“That’s not fair,” Grace complained.
Esther rolled her eyes but eventually allowed Grace to go with her. They had to walk around the back of the farmhouse instead of through the yard because Caleb was running another course for new people. That meant they couldn’t be out in the open. It was probably why they were working in the garden today, because it kept them out of the way of prying eyes. But it wasn’t going to stop Esther checking on Missy. She supposed that the will of God was more important anyway.
Once they got to the coop, Esther found one egg in Missy’s corner. She picked it up and smiled. One down. Then she frowned. Did she want Missy to lay two eggs? Did she want to do the thing Father James had asked her to do? Now she wasn’t sure, but she liked the idea of God talking to her as well as talking to Father.
“Boring,” Grace said. “It’s just an egg.”
“I guess none of them are broody then,” Esther said.
They went back to the garden and carried on weeding and watering. The next time she checked back was lunchtime. Nothing. She ran all the way back to the farmhouse. The children couldn’t use the sermon hall today, they had to eat at the table in the dining room. Mary had joined them though. She wrapped her arms around Esther’s shoulders.
“I miss you, Essie,” she said, tears running down her cheeks.
Esther cringed. Why did she look so terrible? Eyes sticking out of her head, skin taut and yellow, a bag of bones for a body. Didn’t Mary understand that it made her feel bad?
Mary sat uncomfortably close to Esther and watched her eat with a smile on her face. It was creepy. And Mary didn’t eat a single thing, she just drank coffee while her body trembled. Sometimes she muttered things out loud that sounded like internal thoughts.
“I’ll get us out,” she said. “… the Reckoning… Has to be. Out. We’ll be out.”
None of it made sense and it frightened Esther. Because she couldn’t wait to get away, Esther wolfed down her food and made her excuses. But Mary wasn’t even listening. She continued to mumble to herself, with her chapped lips moving up and down like a babbling baby, and her blank eyes staring out at nothing. It began to upset Esther. In fact, she hid behind the tomato plants and cried for a while before pulling herself together. God was waiting for her.
When she checked Missy’s corner, there was no second egg. She didn’t know whether to be happy that she didn’t have to go through with Father James’s request, or angry that God wouldn’t talk to her. She went back to the garden and picked tomatoes, bending close to the ground as she worked. Grace smiled and waved enthusiastically but even though Esther smiled back, inside she secretly hoped her friend wouldn’t come over. Unfortunately, Grace didn’t pick up on Esther’s bad mood and walked over to join her. She had on the same dirty overalls as Esther, and wiped soil on them from her palms.
“Do you think Mary is okay?” she asked. She stood over Esther, her body blocking the sun.
Esther shrugged her shoulders.
“Did you talk to her?”
“No.” She didn’t want to talk about Mary. She didn’t want to talk at all. “I’m going to go dig up weeds over there.” She moved away from Grace and attacked the soil with her trowel.
For the rest of the day Esther refused to look at Missy’s corner. She got paper-cut slices in between her fingers weeding out bristle-grass at the bottom of the garden. She carried punnets of tomatoes into the kitchen. She washed potatoes and peeled carrots for dinner. She washed some of the dresses for the women. She wiped sweat from her brow more times than she could count. She ate her dinner in silence in the sermon hall now that the course people had left. She avoided Mary’s gaze as she ate. She didn’t look at Father James, who was sitting next to Mary, occasionally feeding her from his fork. She ignored her tummy troubles and ate the vegetable casserole anyway.
And then… Well, then she ran off to Missy’s corner for one last look. There was the second egg.
Chapter Seventy
They cleared that damn field. Fran watched Talisa straighten up and take a swig from her water bottle. She wasn’t complaining anymore, she was smiling. The field was clear of stones, all the debris raked away. And it had happened while she was in a daze. A strange, meditative daze. One of the young blonds collapsed dramatically onto the soil and laughed. There were smiles spreading around the group because they’d achieved something remarkable with the summer sun beating down on them.
