by Kate L. Mary
Was the touch intentional?
When my eyes meet his, he smiles. It’s the same crooked grin I’ve dreamt about the past two nights, and the way my heart soars into the air reminds me of bird taking flight.
Jared gets to his feet, but I take a second so I can steady my breathing and pull myself together. Once I’ve collected myself, I push the wheelchair down the hall to the x-ray room behind Dr. Jones. Jared is only a step behind me, and every time I think about him being there, his eyes on me as I walk, tingles move through my body.
In the x-ray room, I stand silently off to the side while Dr. Jones prepares the patient. Jared stays with his father, tapping his foot on the floor and reaching up occasionally to rub the back of his neck. Even though my head is down, my eyes follow his every move. My body reacts to every breath he takes, every muscle that flexes in his neck and jaw. Every glance he gives his father, or me.
When did I start caring what anyone else did? Especially a man.
When Dr. Jones is ready to start taking pictures, I step outside with Jared. We are alone, but we aren’t. There’s no door on the x-ray room, and even though Jared has to know how risky our situation is, he doesn’t seem to care. He stands dangerously close, with our arms almost touching and our heat mingling until it almost feels like we’re one person. My heart speeds up, and everything inside me begs for him to move closer. But why?
As if reading my mind, he does, taking a tiny step toward me until our arms are pressed together. Even though it’s what I wanted, I can’t help holding my breath and waiting for the terror to set in. Only it doesn’t.
“You’re still going to meet me today, aren’t you?” he says, just loud enough for me to hear.
I nod, but I can’t speak. Even though his close proximity doesn’t terrify me, I’m having a difficult time catching my breath. It’s the way he smiles down at me and how his gray eyes twinkle. His blond hair falls over his forehead, and I want to brush it away, to feel the silky strands against my skin and twist one of the curls around my finger.
A noise at the other end of the hall makes me jump, and I glance down to find Mother Ruth staring at us. She doesn’t say anything, though. She just stands there for a few seconds before bowing her head and walking away.
Jared rubs the back of his neck and takes a small step away from me. Disappointment squeezes my stomach, but before I can say a word, Dr. Jones barks my name.
Once the x-rays are done and Jared’s father is back in the exam room, Dr. Jones sends me to the second floor to fetch his lunch. I don’t get to hear the diagnosis, but I’ll find out when Jared and I are alone. I only have a few more hours to get through before I can have his undivided attention, and I can’t wait.
Chapter 10
By the time my workday has come to an end, the rain has returned. Meaning there’s no way I’ll be able to sneak out to the willow tree without raising suspicions.
Rainy days are always miserable. There’s nowhere for me to go during reflection time but the worship hall or home. The worship hall just makes me think of Father David, and the house is suffocating when George is cooped up. Even after a couple years of living under the same roof as him, it’s impossible to gauge when he’s going to explode or what’s going to set him off.
Thankfully, George is on his best behavior at dinner, which means only being incredibly rude instead of hitting my mother or me. We eat in silence, as usual, and when it’s over, George heads into the living room where he sprawls out on the couch, leaving us to clean up.
When it’s all done, I turn to head for my room, but she stops me by saying, “I want to talk to you about the other day.”
I stiffen.
Unless she plans on apologizing and telling me she loves me, nothing she’s about to say is going to make me happy. “What?”
“You need to learn to be respectful, Willow. You’re fortunate I didn’t tell George about your outburst.” She glances toward my stepfather, who is still sprawled out on the couch, snoring loudly. “He’s told me to let him know whenever you’re insolent.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “There’s nothing fortunate about my circumstances, Mother.”
When she frowns, her whole face seems to turn down. “You are ungrateful.”
My body goes rigid, and against my will, tears sting at my eyes. “Ungrateful? Are you serious? What do I have to be grateful for?” It’s nearly impossible to keep my voice low, but I do my best. The last thing I want is to wake George and get him involved in this conversation.
“You have a place to live and clothes and food. You’re taken care of, and you’ve been betrothed to Father David’s son.” Her eyes have gone wide, and her tone is ripe with frustration. It’s one of the first emotions I’ve seen out of her in years, but it isn’t welcome.
“I don’t want any of that,” I say, fighting the tears back. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be freed, and to have a mother who actually loves me.”
“You have been given more than you deserve.”
Her words hurt worse than any of George’s beatings, are more devastating than anything Father David could throw my way. They crack my heart in two, leaving me emptier than I ever thought I could be.
When I don’t respond, my mother lets out a deep sigh. “It will be up to David soon.”
She turns away, heading into the living room, but I can’t make myself move. I’m still standing in the kitchen when she wakes my stepfather, and together they head into the bedroom. Leaving me alone.
I’ve always wondered whether my mother really cared about me. Now that I finally know the truth, the weight of it almost crushes me.
She doesn’t love me at all.
Tuesday is wet and dreary, and when Wednesday rolls around, it turns out to be just as bad. The overcast sky presses down on me when I walk through the sheets of rain, headed home after work. The only thing worse than being in that suffocating building with my mother and George is knowing I could be somewhere else if this rain would finally let up.
