Lyle
Mira had decided, somewhere in the first day, that the world had done something unforgivable. She was right. She just had no way to say it except at volume. She didn’t want Hessa. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want the nursemaids or the rocking or the songs, and when I tried Darren’s ridiculous porridge verses in a voice nothing like his, she screwed up her face and howled louder, because I wasn’t him. The only thing she wanted in the world were her parents. She knew something was wrong and she wanted their comfort.
“She knows,” Evette said, rocking her granddaughter slowly. “They always know. She can feel the shape of who’s missing.”
Her brother grieved the way he does everything, quietly, and that unsettled me more than the screaming did.
Soren had gone still in a way no baby s
