“Yeah. I’m a little sad, too.” She laid her head on my shoulder, and I didn’t know how to comfort her. So I just sat with her. “It wasn’t meant to be, for me. I mean, if I’d had a choice, I would have kept my baby. But I don’t know how that would have played out. It would have been hard, without a father. And if Kevin ever found out...it would have broken his heart.”
It wasn’t the baby that would have broken her husband’s heart. It was how the baby had been conceived.
Thefuriaehad already done what she could for Lenore. The man who’d ended her pregnancy without permission had subsequently eviscerated himself with his own scalpel. Nothing I said would have helped Lenore, beyond what thefuriaehad already helped me do. So I just took her hand and squeezed it. And together, we stared at my new baby.
May 2000
The calendar on the wall beside the chalkboard taunted Rebecca with its series of redX’s. There were only two weeks of school left.
“Okay, guys, the bell will ring in a few minutes. Please pack up your backpacks—don’t forget we have homework in math and reading tonight!—and go back to your tables.” She smiled as the kids jostled for position in front of the line of hooks on the wall, where their backpacks all hung. Then she held up the fat red marker. “I’m going to pick someone from the quietest table to mark off today on the calendar!”
Rebecca hadn’t thought they’d care about the thick red marker. Some years, fifth graders considered themselves too old for juvenile privileges like marking off the days left in the school year. But the 1999/2000 class was competitive. For them, it was more about being chosen than about what they were being chosen to do.
“Come on, guys! Take your seats!”
For the first time in her career—in her life, really—Rebecca was dreading the end of the school year. She looked forward to passing Matt Fuqua on to some poor, unsuspecting middle-school teacher, but Delilah...
She no longer thought of Delilah only as her secret sister. As the embodiment of an idea that never had a chance to materialize—the Essig that should have been.
Having spent the past academic year teaching and watching her, Rebecca now understood that Delilah was her own person. The product not just of her genes, but of her environment. Of the parents who loved her and the friends who welcomed her.
Delilah was happy. She was sweet. She was kind. She was pensive. She was slow to anger and quick to defend. And, unlike Rebecca, she was not—at least in the eyes of the world—a survivor of the reaping. She was not a case to be studied or a victim to be pitied. She was not an orphan or a freak.
By some miracle, the reaping had not touched her. Well, no more than it had touched any of her classmates, who hadn’t yet been sparkles in their parents’ eyes in August of 1986.
That, Rebecca took great pride in. She’d protected her sister by making the most difficult decision of her life. The decision to let Delilah go. And the universe had rewarded her with this school year. This one nine-month opportunity to get to know the sister she’d given up and to have some kind of positive influence on the person she would become.
But now that was nearly over.
When a hush fell over the classroom, Rebecca blinked and realized they were waiting for her declaration. And that she still held the red marker.
“Great hustle today, guys. But Table Two, you guys were just alittlefaster and a little quieter than everyone else. Who hasn’t marked the calendar yet from your table?”
At Table Two, Matt pointed to himself. Neal and Delilah pointed to Shelley Wells.
Rebecca held the marker out to Shelley and watched while she drew a redXthrough Tuesday, May 16.
“Okay, bus riders, line up to the left of the door! Walkers and parent pickups, line up on the right!”
The kids chatted as they stood from their tables—actually, groups of four desks arranged in squares—and pushed in their chairs. Rebecca led them into the hallway, where her bus kids fell into the line of bus kids from the next classroom and that classroom’s walkers and parent pickup kids fell in with hers.
The bus kids headed to the left with the other teacher, and Rebecca took her line to the right, out the west entrance of the school, to where cars were already lined up around the side of the building, waiting for the children.
The kids who saw their parents ran for the cars, and those whose parents hadn’t yet arrived sat in a line on the sidewalk beneath the awning to wait.
Rebecca did a head count of the fifth graders, then she headed to the end of the sidewalk, to join the teachers helping younger kids into their cars.
Delilah, Shelley Wells and three of the fifth grade boys, all walkers who lived within half a mile of the school, meandered slowly toward Rebecca, headed for the crosswalk just past where the line of seated kids ended. The boys were in their own world, arguing over a game show they’d seen the night before.
Delilah and Shelley were never in any hurry to get home, where they’d have to say goodbye to each other and start their homework. But halfway down the sidewalk, the boys got excited about something and left the girls behind, dodging errant second graders on their bolt past Rebecca and across the street.
A couple of minutes later, Rebecca waved goodbye to the first grader she’d just buckled into a booster seat, and when she looked up, she saw Shelley and Delilah waiting at the crosswalk. When the first grader’s car had passed, they looked both ways, then stepped into the street.
At that moment, some strange refraction of the afternoon sunlight seemed to envelop Delilah in a shining haze. Like an aura of brightness.
When she looked away, shielding her eyes from the strange glare, Rebecca noticed a car driving through the parking lot, past the line of pickup cars, heading right for the girls. The woman behind the wheel was staring at her flip phone, trying to dial, and her windows were rolled up.
Rebecca pushed past two first graders and stepped between two of the cars idling in line. The woman with the phone kept coming, completely oblivious.
