Hare Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

arm, tugging him behind her.
    He grips her hand as she slams the door. “I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t know,” he says again, as if repeating it over and over again will still the confusion inside.

    Tabitha sits in the corner of a cramped room while the rest of the Sisters figure out what to do next. The two infected Sisters are in the infirmary. They’re being given last rites and will be put down soon. “We’ll tell the village it was a bout of food poisoning,” the oldest Sister, their de facto leader, says. Everyone else murmurs in stunned agreement, but Tabitha stays silent.
    “Now, about the infected child,” the head Sister says. As if she’s leading some sort of meeting with an agenda.
    Patrick’s brother is still in Tabitha’s room. She knows he’s made it to the door because she thinks she can hear him scratching against it. Tiny moans float through the hallways. Patrick’s been tied to a bed in another room. Tabitha’s sure they gagged him or else she’d be able to hear him shouting forhis brother, screaming that he didn’t know.
    She presses her lips together tightly. She’s very aware that everyone around her is struggling not to look at her. She’s trying to figure out what she believes. She’s trying to decide if it matters.
    She knows she asked him directly if his brother was infected and he said no. She doesn’t know if he was lying. She closes her eyes, remembering the earnest panic of his expression as she pulled him from her room.
    Tabitha thinks about the book in the tunnel room. About how long this village has lasted because it was cut off. How she has endangered that.
    Ruth and Ami, her only two friends in the Sisterhood, will be dead soon. Her family could have died as well. Everyone in the village could have become infected.
    “Someone will have to take care of the child,” the oldest Sister says.
    Tabitha rubs a hand over her face, shifting in her chair. It’s all her fault. Whether Patrick lied to her or not, she was the one to bring the infected child into the village. The little boy is her responsibility. Just as Patrick’s fate belongs to her.
    It would be so much easier if she knew Patrick lied to her. If she could believe that he knew all along that his brother was infected. But she knows her heart and her heart knows his, and this is how she is sure that Patrick told the truth.
    And yet it doesn’t matter that she believes him: belief is irrelevant in the face of fact. He brought the infection. She allowed it to happen.
    “I will take care of the infected child,” she says softly. She looks at the otherwomen in the room—really looks at them. At how soft some of them appear. How old and tired. How they devote their lives to God and leave nothing for themselves.
    How unlike Tabitha. She who lusted. She who put desire for a different life—for a man, for her dreams—before God. She who almost brought down her village.
    “And the older brother?” the head Sister asks. For the first time Tabitha realizes the hesitation in her voice. She realizes how weak this woman is to be in charge of not just the Cathedral, but the fate of the village. She wonders if any of the rest of them know of the journal downstairs, know of the legacy of their survival.
    Tabitha thinks about taking Patrick’s hand and leading him down the path and away from the village. Of banishing herself and him together. She smiles, letting the dream roll around in her mind.
    “Him I will take care of as well,” Tabitha says.
    “About the circumstances in which the older boy was found …,” the head Sister begins, leaving an opening for Tabitha to fill in the blank.
    Tabitha stands and squares her shoulders. She keeps her chin level and her voice even as she says, “It is none of your concern.” She sweeps toward the door, black tunic floating around her ankles. She waits for the head Sister to challenge her, to maintain her authority and dress Tabitha down in front of her peers