Last time, their home is ashes, the basements full of dead rats and lilies for some reason, and it seems her brother dug up the trunk.

Okay, so what did he take?

Well, she can’t find her mom’s jewelry, the lily seeds only just now mentioned, or their notebooks. Note that she stuck the seeds in the notebooks, so they could easily have been taken by accident. But because why be clear, she doesn’t bother to say if that’s all he took or just what she feels like mentioning.

She remembers on their nineth birthday Rowan blurts out that next year, she’ll be middle aged and he won’t, and she realizes he’s upset by it. Then her mom afterward says to look out for him.

I could almost believe my parents had had twins on purpose, rather than by chance, just so we could each fulfill that promise.

Well, that would make you be even more special and that’s looking distressingly likely as the book goes on.

But I didn’t follow through on that, did I? I left him here alone.

Oh boy. The only thing better than our heroine being a sociopathic monster is her being one except when it’s time to blame herself for upsetting the boys.

Normally I’d read this charitably as just being upset, but this book is terrible and I don’t doubt it means to be so here.

She finally admits he thinks she’s dead, and yes, this part actually is her part when she took every opportunity to not find a way of contacting her brother.

You know what’s annoying? There’s a way that could be justified. If she thought mentioning her brother and admitting to Rapist-chan that there was anyone else important to her might make him more suspicous of her escape, she’d have a reason to stay quiet. And had she spent last book convinced her brother would know she was alive and wait for her, this would be a bad gut punch.

But last book she was immediately speculating that Rowan might have given up on her and left home to get away from the memories, yet this book it’s supposed to be a surprise he could have done just that.

When our parents died, my brother became all about survival. He took care not to let me sink too deep into that endless cavern of despair. He worked us both into a routine of doing and surviving. And all that time, while he was keeping me afloat, it never occurred to me that I was doing the same for him. That he needed me every bit as much as I needed him. That, without me, the routine would fall apart.

I can almost hear the author in the background saying that see, they’re both just as important! Sure, Rhine’s brother did absolutely everything and made every decision and knew everything and also kept her from giving up, but if he was completely alone he would’ve given up too – you know, the way Rhine actually did over just the death of her parents even with her brother still there and needing his active intervention to keep going. So she was super useful because being a sad sack of uselessness gave him something to do!

Why the hell are you such a terrible character, Rhine? What about your hellhole world made you so weak?

And then she shows off exactly how useless she is by insisting there is absolutely no clues what happened or where her brother went, because her neighbors don’t exist.

I lean my head on his shoulder. “You must think I’m so stupid,” I say. “To leave the mansion behind for this.”

I find your constant need to justifying it far more disturbing. You were kidnapped and locked up with a rapist and a murderer. You don’t need to explain how great it is outside the cage doors, the fact it isn’t a cage owned by terrible people already makes it better.

He swallows, and I’m so close to his throat that I hear it. “I didn’t understand it at first,” he admits.

“I mean, sure I was jealous he might rape you when I wanted to be the one you had sex with, but otherwise it was a pretty sweet deal.”

Anyway, Jenna has to explain to Gabriel that Rhine still wanted to try to escape after nearly dying in her first incredibly shitty escape attempt and also getting to first-wife it up at some party, so when she did he should go with her.

“But you still tried to convince me to stay after that,” I remind him.

Listening comprehension, Rhine! That’s because he didn’t want to leave. If he has to go with you if you leave, and he doesn’t want to leave, then he doesn’t want you to leave. Also, he’s a shithead for not telling you his real reasons.

Which he continues to do, by explaining he told her to stay with Rapist and his murdering evil mad scientist daddy because “I didn’t want you to be hurt. Or killed,” he says. because absolutely staying with a rapist and his murdering daddy will keep her safe from those two things. But he finally decides that if she wants to commit suicide by escape, then he shouldn’t stop her.

“I didn’t think I would die trying,” I say.
“Because you don’t think about death.”
“Right.”

Which then justifies why Rhine has to listen to the men make decisions, she’s too dumb to do it on her own. Gabriel erroneously thought she was capable of making an informed choice and that she’d decided she was willing to risk death to get what she wanted. But actually she’s just a delusional child who assumes everything will work out fine!

She realizes that she’s not sure why exactly Gabriel ended up coming with her, and that it seems like he actually never wanted to leave. I guess that was the dream of the helicopter – he wished they could go back.

