The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Stevens, Taylor

  Finally, his eyes cut back to hers. “That’s completely fucked up,” he said. She ignored his words for the tone, which carried in it the seeds of change that she’d been working toward. The door had been opened, she’d proven that she was capable of giving him what he wanted, and this was the groundwork for getting what she wanted in turn.

  “Is that what got you into this line of work?” he asked.

  “Partly,” she replied. “I came to the States after that. Put myself through school, got a degree, tried the corporate route and failed miserably at it. Lots of people wish their bosses dead, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to stay on a normal job when you’ve got the skills and mind-set to kill your evil supervisor and get away with it?” She paused and, with a smirk and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, said, “I don’t do normal very well.”

  Gideon let out an involuntary laugh and then, in seriousness, said, “Logan says you’re getting close. He seems pretty hopeful.”

  “Yeah, I am,” she said.

  “Are you going inside?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I wonder if much has changed,” he said. “They say it has, and that’s great for the younger ones if it’s true, but that doesn’t do much for me, does it?”

  “No,” she said. “I imagine it doesn’t do much for you at all,” and between them, there was a moment of understanding.

  Munroe shifted toward him, hands folded, elbows on the table. Gideon’s size and short fuse made it easy to dismiss him as a hulking brute, but bully strength wasn’t what got a guy from where Gideon had started to where he was now, heading up a large IT department. His well ran deep, and Munroe needed him to talk himself completely empty, because until he’d thoroughly vented, not one word she’d said would make a damn bit of difference.

  So she sat, quiet and waiting.

  Gideon stretched out, legs forward, one arm looped over the back of the chair, and he looked toward her in a long and drawn-out silence.

  “All most people know is what they see on TV,” he said finally. “And for the most part, TV news stories are nothing other than sensationalism and pandering. Have you ever seen a segment done on The Chosen?”

  Munroe shook her head.

  “Probably better that way,” he said. “Every last one of them takes our pain and makes a mockery of it for the sake of ratings. You’d think after getting burned once or twice, me and my friends would figure out that nobody really gives a damn, huh? Every time we think we find a reporter who might actually care, who is willing to tell our story as it truly is, they stab us in the back and turn it into more of the same lurid entertainment. That’s all we are to them, you know? A juicy paycheck. They get paid and we get screwed. Again.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “There was sexual abuse. Lots of it. But that was just one of so many dishes served on the smorgasbord of my childhood. Just one. Nobody reports about the extreme discipline, or being separated from our families, or education deprivation, or the lack of medical care, or the unquestioning obedience, or that we’re thrust out into the world to fend for ourselves after being kept from the world our entire lives. That’s not entertaining enough, so it’s just, ‘Sex, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, sex,’ and in the end, we just look like freaks—damaged goods that people can tsk-tsk over before they move on to the rest of the evening’s titillation. Do you have any idea how that translates for me into everyday life?”

  He leaned forward and pointed a finger in her direction. “Not only am I forced to pay for the mistakes of my parents,” he said, “not only do I struggle to recapture and put to use the human potential stolen from me, but I have to carry through it in secrecy, as if there was some shame in my past, as if somehow I’m responsible for what was done to me, because nobody, not law enforcement, not academia, and certainly not your all-American Joe, can wrap their heads around what actually happened. Do you have any idea what the typical response is whenever I do give someone a glimpse of my life?”

  Gideon paused, as if he waited for her to answer, and Munroe hesitated. Yes, she did know. She knew, because it was the same response she would get if she chose to let down her own guard—hell, it was practically the same response Miles had given the night she had told him the unadulterated truth of her past.

  She shook her head again.

  “Standard response,” he said. “I swear to God. First thing out of their mouths, is, ‘Wow, it’s shocking you’re so normal.’ What the fuck? Do I have to be damaged for my past to make sense? And what the hell is ‘normal’ anyway, and does white-bread America have dibs on it?” Gideon stopped talking, crossed his arms, and the look on his face said that he regretted saying as much as he had.

  Munroe mirrored his silence, hoping that he would continue without the need for her to poke and prod, but when he leaned back with an air of finality and she knew he would go no further without provocation, she said, “Can’t you just let it go? Move on?”

  His face darkened, his eyes glared in response, and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick.

  She’d used the same line that The Prophet and his Representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there’s no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who’d done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it, but then, that was the standard, blame-the-victim, abuser mentality, and to be expected.

  Gideon seemed to work through the slap in the face and let it slide. He said, “For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible, if I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don’t know, I thought maybe if they apologized it would be so much easier to forget this shit, you know? To do what they say and let it go? But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn’t as bad as I remember it. Fuck that,” he said. “They weren’t even there. They don’t even know what went on with me. I just—” He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair.

