I turned back into her room.
"What did you just say?"
She was standing now, hands at her sides, the white dress settled clean over her legs again. She watched me the way you watch something you've set down and are waiting to see move — not tense, not careful. Patient.
"I asked you to ask yourself why your father never stopped the awakening himself."
"Not that."
A small laugh came out of her. It didn't reach her eyes.
"So you genuinely don't know." She tilted her head. The light caught the edge of her face and left the rest in the room's thin shadow. "Ethan is alive. These walls don't hold him and they never did. So ask the question again. Why didn't he do it himself?"
"You're lying."
"Am I?"
"You're lying."
"You know I'm not." No rise in her voice. No need for one. "He was never far from you out there, Abram. Every year of it. Whatever came close to you on that plain didn't get to finish, and you never once asked yourself why a boy on his own lived that long."
