"I wish I knew what to say. I can't wrap my mind around this, I guess. Dayton seems like he was promoted to parent over your own parents and that's just so hard to picture. I don't understand how your parents can be happy like this. Family is true wealth; why walk away from that?"

Frowning, he shifted to look at Dolemeck. "You're not a rich brat. You may have money, but you're not a bad person. I've seen the difference. In Elvuney, the richest man was the head of the polar station there. He had two daughters, Marya and Gennadiya. Gennadiya was a nightmare to even be around, always using her money and position to get away with things, and her father's connections to get her off the island and into an elite school. After that she married some commissar for the power and money, and never even spoke to her family again.

Marya helped convince her father to let Chukchi people come and go in the summer months, and tried to get her father to intervene when I was marked for the gulag. He couldn't, because even he didn't have the power to overturn that. And she couldn't talk to me because the world was watching, but she left me blueberries, the first fruit I ever had and the only gift I'd ever gotten from someone not in my family.

There are two kinds of rich people in the world: the Gennadiyas, and the Maryas. And you are a Marya, Dolemeck."