  “Christ,” he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her. “Even the people who never personally raised a hand against me still propped up the regime that made it happen. They stood by and allowed it, played a part, all of them. Every single one was a participant, either directly or by looking away. Institutionally, doctrinally, they abused us, sent us into the streets to beg, denied us an education, had us beaten, starved, exorcised, and separated from our parents; they broke up our families, gave our bodies to perverts, and stole our future, and then they turn around and say we’re supposed to just forget it happened and move on from it.

  “If instead we bring up the past, then they’ll call us liars, say we’re exaggerating or making it up completely. Why the hell would we make any of this shit up? What’s the point in that? To make our lives seem worse than they were? Not that I would, but do you have any idea how much exaggeration it would take for the average person to even begin to grasp how fucking miserable it was? And then, if they ever do admit to any of it, they say that mistakes were made. Mistakes!” he said.

  He was leaning forward again, punctuating the air with his finger. “Michael, they commit crimes against children! You know, those things people in society go to jail for when they’re caught? And then to the public they do what they always do, ‘deny, deny, deny,’ and we’re left more raped than ever, victimized first by what they did and again by their refusal to admit that it happened. They paint us as bitter apostates and liars to a world that not only doesn’t give a shit but also couldn’t possibly understand even if it did.”

  “I do,” Munroe said, and Gideon stopped.

  In his eyes were tears. He shook his head and took a cleansing breath. “I don’t understand why you are doing this,” he said. His words were sarcastic and threatening, bu
t his tone was sincere. “Why do you even care? At first I thought you were here for money and I really didn’t get Logan’s attachment to you, but obviously it’s not about that.”

  Munroe reached her hand across the table, placed it on top of Gideon’s. “Because of the bond you share with those raised like you, I think you can grasp this in a way most people can’t,” she said. “For years, Logan has been the only one who has really understood me and accepted me for who I am, and for that acceptance, Logan will always have a piece of my heart, my life, and I will always have his back.”

  “So you’re doing this for him, for friendship?”

  “Initially,” she said. “I started on this assignment for him, for Hannah, and because I needed to work.” She paused. “You see, Gideon, like you, I have my own rage issues, my own rapid pace toward self-destruction, and if I’m still for too long, I become very dangerous. So I started out doing this for Logan, and for myself, and for a little girl that reminded me of me.”

  Gideon watched her, eyes narrow, jaw thrust forward. “That’s how it began, how does it end?”

  Munroe sat back and held steady eye contact. “I don’t know how it ends,” she said. “The story is still being written, and I’m inviting you to write it with me. I need time,” she said, “just a little bit of time. I know you’re here for more than just Hannah, I know you’re looking for something—someone—and in your own search, you have the power to disrupt everything. If you back off and give me time, when my part of this story is finished, I’ll give you everything I have on the Havens, everything I know, so that you can find your own path to justice.”

  “How long will it take?” Gideon said.

  She shrugged. “A few days, maybe. If we’re lucky.”

  Gideon looked off into the distance, and Munroe shifted forward again, elbows and forearms to the table, as they had been previously, hands folded in front. She waited.

  “You’ve killed people,” he said finally. Not a question but rather a realization that surfaced slowly and audibly.

  “Is it so difficult to believe?” she asked.

  Gideon turned toward her, and while Munroe remained quiet, he studied her face for a long while. “I think I understand why Logan trusts you so much,” he said.

  “Because I’ve killed people?”

  “Because you’re like us,” he said. “You’re different. You understand our pain.”

  “And you understand mine.”

  “I think I do,” he said, and then after a long pause nodded in acquiescence. “I’ll give you the time you need,” he said. “I won’t interfere, won’t do anything to hinder getting Hannah out, even if it means I came down here for nothing.”

  “Who do you want to find?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “What’s forcing you back? Is it work? Money?”

  “A little of both,” he said. “I have limited paid vacation time, and tickets to Argentina aren’t cheap.”

  Munroe nodded. “Let’s see how things play out here, and when it’s over, find me, okay? I’ll see how I can help you.”

  “I don’t want a handout,” he said.

  “If we get to that point, just consider it a reimbursement for your wasted time and your travel expenses.”

  The corners of Gideon’s mouth turned upward, almost shyly, and for the first time since Munroe had known him, there was a genuine smile in his eyes.

  Chapter 25

  The big room emptied, and the hallway and stairwell filled with the footsteps and commotion that always came when everyone filtered out from morning Instructives to their different ministries.

  Hannah kept her eyes low and followed the footsteps to the schedule board. She wanted to be small, invisible, didn’t want anyone to talk to her because, being on silent punishment as she was, she wasn’t allowed to return the conversation, and that was embarrassing.

  The assignment board said she was in the kitchen again, and for this, Hannah almost smiled. Normally, when you were in trouble, except for the days of raising money, you were put to cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, or any other of the yuck jobs around, usually for weeks at a time. But since Morningstar was her full-time Keeper, and maybe because Morningstar didn’t deserve to do the low jobs, they’d let Hannah stay on normal assignments instead, which was a relief.

