“It’s okay, Dad,” Gabi murmured. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make this harder. I’m just trying to understand. I think I need to be alone for a little while. I’m pretty tired.”
Her father took a lunging step over the books and kissed the top of her head. “Of course, honey. You rest. I’ll be down the hall if you need anything. I’ve got to make arrangements for tomorrow. There will be a service for Gram, so you should try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”
Gabi tried to smile, but the attempt hung falsely on her face as Sam tiptoed back over the books and closed the door behind him.
The little-girl part of her yearned to follow her father, to curl up in his lap and demand he make everything right. She wanted him to explain what it meant that Gram wasn’t alive anymore, but she had never been that kind of child. From the moment she was old enough to understand that Sam was an important man in Unitas, she had ceased expecting him to be a parent first and a fellow second. That simply wasn’t how it worked. Their survival as a species depended upon the willingness of every individual to put the good of the whole first. The alternative was made all too vivid by the reports sent back by Witness teams working with the Tribes. Anarchy. Starvation. Chaos.
Gabi felt as though someone had ripped her grandmother right out of their home and hidden her away under the cover of a lie. The lie was that everything would be fine, that tomorrow would come and they would all stand around her Care Center bed joking about the bad food and all the fuss over their very unfussy gram. There was another lie too, a slippery one that Gabi couldn’t track. It was not possible that her father’s version of what triggered the alarm was true and that Gram’s confession to Gabi was also true. They canceled each other out. Gabi trusted both Gram and her father, but the circumstances were far from normal, and she knew that adults often stretched the truth when they thought it necessary.
Gabi knew, for example, that some of the Returned were brought back from the Tribes against their will. The official Unitas position was that all Returned were voluntary penitents, members of the flock who had gone astray and now wanted nothing more than to be redeemed. But sometimes it was not possible to reach the afflicted with Unitas’s message of peace, unity, and protection. Temptation was too strong in some of the more remote areas, where sin raged like a killer virus. For individuals brought back from those places, the return to the fellowship was a longer road. This was a major factor in the size and strength requirements for most Minders. Until the rescued became the Returned, they were a danger to themselves and others.
Gram had always answered Gabi’s questions as honestly as she could, without dumbing things down or giving a pat answer, and she freely admitted her own doubts about many aspects of the fellowship. In contrast Gabi often felt as though her father couldn’t see through any lens but the doctrine. Now, with no one to confirm or deny her suspicions, Gabi’s own feelings were all she had to go on. She leaned back against her bed and reached into the waistband of her skirt. The whale photo was stuck to her, and she peeled it away slowly so as not to tear the delicate paper. Remnants of ink marred her skin, which was as white as the paper itself. The passcard fell onto the carpet, where her father’s ID photo stared up at her from the seascape on the rug.
I’ll return the card tonight after he goes to bed, Gabi resolved. She had no intention of repeating her escapade.
The paper was as fine as onion skin, and it made a moist sound when she peeled the pages apart. There was a stark beauty to the flayed whale flipper, pinned open so that it resembled a fleshy flower. The bones were tapered ivory, perfectly notched and fitted end to end. Gabi’s middle finger, the longest on her hand, fell far short of the elongated whale digits even though the photo wasn’t to scale, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Though the last whales in existence had no use for their fingers and toes, they’d possessed them still, and there could be only one reason. They may not have needed hands and feet in the ocean, but they would have been very useful on land. The yearning to rush down the hall and process the revelation with Gram landed like a punch to the throat. There was nothing to do but stare, stricken, at the page and wait for the agony to subside.
If she hadn’t latched her gaze on to that page as an anchor, Gabi might have missed the awkward blue ants marching around its perimeter. No, not ants. Hieroglyphics? The markings were smudged in places, and a quick lift of her shirt confirmed that mirror images of them were stamped onto her belly. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the tiny scrawl, sloppier than she had ever seen it, was Gram’s.
Gabi scooted over to her bedside table and placed the page in the circle of light cast by her lamp. Her eyes snagged on her name. Gabriela. The letters were crowded against each other, and a tremor was evident in the handwriting, but it was still legible.
“Dear, Gabriela,” it began, “you are young and unwell, and you might think it unfair of me to burden you, but I know you are strong inside. I now realize that it is precisely what has been kept from you that has blinded you to that strength. I am determined to give what I can of it back, and the time left to do so
