After keeping to her room for a week, Maura is now quite recovered. She has funneled her energy into her studies, showing marked improvement. I worry that she is overexerting herself. I have urged her to write you, but she insists you must be having such grand adventures that you care nothing for what happens at home. I know she is wrong in that. I hope she will soon reconcile herself to her place here.
We had an at-home afternoon last week, which was very well attended. I baked a splendid gingerbread, and everyone inquired after you. Mrs. Ishida says she cannot remember the last time a girl from Chatham joined the Sisterhood, and Miss Ishida asked me to convey her particular good wishes.
I miss you dreadfully, Cate. Even with Father back, the house is dull and lonely without you. Penny had kittens in the hayloft, three white and one black, and Mrs. O’Hare keeps chiding me for climbing up to see them; that’s the sum of this week’s excitement.
I hope that you are well and not too homesick for us. Write me as soon as you can.
With love,
Tess
I picture my brilliant little sister—her blond curls, the gray eyes that don’t miss a thing—and a wave of homesickness washes over me. Until six weeks ago, I’d seen Tess every day since she was born. I remember hearing her first shriek—a relief, after a stillborn brother—and the moment I first saw her squalling red face. And Maura—we’re too close in age for me to remember a time without her; she’s simply always been there to battle me and make me laugh.
I hate the Sisterhood for separating us. I hate the magic for giving them leverage to do it. If we were normal, ordinary girls—
But we aren’t. It doesn’t do any good to think on that.
“Why don’t you come down to the sitting room with me?” Rilla suggests.
I always had my own room at home. It’s strange, sharing a bedroom with a stranger. There are two high, narrow beds, two armoires, one dressing table—and absolutely no privacy. Rilla knows I’m homesick, and she’s determined to cheer me up. She reads me passages from her frightful Gothic novels; she brings me cups of hot cocoa before bed; she shares the sticky maple candies her mother sends from their farm in Vermont.
She means well, but none of those things can cure a broken heart.
“No, thank you. I’ve got reading to do; I can’t concentrate with all the chattering down there.” I sit up, grabbing a history textbook from the foot of my bed.
“Caaate,” Rilla groans, picking her way across the cluttered floor. Her bed is beneath the single, arched window; mine is along the wall perpendicular to it. “You can’t keep shutting yourself away like this. Don’t you want to get to know the other girls?”
Not particularly, no. They’re always staring at me as though I’ll manifest some magnificent power at any second, and I always feel as though I’m disappointing them.
“Maybe tomorrow?” I suggest.
“You always say that.” Rilla jumps up onto her bed. “I know you don’t want to be here. Everyone knows you don’t want to be here. You hardly hide it. But it’s almost December—you’ve been in New London over a month now. Can’t you make the best of things?”
“I am! I’m trying,” I insist, stung.
Since healing Mei two days ago, I’ve been shifted out of botany—the one class I loved—and into advanced healing. Mei’s been partnering with me for lessons and keeps asking me to play chess with her during afternoon tea. Rilla’s made a point of sitting with me during meals and in the classes we share, though it would certainly be easier—and more fun for her—to sit with other chattering, laughing girls instead of the one who barely speaks.
Have I ever thanked them for their pains?
“Are you really?” Rilla echoes my thoughts, her tone uncharacteristically tart. She rubs a hand over her cheek, dusted with freckles that remind me of Finn every time I look at her. “I don’t mean studying magic and delivering food to the poor; I mean making this your home. Just look at your side of the room!”
Oh. I notice, suddenly, the difference between hers—the yellow quilt with uneven stitches covering her bed, the novels and mugs and dresses scattered everywhere—and mine, which is barren. I never sent for my rose-patterned rug or Mother’s watercolor painting of the garden. I never even unpacked my spring dresses. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to take up too much space—but is it, or do I just want to be prepared to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice?
“I’m trying to be your friend, Cate. But half the time you act as though I’m some pesky fly you’d like to swat. You never ask how my day was. You’ve never even asked me how I came to be here!”
The complaints pour out, a litany against me, and I’m staggered. Rilla is so relentlessly good-natured; I had no idea she’d noticed my rebuffs, much less was hurt by them.
“I defend you, you know, when the other girls say you’re proud and standoffish. So does Mei. But you’ve got to start making more of an effort.” Rilla swings her legs off the edge of her bed. She’s wearing a new dress today—a yellow brocade with enormous orange gigot sleeves, an orange taffeta bow at the breast, and orange chiffon ruffles at the hem. It looks well on her. Did I think to tell her that? I get so caught up in my lessons, in missing Maura and Tess and—
“Perhaps sometimes I just want to be alone for five minutes! Perhaps I have more important things on my mind than who got a new dress, or what mean thing Alice said today,” I snap, hunching my shoulders and hugging the book to my chest.
Rilla’s face flushes. “That’s not all I care about, and you know it—or you would, if you ever bothered to talk to me. We all know how bad things are getting, but we don’t have to dwell on it every single second. It wouldn’t kill you to have a little fun, sometimes.”
“Perhaps,” I whisper, undone by the disappointment in her voice.
I could try harder. Join in the games of chess and draughts and charades after dinner, look through the fashion magazines from Dubai, talk about the Brothers’ latest arrests and what the Sisterhood should do next. I know it’s what the other girls want from me. I could have friends here, if I wanted them.
But that would mean accepting that this is my home now—that my place is here among these strangers, that my future lies with the Sisterhood, not with Finn. It would require accepting that there’s no going back—and despite the ugly machinations they used, despite all my objections, the Sisters were right to bring me here, because this is where I belong.
I take a deep breath, leaning back against the brass headboard and stretching my legs out in front of me. “How did you end up here, Rilla?”
She scowls. “Are you asking because you want to know or because you feel obliged?”
“I want to know,” I say, truthfully. “And I’m sorry for not asking you before.”
“Well. I did something very foolish.” Even in the candlelight, I can see Rilla’s ears flush red. “There was a boy I fancied. Charlie Mott. He had black hair and he rode a black horse, and he was so handsome! I was desperate for him to notice me. A group of us went on a sleigh ride one Saturday night, and I made sure I was sitting next to him. But Emma Carrick was sitting on his other side, and he put his arm around her instead. I was so jealous. It all got a bit out of hand. I wished she weren’t so pretty, and then suddenly she wasn’t; she was hideous! Her face erupted in these awful hives, and her nose grew out to here—” Rilla gestures six inches away from her own pert nose. “When Charlie saw, he scooted away from her right quick. I—well, I couldn’t help it. I laughed.”