“I asked your parents for something from Remi to have at the house, so you’d be comfortable there.” His blush deepens, a rare sight. “I want you to know it’s your home too, so it should have things that matter to you in it.”
My legs go a little wobbly at that. “Thank you,” I say, blinking back tears. “That means a lot to me.”
Carrson sees them anyway. He sweeps a finger under my eye and brings it up wet. “Don’t cry.” His brow knits with concern. “I wanted to make you happy.”
“I am,” I tell him, meaning it with everything I have. “I’m happy.Youmake me so happy.” He’s smiling as he kisses me, and I can see it. Our future laidout before us. So bright and brimming with potential. How we’ll grow together. Stronger. More powerful and every day more in love.
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Blackburn Law Library is supposed to be silent. Unfortunately, Becky Dawson and Carrson Ashford have never been very good at following rules. They’re doing some very inappropriate “studying” in the law library… and trying not to get caught.
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Chapter forty-five
Rebecca
Second Epilogue
Becky
February 24, 2003
My dearest Remi,
I’m sorry I haven’t written in such a long time. It’s been years.
Things have changed. Everyone calls me Rebecca now, and Carrson is called Carr. It’s a thing in The Order, once a man has a baby, they lose the -son fromtheir name. Don’t ask me to explain why. It goes way back. As for me, Becky seemed too young for who I’ve become. What I’ve grown into.
I’m the High Mother now, the highest position a woman can hold in The Order. I know all the secrets now. How it all began. Where it’s going. I know the blood that’s on our hands, mine included. The human suffering. But I also know the miracles we’ve accomplished. Technology is booming, thanks to companies and research secretly funded by us. We have cell phones that we can talk on without cords. Portable computers. The Internet in every house, not just on college campuses.
The world calls it progress.
The Order calls it control.
But Remi! If you lived now, you wouldn’t have to go to the hospital so much. We’ve made huge strides with cystic fibrosis. More and more patients are living into their thirties and older now, falling in love, having children of their own. Carr says in twenty years the disease will be completely survivable. He’s helped so much, stood by me while we fought for that research to get the attention it deserves.
I did that for you, but you’re still dead.
All because you were born a decade too soon.
Sometimes I see seventeen-year-olds laughing in restaurants or driving around with their friends, and I think of you. You were seventeen too. Just a girl. Still sleeping with stuffed animals on your bed and pretending not to hear Mom crying in the bathroom. Trying to be brave even when your lungs failed one breath at a time.
You should’ve lived long enough to become complicated and messy and old.
That unfairness lives inside me like a wound that’ll never heal. Some nights it feels unbearable, knowing girls like you survive now. That somewhere there are sisters who get to keep each other simply because history shifted a few years in the right direction.
I’m happy for them.
I hate them.
I keep your memory alive even though I don’t write. I gave my daughter your middle name, just like I promised. That’s right. I have a baby, a beautiful daughter named Samantha. She’s only one year old now, but already her laugh sounds just like yours.
Carr has a son the exact same age. He’s named Carrson.
We’ve made mistakes, both Carr and I. Have broken each other’s hearts more times than I can count, but every time we come crashing back together, like addicts who can’t give up even if it’s bad for us.