Her body ached and she was exhausted. She was dirty, too, and hoped there would at least be a sink for her to wash her hands and face before they went home. No one spoke. Caleb gestured for them to follow him. He walked out of the freshly tilled field and into a grassy meadow. Fran wondered briefly just how much land the cult owned. But that thought flittered away, replaced by appreciation of the nature around them, because it was beautiful. From the distant terracotta peaks, to the fields of dry grass and mesquite bushes rolling into the grid-like streets of Tucson city below. Cars scurried along straight roads like ants in a formation.
Caleb sat down on the grass and invited them to do the same. It was slightly spiky, less comfortable than the soft, British grass that always seemed to be damp. He crossed his legs and they did too. He closed his eyes and they did the same. Fran shuffled, trying to feel at ease. There was still tension running through her. She swallowed thickly. Then Caleb began to speak.
“I feed my spirit. I feed my soul. I feed my spirit. I feed my soul. No need to say it with me, just relax and concentrate on my words.” And then he continued over and over again. I feed my spirit. I feed my soul.
Fran opened her eyes and found Caleb watching her. He winked, and never missed a beat. I feed my spirit. I feed my soul. She closed her eyes, embarrassed to have been caught.
She knew it was all a load of rubbish and that the cult had managed to make her pay them to till their field and that there were more than likely cult members in the group playing along to help it seem more authentic, and yet she still felt a tremendous sense of peace wash over her. Once she stopped fighting that sensation, her body sank into the ground and she felt both heavy and weightless at the same time. Some of that tension left her body. Her mind cleared, completely, for a moment. Two moments. It was blissful, but fleeting. After that calming sensation she saw Mary and Esther sitting opposite her in the café back in Leacroft. Esther’s expression was stern as always. Mary was laughing, the corners of her eyes crinkling pleasantly. Then she saw Esther standing in the middle of the village green on her own in the dark. Hands behind her back. Black shoes together. She felt the sensation of aching calves as though she’d been running. She held out her hand, but Esther simply stared at her.
Lastly, Fran saw Chloe. She saw her tiny face poking above the baby blanket. She had walked into the nursery many times before and seen Chloe’s chubby cheeks above the soft, pink wool. She’d walked in to find Chloe smiling, or gurgling, or relaxed in sleep. But this time she felt a punch in her gut. A wrecking ball to the abdomen. Her body knew before her mind caught up. Chloe’s perfect peaches and cream complexion had turned blue. She remembered the silence on the baby monitor. Those purple toes peeking out from under the wool.
Fran gasped. She stood, walked away from the group, with her hand clamped to her mouth. She couldn’t breathe. Before she knew it, Caleb was next to her, a warm hand on her back gently rubbing in a circular motion. Fran was doubled over sobbing, an excruciating pain radiating from her abdomen.
“You’re safe,” he said. “Let out your pain. Let it go.”
“No,” Fran gulped out. “It’s all I have left of her. It’s all I have.”
She felt more hands placed on her shoulders and back. The others had joined her. They were checking she was okay. They rubbed and caressed and patted. She felt the warmth of their skin on hers.
“We’ve got you,” Talisa said.
“I… I…” Fran said, her sobs still wracking through her. “I. Can’t. Let. Her. Go.”
“Just breathe, Francesca,�
� Caleb said. “Breathe it out. Come on, breathe with me.” He helped her straighten up. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. She matched him. “In… Out…” The others did the same. They breathed in and out. In and out. They breathed together.
“Let it go,” Caleb whispered.
Fran stared at those faces. They all stared back, from the young blond kids to the two guys to Talisa, who was nodding encouragingly with her, like a midwife. She didn’t know any of these people and yet she felt safe. She felt seen. She turned and faced the farmhouse. She saw the simplicity, the charm of it. Then back to the fields, to the city, to the ants. Adrian had never told her to let it go. He had never told her to let it out. Did it frighten him to see her pain? She had kept all of this folded neatly away in a space inside her. They’d redecorated the nursery with a slap of paint and that was that.
