The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski

Author:Marie Rutkoski [Rutkoski, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374306380
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2020-03-02T18:30:00+00:00

31

“YOU WANT TO LEAVE ME?” Tears welled in Raven’s eyes.

“No,” I said, “of course not. It is only for a month. Then I will come home.”

“Don’t you love me? How can you leave me alone?”

I knelt beside her chair. Sid, who had insisted on being present when I told Raven, looked on, her expression closed. I took Raven’s hands, which were folded limply in her lap. I pressed them to my cheek. A thick sludge of guilt bubbled up. I remembered what Morah had told me about her baby, but maybe Morah didn’t understand Raven like I did, how much emotion the older woman had within her, how important it was to hold her three girls close, as she would any children. She made mistakes, but no one could doubt her affection, not when tears were slipping down her face and loneliness aged her face. “I love you so much,” I told her. “You won’t be alone. You have Morah and Annin.”

“They are not you.”

Her words glowed within me. It was selfish, I knew, to be so happy to be her favorite. And it was wrong (I knew this, too), but I couldn’t help thinking that what had happened with Morah could never happen with me. I was Raven’s special girl. When I gazed upon her, I saw the worn face that I loved and the glint of a golden chain at her throat, half hidden by her dress, that reminded me of the moon necklace my mother had worn. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of Raven’s delicate chain, and I would pretend that if only she untucked the necklace from her dress I would see the crescent-moon pendant dangling from it. I would pretend that she was my mother. Raven had always promised to protect me, to care for me, to make certain I wanted for nothing. “I will be back, Ama,” I said, using the word for mother, “I promise.”

Raven’s hand tightened hard on my chin. She forced my face up so that she could stare into my eyes. It hurt my neck and my jaw ached beneath her thumb, but I said nothing because Raven did this only because she cared so much and was scared to lose me. “You call me Ama, but you don’t mean it. How can you mean it, when you can leave me so easily?”

I heard the scrape of Sid’s boot. “Let go of her,” Sid said. “You are hurting her.”

Raven released me, her blue eyes bright with sadness and anger. “What about our project?” she asked me, with a cautious eye on Sid. My heart sank as Raven carefully chose her words to screen their true meaning from Sid. “Even if you care nothing for me, how can you abandon everyone who depends on you?”

It was true. Without me, Raven wouldn’t dare forge passports. She could trace officials’ signatures, perhaps, but she couldn’t remember the tricks of their various and different handwriting the way that I did, the quirks and

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