Obstetrix(34)

“That’s why it’s a good idea to train her, and the sooner the better. What if something happens to me?” She paused. “To both of us?”

I dropped the subject and decided I’d need to come up with a list of errands to send Bethany on, if I needed to get her out of the room. I returned to the expiration-date audit. Most of the drugs were within something resembling a reasonable tolerance, but there were also a dozen packs of antibiotics that expired two years ago. I set them aside. “These should be replaced,” I said.

“I’ll let Pastor know,” Sarah said.

Something from the earlier conversation was nagging at me. “Why does Brother Ethan get a say in Bethany’s apprenticeship?” I asked.

“Because he’s her betrothed,” Sarah said.

“He’s—what?”

“He’s going to be her husband,” Sarah said. “Because he’s widowed, since Ginny died, and Bethany will be old enough soon.”

Bethany’s chatter about Ethan, and how he’d been a faithful husband, and wanting to know what I thought of him, rushed back to me, and I felt fully lightheaded. “How soon?”

“When she turns fourteen. So, March. Don’t worry, Dr. Elizabeth. Brother Ethan was a very good husband to Ginny.”

Brother Ethan is a murderer, I thought. And Bethany was a child. Literally a child. “Bethany is not physically mature,” I said, knowing that I was betraying my thoughts with my voice.

“She started menstruating when she was twelve,” Sarah said. “I’ve tracked her growth, and she’s as grown as she’s going to get. Anyway, we trust that if a girl’s body is not ready to bear children, she won’t get pregnant.”

“You literally had me examine a girl because she wasn’t pregnant yet.”

“Everyone knew something odd was going on with Sister Chloe and Brother Nick. And we were right. Brother Nick wasn’t doing a proper job of it.”

Our conversation was interrupted by a knock: two people had sore shoulders from shoveling snow. I forced a smile to my face as I gave them ibuprofen and ice packs.

How long will it take? I thought. Surely my father will go to the police. Surely the police will go to the FBI. Surely the FBI will find us—I narrowed it down for them! And there’s probably some way they can trace the phone the message came from? When it turns on the next time, they can get a fix on the location. Surely it will only be a few more days.

Taking the phone with me would have been a foolish risk, but it would have let me text with my father, and I was gripped with a sudden, intense longing to hear his voice. I remembered our last conversation, right before I was kidnapped: You never think people like you. You’ll be even farther from home. Love you.

What if something had happened to him? He was an old man, what if the shock of my disappearance had—

No. I refused to let myself spiral into that possibility. Someone would be coming. I just had to wait. I just had to be patient.

Lying in bed that night, I thought about Isabelle, and how the story in The Onyx Dagger is all from Deirdre’s perspective, not Isabelle’s. The reader never finds out how Isabelle felt after her capture, before she was hypnotized; how long she fought the mind powers of Lord Nightshade; whether she trusted that rescue was coming. Whether she listened to the screams and cries of other prisoners and wasn’t able to save them any more than she could save herself. Whether she tried not to give up.

It was a shame that none of that was in the book, I thought, because that felt like what I needed, just now.



* * *



I SPENT ALL OF Friday listening for what I imagined rescue would sound like: cars, lots of them, driving closer. Or a helicopter. Probably not a helicopter, but if I heard a helicopter, probably a helicopter. I listened as I stitched. I listened as I “bowed down before the Lord.” I listened as I told Bethany the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I heard an agricultural drone pass overhead once. Every single vehicle motor I heard turned out to be the cult’s ATVs.

Dinner was black bean and ham soup with bread, and something was going on. There was markedly less conversation than I usually heard at dinner, and everyone was avoiding everyone else’s eyes. It was Friday, so time for “Testimonies and Confessions,” and I wondered if someone was confessing something particularly big. Bethany seemed subdued but not nervous, so hopefully that meant she wasn’t planning to confess our shared stories.

Dinner finished, and Holly and her husband stood up.

Oh shit, I thought. This is about the cell phone.

The cell phone, and also the romance novel. Holly confessed, weeping, to both, as I wondered if I hadn’t been careful enough, if I was the reason they’d been discovered? Had Natalie overheard the toilet lid, had she reported it, had this set off a search? Holly handed over the cell phone and the book: the cell phone was solemnly placed onto a concrete block and then smashed with a hammer. The book was ripped into sections, doused with something, and set on fire.

Will anyone remember that I was unsupervised while at Holly’s house? I wondered. It was just a few days ago. I saw Natalie glance over at me. She knew she’d fallen asleep. She could confess to having fallen asleep. She was probably supposed to confess to having fallen asleep.

But Pastor John was angry. Frighteningly angry. Bethany was sitting to my left, her face very pale, and Janet was to my right, her arms wrapped around herself. Holly was kneeling on the floor, sobbing, and Pastor John laid his hand on her head and said, “I cast out the demon of disobedience. I cast it out. Sister Holly, you cannot open the door just a tiny crack to Satan’s influence. When you open that door, you let Satan into your life. And what did Satan take in return? He took your child.”