He spits on the ground near my feet and some of the spit catches in the short black hairs on his chin. “It was not her choice.” His voice is strained and even and I know that he would prefer to be yelling but does not want to cause a scene in the village. “She was insane, she was sick.” I can feel his rage and pain wash over me and I want to take his emotions onto myself, to help him carry this burden. But my own feelings are too much, they swirl and overwhelm me such that I am helpless to comfort my brother.

“I couldn't kill her, Jed. I couldn't let them do that.” I resist the urge to look down at my hands as I speak.

“What do you think throwing her to the Unconsecrated was, Mary?” He reaches out and grabs my shoulder so hard that his fingers dig in around the bone. “Don't you realize that I will have to kill her now? When I'm out on patrol, what do you think will happen if I see her? Do you think I can let her go on”—he waves his hand past me, past the fields and toward the fence line

—”like that? That is not life. That is not natural. It is sick and horrid and evil and I can't believe you would do this to me. That you would make me be the one to kill our mother because you weren't strong enough to do it.”

I see now that he wanted me to be the one to kill her so that he wouldn't have to make his own choice.

“I'm sorry, Jed,” I say, because I don't know how else to make it right between us. He is a Guardian, one of the few whose only duty is to protect the village, to mend the fence line, to kill the Infected. I don't know how to force him to see that it was her choice and not mine. That in making that choice she must have known that it could come to her own son having to kill her later. I don't know how to make him understand that sometimes love and devotion can overpower a person to the point where she wants to join her spouse in the Forest. Even if it means throwing everything else in life away.

I move forward to give him a hug but he keeps his arm stiff, his hand still on my shoulder so that I cannot come any closer.

“I am the man of the house now, Mary,” he tells me.

I try a smile, to remind him that he will always be my brother. “That doesn't mean you can't hug your own sister,” I tell him.

He doesn't laugh as I hoped. “I hear you are to join the Sisterhood,” he says. His words hit me like a slap. I don't know what I was expecting—anger, pain, regret, but not for him to turn me away. Not for him to cast me out and leave me to the Sisters before I've even had a chance to speak with him. To plead my case. This is why he didn't come to me at the Cathedral—in his mind I already belonged to them, I was already a Sister.