“She is so beautiful, Grace.”
Take it away. It should die. Death will save her. Kill it.
This child deserves every chance.
The translucent pink of her head poked out from the blanket.
Look at her. She is life itself.
Kill it.
The small pink face, eyes shut tight, the rash bump of a nose.
She will be just like us. She will suffer the same way.
No, there is a chance it will be different. The discovery of the gene . . .
The smell of milk and flowers. Forget-me-nots. She carefully reached out one finger. As she focused on the face and touched her finger three times to the child’s forehead, the silence in the room exploded into her mind. She gasped, “Hannah.”
The man stared into her face. “Your mother’s name? I’m going to make sure she’s okay, Grace. I promise. She is going to wait for you. We are going to wait for you. Come back, Grace. Come back.”
The distant rumbling returned and the familiar vibrations of the track soothed her pain. She closed her eyes. All that she had seen lost to blackness.
Death would stop the suffering.
Death is not an answer.
All you care about is a cure. Stop your madness. Kill the child. Save her from herself. Death. Death is a choice.
And so is life. The strength to believe and live. That is a choice.
This is not a real life.
She was on the train, moving moving away toward something nothing someone no one leaving returning sitting standing sleeping waking watching waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting in the place between breaths.
Winter Yields. Spring
We see you standing on a bridge, looking back at the life you have lived. The memories like clouds passing over the landscape of your face. The anguish that can only come from knowing how much you have loved and been loved. And to know you are losing that time. Forever.
We watch you hear what is coming forward across that bridge to you. The endless shrieks of a life that you do not want but cannot change. Like the Fates. They were never minor gods to you.
We see you standing on this bridge, fanning the cards of decision, the paths beaming out like endless rays into the future, the possibilities a forget-me-not flower seen from the eyes of a bee.
You know how to end your life.
Hers could be another story.
We cannot help you with this decision.
Yet when all is sifted, what remains?
Faith.
About the Author
An Na was born in South Korea and grew up in San Diego, California. A former middle school English and history teacher, she is the critically acclaimed author of the Michael L. Printz Award–winning novel A Step from Heaven, The Fold, and Wait for Me. She currently lives in Vermont. Visit her at anwriting.com.
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Also by An Na
The Fold
A Step from Heaven
Wait for Me
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by An Na
Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Levente Szabo
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CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-2225-3 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2227-7 (eBook)
