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This time, I find the button to pause the microcard. Why would Grandfather choose a memory like that? I have so many memories of my father—his laugh, his eyes brightening as he talked about his work, the way he loved my mother, the games he taught us. My father was, first and foremost, a gentle man, and in spite of the poem advising otherwise, I hope that is the way that he went into the night.
“Why?” I ask softly. “Why would Grandfather say that about Papa?”
“It seems strange, doesn’t it,” my mother says, and I look over to see her watching me with tears slipping down her cheeks. She knows he’s gone, even though she hasn’t asked and I haven’t told.
“Yes,” I say.
“That memory happened before I knew your father,” my mother says. “But he told me about it. ” She pauses, puts her hand flat against her chest. She finds it hard to breathe without him, I think, something in her is still drowning a little from loss. “Your father told me that your grandfather gave the poems to you, Cassia,” she says. “He tried to give them to your father, too. ”
Now I cannot breathe. “He did?” I whisper. “Did Papa read them?”
“Just once,” my mother says. “Then he gave them back. He didn’t want them. ”
“Why?”
My mother shakes her head. “He always told me that it was because he was happy in the Society. He wanted everything to be safe. He wanted what the Society could offer. That was his choice. ”
“What did Grandfather do?” I ask. I imagine giving someone such a gift and then having it returned. Parents are always giving things that are not taken. Grandfather tried to give my father the poems and to tell him about the rebellion. My mother and father tried to give me safety.
“That was when they argued,” my mother says. “Your great-grandmother had saved the poems. And there was a certain legacy of rebellion attached to them. But Abran thought it was too dangerous, that your grandfather took too many risks. Eventually, Grandfather accepted your father’s decision. ” She brings her hand down from her chest and breathes in more deeply.
“Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask.
“We thought he might,” my mother says.
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
“We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says.
“But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising,”
I say.
“I think he wanted you to find your own way,” my mother says. She smiles. “In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that’s why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it. ”
I see why my father had to honor Grandfather’s last request—to destroy his sample—even though my father didn’t agree with the choice. It was his turn to give that back; to be the one to respect and honor a decision made. And my father also extended that gift to me. I remember what he said in his note: Cassia, I want you to know that I’m proud of you for seeing things through, and for being braver than I was.
“That’s why the Rising didn’t make us immune to the red tablet,” Bram says to me. “Because they thought our father was weak. They thought he was a traitor. ”
“Bram,” I say.
“I didn’t say I believe them,” Bram says. “The Rising was wrong. ”
I look at my mother. Her eyes are closed. “Please,” she says. “Play the rest. ”
I press the button on the datapod and the historian speaks again.
“His favorite memory of his grandson, Bram, was his first word,” the historian says. “It was ‘more. ’”
Bram smiles a little.
“His favorite memory of his granddaughter, Cassia,” the historian says, and I lean forward to listen, “was of the red garden day. ”
That’s all. The datapod goes blank.
My mother opens her eyes. “Your father is gone,” she says, her lips trembling.
“Yes,” I say.
“He died while you were still,” Bram says to my mother. His smile is gone, and his voice sounds heavy and sad, weary with telling this terrible news.
“I know,” my mother says, smiling through her tears. “He came to say good-bye. ”
“How?” Bram asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “But he did. When I was still, I saw him. He was there, and then he went away. ”
“I saw him dead, but not the way you saw him,” Bram says. “I found his body. ”
“Oh, Bram, no,” my mother says, her voice a whisper of agony. “No, no,” she says, and she gathers my brother close. “I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I’m so sorry. ”
My mother holds Bram tightly. I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can’t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist. I want to do something to make this better, even though I know that nothing can change the fact of my father gone and under ground.
My mother looks at me and her gaze is pleading. “Can you bring me something,” she says, “anything, that is growing?”
“Of course,” I say.
