Partridge will come for her. They’ll start a new life. He loves her. She remembers walking with Partridge to the subway car, the dusty wind kicking up her cape. He kissed her, quickly, before Mother Hestra could catch them. After they lay with each other in the warden’s house, Partridge was the one who wanted her to come with him. The way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the way it felt when they were near each other—that was love, wasn’t it? Can love just disappear?She was the one to tell Partridge to marry Iralene—to stop people from killing themselves. Wasn’t it the right thing to do? Was it a setup? Did Partridge want permission to betray her?She looks around the nursery—the dismantled crib, the small mattress tilted against a wall next to a stack of ripped-up baby books and the bowl of ash where she burned page after page, the pile of spears she whittled from the slats, the shavings littering the floor, and the bags of yarn and knitting needles brought in by Chandry.She looks down at her torn dress, the tightness of it around her waist where her belly will continue to widen… This is the room of a crazy person, and she’s the crazy person within it.
