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  Liesel tried another approach, not sure she could even form the words but managing. “That’s like tossing money away. You might as well just flush my paycheck down the toilet.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Food costs money.” Surely the girl understood that. She couldn’t be that sheltered…or simple. Could she?

  “I know. But it’s bad food, Liesel. Corn syrup causes all kinds of disease. It harms your vessel. If you can’t grow your own food, fresh, it’s best to keep it as simple as possible. Avoid chemicals and toxins.”

  “It wasn’t yours to dump,” Liesel said, sounding too harsh, but the sight of her soda swirling down the drain made her want to weep. Even Christopher, who could be incredibly unobservant, knew better than to drink her soda, and Sunny had dumped it all away.

  Sunny’s expression didn’t change except, if it were possible, to get blanker. She backed up a step. Paced a few more, swiveled on her heel. Then back again. Her fists clenched together, fingers linked. She paused, head hanging, the intricate design of her braid somehow making her ears and chin and neck seem all the more exposed.

  Liesel fought her own expression, which wanted to twist and turn into ugliness. “Look. Sunny. I know all this is crazy and new to you…”

  “It is,” Sunny said in a low voice, without looking at her. “We’ve already talked about this. You’re going to tell me you understand, that you know it will take time. That me and my kids are welcome here, in my father’s house.”

  It was exactly what Liesel had been about to say, the same words she’d already said several times over the past few days. “All of that is true.”

  Sunny faced her. “But you don’t understand, Liesel. You can’t ever understand, I don’t think.”

  “Because I’m blemished?” Liesel asked wearily.

  “Because you’ve lived your whole life in a house like this!” Sunny cried, her blank mask slipping for a moment to reveal the agonized girl beneath.

  From upstairs came a thin wail. Bliss. Sunny let her eyes roll upward, but she didn’t move. She looked back at Liesel.

  “Why don’t you have any children?”

  “I… We…” Liesel frowned. “That’s not really any of your business.”

  From upstairs came a series of thumps. Another short cry. Liesel would’ve been up the stairs by now, but Sunny just cocked her head as though assessing not just the volume of the cry, but its nature. She shook her head a little and pushed away a tendril of hair that had fallen over her face.

  “I know you don’t have to let us stay here.”

  Liesel sighed. “Of course I do, Sunny. Where else would you go? A homeless shelter? Or maybe you’d like to give up your kids—”

  “No!”

  “Well,” Liesel said again with that same harsh tone she was disturbed to realize tasted too familiar, “that’s what would happen if you don’t stay here. You’ll be out on the street. And the state will take your kids from you.”

  It sounded too much like a threat, and she hadn’t meant it to be. It was the simple truth. Hard, unpleasant. But true.

  “I’m not a child.”

  “I know you’re not,” Liesel said, again too harshly, but unable to stay emotionless. “But let’s face it, you’re as much to take care of as one.”

  “I am as a child in my father’s house.” Sunny coughed against the back of her hand, not looking at Liesel. It sounded like a quote Liesel should know the source of, but didn’t. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

  “No. And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “You meant it, didn’t you?” Sunny shrugged, still without looking at her.

  Liesel sighed and put both her hands on the countertop, leaning forward for support, her shoulders tense and back aching. “But I shouldn’t have said it. It wasn’t nice.”

  “If it’s true, does it have to be nice? If you have something true to say, but you don’t say it because you just want to be nice, isn’t that sort of like a lie?” Sunny looked at her again, her words a question but her face showing no sign of curiosity.

  “Is that what your…is that what Papa taught you?”

  “Not to speak with a liar’s tongue. Yes. We’re taught not to.”

  “So…you always tell the truth?”

  Sunny hesitated. “We’re supposed to. If we don’t, someone will tell it for us. You can’t go through the gates with the weight of lies and misdeeds holding you back.”

  Liesel looked around her ruined kitchen, the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of wasted food. She thought of three small faces and the clasp of tiny fingers in hers. “Nobody expects all this to just magically be all right for any of us.”

  “I know that.”

  “But it will get better,” Liesel said.

  Sunny looked at her. “Are you saying that because you think it’s true? Or because you think it’s nice?”

  “Sunny,” Liesel said with a smile the girl slowly returned, “sometimes it can be the same thing.”

  Chapter 23

  Papa used to be tall and strong, with long white hair and a scratchy beard that tickled on your cheeks when he kissed you. Now he sits in a wheelchair and his hair has gone a dirty yellow color. His fingernails, too.

  He hasn’t kissed Sunny in a long time, not for ages, but she thinks about the feeling of his beard on her face now. It’s time to see if maybe Sunny’s going to become Papa’s one true wife, to replace the one who’d left her vessel too soon. It’s been a long time and he hasn’t found her yet, but there’s always the chance it could be any one of the women in the family. Maybe Sunny. And once he finds her, then everyone else can take their one true wife or husband, and they’ll all be able to go through the gates. But by the time Sunny’s mother brings her to Papa’s room, he’s already started to get tired.

  “Sit with me, Sunshine,” Papa says from his bed, patting the blankets next to him. “Tell me about yourself.”

  There’s not much to tell. Sunny is fourteen years old and has moved into the dorm where she’ll stay until something else happens to her, like becoming the one true wife or having a baby. She shares the dorm with Patience, Willow and Praise, four beds all in a row, and she misses the trundle in her mother’s room. But her mother says she’s glad Sunny’s moved out to the dorm so she can have a little more privacy—which Sunny knows means time with John Second alone, and that’s okay with her because maybe if he has more time with her mother, he won’t bother with Sunny anymore.

  “You’ve done well with your lessons, I hear.”

  She doesn’t ask from whom. Anyone can make a report on anyone else, and it could be a good report or a bad report. Mostly bad. People always seem to pay attention to the bad things you do, not so much the good. She nods, shy in front of Papa, though she shouldn’t be.

  “In another month or so you’ll be sent out among the blemished.” Papa coughs fiercely, the bed shaking. He coughs so loud and long and hard that Sunny becomes alarmed, though he waves away the glass of water she pours him from the pitcher on the table by the bed. “You’ll be an emissary for us here in Sanctuary, Sunshine.”

  “What’s an emissary?”

  Papa laughs. “A bringer of good news, I suppose you could say. It’ll be part of your job to put my words into the hands of the blemished and hope that some of them become seekers.”

  Sunny nods, relaxing a little bit. If all Papa wants to do is talk to her…well, that can’t be bad. “Like Edwina and Patch.”

  “Yes. They came to us as seekers and now they’ve become part of our family. It’s a beautiful thing, Sunshine, being able to bring the word to those who don’t know about it.” Papa coughs again, longer this time, then sags back against the pillows. He reaches for her hand and holds it tigh