Anyway, despite the fact that there’s still no mention of anyone living in the house next door so they could just go there to live, and despite the fact we do know there’s at least one person living on the street and he’s been there since before Rhine left so they could ask him if he knew what happened or if Rowan said where he was going, Rhine has no idea what to do with her house burned down, so she decides to go check out the address from the book because neither of them can think of anything better to do. Christ.

Here:

1) Ask everyone else what happened. If that’s limited to the guy with the tied up mini-collie guard dog, then say that, if it’s not then go through the rest.
2) Check out other house(s) that are unoccupied with the intent of sleeping in the best one tonight. If none are unoccupied, say so, explain if you can move in with anyone and give a good reason for why you can’t. (“Because we are all vicious sociopaths and so can’t trust each other!” seems a likely one.)
3) Go to the last job you know of him having, and other major employers he might have been with in the meantime.
4) Check out whatever hangouts he had. As an aside, this would probably be easier if either of you had been capable of normal human interaction and made friends with anyone ever.
5) Shops. You noticed the jewelry was gone and assumed he’s sold it. See if you can find anyone who remembers someone who looked like Rowan selling a lot jewelry. How long ago did it happen? Did he buy any supplies? Did he mention where he was going?
6) Brothels. He would have checked there for you, someone might remember him. No one should look twice at Gabriel wandering through while it’s apparently dangerous to women, so he should go alone.

When you’ve exhausted all those options, several days later, and are trying to figure out what to do, then you go check your storybook’s address because you’ve got nothing to do. If the author wants to skip to it, then say that it’s between here and one of the above locations – certainly, between shops and factories, you should be covering much of the city.

Anyway, she talks about how she knows every bit of the city.

every withering excuse for a park, every turn of the ocean. I even know its fish, the rainbow scales, the deadpan eyes, the toxicity that makes sport fishermen throw them back.

I’d think the parks would be getting turned to food gardens, or maybe a return to commons – stick some cows on there and hand out free milk to the kiddies. Also, what sort of toxic fish look like totally normal fish with no problems at all?

They find there’s a crowd and balloons.

“Maybe the president is giving a speech,” I say. Manhattan is so technologically advanced that most of the president’s news broadcasts are filmed here.

Okay, I suddenly understand how “technology” protected America.

“Technology” is the word for the background science rating of an area. You know, like how you can have ambient magical radiation powering stuff. A technology rating of 10 is required for live color filming. At 9, you have to record first and deliver the tape somewhere for broadcast, 6 means black and white only, 5 loses sound and by 3, cameras stop working entirely.

America used to have a technology rating of 20, which meant anti-bomb and anti-aftereffects-of-bomb and anti-after-aftereffects-of-bomb shields worked. But as buildings and stuff fell apart, or maybe when the average education level fell, the technology ratings dropped to below the level things worked at. That would fit with the carnival – it gets a bonus by having an first-gen with her normal-world education and a engineering prodigy, plus various people were educated in medicine, allowing a microclime technology level that’s higher than its surroundings so that the ferris wheel and soil-heaty-thing work.

This is why the phones are so rare. Only a few areas have a high enough technology rating for phone technology to function, . It’s also why the boat at the beginning could only send a signal when it got close to shore, the ocean has a 0 technology rating and the boat itself can only manage a 1, which isn’t enough to run radios. As a bonus, this explains why fishing isn’t being used more to feed people and it’s apparently impossible to actually go out sailing to where Europe is, it’s really dangerous because most of what’s normal ship equipment to us requires a higher technology rating. Maybe if they go out as a fleet on specially designed boats they can manage a group 2, but anyone separated is doomed as their rating lowers rendering their equipment dormant.

See, it all makes sense if you assume there’s some arbitrary rule governing things that doesn’t have any connection to reality!

It’s not unusual for select roads to close to accommodate them. Not that his speeches are worthy of closing a road, my brother would say.

More to the point, do you actually have enough traffic for closed roads to mean much? Also, there’s probably debris in the roads all the time causing blockages. Given most of the vehicles Rhine mentions are gatherer vans, and she’s said people her age never have cars, you’d think people would be actively sabotaging the roads too, since what are they good for but letting people steal girls and first gens cruse around aloof?

there’s the president on a high platform that’s decorated in gigantic fake flowers, in honor of spring. I remember one winter his bulletproof dome was aflutter with artificial snow. He never ventures anywhere unless he’s encased in that dome.