She fell down, defeated, and the others sat around her. Each of them placed one hand on her. She closed her eyes and thought of Chloe, imagining the girl she would have been. Fran had never admitted this to anyone, but she liked children in traditional clothing. She liked little girls in pigtails and smart, leather shoes. Proper tights and dresses. Not the leggings and t-shirts that most children wore now.
Chloe would have been bright, of course. Interested in books, perhaps. Good at English. Average at maths. An empath, always kind but never a pushover. Neat but not obsessive. A violin player. Beautiful but not overtly so, possessing a subtle grace. Yes, these were fantasies of the girl Fran had wanted to be herself and never was.
She let it go.
She recognised them as pointless now. None of these things were Chloe. Her daughter had never been given the opportunity to form her own personality. Fran was torturing herself by creating it for her. Forcing a future onto a ghost. It was time to stop inventing the life she regarded as snatched away by cruelty. Instead she clung to the hours of bloody agony in the hospital, the sensation of Chloe at the breast and how bizarre yet comforting it was. The sight of her spit bubbles. The smell of her head. The chubby wrinkles in her skin. The dry flakes above her eyebrows. The gurgling noises. The screams during those first few nappy changes. The warmth of her as she lay on her chest.
Before Fran knew it, she was lying down on the ground, her head nestled by the spiky grass. She was smiling up at the sky. She had let go.
Chapter Seventy-One
Fran was meeting Caleb for lunch. It was the day after Children of James 101 and he told her that he’d love to do a follow up chat and see how she was getting on. The course had been particularly intense for Fran. He sensed that she’d let go of a great weight, and he wanted to make sure she was all right. Such a huge transition could be difficult for people.
She agreed to meet him at the same Mexican restaurant she’d found near the police station because that was the one place she remembered. Plus, if she did get any bad feelings or hunches about the cult she could go straight to the station and find Detective Woodson.
She walked into the city centre. It was a slightly cooler day, with a fresh breeze drifting down from the mountains. She’d used clips to keep her hair away from her face and wore a vest top and skirt. It’d pained her to spend money on the over-priced laundry service at the hotel, but she hadn’t fancied dragging her suitcase to a laundrette. She smoothed her skirt nervously when entering the restaurant. The same elfin waitress gave her a half-hearted smile before her eyes flicked anxiously towards Caleb. Fran hadn’t thought about other people’s reaction to a cult member. Of course, the waitress would feel uncomfortable with Caleb sitting alone in her restaurant. She flashed the girl a guilty smile before sitting down with him.
He clasped her hand in greeting. “It’s so good to see you Francesca. I thought about you all last night.”
Taken out of context, the words sounded almost romantic. She flushed with heat.
The embarrassment must have shown, because Caleb followed up with, “About your wellbeing, I mean. Yesterday must have been a… strange experience.”
“That’s one way of describing it.” Fran found herself smiling awkwardly as the waitress came over to take her order. She asked for a lemonade and then they had a quick discussion about what food to order. Fran went for a vegetable burrito; Caleb ordered a three-bean salad.
“This is also going to sound odd, but hear me out,” Caleb said. “When I saw your reaction yesterday my heart soared with joy.”
Fran raised her eyebrows.
“Not because I wanted you to go through the pain, but because I wanted you to release it. Don’t you feel your soul healing?”
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I do.”
“Exactly.” He was talking faster and gesturing with excitement. “Which is why you are so perfect for the family. I can’t wait for you to meet everyone.”
“You mean, I’ve been accepted?”
“Yes, ma’am you have! I told Father James all about you at the end of the day. He wants to meet you on the ranch. He rarely does this.”
“Don’t I need to complete more courses?”
Caleb shook his head. “I don’t think you need it. Plus, you can take them all for free if you join us.”
