Page 23 of Redline Communion

“Then explain it.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

For a second, she almost tells me.

I know my mother’s face. I know when she’s about to laugh in church and when she’s pretending not to be angry because people are around. I know the look she gets when she’s already forgiven somebody but wants them to suffer another ten minutes before finding out.

This is none of those.

Whatever she wants to say reaches her mouth.

Then she swallows it.

“Marcus’s family is grieving,” she says. “That’s all you need to know. Grieving families deserve privacy, not gossip.”

“Grieving how?”

Her fingers stop turning her ring.

“Grieving like he’s dead,” I say, “or grieving like he’s somewhere they can’t visit him?”

“Lorelei.”

“Those are different things, Mom. I’ve been trying to figure out which one it is since the Reaping, and nobody will say it.”

“I need you to stop asking.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have an answer that won’t terrify you, and I’m not ready to be the one who says it.”

That shuts me up.

Not because she told me to stop.

Because it’s true.

Everything else she’s said has been arranged for me. That came out before she could fix it.

She isn’t protecting Marcus’s family from gossip.

She’s protecting me from something she’s already seen.

“You know what happened to him.”

My voice sounds different now, smaller than I want it to.

She looks at me, and the worst part is how sorry she looks.

She doesn’t answer.

She turns and goes down the stairs before I can ask the question sitting behind my teeth.