Rise An Eve Novel

lose her, that it all could go away.
    Beatrice kept her head down, her voice slow and deliberate. “You can tell me, Eve,” she said. “You have to know you can trust me. What happened with Caleb was a mistake. I panicked. Your father had threatened her.” Her eyes fell on Sarah, who was walking several yards ahead, helping Helene along.
    “I do,” I said. “I know you would take it back if you could.”
    Beatrice covered her mouth with her hand. “You’ll see,” she said. “It’s not easy. Sometimes I feel like I’ve made so many mistakes—too many. I’ve tried so hard to protect her.”
    “You didn’t know about the Schools,” I said, remembering the night I had met Beatrice, how well kept the secret had been. She, like most in the City, believed the girls had volunteered to give birth.
    “You should’ve told me you were pregnant,” Beatrice went on. “I could’ve helped you. Here we are, all alone, and you’re suffering like this. You should have told me.” She squeezed my hand, the warmth of it comforting me.
    I watched Sarah up ahead, beside Helene, kicking a rock as they trudged over the narrow road. She’d found a cloth bag in a house miles back and carried a few of her things inside, letting it swing on her shoulder. The girls stayed in the center, as I’d directed, away from the steep drop. “She’ll be okay, Beatrice,” I said. “She’s handled this the best out of all of them. That has to mean something.”
    Beatrice watched the road as we walked. “You’re polite,” she said. “She hasn’t exactly taken to me so easily. You’ve seen her, I know you have.”
    I nodded. When Sarah went to sleep for the night, settling down beside Helene or Kit, I’d seen the passing disappointment on Beatrice’s face. Sarah insisted on carrying her own bag, on walking with her friends, and the conversations I had overheard between mother and daughter always seemed a little forced and awkward. Beatrice asked questions, and Sarah provided short, one-word answers. “It’ll take time,” I offered.
    Beatrice nodded. She squeezed my hand again, her eyes returning to Sarah. The girls had stopped at the edge of the road, Clara with them. They were looking down at something below. “I hope,” she said. “And I’ll keep your secret if that’s what you want, but you’ll have my dinner tonight.”
    “Beatrice, that’s not—”
    “I know there’s not much, but you need it. And we’ll figure out more provisions in a few days, when we get to the lodgings on the map,” she said. “I insist.”
    “We can hunt when we get to the first lake,” I said, trying to ignore the growing pain in my stomach. “It’s only two days off.” As we approached the girls they were smiling, Kit pointing to something out across the valley floor.
    “You can see them!” she yelled to us over her shoulder. “Sheep!”
    I squinted against the morning sun, noticing the horned sheep moving up the side of the rock face, a hundred yards below, just to our left. Beatrice walked beside me, laughing when she noticed them. There was a whole herd, two smaller ones in the center. They nearly blended in with the sandstone rock. “I spotted them first,” Kit called to us, her fingers combing out her long ponytail. “Do you see, Eve?”
    We made our way up the narrow road. The girls had turned to us, waiting for my reaction. It was a relief to see them smiling, the heat of the day not yet upon us, their thirst and hunger forgotten, if only for a moment. I was about to comment on their discovery when I was distracted by Helene. She stood to the side of the group, near the edge of the cliff, where the pavement gave way to rock. She held one heel in her hand, fiddling with the same shoe that had bothered her before.
    It happened so quickly I barely had time to react. She set her foot back behind her, too close to the edge, and the rock crumbled beneath her step. She was pulled down the side of the steep cliff, the earth going with her. She let out a choked yell as she slipped away, out of my view.

eighteen
    I HEARD HER LOW, BROKEN CRIES AND THE SOUND OF THE ROCK giving way, hundreds of tiny pebbles careening down into the ravine, toward the valley floor. A few of the girls knelt, trying to reach her, but she was already too far below. Her body fell farther down the jagged cliff. There was the horrible, skidding sound of her hands dragging against the stone, trying to find something to hold on to.
    “Stay back