Hm. She’s phrasing this to sound sort of cowardly, but what’s the actual political situation. Of the three first gen families we know of, Rhine and Rose’s parents were killed by terrorists, with Rapist-chan the only one with a father left. While Rhine and Rose were there in part because a lack of parents made them vulnerable, the reverse can be said with Rapist-chan and even more strongly – only a kid who still has a first gen patron would be able to get wives. So, on balance? Seems an awful lot of first gens die by violence.

Oh, also the guy’s name is Guiltree. Guilty with a side of gilding trees. Why, book?

Rhine says Gabriel’s probably never seen anything like this or heard the president speak because yeah I’m sure his mandatorily televised speeches were never shown in any orphanage, that really sounds like a thing presidents would like.

President Guiltree is more of a figurehead than anything else.

I thought you said he banned birth control and supported the gatherers?

A symbol of a pointless tradition that’s been carried on for centuries. America is a country. A country must have a leader, even if its people are scrambling around like ants without their queen, going through the motions but to no end.

That’s really not your problem. Your problem is half your adult population are got-mine suicide cultists who blow people up for trying to find a way for kids to live past twenty and most of your younger population are rapists and murdering kidnappers, and the people who aren’t are still selfish assholes who want to keep their huge home all to themselves instead of taking anyone else in and trying to work together. Going through motions would be an enormous step up from actively tearing the place apart.

Going through empty motions would be still trying to send kids through ordinary schools, teaching them about destroyed countries in geography class and making them take the SAT to find out what college they could go to for a degree they’d die before using.

Which would actually be really creepy. Imagine that, when faced with their inability to cure whatever’s killing people, they instead built another nation of robots to run the place, caring for and educating the kids in vast institutions that serve no purpose.

Behind the president, in his dome, are all nine of his wives, each wearing a different shade of pastel dress and a crown of laurel. Three of them are first generation; four of the younger brides appear to be in various stages of pregnancy.

Okay, so we’ve now confirmed only first generation men are still fertile. In the process, we also know that they’ve lost the advanced techniques known as “hormone treatments” or they’d be using that.

I’d like to also express confusion and irritation at why three first gen women would be taking part in this, since they have other options and appear to be too old to be kidnapped and forced into it. But the book has shown that only men ever have other options – the two women who do anything requiring brains or skill at all are backstories (Rhine and Rose again) and only as part of a married pair.

They were chosen from a long list of applicants, bright-eyed and willing.

Why? What’s good for the rich gander is good for the other rich gander, isn’t it? I could believe that they might supplement their applicants with particularly attractive kidnapped girls, but why would the president do this yet no one else try it? And since the president is so fine with the gatherers and encouraging reproduction, why doesn’t he lead by example there and kidnap girls to add to his harem?

The luxurious life of a wealthy man’s bride has its appeal. I know that. But it even took its toll on Cecily, who’d spent her childhood dreaming of it.

You mean was raised to believe it was her only option, sold into it, raped at thirteen and then not allowed to so much as stand up on her own for the nine months of pregnancy. While you treated her like shit, I might add.

But no, I’m sure it’s just that generally there’s some drawbacks because otherwise we might have to acknowledge that what happened to Cecily was wrong beyond not being quite as awesome as she expected.

There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage—a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn’t seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.

What was your first clue, the part where you were kidnapped?

The president is giving a speech about how spring is life just like his upcoming sons and he wants to share this with everyone by rebuilding the labs. Rhine takes this opportunity to flash back to the memory of the explosion.

Some survivors were crawling from the rubble when we arrived. I had to wrap my arms around Rowan like a vise, pleading for him not to join the civilians who rushed in to help.

Well. I admit this surprises me, but the moment I think I realize it shouldn’t.

So they just stood and watched. Because that’s what you do, right? You stand and watch.

Just as Jenna, Cecily and Lilac showed us before that not everyone is horrible, so to we see it here, where many other people, other people who likely didn’t have anyone they knew in there at all, saw the injured and dying and rushed in to help. It’s not that there’s no hope in this world, no goodness.

It’s just there’s none in Rhine or her brother.

Not only did that explosion take my parents, it took the city’s pro-science ideals

No, she doesn’t acknowledge any other loss beyond that. Nevermind it was full of pregnant teens and babies. When she talks about people trying to crawl out of rubble, about rescuers trying to save the injured, she’s just explaining how there were a bunch of bodies there that weren’t her parents who were the only ones that could possibly matter.

A new lab. It is the first thing the president has ever said that has made me feel hope.

