But I’m too afraid, because if I take his hand even one more time...I’m not sure I’ll be able to let go.
All the panic and activity haven’t undone what happened between us last night. Nothing’s changed.
Better safe than sorry.
“This is his stuff,” I tell Howard, shoving the duffel bag at his chest because my heart is trying to crack its way out of mine. “Just clothes and his toothbrush, deodorant...stuff he might need, while he’s here.”
I don’t mention the book. Van will find it.
I can’t give him my story. But I can give him a thread to pull, if he cares enough.
Howard looks at me, not the luggage. “You aren’t staying? What do I tell him when he asks about you?”
He won’t.
“I was supposed to just drop him off at your place,” I say instead. The tears have stopped. Numbness has taken over.
Is this how Van felt, all the time?
He said he hated it, but right now I’d call it a gift. With no feelings to get in the way, you can do anything. No matter how hard it is.
“That’s what he said he wanted,” I whisper.
And as anyone who’s ever met Van knows, it’s easier to just give him what he wants.
Howard draws a confused breath and says all right. I spare him the embarrassment of a forced hug by sticking out my hand. We shake, like transferring a deed on the honor of our word.
In the elevator, the numbness slips. I shut my eyes and inhale through my nose, exhale through my mouth, until it nudges itself back. Just stay a little longer, I beg it.
Candace sighs with her hand over her heart when I climb the porch and tell her Van will be okay.
Then her brow furrows, seeing everything in my arms.
It takes me three trips. Wordlessly, Candace carries each item into the farmhouse as soon as I set them on the porch. It feels like offerings at a shrine. Meaningless gifts and too-late sacrifices for a fallen god.
“I’ll make sure he gets it all,” she assures me.
I know the numbness is still intact when she hugs me again, because this time, I don’t cry.
Almost, I assure it, after hours of driving.
Not yet.
A few more miles.
As soon as I pass the border of North Dakota, I pull over. Tears singe my eyes as I stare ahead, following a trail of woodsmoke beyond the trees.
What was it that waitress told me, my first night on the road with Van? Something about ignoring a fire when she thought she smelled smoke.
That’s exactly what I did. Ignored the flames, even when I felt us melting. Smelled smoke and told myself there was nothing to worry over.
I wipe my eyes. Heartbreak tells me to turn around and go back, while self-preservation wonders which direction will bring less pain in the long run.
History tells me, You already know.
Grief remembers what we had. Bitterness clucks its tongue at me, a reminder that we never really had it. It was just an illusion.
Smoke and mirrors, like any good magic act.
Thirty-One
She’s gone.
I don’t sense her absence, this time. My brilliant brain figures it out when Howard steps into my room, my duffel bag dangling from his fingertips.
“Two hospital stays in under a month.” He tosses the bag onto my feet and pulls up a chair. “Just like the old days.”
“I wish. I’d happily trade this bullshit for a concussion or some stitches.” Howard’s driven me to this ER too many times to count, back when I’d take my horse over jumps I wasn’t ready for, or ride my board down trails I couldn’t handle. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen him looking scared.
“Hey.” I hit his arm with my IV-tethered hand. “I’m okay.” Still feeling sick as hell, but fine. If one more doctor tells me how lucky I am, I’ll have to buy an entire roll of lottery tickets just to beat them to death with something ironic enough.
“I know.” He rubs his face with both palms, half to wake himself up, half so I won’t notice the glassy look in his eyes. Too late.
I find my bed remote and sit up, even though doing so slams a sledgehammer into my chest.
“So was this worse,” I croak, “or better than the time I split my head open on that rock near your old place?”
He chuckles. “Pretty much the same. But at least back then I expected your friends showing up on my porch to tell me you were hurt. This one caught me by complete surprise.”
I wonder if he means the illness itself...or that this time, the friend on his porch was Juniper.
“So.” My fingers pick at the tape over my IV, instinctive. I stop myself and smooth the corners down. “Longshot, but—”
“I don’t know where she went, Van. Might as well save your pride and not ask.”
My pride’s the last fucking thing I need to save, and we both know it. Still, I appreciate him shooting it straight with me. “When did she leave?”
“Few minutes ago.” Nodding at my bag, he leans back in his seat and stretches. “Gave me that, turned, and left.”
Whether it’s the beast or guard dog growling in my incapacitated chest, I can’t tell. “I can’t believe she did that.”
Yes, I can.
“She said that’s what you wanted,” he shrugs, like he fully bought into it the second she said it.
And I guess he should. That is what I told her to do: drop me off at the ranch and call the debt even. Leaving me in a hospital with Howard at my bedside instead of her is basically the same thing.
But they’re both wrong, saying it’s what I wanted. It’s not.
Just what had to happen.
Thank God for the convenient excuse of pneumonia. When the sting hits my eyes, I can shut them and have Howard assume I’m just exhausted. He gets up and pats my shoulder.
“Rest up,” he says. “I’m gonna head home to help Candace put the boys to bed, then I’ll come back.”
“I’m a grown man. You don’t have to stay with me all night.”
