the Officials at the Contract celebration. So my parents’ silver boxes are empty.
I pick up her dress fragment and hold it up. My mother’s gown was blue and thanks to preservation techniques, the satin is stil bright and lovely in its frame.
I put it next to mine along the windowsil . Together, side by side, I imagine that they look a little like a stained-glass window. The light behind them brightens them, and I can almost imagine that I could look through the colors and see a world made beautiful and different.
My mother understands. “Yes,” she says. “I imagine the windows looked something like that.” I want to tel her everything but I can’t. Not now. I am too fragile. I am trapped in glass and I want to break out and breathe deep but I’m too afraid that it wil hurt.
My mother puts her arm around me. “Can you tel me what’s wrong?” she asks gently. “Is it something to do with your Match?” I reach for my dress fragment and take it down from the window so my mother’s sits up there alone. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I shake my head. How can I explain to my perfectly Matched mother everything that has happened? Everything I’ve risked? How can I explain to her that I’d do it again? How can I tel her that I hate the system that created her life, her love, her family? That created me?
Instead, I ask, “How did you know?”
She reaches for her frame and takes it down, too. “At first, I could see that you were fal ing deeper and deeper in love, but I didn’t worry about it because I thought your Match was perfect for you. Xander is wonderful. And you might be able to stay in Oria, nearby, since both of your families live here. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine a better scenario.”
She pauses, looking at me. “And then I was so busy with work. It took until today for me to realize that I was wrong. You weren’t thinking of Xander.”
Don’t say it, I beg her with my eyes. Don’t say that you know I’m in love with someone else. Please.
“Cassia,” she tel s me, and the love in her eyes for me is pure and true and that’s what makes her next words cut deep, because I know she has my best interests at heart. “I’m married to someone wonderful. I have two beautiful children and a job I love. It’s a good life.” She holds out the piece of blue satin. “Do you know what would happen if I broke this glass?”
I nod. “The cloth would disintegrate. It would be ruined.”
“Yes,” she says, and then it’s almost as if she’s speaking to herself. “It would be ruined. Everything would be ruined.” Then she puts her hand on my arm. “Do you remember what I said the day they cut the trees down?” Of course I do. “About how it was a warning for you?”
“Yes.” She flushes. “That wasn’t true. I was so worried that I wasn’t acting rational y. Of course it wasn’t a warning for me. It wasn’t a warning for anyone. The trees simply needed to come down.”
I hear in her voice how badly she wants to believe that what she says is true, how she almost does believe it. Wanting to hear more, but not wanting to push too hard, I ask, “What was so important about the report? What makes it different from other reports you’ve done?” My mother sighs. She doesn’t answer me directly; instead, she says, “I don’t know how the workers at the medical center stand it when they’re working on people or delivering babies. It’s too hard to have other lives in your hands.” My unspoken question hovers in the air: What do you mean? She pauses. She seems to be deciding whether or not to answer me, and I hold perfectly stil until she speaks again. Absentmindedly she picks up her dress fragment and begins polishing the glass.
“Someone out in Grandia, and then in another Province, reported that there were strange crops popping up. The one in Grandia was in the Arboretum, in an experimental field that had been fal ow for a long time. The other field was in the Farmlands of the second Province. The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebel ion?”
I draw in my breath. It’s forbidden to grow food unless the Government has specifical y requested it. They control the food; they control us. Some people know how to grow food, some know how to harvest it, some know how to process it; others know how to cook it. But none of us know how to do al of it. We could never survive on our own.
“The three of us agreed that the crops were definitely usable as foodstuffs. The grower at the Arboretum had an entire field of Queen Anne’s lace.” My mother’s face changes suddenly, lights up. “Oh, Cassia, it was so beautiful. I’ve only seen a sprig here and there. This was a whole field, waving in the wind.”
“Wild carrot,” I say, remembering.
“Wild carrot,” she agrees, her voice sad. “The second grower had a crop I’d never seen before, of white flowers even more beautiful than the first.
Sego lilies, they cal ed them. One of the others with me knew what they were. You can eat the bulb. Both growers denied knowing you could use the plants for food; they both asserted that their interest was in the flower. They insisted the plants were new to them and that they cultivated them as research, for the blossoms.”
Her voice, which has been soft and sad since she mentioned the field of Queen Anne’s lace, grows stronger. “The three of us argued the whole way back after the second trip. One expert was convinced the growers were tel ing the truth. The other thought they were lying. They submitted conflicting reports. Everyone waited for mine. I asked for one last trip to be sure. After al , these growers wil be Relocated or Reclassified based on our reports. Mine would tip the balance one way or the other.”
She stops polishing the glass and looks down at the piece of blue cloth as though there is something written there for her to see. And I realize that for her, there is. That blue cloth represents the night she was Matched to my father. She reads her life, the life she loves, in that square of blue satin.