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up to scare us.”
    “Scare you?” I asked.
    “Family, attachment, all of that meant vulnerability. We were bred to fight wars, Tess. The idea of family was so abstract that despite your father’s stories, I couldn’t believe something so supposedly harmful could truly exist. Or that I would desire it so badly,” he said, dropping the rock to the ground.
    “Do you still think family connections make us weak?” I asked, continuing to toss the rock back and forth, my eyes returning to Henry.
    “Did I ever agree with the council that to love was dangerous? Wild? Reckless? Of course. But it’s for those very reasons that we humans crave it so much.”
    He was right. I barely knew what love was, and sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, when it seemed as if I was the only being in the world awake, alive, master of all things, I wondered if I loved James for him or for how he made me feel. Maybe I loved him for both, and maybe I didn’t think that was so wrong. It comforted me to hear of Robert’s love for my sister. To understand how he loved someone helped me understand how I did, and it made me feel like maybe that love wasn’t completely gone just because James wasn’t right there with me. Because it had become so obvious, sitting there in the woods of this unknown place, away from everything that felt comfortable and steps away from a whole new life, that no matter what happened to him or where he went, Robert loved my sister. That would never change.
    “Once I was well enough to travel, your father connected me with the resistance movement. I was in hiding with different small clusters of people in the woods and bombed cities for years. And when we could make enough connections to falsify my papers and get me transferred into your compound as a natural, I had no idea you or your sisters would be there. That day you saw me at your house was the last I ever saw or heard from your father,” Robert said.
    I stopped tossing the rock. “So you don’t know what happened to him?”
    Robert sighed. “I know. Do you want to hear that story today?”
    “No. Not today.” I returned to tossing the rock back and forth. There would be time for that story another day. I didn’t know if I was brave enough to hear it at the moment.
    Robert nodded, and I was grateful he didn’t push me. He would wait until I was ready. “When I first met your sister, I tried to stay away from her. But I couldn’t help it. I had to see if she was what I imagined her to be. There was so much about the outside world that let me down, so much that seemed to prove the council right, but she wasn’t one of them. How anyone could ever hate her, I will never understand.”
    “She was perfect,” I agreed.
    “Yes. She was. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to keep my distance. I had become too…”
    “Human?” I offered.
    Robert laughed. “Yeah, I guess. So I decided to be her friend.”
    “I remember that. I like to think you were my friend, too. But then things changed. You broke your promise,” I charged, unable to rein in the tiny bit of anger that slipped from my lips. It stilled lived inside of me; I wondered if it always would. My eyes found Henry again.
    “Tess—”
    “Don’t. No matter how many times we speak about her, it will always come to this. Some part of me understands, but then there will always be a part of me that can’t forget. I know she took matters into her own hands. I’m still angry with her for that. It’s not fair that she lied to you, told you she was being safe. All she wanted was to give you a child. She didn’t think of the family she already had. She got pregnant knowing full well that in all likelihood, she would die. I know it’s hard for me to understand when I’ll never be in the same position as her…” My voice trailed off.
    I could have sex if I wanted to without worrying that I would die if I got pregnant. But James and I had decided we weren’t ready. I wondered if some day I