Glory washed up with the bathroom door cracked open so that she could see any movement in the hallway. Then she quickly changed into her nightgown and thick socks and huddled under a blanket to wait.
From Luna’s bed in the corner, she could see the bedroom door. After a long day of cleaning, it would be hard to stay awake. But she must. Leaning against the wall, she pulled a fat book into her lap but didn’t have any real interest in cracking it open. It was one of many biographies of Leo’s hero, Karl Marx, from the library downstairs, one of the “approved” volumes for reading in the house. Socialism, social change, and revolution had been Leo’s passions when he was younger. His intentions had seemed pure—wanting to make the world a better place for all people, a fairer world. Now she wondered if the real attraction had been the thrum and chaos of rebellion.
She was staring off in space, her vision a blur, when she heard the creak of the door, then his footsteps. He paused at her open door. His hair had grown long on top, and it jutted out in different directions, as if he’d been raking his hands through it.
Her senses were on alert. She felt ready to pounce, scream, kick, and scratch—anything to protect her girl—but she dialed it back, trying to act normal, hoping she could fend him off with reason. “Are you going to let her out?”
He shook his head. “Just going to check on her.”
“I went up there after dinner. Brought her some stew.” She kept her voice steady, respectful. She knew he was lying, but it wasn’t wise to challenge a lion in his den. “She’s probably asleep already.”
“Then I’ll wake her up.”
“Please, don’t.” She pushed off the bed and motioned him into the room. “Let’s talk. I don’t want to disturb the sisters.”
He came inside and closed the door. He was wearing his gray glare, that dejected stare that had once made her want to soothe him. “You know, you and your daughter are becoming a problem.”
“Me?” She blinked. “I’m sorry about Luna breaking the rules, but I usually keep her in line, and I work hard at the hotel. I do my part for the sisters.”
“Always faithful to the sisters.” He closed the space between them. “So loyal that you want to leave us.”
“What are you talking about?” She backed away from him until she was pressing against the bed.
“Natalie told me you want to take Luna and leave.” He shook his head, disgusted. “Did you really think she wouldn’t tell me?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“At first I was hurt. Stabbed in the back, after all I’ve done for you. Then I got mad, especially when I realized how big your ego has grown. You really think you can survive in the big bad world? And with a snot-nosed kid to tote around, too? I thought you had more sense than that.”
“I wanted to help. . . .” She sat down on the bed, her mind scrambling to come up with the right words. “I didn’t want to be a burden on the sisters, especially with Luna getting older. Sneaking out of the house and eating more food. I thought I could spare everyone the annoyance.”
“Well, you thought wrong. Doesn’t this family mean anything to you? After what . . . twelve years sharing our home?”
Sharing? While he and Natalie collected all the money and doled out small bits for a slice of pizza at the food court or a used pair of jeans at the Goodwill store? And what kind of a home had doors that were alarmed and triple-bolted? “Alarmed with magnetic darts,” Leo always bragged. “You know how magnetism is invisible? That’s the theory behind the electronic weapon I’ve installed on the doors. You tamper with the locks, you’ll have thousands of volts of invisible rays passing through your brain.” She suspected it was all a ruse, but sisters such as Laura and Julia hung on every word.
“After all I’ve done for you, you stab me in the back? You sneak around when you think we’re not looking?”
She wanted to cry at the injustice of it, but she forced herself to play the game. This was a rare chance to talk alone with Leo. “I’m sorry. I really was trying to help.”
He seemed weary and older as he rubbed his eyes and raked back his hair.
“You’re tired,” she said. “You should get some rest. Things will look better in the morning.”
“I’ve got too much on my mind. Too many problems, like you and your daughter.”
“You don’t have to worry about us. Luna finally understands that she can’t sneak out. See? One problem solved.”
“Fantastic.” His voice was sour with sarcasm, but he seemed to be calming down as he sat beside her on the bed. “Next you’ll be telling me what to do about Sienna.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s not fitting in. Too surly and resistant to the rules. She won’t melt the way you used to. Like butter.” He put a hand on her bare knee and ran his fingertips up over her inner thigh, his intention unmistakable.
Glory had to force herself to stay calm, compliant. Years ago she had believed there was a magic in the two of them joining together. Now she knew that the only magic of that time had been the creation of Luna.
“You could let her go,” she said, trying to stay on topic.
“That’s not going to happen. Nat and I never fail. One way or another, we’ll break her.” He slipped his hand under her nightgown, his fingertips grazing her thigh.
“You keep talking about breaking her, as if she were a wild horse. She’s not. She’s a girl, Leo.”
“A whiny girl. Not like you,” he said, sliding his hand higher on her thigh.
Glory wished she could turn to smoke and rise up from her body. He hadn’t touched her this way for years—not since he had learned she was pregnant. It made her sad to recall how she had craved his attention for years. Just months ago she would have gladly curled around him.
But something had changed inside her. Sneaking out of the house like an adolescent, she had found her independence, and she couldn’t go back to being the property of a man who alarmed and locked the doors, a man who threatened to track down and punish anyone who tried to escape the house. A man who killed rather than lose a woman in his possession.