Jared and I have crossed paths a few times since Monday, but there hasn’t been an opportunity for us to do more than nod at each other, and I can’t help wondering if we’ll ever be able to find the time to be alone again. The wedding is coming faster than I care to think about, only fifteen more days, and every time I think about it, the urge to throw up slams into me.
When I open my eyes Thursday morning, the first thing I notice is the bit of blue sky visible through my bedroom window. The rain has finally stopped.
I practically jump out of bed and get ready for the day as fast as I can, ignoring the glares from George while I eat or the fresh bruise peeking out from the collar of my mother’s blouse.
When I finally make it outside, the spring air caresses my skin. It’s warm enough that I don’t need a cardigan. Puddles still dot the main street, water drips from the houses and trees, and every inch of the commune is damp from three days of rain, but we’d have to be under six feet of water to keep me from the willow tree today.
The day flies by, and the second work is over, I grab my book and head toward the cemetery. The sky above me is still overcast, full of thin, misty clouds that float lazily across the sky, but above the mountain there’s a little bit of sunlight peeking between them, struggling to break through. The sight makes my steps light. It’s as if just a little bit of hope is looming on the horizon.
The branches of the willow tree brush across my face and hair when I step through. They’re still wet, and they leave trails of water behind that drip down my cheeks like tears. I wipe the drops from my face while my pulse quickens and my eyes search the shadowy space under the tree for Jared. He isn’t here yet, but he’ll come. He has to.
I play with the button on my shirt while leaning against the trunk. The fabric is thin, and the bark rubs against my back. An hour passes of me alternating between undoing the top button on my blouse, checking my watch, and buttoning my shirt back up. Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe our time together didn’t mean a
s much to him as it did to me.
Mere seconds after the thought has crossed my mind, the branches rustle across the ground, and he steps through.
“Jared,” I gasp.
I’m on my feet before I can think about it, moving toward him automatically. The urge to throw my arms around him takes me by surprise, but I know I’m not quite ready for such a big step, so I cross my arms over my chest.
He gives me a timid, crooked smile. “Sorry I’m late. I had to check on my father before I came.”
I frown as I fiddle with the buttons on my shirt. In the midst of my concern for myself, I’d completely forgot about his dad being sick. “How is he? Was the doctor able to figure out what was wrong with him?”
“He thinks it’s lung cancer, but he can’t tell for sure without a biopsy, and since there’s no way to do it here…” Jared looks away, and his shoulders slump.
The pain on his face makes me take a step closer, and I fight against the urge to reach out and touch him. To comfort him. “I’m so sorry, Jared.”
“I am, too. If things were different, then maybe there would be hope. But there’s no hope here.” His voice comes out flat, and he shakes his head like he can’t believe he’s here or that his father is sick. Maybe both.
His words remind me of Mother Ruth and how she urged me to leave, how she seems to think the same thing about hope missing from place. Maybe Jared and I aren’t alone in our thoughts, after all. There could be others. Like Angela? My brief encounter with her has kept me up at night, but I still can’t wrap my brain around it. Maybe she’s unhappy, too. Maybe that’s what she was going to tell me that day, but she lost her nerve.
“He didn’t tell me,” Jared says, bringing my thoughts back to here and now. “He’s known he was sick for a while, but he didn’t tell me until the other day. I think he was waiting until he knew the end was near. After everything you and I talked about, I was honestly thinking about leaving, but now I can’t. I can’t leave when he’s this sick. Not unless he’ll come with me, which he refuses to do. I think he’s just ready to be with my mom again.”
It’s unfair, but I can’t help being relieved that Jared isn’t thinking of running off in the middle of the night.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” I say instead of telling him how horribly selfish I am. “They’re the ones who brought us here in the first place, and now they’re the ones trapping us here for the rest of our lives. Too afraid to leave them.”
Jared tilts his head to the side. “Is your mother trapping you here?”
I take a deep breath and go back to fiddling with the button on my shirt. There’s Father David and his verbal threats, and there’s George with his very present physical threats, and then there’s my own crushing guilt. I would never be able to live with myself if I left her here.
“If I leave, she’ll die.”
Jared gives me a sympathetic look, but I realize he’s probably thinking of George. There’s no way he knows what I really mean, that Father David threatened to kill my mother if I ran away again. No one would guess that. No one would dream that our leader is capable of something so horrible.
I go back to leaning against the trunk. My legs have grown shaky and weak, and if I don’t find something to lean on, I’ll fall over for sure. I’m only seventeen, but I feel like I’m a hundred, and suddenly all I want is to lie down on the ground and go to sleep.
Years ago on the ranch, I saw a picture of a boat floating on the water. I’d never been around water or boats before, so I had a lot of questions about it. Annabel had explained to me how the fisherman used the anchor to keep him in one place, and that no matter how hard the water around him pushed and pulled, the boat couldn’t move as long as that anchor was there. That’s how I feel now, only instead of saving me, the anchor is doing everything it can to drag me under.
