Chapter 17: Liv

Hedda's POV

My mother was waiting for me on the porch of the Elder Den.

She sat on the top step in her grey knitted dress with a flat cloth bag in her lap, and she stood up when I came out.

It was the evening before the Gathering.

I had not spoken to her in five days.

"Hedda," Liv said.

Her voice was rough and low, a voice that had forgotten how to carry.

"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me," she said.

"Good."

"I'm going to ask you to listen. You can say no."

I looked at her hands.

They were thin, and the knuckles were swollen, and they were holding the bag so tightly that the cloth creased.

They were the hands that had been over my mouth.

"Say it," I said.

"The night your senses came, you screamed."

"I remember."

"You heard the sea, and the whole house, and you thought you were dying."

"I put my hand on your mouth to quiet you, and you went still."

"It worked."

"That's what I told myself for ten years. It worked."

She did not look away from me.

"By the second winter I knew it wasn't a cure. You would look at me over my fingers, and I knew."

"And you didn't stop."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because Arne would look at me across the table, and Sunniva would say, 'Not yet, Liv, it's not safe.'"

"And I was a coward, and I let them say it."

I had expected her to cry.

She did not.

She stood and took it, with her chin up and her hands clenched around the bag.

"I held your mouth shut for ten years," she said. "I'll never be able to undo it, and I won't pretend the thing I did was small."

"You said I'd seize if I was loud."

"I believed it."

"Even after I never did?"

"Even then."

I turned my face away.

It was cold on the porch, and I could hear the Ridge settling for the night.

"I'm not forgiving you," I said.

"I know."

"Don't think because you're standing here I'm going to put my head on your shoulder."

"I won't think that."

"Then what do you want?"

She opened the cloth bag and took out a thick, stained ledger.

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