A man who made advances on his own daughter.
No. You don’t own me . . . not anymore.
Time to fend for herself and her daughter—time to break free of this place.
She pushed his hand away and rose from the bed. “We can’t,” she said, breathless with fear. “The sisters will hear. Sienna will hear.” She opened the door, then turned to face him. “Then she’ll be too angry to melt for you.”
In truth, Sienna and Rachel’s room was at the other end of the hall, but the seeds of shame had been planted.
He rose from the bed with a sigh. “You know, we had a good thing, you and I. Until you went and got pregnant and ruined it all.”
As if it were her fault. They’d been careful, mostly because Leo had been afraid that his sister would find out he was having sex with one of the sisters. (As if Natalie didn’t know how he and his pet spent most afternoons!) Most times they had avoided intercourse to be extra careful. But Leo had been game for just about anything else. He’d been voracious, a lion.
By the time Natalie had noticed Glory’s weight gain, it had been too late to terminate the pregnancy. “I should send you packing, belly and all,” Natalie had growled with a withering fury.
The threat had fed Glory’s worst fear, to be once again alone and penniless with a child—and she took on the cleaning job at the hotel and dove in with a fury. She had thought it was so important to be allowed to stay with the sisters. Fool that she was. If she had pressed the point, maybe Natalie would have allowed her to go back then. A clean escape.
“Tell me, Glory.” He paused at the doorway. “Do you still dream about me?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted, though she didn’t tell him the whole truth, that those dreams were nightmares.
Glory watched him go, waited ten minutes, then gathered blankets and a pillow to take up to the attic. Although she wouldn’
t break Luna out of her prison, she wouldn’t take the chance that Leo would visit her during the night.
In a nest of blankets on the attic floor, she lay snuggled with Luna, plotting their escape. This time, she would do the right thing. This time, she wasn’t going to let her daughter go.
CHAPTER 35
Shivering from the cold and damp, Ruby clicked on the seat heater and maneuvered the Passat out of its spot on the street. The black pavement, wet with rain, glistened in the headlights of the car as she drove through West Green toward the freeway. The town seemed empty, the shop windows dark except for strings of holiday lights that twinkled in the night. A few hours earlier, these streets had been congested with Saturday night traffic, with people gravitating toward restaurants, bars, and the town’s old two-screen movie theater.
Now the empty streets reminded her of those quaint little snow villages along the tracks of a train set. Yeah, she and her friends complained that West Green was a dead spot on the planet, but after learning about the stuff Glory Noland had been through, trapped in the house and forced to follow the rules of the cult, Ruby had come to realize that West Green wasn’t so bad at all. It was as if overnight Ruby’s eyes had opened to the luxuries in her life. Her smooth lavender bedsheets. Her legion of rubber ducks. Mochas at Starbucks with her friends. This car.
Guilt tightened in her chest, a sharp blade under her breastbone as she sped up on the highway radiating out of their cozy town, aiming for the entrance ramp to I-5. Her parents would have a fit if they found out about this. Dad would be the morally righteous one, disappointed by Ruby’s betrayal, while Mom would be wounded, upset, and desperate to understand what Ruby had been thinking when she constructed a web of lies and ventured into East Portland on her own on a rainy December night.
Mom would be wounded that Ruby was curious about her birth mother, but also that Ruby hadn’t told her about her mission to find Glory. If Mom managed to get beyond being hurt, she would be surprised to learn that this crazy meeting with Glory was more of a charity mission than a well-thought-out plan. Sure, Ruby had concocted a plan to cover herself, spending the night at Delilah’s rambling house, always a zoo of girls and their friends. She and Delilah knew that no one would be the wiser when Ruby went out the back door and took off in her car, which she’d parked down the street, so that Delilah’s parents, Ruth and Seth, wouldn’t hear.
Ruby could barely believe she was doing this, but Wednesday’s text message from Glory had sucked her back into it: Can we meet at the mall today? I have a surprise for you.
In the times they had gotten together, Glory hadn’t figured out that Ruby was not a person who liked surprises, which so often were the opposite of good news.
Surprise! We’re having a pop quiz.
Surprise! Your front tire is flat.
Surprise! Your mom has cancer.
Surprise! I’m leaving you and your sister here at the firehouse.
Ruby had texted back that she couldn’t meet Glory, that she was really busy. So sorry. Maybe in a few weeks they could get together.
Please, Glory responded. Let me explain.
Explain what? Ruby had been about to tell her to explain in a text, but then she remembered that Glory had one of those old flip phones with no keyboard. Even a short message would take forever to type.
I can’t drive over to East Portland this week, Ruby had texted. She had made the excuse of schoolwork, not wanting to tell Glory that Tamarind was sick. She felt a new sense of protectiveness toward her adoptive mother, and it seemed wrong to tell Glory that Tamarind was anything less than perfect.
Need to talk, Glory had texted back. Please.