  Hannah pushed open the kitchen door expecting to find Morningstar waiting, but so far, only Uncle Hez was there.

  Hannah nodded. Hez already knew she was on silence, so he sent her to sort vegetables in the lean-to pantry. That was the yuck job of the kitchen, sorting vegetables. It meant digging through what was rotten, sometimes even with maggots or other bugs, to find what was still worth eating. It was a little tricky to find the balance, because lots of things Hannah didn’t want to eat were still considered edible, and if you threw away too much, Hez got mad.

  She was sorting through a box of tomatoes, fingers covered in mush, when the screen door banged open and Morningstar stepped into the lean-to.

  “Elijah wants to see you,” she said. “He’s in his room.”

  Since Hannah was allowed to talk to Morningstar, she said, “Should I finish this first?”

  “No,” Morningstar said, so Hannah put down the bucket, turned on the tap of the outside sink, and washed her hands.

  She didn’t look up when she walked back through the kitchen. The rest of the crew was there. They knew she was in trouble, and Hannah was pretty sure they also knew she’d been summoned for another talk, and she didn’t want to see them stare after her as she went.

  Hannah walked slowly to the back door, her stomach turning cartwheels, the sick feeling coming all the way up to her throat. Her heart was pounding very hard, as if it were beating against a wall and trying to escape through it. In her mind a thousand thoughts flew by, every possible thing she could have done wrong in the last few days. She’d not talked to anyone. She’d not disobeyed. She’d shown a meek and humble spirit. She’d written good and honest reactions to every Instructive in order to show that she’d truly taken in the words of The Prophet. And she had been very, very yielded.

  But, even still, it could be anything, and there was nothing good that ever came out of a talk.

  Elijah’s room was in the annex, around the corner from the ten-to-twelves, and when Hannah reached it, she knocked quietly on the door.

  He said, “Open,” and she stepped inside.

  The room had a double bed, and very close, with almost no walking space, a small desk. Elijah was sitting on the chair beside the desk, and Auntie Sunshine was sitting on the bed. Seeing Sunshine here was a surprise.

  Sunshine patted the bed and said, “Sit down, sweetie.”

  Hannah’s stomach jumped again. Nice words or even nice gestures were often the thing that came before trouble. She sat slowly, folded her hands in her lap, and waited for someone to talk.

  “I have a letter from your dad,” Elijah said.

  Hannah nodded, and reached for the paper that he held out to her, which was really a printed-out e-mail that Elijah and Sunshine had obviously already read. There was no way they would have called her in here just to give her a letter, but still, it felt good that her dad had written, and since Elijah and Sunshine still didn’t say anything, she knew they were waiting for her to read what it said before they started talking.

  There wasn’t much to the e-mail, just a couple of paragraphs about how busy he was and how much he missed her, how proud of her he was for letting him go do the Lord’s work, and that he had put her in the Lord’s hands and trusted those who made decisions for her, that they were doing what was best.

  That’s how all her dad’s letters were, they never really said anything, and even if she really, really tried to read between the lines, she might only find a possibility of some extra meaning. But it was nice to hear from him, nice to be remembered, and it made her throat hurt and feel all tight.

  She put the page d
own on the bed so that Elijah and Sunshine would know that she had finished, and then, right on time, Elijah said, “Honey, we’re going to be sending you away from the Haven for a little while.”

  A million questions danced around in Hannah’s head, but there were very few she would be allowed to ask, so she paused, and with what she was sure would be seen as a humble spirit, said, “Because of my sins?”

  Elijah smiled, and it was a funny smile, almost like he was laughing at her, but it was better than if he was angry.

  “No, sweetie, not because of that,” he said. “Our vicious enemies, the ones who have spent so much time trying to get you, are on the attack again, and there might be raids. We want to keep you safe and away from it all, so that’s why.”

  Hannah felt sad, repentant, and it was such a heavy weight.

  The Havens and The Prophet suffered so much because of her, and because of her evil mother from the Void who used the police and Antichrist governments to persecute The Chosen. She and her dad had to move often, and the Havens went to great lengths to keep her safe from the Void. Even The Prophet knew about her situation, and that made her current sins so much worse, because it showed she didn’t appreciate the sacrifices made for her.

  “Is it my Void mother again?” Hannah asked.

  “We’re not really sure who it is this time,” Elijah said, “but the Lord and The Prophet showed us to expect it, so we are making preparations.”

  “Where will I go?” Hannah said. “Will I travel without my dad?”

  “Your dad’s given his blessing,” Elijah said. “But since he can’t travel with you, you’ll stay in the city—just not in a Haven, and Sunshine will go with you instead.”

  That explained why Sunshine was here.

  “Right now?” Hannah asked.

  “We have Sponsors stopping by sometime today or tomorrow, and they’ll take you to a safe place.”