Page 143 of The Final Cut

The anger in me quiets enough to listen.

“Cal had Reva?”

“Cal had a way out. Deacon made one.” Her voice stays careful, though every word has a bruise beneath it. “There were minutes, maybe less, where everything depended on movement and lies. Deacon made Isabel believe the order had been carried out long enough for Cal to take Reva north. Isabel did not know Reva lived.”

“And you?”

“I had Delia.”

The words are simple, but they feel anything but.

Marisol looks down at her hands. “I could go with Cal and Reva. Disappear if the lie held. Hold one daughter and abandon the other to Isabel completely. Or I could stay where Isabel could see me, keep some small place near Delia, soften what I was able to, turn a punishment aside when I had enough leverage, teach her how to survive the rooms I wasn’t allowed to enter.”

Her voice thins, then steadies by force.

“I chose the child who had no Cal.”

I look toward the door because the sentence makes the choice she made feel too small, and that choice was…everything. For all of them. It was the impossible choice.

Stay, and deny herself a life with Reva.

Go with Reva, and deny herself a life with Delia.

If she had stayed with Reva, Reva would have been safe and happy, and so would she. And Cal…obviously there was something between them. Had it always been there, those feelings, that sentiment?

But Delia…if she had stayed with Reva, Delia would have been left to Isabel’s not-so-tender mercies. Maybe she’d have been fine; maybe…probably…not.

A shudder moves through me at the thought of Delia suffering Isabel’s ‘correction’ for the past fifteen years without the softness of her mother there to balance it, to ease it somewhat.

“She thinks you chose Isabel,” I say.

“I chose the child I thought needed me the most. And I’m so sorry for it⁠—”

“She hates that,” I tell her. “The apology. The words that make it sound like you’ve already had time to forgive yourself for what she just learned.”

Her face crumples in one small place before she gathers it back. “I haven’t forgiven myself.”

“Good. Don’t start tonight.”

A sad breath leaves her. It could be a laugh in another life. “Cal said you were kind.”

“Cal lies when he likes people.”

“No. He was very specific about your particular defects.”

I snort. That almost gets me.

I look at the cross at the front of the chapel to keep from getting misty. “Where does Deacon fit?”

Marisol’s expression changes at his name. Respect. Guilt. Fear for him, maybe.

“Deacon stayed close enough to Isabel to know when she doubted the story,” she says. “He carried messages between me and Cal when he could. Not often. Not safely. Never directly enough to expose Reva. He protected the lie because the lie was the only reason she grew up.”

“And Cal?”

“Cal raised her.” Her voice breaks on that one, and she lets it. “He sent pieces when he could. Proof of life, never place. A school photo with the background cut away. A note in code through Deacon. Once, a drawing Reva made of a cat in a crown.”

I swallow hard and decide to be angry about something else for a second.