Of course, Ruby wrote back, because that was the kind of person she was: polite and accommodating. She just couldn’t say no when someone needed help.
They had set up a phone call for Thursday. Timing was tricky, as Ruby was in school during the time when Glory was free to call while working on her own at the hotel. They decided to do the call at 11:40, during Ruby’s lunch period at school. She knew a quiet place where she could hide out to make the call.
* * *
During Thursday’s lunch period, Delilah unlocked the door to the stairway at the back of the school auditorium and led the way up. “I wish you weren’t doing this,” she said, plodding up steps that had been carpeted to muffle noise of the stage crew. “I don’t feel right about this. A grown woman contacting you.”
“I got in touch with her first.” Ruby followed her up the stairs to the lighting booth, where the girls gathered when they wanted a quiet place to talk at school. As tech director for the theater department, Delilah had keys to everything in the theater, where she spent much of her time working the lights and audio for shows and assemblies. Delilah’s parents were glad she’d found a paying job, and Delilah liked having a place to hang out away from home. “It’s not like Glory is a predator,” Ruby said as they emerged into the control booth at the top of the stairs. “I started the relationship.”
Delilah flicked on the low lights and the girls plopped into chairs. “I know, but it was natural for you to feel curious, to want to meet her. But after a few chats, she should have the grace to back off. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to become best friends, and you already have a mother.”
“True,” Ruby said. Delilah was blunt, unfiltered, and uncensored, but it was so much better than dancing around the issue. “But I only agreed to a phone call. Look, I’m already spread thin between school and driving Mom to chemo. I don’t have the time to sneak away and play catch-up with Glory. But she was so persistent, I couldn’t say no.”
“Just be careful.” Delilah stretched like a cat over the sound board to reach the switch at the back, then moved down the counter to also turn on the light board. “Sometimes you’re way too nice.”
“I can be a bitch. I know how to stand my ground.”
“Okay, then. There’s a class coming onstage in next period that I need to set up for. But do you want me to give you privacy until then?”
“Stay. Please. I may need support.”
Delilah smiled, half-twirling in her chair. “Okay, bitch.”
They were chatting over a bag of SunChips when the call came.
“Hi, Glory.” Ruby wiped her salty fingertips on her jeans.
“You knew it was me!” Glory seemed pleased. “Thanks for taking the time to talk.”
“No problem.” Ruby sounded a lot more enthusiastic than she felt. “My next class is in half an hour, so we need to make it quick. What’s going on?”
“I need your help. I need to escape. There’s too much to explain, but if I don’t get out soon, I’ll never make it out. Please, Ruby . . . I don’t want to die in that house like Annabelle.”
“Whoa. Wait. Who’s Annabelle?”
“One of the sisters. She was killed up in the attic.”
Ruby was stunned. “What? Who killed her?”
Delilah turned away from the light board to gape at Ruby. “It was Leo.” Talking fast, Glory launched into a story of a young woman locked in the attic, dying of thirst. She had died in the house, and now another sister was in the attic and Glory would be next when Leo found out she was talking to Ruby.
Ruby was stunned and confused. “So Leo killed this Annabelle?”
“Yes, and he’s furious now because Sienna isn’t following orders and Luna is locked in the attic and . . . please, will you help me? Please. I need you to help me get away.”
“I think you need to call the police. They’ll be able to help you.”
“They’ve been there many times, but Leo always manipulates them.”
“Did you tell them about the girl who was killed in the attic?” Ruby asked. “That should get their attention.”
It got Delilah’s attention. She mimed a shrieking expression.
Ruby waved her off.
“They don’t want to listen to a damaged woman like me,” Glory said. “They think Leo’s doing a community service, lod
ging all those women. They think he’s a hero. By the time Natalie rolls out in her wheelchair, the cops think those two are saints. They don’t ever notice the broken women in the house, and they don’t take complaints seriously. I need your help, Ruby. You’re my only hope.”
“What can I do?”
“Meet me outside the house at night. Late at night, after everyone has gone to sleep. I need your help getting away from here to a safe place.”
“How are you going to get out if the house is locked up tight, with all those alarms and stuff?”
“I’ll figure out a way. If you can get me out of his sight, I only need a safe place to stay, just for a few days, until I can find a job.”
“Even if I picked you up from there, where would I take you?” The silence on the line told her that Glory didn’t have that part of the plan mapped out. “I can’t . . . I can’t bring you to my parents. They wouldn’t understand.”
“I would never do that,” Glory insisted. “But there’s got to be a place. A homeless shelter in Portland. One that’s safe for women.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Could you, maybe, find out?”
“I guess I could look online, but I’m not sure how much I can help. I mean, I’m only sixteen.”
“I’m sure some sixteen-year-olds are homeless and need a place to stay,” Glory said pointedly.
“I guess.” Ruby felt like she was tethered to a boat and struggling to stay afloat as she was being dragged out to sea. This all felt wrong, but she couldn’t say no. Glory was desperate for her help.
“So you’ll help me? You’ll come for me tonight?”
“Not tonight. I have to be somewhere, and I have school tomorrow.”
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