Ariadne raised her lovely face. Tears poured down her cheeks; she wiped them away with shaking hands. “Oh, Anna, won’t you kiss me?” she said. “Oh, please, Anna. Do not leave me. Please kiss me.”

She looked at Anna pleadingly. Anna’s breaths were short, and her heart beat a wailing tattoo in her chest. The perfect world she had dreamed of was shattered into a million pieces, turned to dust, and blown away. What replaced it was something cruel and strange. There was not enough air to breathe. Hot tears stung her eyes.

“Good-bye, Ariadne,” she managed, and staggered from the room.

Anna sat on the edge of her bed and cried for a very long time. She cried until no tears came and her body heaved reflexively.

There was a soft knock on her door, and her brother peeked his head in.

“Anna?” he said, blinking his lavender eyes. “Are you all right? I thought I heard something.”

Oh, Christopher. Sweet Christopher. Anna roughly wiped her face.

“I’m fine, Christopher,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Are you sure?” Christopher asked. “Is there nothing I can do to help you? I could perform a saving act of science.”

“Christopher, get along with you.” It was Anna’s mother, appearing silently as a cat in the corridor behind her son. “Go and do something else. Something without explosives,” she added, shooing her second-born off down the hall.

Anna hastily scrubbed the last traces of tears from her eyes as her mother came into her room, carrying a long, beribboned box. She sat down on the bed and looked at her daughter placidly.

As always, Cecily was perfectly dressed and perfectly calm-looking, her dark hair in a smooth chignon at the back of her neck, her dress a becoming blue. Anna couldn’t help but think how ghastly she must look in her nightshirt with her face blotchy and red.

“Do you know why I named you Anna?” Cecily said.

Anna shook her head, puzzled.

“I was awfully ill during my pregnancy,” said Cecily. Anna blinked—she hadn’t known that. “I was worried all the time that you wouldn’t live to be born, or you would be sickly and ill. And then you were born, and you were the most beautiful, healthy, perfect child.” She smiled. “Anna means ‘favor,’ as in ‘God has favored me.’ I thought the Angel had favored me with you, and I would make sure you were always happy, always content.” She reached out to gently touch Anna’s cheek. “She broke your heart, didn’t she? Ariadne?”

Anna was speechless. So her mother did know. She had always thought her mother knew that she loved women, and that her father did as well … but they had never spoken of it until now.