Only so long as they stick to drugging pregnant women to shut them up and experimenting on their babies, rather than dissecting people who die of natural causes, though. What if Evil Mad Scientist shows up to evilly hurt the precious corpses, Rhine? What then?

Anyway, the crowd does not like that and throws a rock at his dome, shouting they don’t want people messing with kids any more. Okay, I have no idea what any of this means. Rhine hates people doing science, but she does like it if they torture babies in the process (so long as they don’t mess with their corpses afterward), so is she now against the crowd even though she’s generally on the side of lie down and die?

“Use that space to build a hospital!” someone yells. Hospitals are a luxury only the wealthy can manage. However, there are some who have studied medicine and offer makeshift health care out of their homes. If they’re able to find a usable abandoned building, they might set up a broader practice. I’ve never heard of the president shelling out a dime to help fund these ventures. Why would he? What would be the point in saving a life that will end in a few years anyway?

……………………..because what the fuck do you think a lab involves?

God, no wonder no one’s figured out the problem. Evil Mad Scientist is apparently the only one in fifty years to have figured out that you have to study the sick and dead to figure out what the disease is. Everyone else has probably just been sticking babies with needles.

You know what, Evil Mad Scientist? You may be a murderer but fuck it, you’ve the scientist we need. You’ll be rightly remembered by the people who come after you as a monster, but you’ll be remembered as the only one who solved the deaths and made it so there’s anyone left to care.

Then the explosion happens.

I bet this is Rowan. Rowan went pro-naturalist with their parent’s death and without Rhine nothing was holding him back from terrorism.

I’m transfixed by the tiny gray cloud that has formed in the distance. And then another blast. And another. Someone is bombing the trees.

Yeah, that’s a productive use of your time.

Also, explosives that aren’t hurting anyone so it wouldn’t morally stain Rowan if he happened to be behind this.

The crowd takes this as the final push to riot and start pounding on his dome.

His wives, in their row behind him, are steely and brave, their chests pushed forward, their chins high, their hands roped together.

Well, I wonder if they can be anything else.

I’d assume they’d only pick the ones who really wanted to be there, Rhine’s attempt to compare it to poor Cecily being stupid, but given what I said about the sons, there’s no way they can really believe there’s hope by now. No matter how much they believed in this, and how much they wanted to be there, son after son they’ve watched things slip away.

But what happens if they aren’t in lockstep? What happens if they flinch, if they frown, if they speak out of turn? Rhine’s said he has nine wives. She hasn’t said if there were ever more. And even if this was a world where divorce was an option, if they were cast out they’d probably be killed by people angry at the president, because he’s out of reach but they no longer are.

The president tries to speak, over the blasts and the drums and the microphone interference, but eventually he gives up.

You’d think he’d be more used to this.

His platform starts moving slowly forward through the crowd, and people scramble out of the way and then follow it.

Rhine, there’s no way that happened. That’s not how mobs work. There’s a reason people get hurt when this stuff happens.

The people in front of the platform are getting crushed and want to move. But the other people who aren’t crushed are still pushing in, trying to hit it or block it from leaving. The way to do this is have police set up with riot shields shoving the crowd out of the way, so they can grab anyone that falls before they’re run over by the platform.

Failing that, fine, this world is a grimshit deathfest, let his retreat leave a trail of red slurry behind it.

Follow it all the way to the pier, where it connects with a ferry that will take him out to sea before his helicopter comes to retrieve him.

Huh. Well, there goes my theory about technology radiation ranks. Also, there goes my theory anything ever will make any kind of sense – he goes onto the pier to the ferry to the helicopter?

(Incidentally, mine the goddamn pier you pack of idiots! You know his escape route!)

More than half of the crowd, though, was opposed to the new lab. More than half of my home city believes we are a lost cause. Believes I am a lost cause.

No, they’re just not in favor of injecting random shit into babies to see what happens, which together with staring at blood under a microscope appears to be all you people think qualifies as “science”.

Gabriel doesn’t understand what happened.

“More than four years ago protestors bombed the research labs in the name of pronaturalism,” I say. “They didn’t want any further experiments to be done on children to find an antidote, because they don’t think there is an antidote.

Or maybe they didn’t want further experiments done on children because that’s unethical!

