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a second time, but as I begin to lift her, she giggles and climbs from my lap. She puts the kettle on and looks back to me, smiling. I don’t know how she can be so calm. My chest is still heaving, my body electrified.
    “You know, maybe you’re overdoing the whole thing,” she says. “Maybe your ma really did have twins back then, but the younger one died or something. And then a year later you came along and she named you in his memory. You could really be a year younger than Blaine.”
    “But then a lost child would have been stated in my mother’s scroll. And I would have been listed as the third.”
    “Or maybe the scrolls are incomplete,” she counters. “After all, that’s the excuse you gave me when we originally talked about Claysoot’s founding.”
    I raise an eyebrow at her. “That’s different.”
    “How so?”
    “I don’t know. It just is.”
    “Maybe you should go talk to Maude, Gray. If there are any more answers to be found, she has them.”
    “And, what? Admit that we snooped around the Clinic and read private records and now I don’t understand why, at eighteen, I haven’t been Heisted?”
    “At this point it seems a far safer option than climbing over the Wall.”
    I catch myself staring at her wavy hair, the way it has grown wild in the damp evening, and decide she is the most beautiful being I have ever seen.
    “You are so smart, Emma, you know that?”
    She blushes and pours the tea.
    Much later, after tossing in bed for hours, I give up on sleep entirely. I sit at the table and think about Emma’s suggestion. Maybe I can get information from Maude without admitting I snooped around at the Clinic. Maybe I can say I discovered I was a twin through Ma’s letter by pretending I have both pages. Before I can decide if this is a good idea or rather foolish, I am pulling on a hooded shirt and stepping into the rain.
    I knock on Maude’s door several times, but she doesn’t answer. She’s probably asleep, but I pound again. This time, the door swings inward ever so slightly from the force. I nudge it cautiously with my foot. The kitchen is empty, but a faint, flickering light seeps from the bedroom, casting an eerie blue glow about the room.
    “Hello?” I step inside, mostly to get out of the rain. “Maude?”
    Still no answer.
    I move cautiously through the kitchen, and that’s when I hear it, murmured voices, coming from the bedroom.
    “Any other happenings to report?” It’s the voice of a male, so soft I can barely hear it.
    “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Maude says.
    I peer around the doorway and find Maude’s back to me, the rest of her facing an oddly illuminated section of her bedroom wall. I lean forward to better hear who she is talking to, but my foot steps on a squeaky floorboard that cries out under my weight.
    Maude spins around and her eyes narrow as she sees me. She stands up quickly, far quicker than I’ve ever seen her move before and slams closed the cabinet housing the light. I step away from the room, ready to bolt for the door, but she marches right at me and I know it’s no use.
    “What are you doing here?” she wheezes, leaning on her cane as she moves into the kitchen. She does not look angry but terrified.
    “I came to talk to you. I had a question.” My eyes search the room behind her. “Who were you talking to?”
    “No one,” she says. “I was preparing my notes for a meeting with the Council Heads tomorrow and sometimes I like to review them out loud.”
    “But I heard a man’s voice.” Again I crane my head around her, searching the bedroom.
    “You heard nothing of the sort,” she says bluntly.
    But I did. I know what I saw, what I heard. Suddenly, I no longer trust her. Maude, who always seemed to guide our people, show us the way. She has become another element that feels unnatural, and so quickly.
    “I’m leaving,” I tell her.
    “Good. It does not do to enter others’ homes by force.”
    “No, not just your house,”