Sisters' Fate by Jessica Spotswood

Author:Jessica Spotswood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

TESS HAS CALLED A FAMILY MEETING.

Frankly, I would have liked to refuse to come, but it is Christmas Eve.

“I think we ought to go over early for Christmas dinner,” Tess says, standing awkwardly in the middle of her bedroom. It’s the first time she and Maura and I have been alone together in weeks. “To talk to Father.”

“Good luck to you with that.” Still standing in the doorway, Maura rolls her blue eyes. “He doesn’t know how to talk to us. Never has.”

She’s got a point. A month ago I would have said the same thing, in the same scornful tones.

“It’s what we have to say to him that’s important.” Tess gulps, smoothing her green skirt. “We’re going to tell him the truth. I—I’d like it if you’d come, too. I think all three of us should be there.”

Maura stiffens. “What truth? You can’t mean—”

“I do,” Tess interrupts, ushering Maura in. Maura eyes me warily and then sits on Vi’s bed, rumpling the fluffy white goose-down duvet. Tess shuts the door behind her. “There’s something you ought to know. Something Mother kept from us. When they were first married, Father knew about Mother’s witchery. She erased his memory. Zara told us.”

Maura glares at us. It is not, I think, the reaction Tess was hoping for. “Tell me this—if he supported her, why would she need to erase his memory?”

Tess sits next to me on her bed. “After Zara was arrested, Mother was afraid she would be next. She thought Father might do something rash to get himself arrested right alongside her.”

“Father?” Maura snorts. “He’s hardly the impetuous sort. What did she think he would do, shoot Brother Ishida?”

I remember Marianne Belastra’s kind brown eyes on the day she found out Finn and I were in love. He may not have said the words, but I know my son. I saw the way he looked at you. Like he’d do murder for you.

“He might,” I snap. “It seems we don’t really know what Father is.”

“We do,” Maura insists. “The way he’s acted over the last three years says all we need to know about his character. He only cares for his books and his business.”

“And Mother.” I lean forward, eyes intent. “They were so in love. It never made sense to me that she kept such an enormous secret from him. When you love someone like that, with your whole heart”—the way I love Finn, the way he used to love me—“how could you not want them to know you?”

Maura’s eyes falter to the rich purple rug. “Still. If he’d stay home and open his eyes for two minutes together, he’d know what we are. Mrs. O’Hare knew. Even the maid suspected! If Father doesn’t know us, it’s because he doesn’t care to.”

Tess shakes her head. “I think you’re wrong. Mother didn’t give him the chance to be there for us, and I—I know she did it because she loved us, and she didn’t want us raised by the Sisterhood and maybe separated.

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