"Everyone gets lost sometimes," she says softly, but with a thread of something stronger in her voice, like a thread of steel (or graphene might be more appropriate, considering her late husband's graphene armor). "It just means that you have to find yourself instead of relying on someone else to hold your hand along the way." It's one of those lessons that Clara's learned all too well, both in the months before Alex's return home before she was brought to Panem, and the months (years almost) that have followed.

There's something about her that's...not quite hopeful. It's hard to be hopeful in the face of something like a young man's death, but it's something resembling it. "Sometimes getting lost along the way is part of growing up."