“Promised your dad I would.” I hear him laugh to himself in the doorway. “And everyone knows you don’t break your word to a Durham.”
With that last unintentional knife-twist, he leaves. I sink back into my pillows and screw with the cannula in my nose before deciding, much as I hate it, I need it.
I pull my bag closer and hunt for my phone. Dad’s probably texted or emailed a few times, and I’m sure Theo and Wes have blown up my inbox with genuine concern and tasteless jokes. I’d be disappointed I don’t have a single text from Juniper...if I didn’t suddenly realize we never gave each other our numbers.
Leave it to me to date a girl and not even know her fucking phone number. I mean, we were living together, for all intents and purposes. But still.
Everything in the bag smells like her. Screw the phone. Let’s save this time capsule for another day.
When I try to zip it shut, something pokes out.
It’s The Phoenix Seer, the book she told me she read in her attic.
No way was this a mistake. This is almost the equivalent of her putting the iPod in here: she’d never let it out of her sight by accident.
Turning it over in my hands feels like another twist of the knife tearing up my chest, but mostly because I know what a gift this is.
I told her the debt was off, that I was calling it even—but between this and everything else she’s given me, it’s been paid and then some.
As promised, Howard returns later that night, keeping vigil at my bedside like I’m dying of cholera or some shit. We talk about Dad and Megan and the new baby, until he falls asleep in the recliner.
My body’s begging for sleep too, but my brain’s not having it. Every conversation with Juniper plays in my ears at the same time. Every time we argued. Every time we made love.
Was that what it was?
I shut my eyes and press my palms into them until I see colors instead of her face.
With nothing else to do, I op
en the book. One chapter in, I know it’s not what I would’ve ever read as a kid, let alone now.
But I keep reading, if only because I like picturing Juniper when she was younger, hiding out and giggling with her friend over their little act of rebellion.
“Her name’s Rebecca Hostetter.”
This memory doesn’t hit like a train, but like my fever from before: a slow, relentless crawl through my body. At first, it just makes me feel a little off. I can’t pinpoint why.
Then I grab my phone and, for the hell of it, Google the girl’s name.
“Nothing you can’t find out online.”
The results aren’t the scattered social media accounts I expected. They’re headlines, and interviews, and a hundred pieces clicking into place at once. I read and watch until it all makes sense.
Until I wish so damn bad that it didn’t.
Thirty-Two
Seven Years Ago
Age Fifteen
“You’ll make a fine bride, Jescha.”
My throat sealed itself off as Miss Doris, the community’s oldest seamstress, stepped back and left me to balance on the empty fruit crate by myself. Brave of her, since I’d almost fainted twice.
The women kept clucking that it was nerves, like my terror was adorable, instead of the fact I hadn’t eaten in so long even the potpourri in glass dishes along the mantle was starting to look good.
Water only, everyone reminded me. All brides were required to fast for three days before the wedding, to give us clarity and peace.
Peace? That was laughable. I felt permanently sick to my stomach, even in my sleep.
But clarity…I had plenty of that.
And it was beyond clear to me that I couldn’t possibly do this.
To my right was Elisha, a girl born right after me who despised me over it. I could feel her glare from behind her veil, identical to my own: gauzy like cheesecloth, but still impossible to breathe in. As soon as Miss Doris declared it ready, I slipped mine off and resisted the urge to fling it from the window.
On my left stood Rebecca. She was matched with Caleb, because the church council decided her beauty could “relieve the boy of his sinful thoughts.” He’d cried during group confession that he dreamed about men, and the apparent cure was to give him the prettiest bride possible.
At least Caleb was our age. My match was Zachary, a man in his late thirties I’d yet to officially meet.
Reverend Barton picked him personally, in the hopes I’d learn the obedience my mother failed to teach me.
I asked questions no one wanted to answer. I coveted things we weren’t allowed to have anymore, like bicycles, or movies, or phones in our houses, instead of the monitored ones in the Main House.
My cure? A husband old enough to be my father, who would put me in my place.
* * *
Once upon a time, I thought I was magic, too.
Only, we didn’t call it that. We called it “anointed.” Chosen.
The day I was born, Reverend Barton held me before anyone else, even my mother. He’d had a vision that the next baby born in the community, male or female, would be his successor. An hour later, there I was.
It didn’t matter that I was born to an unwed mother, he said. It didn’t matter that I squirmed in my chair during my extra lessons, the ones where I had to memorize entire Bible passages before I could even read, let alone know what the words meant.
I was special, he told me. Mother told me that too, so often it became my earliest, strongest memory.
Sometimes we had dinner with Reverend Barton in his home. I had to keep my clothes spotless, my braid perfect, during the walk up the hill with my mother’s hand sweating around mine.
He asked me questions I didn’t know how to answer: if I saw burning bushes or strange, glowing forms in my dreams; if I heard things like whispers in my heart. When Mother would try to coax answers out of me, rephrasing his confusing questions in simpler words, he’d scold her for interfering.
“The child is in your care, Allison,” he’d hiss at her, “but she belongs to the community. Remember that.”
