There’s a long pause before I hear her footsteps. The door opens a sliver, and then she steps back and motions for me to come in. She’s either a dainty crier or quite skilled at cleaning herself up. Other than a slight reddish tinge to her eyes, she looks put together. Her dark blond hair is neatly combed back, and her dress is smooth and unrumpled. The sheets on her bed are piled into a small nest, and she climbs on, pulling her feet up after her. “Is there anything you need?”

“Is there anything bothering you?” I ask her. “Anything you’d like to talk about?”

Mehtap looks down and lets out a wry chuckle. “You heard me, didn’t you? And here I thought I was being discreet.”

“If you’d rather I leave it alone…”

“No, it’s all right.” She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “It’s silly, really. I was just reading a letter from my good friend. She’s…” She gestures helplessly toward a tablet nestled in her blankets. “She’s getting married.”

Understanding comes quickly. I think back to the day Leora came by my cottage with her bridal veil, and I feel that familiar twinge in my chest.

“I’m happy for her,” Mehtap says. “I really am. It’s just…” She bites her lip.

“I know,” I say quietly.

Apparently, my words give Mehtap the permission she needed, because tears start to stream silently down her face. “She’ll have a beautiful wedding. Her betrothed is a good man. And she’ll have children….” And here she stops herself and laughs a little. “I don’t even like children.”

Her words bring a rush of memories. Leora’s eyes sparkling as she tells me about her betrothed. Alia’s animated recountings of village feasts, her arms akimbo as she imitates the wildest dancers. Mother and Father, speaking sensibly about the harvest and plans to rotate the crops over the next years. I craved the news they brought, the window they offered into what I’d left behind. But the stories came with a bitter aftertaste. I missed my family dearly between visits, but my moments with them were poisoned by my illness as well.

“It seems unfair sometimes, doesn’t it?” I say. “That life goes on outside these walls. We get put inside, but everyone just continues without us.”

Mehtap wipes at her eyes. “I just want to know what I did wrong. What did I do to offend the gods so?”

She looks at me with something close to desperation, and my words tangle in my throat. There are so many things I could say. That the gods’ ways are mysterious. That it makes no more sense to question our misfortune than it does to question our good fortune. That it would be arrogant to think we deserve not to suffer when plenty of others share our fate.