Chapter 15: Six Questions Maren Puts to Cael That He Must Answer

The confrontation did not happen on Monday.

Maren had prepared it thoroughly — had arranged the six questions in order of increasing difficulty the way she had once arranged her mother's medications on the kitchen counter, smallest to largest, each one exactly the right distance from the next. She had walked to school with them, attended registration, sat through two periods of biology in which Mr. Farrow discussed the reproductive strategies of marine invertebrates with a thoroughness that would, under other circumstances, have interested her. She had carried the questions through the corridors, through lunch in the corner of the canteen where Petra sat across from her and talked steadily about the untranslated Latin clause and did not ask, with genuine disciplined restraint, what had happened with Sable on the cliff path.

Cael was not at school on Monday.