I felt his lips brush my earlobe. The little hairs on my arms all stood up.
“I’m so glad you’re here with us,” he said. I licked my lips, getting ready to echo his words back.
“I’m glad to be here t—”
But Nina cut me off. Her voice rose up over the rattle of the heaters.
“Oh!” she said, pointing. “There it is!”
We looked up. There, at the dome’s edge, what looked like a new star crawled into view. It was different from the other stars—a bigger pinprick through the darkness of space, shining brightly. Unlike the others, it was green, the color of oxidized copper. Eps Eridani F. Our new neighbor. Applause spread slowly across the field. I should have clapped too. I was a part of something now. A part of Koen’s life. A part of the Children of Abel. But for some reason my mind was stormy. I didn’t clap; I only drew in a shuddered breath.
Later that night I came home to a dark house. I went from room to room turning on the lights, but it hardly did anything to beat back the darkness. I wanted to be out in the dome, under the sparkle of starlight and that new green speck of light. Of course, it wasn’t Zehava—it was a gaseous body, no ground or breathable atmosphere. Still, it was the closest I’d ever been to a planet. Part of me wanted to lay myself down on the frozen ground beneath its light, to wait for my dreams to overtake and comfort me. But it was a crazy thought.
Almost as crazy as stealing plants for the rebellion. I stood frozen over the counter, thinking about it. I was one of them now, a Child of Abel. I needed to act, and soon. But I’d invented a million different reasons for Mara to take me down to the herbarium, and none seemed right when I was under the harsh lab lights. Mara would catch me. She would surely know. What if she turned me in to the Council? What if the guards came for me, just as they’d come for Mar Jacobi?
I remembered his strangled cry. My hands went cold at the memory. When the sound of a fist came, frantic, at the door, I nearly jumped straight out of my skin.
“Coming,” I said, rushing over, throwing it open. It was Ronen. He held Alyana against him, cradling her tightly.
“Ronen, what are you doing here?”
My brother barreled past me. “I’m here to talk about Abba,” he declared, and sat himself right down at our galley table.
“You don’t live here anymore, you know,” I said. I could see my brother’s jaw flex.
“I know. That’s why I knocked.”
I sighed and fell into the chair at the far end of the table.
“So go ahead,” I said. “Talk about Abba.”
“Something happened today in the dome. It wasn’t normal.”
When was our father ever normal? I stared at Ronen. Jiggling his baby in his arms, he went on.
“The minute the planet came into view, he got up and started to storm off. He wouldn’t stop when I called him, but Hannah chased him down. He lost it. Started screaming at her. I was worried he might hit her, the way he used to hit us.”
Used to. I grimaced. It was all a distant memory for Ronen. But not for me. “So what’d he say?”
Ronen stopped jiggling. His eyes dropped to the table, tracing the knots in the wood. “He said that he doesn’t want to go to Zehava without Mom. Hannah almost couldn’t convince him to sit down with us.”
I didn’t answer at first. I couldn’t think about Abba now. Not with the rebellion weighing so heavily on my mind. In the silence Alyana let out a ripple of tears. That was all I needed. I snapped.
“What do you want me to do, Ronen? Bring her back from the dead?”
My brother didn’t respond right away. He was too busy hushing his daughter, his lips touching the baby hairs that curled like feathers from her head. When he spoke, it was in a whisper, as if he expected me to whisper too. “I’m concerned. I thought we should talk about it. That’s what families do.”
I let out a snort and rose from the table. My chair squeaked against the metal floor. “Don’t you dare tell me about families. You couldn’t wait to get out of here. First chance you got.”
“I was sixteen,” he said. “Hannah—”
I slammed my hand against the counter. It felt satisfying, echoing through our galley and reverberating all up and down my arm. “Hannah was nothing but a ticket out for you, and you know it. You’re concerned now? He’s been like this for years. And it’s never bothered you before. No, no, not until he makes a scene in the dome. In front of everyone. Embarrassing you.”
“That’s not it.”
“I’ve been living with this alone for four years now! And it’s only now, when I’m about to finally get out of it, that you care? Thanks. Thanks for nothing.”
Little Alyana cried and cried. But I turned away from them. Ronen didn’t answer me, though I heard him suck in a breath. Like he was trying to hold his anger in. Maybe he really was one of us—an angry person, like my father.
But when Ronen finally spoke, he didn’t sound angry at all. He only sounded sad. “Sorry, Terra,” he said.
Then I heard his footsteps, and the front door close behind him, and I was alone again—all alone—in the empty silence of our quarters.
15
Ronen was right. Over the next several days Abba’s mood grew even darker. He came home stinking of wine, grumbling his words. Sometimes he passed out in bed while twilight still rosied the dome ceiling. One night, after he’d skipped the supper I’d made to sleep alone upstairs, he barked my name from his bedroom. I stiffened, sure that he’d finally discovered that the paper-wrapped package had disappeared from Momma’s jewelry box. But when I went to the door, I saw that his closet remained shut. He sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped.
“Terra,” he said. I could hear the phlegm in his voice. His words seemed to burble up from it, sticky and hopeless. “Marry Koen. He’s a good boy. A clock keeper. Just like your old man.”
“I know,” I said doubtfully, hanging back. “I’ve already given him my consent.”
“Did you?” He swung his heavy head up toward me. His eyes were filmy, hazy, without understanding.
“Yes, Abba,” I said, my words coming out in a whisper. “You were there.”
“Huh,” Abba said, chuckling to himself. “So I was.”
He turned away from me and stared at the wall. I waited only a moment more before I rushed down the hall toward my room. After I closed the door behind me, shutting away the memory of my father’s stiff posture, his gray face, I pulled out my sketchbook. I fumbled with my pencils, scribbling purple flowers across a rolling field. Each green stalk was meant to sag with violet bells. They were foxglove plants, or were supposed to be, at least. I’d looked them up in one of Mara’s field guides. There hadn’t been much information. Only a diagram. Long stalks. Lozenge leaves. Purple bells, spotted white inside. And the ancient name for them: Digitalis purpurea.
Soon I’d shaded nearly the entire page over with purple pigment. I looked down at the frenzy of color, at my hand, red where I’d clutched the pencil too tight. Then I thrust the pencil against the wall and buried my face in my pillow.
Koen kept me distracted.
Now when we walked through the dome after work, we spoke in hushed tones about the rebellion. Koen told me what he thought of liberty—how, when we reached the surface of our new home, he hoped to find the sort of happiness his parents never had. We no longer held hands. Koen’s were too busy flitting through the air as he jabbered. And I didn’t even try to kiss him. He was always too red-faced, breathless, and antsy for that.