“Does that mean living on the ranch?”
“It does, yes,” he said. “Which is a big step, I know. We don’t want you to rush in. Take your time. But, Francesca, I have to say, I know you’d love it there. Everything is peaceful. Imagine the release you felt yesterday, and then imagine releasing every toxic part of your life. That is exactly what it’s like on the ranch. You leave behind the expectations placed on you by society, the seduction of material wealth, the greed and excess of those around you.”
“What about friends and family?” she asked. “I have a husband.”
“You can still keep in touch with them. Perhaps in time your husband could come to the ranch too. Not all spouses want to. It can be difficult for them. That’s why we recommend you taking your time. There’s no pressure, we just want you to feel loved by us, because we believe you would be a perfect addition to our family. That’s all.”
Fran lowered her head for a moment mulling over his words, thinking about Adrian, and Mary, and Esther. The food came before she could reply. Halfway through her burrito, Fran asked if she could meet Father James today. Caleb had to go outside to make a phone call, but he came back smiling.
“Father says he would be delighted to meet you. We can go to the ranch straight after lunch.”
“That was fast,” Fran replied.
Caleb sipped his coffee. “You’re lucky. Father James has been busy recently. We’ve had a special visitor staying with us over the last few weeks.”
Fran lifted her face to him, her interest piqued. “Really? What sort of visitor?”
“Someone who used to be in the family but left a long time ago. He’s come back to us.”
“And you welcomed them back in? That’s very forgiving.”
Caleb smiled. “Forgiveness is part of feeding and nurturing the soul.”
They continued eating and Caleb talked more about the importance of self-love. On more than one occasion she saw the waitress watching, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. It made her so uncomfortable that she left a generous tip when they paid. Caleb noticed but said nothing.
On the way out of the restaurant, Fran realised she had a missed call from the detective. She glanced up in the direction of the police station. He could be available for a chat right then and there. But she decided not to go. Instead, she got into Caleb’s truck. Perhaps she could find a quiet moment to call back later. Or, on the other hand, maybe she didn’t need Woodson’s help after all. Soon she’d be part of the Children of James family, and then she could get Mary and Esther out from the inside.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Esther hadn’t paid much attention to the visitor over the last few weeks. She’d been too busy with work around the ranch, and the task Father James had asked her to do when the Reckoning came. She’d noticed him in the back
ground, though, always somewhere close to Father. Sometimes Esther saw them in deep conversation near the vegetable garden or in the orchard. She felt his eyes on her—the visitor’s—but she ignored him, and he largely ignored her too.
Since she’d found the second egg in Missy’s corner, Esther had been thinking about the Reckoning. Father was delivering sermons to the ranch while they worked, his voice scratchy and thin over the PA system. The adults picked cantaloupes and rode horses in the fields, while Esther and the other children were at the vegetable garden, listening, as they watered and pruned the plants.
“The Day of Reckoning is coming, my beautiful, beautiful children. There are billions of people out there who have not been preparing, who will not see it coming, and who will not have the foresight to survive. But we will. Mark my words, we will. God has spoken to me. He has told me that we have fed our souls. We have nurtured our inner wellness. We are the ones chosen by Him to ascend. We will ascend. It will be glorious, and we will ascend.
“Mark my words, children, the day is almost upon us. There will be lights in the sky. Shining bright. No one will see the sparks, but you. No one has ever seen the sparks but you, my chosen family. Our spirits are full of love, and now our external goal is salvation. We will achieve salvation. We will live it. The time has come to walk with me into the fire. To be reborn.”
“I want him to stop talking now,” Grace said. She plopped down on the grass near the lettuce and adjusted her sun hat. “I don’t like it.”
Stinky was nearby. He sat down too. “He scares me.”
Delilah nodded.
Esther threw her trowel down in disgust. “How dare you. He is your Father.”
“No, he isn’t!” Stinky glared at her.
“Yes, he is!”
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