At least this does make more sense than pier-ferry-helicopter. In the arguments about animal experimentation, I’ve found the pro-experimental side tends to get stuck on the fact the research has found stuff out. “It found stuff out!” they say, and when the anti-experimental people start complaining about suffering and the conditions and all, half of them just keep repeating “But you don’t understand, it did find stuff out,” as if they think the argument is that it was a waste of money.

And we see here Rhine is one of them.

There are two separate issues here – is experimenting on children right, and is this all a waste of time and money and medical supplies because there’s no cure. If there’s no cure, then it doesn’t matter who, if anyone, you’re experimenting on, this should be spent on hospices. Experimenting on children is the thornier problem – obviously it’s not something you should do for no reason, but it’s not like they can afford to do anything for no reason at this point in their society’s collapse either. So if they’re objecting to the child part in particular, it probably means they don’t think it’s worth it – the ends cannot justify the means.

(Which is different, I think, from the statement that ends don’t justify means. That’s nonsense – the only way we know if means are good is if they happen to have good short-term results, so an ends/means discussion tends to involve the idea there’s some level of delay where the two suddenly separate. But in practice, humans are terrible at guessing how things will work out and at quantifying hazy values, so as a rule, don’t assume doing bad things will be worth it works pretty well.)

Rhine then has to explain to Gabriel that the tree blowing up was a threat regarding the lab and not just how they vent their general hatred of science. Of course, then she’s confused by how they knew there would be that announcement and Gabriel has to explain that maybe they just planned to blow the bombs up no matter what the speech was, because clearly Rhine who’s seen lots of speeches would have less of an idea people hate him and would do this than Gabriel who’s never seen or heard the guy in his life.

Normally this amount of walking wouldn’t bother me, but my head won’t stop swimming, and several times I have to blink away the bright spots that crowd my vision. I open a bag of Kettle chips, hoping the empty carbohydrates will aid my brain as it works through the shock of this afternoon. First, the lost brother. Then the hope of a new lab, which was immediately destroyed. But the chips don’t help, not really

Maybe the problem is you’ve been living off caffeinated syrup and salty chips and are probably seconds away from collapsing of dehydration by now. Did your brother feed you too?

They finally find it and it’s a building labeled Grace’s Orphanage, which is in cursive incidentally which Rhine can read because it’s not like kids her age in the current day barely know what cursive is, of course in the future someone who got half a terrible education would know cursive backwards and forwards.

Some guy answers the door and looks suspicious and upset by the sight of Maddie, but then he assumes they’re just there to dump a kid off and calls “Claire” down, not Grace.

Claire is a first generation, tall and heavyset, with dark skin and a deep, mellow voice that spills out like molasses.

Dark skin often gives you a molasses voice, I’d found.

Also maybe this is evidence the first gens weren’t designer babies? You’d think first on the list would be everyone would be super thin.

There is a cloud of children at her feet wherever she walks, her feet artfully dodging wet paint projects left to dry on the floor, roller skates, teddy bears, xylophones.

You know, this sounds nice until you think that this is what giving up looks like.

What we know about the orphanages indirectly seems horrible. Rhine’s “little domestic” must have done nothing but learn sewing and makeup and the rest, and the same is true for the other kids. Cecily’s education seems a lot less abusive, since she knew games and how to play piano and seemed to read like a kid her age actually would, but she was sold off to be raped by her new owner, so the wife track has its own horrors.

But this was done so they’d survive. The servant children were trained to be useful so people would buy them and house them and feed them.

(And where is the money for this coming from? How can she afford to stay here caring for orphans and feeding orphans and buying them paint and toys?)

All the first gens are seventy. The five year old doing finger paint on the floor has fifteen or twenty years left – does she? What are they supposed to do when she’s gone? How is the world supposed to continue when they don’t have enough time to learn anything?

Maybe she’s hopeful – maybe she’s raising them hoping there will be a cure and they’ll be allowed to be children and yet still have time to grow to be adults. But it seems like she’s raising them like pets. She’ll be their adult until they die.

It’s far from the worst thing people have done.

But as a choice, it’s the end of the human race. I can’t really speak to the ethics of that. I think there’s ways for humanity to keep going from here that don’t require turning children into slaves and raping the prettiest ones, but let’s face it, no one else seems interested in considering that, and if that’s our only option, maybe the last adults raising the last children is the better thing.

she smells like fresh laundry and cleanliness is godliness so she’s good. She gives them tea and they ask for it plain. I’d compliment them for finally realizing they need water, but that’s not it.

Gabriel was never allowed the luxury of sugar when he worked in the mansion

Okay, book.

