Chapter 4
But for all his bravado, Jade also knew who the real Cains were in this Eden—he and his brother and sisters, their parents being outcasts of ungodly fathers. It occurred to him as he got older that the siblings’ differing responses to this situation represented the only possible reactions to rejection. You could set your life hard against it—like turning your face to the wind—as Jade had done. You could ignore it and laugh it off, as the twins did. Or you could aggressively court acceptance, tirelessly knocking on its door in the hope that you would gain admittance—a course that their sister Belle would chart from the moment she learned to write.
Unbeknown to anyone—especially their mother, who would’ve ripped them from her chubby, little fingers—Belle began sending homemade ca
