She heard him sigh loudly. “Yes, I probably do.” He sighed again. “But I do believe your parents have to know . . . that Kat told us . . . what she wishes. If she’s already told them, they’ll be wondering if it’s up to them to tell us . . . that they knew . . . that they know . . . that we know.”

“At any other time the way you said that might have been funny.”

“Maybe,” he said and moved toward the door without having even looked at her. “I’ll see you at supper; I think we just need to tell them.”

Amala couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving the room without her knowing just a little bit more about his frame of mind. She heard the door open and hurried to ask, “Do you intend to keep your promise to Kat?”

“How in heaven and earth do you expect me to answer that question now?” he retorted, clearly angry in spite of keeping his voice hushed. “Do you?”

“Forgive me for asking,” Amala said. “It’s as I already told you . . . not the time to be concerned over how to handle the situation.”

Amala heard the door close and felt certain he would have slammed it if not for Kat sleeping in the room, although Amala suspected Kat would sleep through anything with the amount of medicine she’d been given. Amala turned again to look at her sister and felt a distinct desire to trade places with her. It was far from the first time she’d thought it. Kat had a husband and a son, and she didn’t have the challenge of being a dark-skinned woman in a society of light-skinned people. For Amala to leave this world, having lived a good life and experienced so much, would not have been nearly so tragic. And now with Kat’s edict hanging over her—and Henry—she wanted all the more to be the sister with cancer, the one who could gracefully leave this world and leave all of her problems behind.

Chapter Twelve

WITHOUT COLOR

With all her soul, Amala dreaded going down to supper. But she knew it had to be faced; they just had to get all of the secrets out in the open and stop pretending about everything. Still, the very idea felt terrifying, and she knew that if she felt terrified, Henry surely did too.