You know how poor people are fat these days, not skinny? That’s because sugar is a cheap way to fill people up. Furthermore, when your servants cook food and live on the premises, you cannot stop them from eating the same stuff they make. Even if you expect me to believe that that kind of micromanaging is possible, it was not going on at the mansion, where he kept sneaking Rhine candy and Rhine herself kept sneaking into various places she shouldn’t be at all.

(Hm, speaking of candy, that’s be an interesting way to keep servants out of it – dye the candy and make colored teeth a sign of status. Any servant with blue teeth and tongue gets the rest of him beaten blue as well.)

Also, sugar is sugar, it’s not an acquired taste.

and I never cared for it.

oh for-

In fact, the only sugary things I liked were the desserts at Linden’s parties, and the June Beans.

“In fact, the only sugary things I liked were sugary things in general.” God fucking dammit Rhine just say you don’t like it in tea or you’re sick of sugar after living off coke or your stomach is upset! Or drink your stupid tea with sugar, it doesn’t even matter! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SPEWING NONSENSE OVER SOMETHING SO STUPID?

Claire’s curious how they heard about the orphanage, which is apparently advertised by writing signs and taping them around, because people no longer talk to each other or anything.

“It was in a book,” I say, my voice surprising me with its frailty. It’s the voice of a spirit that has been crushed, a girl one tenth her normal size.

Really.

See, if there’d ever been any sense you had a spine to start with, I could understand finally breaking under the strain. Also, if your relationship with your brother wasn’t so bungled, with you only this book realizing that hey, you did spend a whole year almost entirely lazing around not doing anything to get back to him. Also would help if you hadn’t realized last book he might leave and if you hadn’t repeatedly turned down any hope of contacting him before that happened.

“A book?” Claire says. “That can’t be it. We’ve never advertised in the phone book.”

There’s phone books without phones, apparently.

So Rhine pulls out the book and we finally learn what the actual story is.

The book is called Pram’s Ponies , and it’s about a little girl who can speak to foals, and a little boy who doesn’t believe her. In the end the boy drowns and the girl grows a pair of wings.

Okay. You know what’d have been a good idea to say all this? The first time you read it to her, or maybe the second. I get the sense here the author only now realized this was her last chance to describe it.

But anyway, turns out “Lilac” is the Grace of the book. Showing momentary insight, Rhine figures this out on her own.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Grace Lottner who wanted to be a teacher. She helped care for the orphans that lived with her and her mother.

Huh. See, I’d have thought the orphanage was what her mom did after losing her daughter.

By age twelve her pretty eyes and easy smile, coupled with her long limbs and coffee-dark skin, had made her a thing of beauty.
She left for school early one morning and never came home.
The rest Claire cannot bring herself to say. But that’s all right. I can figure it out myself. Lilac —Grace Lottner—was Gathered and sold into prostitution. She wound up pregnant, and maybe she tried to escape, but she only made it as far as Madame’s.

Well, that’s depressing.

Silas demands to know why they didn’t go back for her.

“She covered for us,” I say. “We were hidden, and she told them we’d gotten away. She knew we had Maddie and that it was better for us to take her than to risk her being caught.”
Silas makes a sound that is between a laugh and a sob. When I look at him, his pale face is red, his light eyes are shiny with tears that don’t come. “Noble,” he snorts.

Rhine’s justification is really terrible.

Because there were guns is why they didn’t go back, or should have been. But the fact they couldn’t help her no matter how much they might have wanted to apparently isn’t part of Rhine’s decision, which I guess makes sense given apparently, she never believes bad things will happen to her. Instead, she had an excuse for why she didn’t have to, so she took it.

“Madame was going to kill her!” I snap.

Was. But she thought Maddie was dead and there’s no reason you’d have needed to bring the girl back with you to rescue Grace.

It’s amazing how this book can take a situation where they really did not have any choice and twist it up into a bunch of selfish excuses when it comes time for Rhine to justify it.

she takes a long moment, then says, “I would love for Maddie to stay with me. Is that why you brought her here?”
And there lies the heart of my anger, and this persistent heartsick feeling like a lead weight on my chest. “We brought her here,” I say, very carefully, working through my disbelief, “because we have no place else to go.”

Except all the other empty houses.

They can’t possibly have anything extra to spare for a seventeen year old and eighteen year old capable of earning a decent wage on their own. The city is drowning in toddlers. You are not more desperate for aid than starving toddlers, Rhine.