Our ideas of closure were certainly different.
“Tessie,” my father said with a sigh.
I blinked furiously, refusing to let any tears fall. Hearing him call me that, hearing it again, tugged at some part of my heart. “I said I was fine,” I repeated. “They need you.” And they did. My father had lost five men to the attack. My sister, Lockwood, and even Henry and I had escaped with nothing more than shot nerves, a few bruises, and, in Henry’s case, a concussion.
“Tessie,” he said again, and despite my ironclad resolve not to give in, my eyes moved toward his face. “Take a walk with me,” he said. His voice wasn’t harsh, but it was a command all the same. When I hesitated, he added, “Unless you’re hurt and can’t manage it.”
It was a challenge. I shouldn’t have given in to it, but he was my father, after all, and he knew I would. I pulled myself to my feet, suppressing a groan. My father promptly turned and walked deeper into the woods, away from his army. We walked in silence for nearly ten minutes before he stopped, turned around, and leaned against a tree. Away from the men and women he commanded, my father seemed to relax a bit, shake off the tough exterior he wore around like armor.
“For centuries, scientists have argued over whether a child’s personality is formed through nature or nurture. I always hoped my stubbornness wasn’t passed along to you.”
It took me a moment to respond. I had expected a scolding, at least a lecture, not a school lesson. My father continued to be full of surprises. “Nature or nurture? What do you mean?” I asked.
“It means whether we are who we are because we were born this way or because of the world we were born into,” he explained. “But I left so long ago, and here you are, perhaps the most stubborn girl I’ve ever met. I guess nature wins out.”
I offered a short laugh in return. “Maybe it’s because you left me that I had to become so stubborn. Maybe it was the only weapon I had left.”
Despite my wry tone, my father grinned. “And the debate continues.”
I shook my head. “Is that why you brought me out here? To talk philosophy? If you ask me, I think we should be getting the hell out of these woods. Weren’t you the one demanding that when we tried to bury McNair?”
My father’s smile faded. His eyes narrowed as they searched something in mine. He took a deep breath and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “No. That’s not why I brought you out here. When I saw you attack that thing, putting your life in danger to save your friend, I wanted to kill you myself for being so stupid.”
Scolding and lecturing it was.
“Standing up for someone you care about is stupid, is it?” I challenged.
“That’s exactly it, isn’t it? The conundrum. The problem I caused and did everything in my power to avoid at the same time,” he said quietly.
“Can we please stop talking in riddles? Why are we out here? If it’s to tell me you think what I did was ridiculous, then let’s get on with it,” I retorted, tapping my foot furiously against the dirt ground. I refused to let him get a rise out of me. He couldn’t play father one moment and commander the next and expect me to be all right with it.
“But it’s the riddle that has come to define my life. I left my family to protect them, joining the resistance movement—”
“But I saw two chosen ones take you! Are you telling me they were part of it, too? That it was all an act?” I couldn’t help myself. I was exhausted, every muscle in my body tight and wound up, and I was scared. Scared that we would never make it out of these woods. Scared that we would, and they wouldn’t let us back into the community.
“I will tell you all that in time, I promise. What you need to know right now is why I did it.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “And why did you do it?” I managed.
“To save this world. To save it for you, and Emma, and Louisa. I am so close, Tess, to ending all of this. To bringing the council down.” I opened my mouth to argue but my father held up his hand. “I know you will always see my leaving as a betrayal, but I had no other options. If I had stayed, I would have ended up in that compound. And there, I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing. I would’ve had to live with the knowledge that they would destroy my family, take my eldest daughter from me and force her into servitude, make the women in my family hate everything about themselves that made them beautiful, and I couldn’t do a thing about it. So I left. I left everything I loved. I became this man you look at with hatred. I became him to give you a better world.”