Sarah had discovered that while she liked to ask questions in the hopes that someone or other could answer them, adults liked to ask questions they already knew the answers to. She wasn’t sure why exactly that was, and had finally decided that as people grew older, the more important something was the easier it becomes for them to forget. They had to keep asking as a way to help them remember.

Are they the same reasons my mother had Owen? Me? Did we each think to improve on the generation that came before us, or did we just want to be certain that someone somewhere loved and needed us? I sniff. My mother discovered soon enough that a son’s love is only for the length of a childhood. A daughter’s is forever. It may be snarled up with resentment, but it goes deeper. Daughters will always eventually understand the mothers they thought they hated.

I’m sorry.′ The words fell out onto the table and flew away like dandelion seeds, never reaching him.

I will never let myself be caught like that – any marriage I make will be my own. A choice. A free one.

Carefully, I arrange the teapot, the little white cup, and the sugar bowl before me like an army. Defense? Or attack?

Before, I would have been powdered and perfumed, my hair done in an elaborate style by the patient fingers of servants. The household crake would have written lines in my honor, my dress would have been new, and I would have been as beautifully turned out as glass sculpture from House Canroth. And as empty.

The two vampires exchange glances, and I sigh. I don’t need Harun’s anger on top of my own. Let the vampires do as they please. He should do what I do and learn to slip all his emotions under layers and layers of nothingness until they are barely there at all. Or perhaps that is a skill only women are taught.

None of them will believe me. I drop any attempt to explain myself and just gracefully accept that people are going to make assumptions and that the more I argue, the more it’ll look like I’m trying to hide something.

My mother still deludes herself that the letters are written out of more than a desire to spend as little time in our company as possible. She likes to think he is still hers.

Sarah liked to think that night was the best time to work on staying silly and childish. Darkness always seemed more understanding about those sorts of things. More accommodating. Tonight.