“My mother’s always been an anchor, keeping me in one place no matter how much I want to leave,” I mumble, almost to myself.
“You know so much about the outside world,” Jared says. “It’s unusual for someone who grew up here.”
I nod but still don’t look at him. My fingers work at getting the button undone again, pulling the small round piece of plastic through that tiny hole, then spinning it between my fingers for a few seconds before pushing it back through.
“I was gone for almost two weeks, remember?”
“I remember. There’s no way I could forget.”
His words snap through the air, and the button slips from my fingers. “What do you mean?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Hasn’t anyone told you what it was like after you left?”
None of my friends would talk to me after I was brought back. Like Angela, they acted like I was a stranger. Maybe to them, I really was.
Jared stares at the ground, gnawing on his lower lip, and kicks at a pinecone. “I don’t blame you, Willow. I don’t now, and I didn’t then, so I don’t want you to think for even a second that I do. But someone needs to tell you what it was like while you were gone, how awful and scary it was for the rest of us.”
I search his face, trying to figure out what he’s talking about while a feeling of dread settles across me, but his head is still down, and I can’t get a read on him.
“What do you mean?” The words are barely more than a whisper.
He takes a deep breath before finally lifting his head, and his eyes bore into mine. “When you ran away, everyone was in a state of panic. No one had any idea what happened to you. David woke up, and you were just gone. At first, he thought you’d gone home, but then your mother went looking for you, and they realized what had happened. My father is an elder, so I heard a lot more of the details than most people did. Everything stopped. Father David put the community on lockdown, and no one was allowed to leave their house unless they were an elder or dying. For almost two weeks, we were all stuck in our homes while Father David, two elders, and David left to look for you. They’d go out every day, search the area, and come home at night empty handed. Day after day this went on, and eventually people started running out of food. Some of the animals got sick because they were being neglected, a few even died. Father David said it was our punishment for having a disobedient Daughter living among us.”
I can’t think. Can barely breathe. What would have happened to these people if Father David had never found me? Would he have let them all starve to death just to punish me?
“When they finally brought you back, we were allowed to resume some of our normal routine,” Jared says, continuing his story. “Father David let us go back to work and school, and things got a little better. But every evening we had to meet in the worship hall to pray for you. We weren’t allowed to go home or eat dinner. All we were allowed to do was sit in silence and pray for you to repent.”
My stomach twists into knots, and I find myself utterly speechless. No one told me. Why would Father David put these people through that? And how can they still believe in him after everything he did? It’s no wonder most people here ignore me, or why the friends I had before stopped talking to me. How could anyone forgive me after all the pain I caused?
“Then it got worse,” Jared says. “About two weeks after you were brought back, people came to the commune looking for you. Outsiders.”
All the air leaves my lungs, and I collapse against the tree.
People came to the commune? Looking for me? Was it Annabel and Abe? Maybe they’re okay after all. Maybe Father David lied to me.
“Who was it?” I ask.
Jared frowns when he shakes his head. “The authorities, police and Children Services. They said a couple of ranchers found a young girl, but the couple had turned up dead, and the girl was missing.”
Tears spring to my eyes, blurring my vision, and I cross my arms in a futile attempt to ease the pain in my chest. I hug myself tight as every last bit of hope drains out of my body. It’s like I’ve been cut open and am now bleeding to death, my optimism spilling out onto the ground and co
llecting at my feet.
“They had warrants to search the commune, and they did.” Jared’s frown deepens, casting a shadow over his face. “They tore the place apart, questioned the children, the women. They looked everywhere for you.”
His words sweep me back in time. If they’d found me, if they’d discovered what Father David had done to punish me, they would have taken us all away for sure. Closed this place down, locked our leader up, and thrown away the key. I could have been saved.
For the first time ever, I find it difficult to believe there is a God looking out for us. If there was, wouldn’t those people have saved me that day?
“I didn’t know,” I say after a few seconds of silence, still trembling from head to toe and hugging myself. “I never told anyone where to find the Children. I knew I couldn’t lead outsiders to the community. That it would be wrong…” My throat aches, and I have to swallow. “I’m so sorry, Jared.”
He takes a small step closer to me, reaching out like he wants to comfort me, but once again he doesn’t touch me. “You don’t have to be sorry, Willow. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I led them there. Even though I didn’t mean to, it was my fault.”
A tear slides down my cheek, and Jared reaches out again. I jerk away before he can touch me, and his eyebrows pull together. There’s pain in his eyes when they sweep over my face, but questions, too. So many questions. If only I could explain it to him. Tell him it isn’t him I’m shrinking away from. He needs to know I’m damaged beyond repair. Hopeless. Lost.
But the words won’t come.
Jared turns away. “They were at the commune for four days looking for you before they gave up. Once they were gone, Father David started the prayer vigils again. He let us work, but only for three hours a day. The rest of the time was spent in prayer and fasting. Praying for your soul.”
He stops talking, and I stay frozen against the tree. My legs won’t move as the memories come screaming back. No matter how hard I try to keep them away, they refuse, and they are almost crushing in their intensity.