Apart from extra lessons and these strange dinners, my childhood wasn’t different from that of Rebecca or my other friends. We played in our shared yards, caught frogs along the river, and made daisy chains longer than our arms could hold.
Some adults gave me hard looks when I’d pass by in a muddy dress, or if I acted up during services. They’d whisper that Reverend Barton’s vision must have been wrong. I couldn’t possibly be their next leader.
“They’re jealous,” Mother assured me, even though I didn’t need reassuring. I knew I was special. Reverend Barton said so. Mother said so. That was enough for me.
Until I was seven, and Reverend Barton had another vision.
The new successor was a baby whose mother almost died in childbirth. Male.
My extra lessons stopped. Dinners in the reverend’s home stopped. The looks and whispers didn’t.
“Am I not special, anymore?” I asked Mother. I was convinced I’d done something wrong. If I’d sat still during my lessons, or answered his questions better, maybe I’d still be chosen.
“You are to me,” she whispered, drawing me close. I shut my eyes and felt her dress soak up my tears. I wanted to believe her.
I wanted it to be enough.
* * *
“Finished. You may go.”
Elisha and Rebecca placed their dresses delicately on the hangers. I balled mine up as I left the bathroom and handed it to the younger seamstress without meeting her eye.
As I left, I heard her huff to someone else, “Such disrespect. Her husband will have his work cut out for him.”
“Mm-hmm. To think she was ever chosen.”
Yes, I thought about screeching through the open window, by your beloved reverend. I suppose he’s not as infallible as you thought, if he was wrong about me.
I knew it was pointless, though. I was the problem, in their minds. They still believed every word Reverend Barton fed them.
As soon as Elisha veered through the grid of prefab houses to her home, Rebecca took my hand and said, “Tonight.”
“No.” I swallowed. My throat felt like I had eaten all that potpourri: dry and cut up into bloody ribbons. “One more day. Please.”
“The ceremony is in two days, Jessie.” She squeezed my fingers in hers and yanked me onto my porch, then inside my house.
We went to the attic. Mother was still at Daily Acts: all women who didn’t have a husband or young children to care for spent their days helping those who did. I could hear a group of them down the block, laughing and beating area rugs on someone’s laundry line.
The attic was stifling, but we pulled the ladder back up behind us anyway. We didn’t open the window, either. This was too important. Sweating was worth privacy.
We’d been planning our escape for a month, ever since our matches got announced.
It wasn’t just the men themselves that made us want to leave. Things were changing.
The marriage arrangements happened every year; that wasn’t new. But the council’s sudden lowering of the age threshold from sixteen to fifteen, with no explanation, was.
A rumor was circulating that Unity Light, our church, was opening a new community. One far, far away from Crown Plains.
And there was the quieter, much worse rumor that all this year’s new marriages would be sent there one day after the ceremony. Our goal: to populate it with new babies as fast as possible.
Rebecca was right. We couldn’t wait any longer.
The strange thing was, we never actually called it an escape; it was simply “going.” As though leaving Crown Plains was still as easy as walking right out.
Exodus, she wrote across the back of a chore list. We laughed.
“The fence is twice as tall as the attic ladder, I think. We can climb the attic ladder in four seconds, so the fence should be eight.”
“The fence is vertical,” I reminded her.
We’d argued about this for weeks. I don’t know why we were even planning this intensely, anymore.
We both knew, once the time came to leave, there’d be no plan. We’d just run.
Rebecca rolled her eyes and scribbled out the “8” she’d written, replacing it with sixteen.
“What about the other side?”
“There won’t be time to climb down the other side. We have to jump.”
My heart pounded just imagining it.
I put my hand overtop hers as she wrote down more numbers. More calculations that wouldn’t matter, in a few hours.
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Would you rather marry Zachary?” she countered, unaffected.
“But what about our parents?”
“Our parents,” she snapped, pulling her dress all the way to her stomach to fan herself, “refuse to listen to us. They refused to listen to the Miller family, or the Hardings.” Her eyes locked on mine. “They want to stay, Jescha. And there’s nothing they won’t do to keep us here.”
Slowly, I nodded. Our parents joined the church before we were born, and often spoke of how Unity Light had saved their lives.
But Rebecca’s parents were different from my mother. Both were on the council—a group of thirty or so men and women, appointed by Reverend Barton himself to help lead the community. They regularly dined in his home.
My mother, by contrast, had fallen out of his favor long ago. She had fewer ties to this place.
At least, I hoped so.
* * *
My mother was sixteen when she joined the church.
She’d run away from home and was sleeping in a public park, half-dead from heroin withdrawal, when a man and woman approached her with a blanket and asked if she needed a home.
“Just like that,” she’d sob, whenever Reverend Barton asked her to share her testimony with new members, “I had a family again. A home. Without even knowing me, Unity Light took me in. They saved my life.”
She told me the church was smaller, when she joined: a welcoming community of endless, unshakeable love. Reverend Barton knew everyone by name. If his team of canvassers, like the couple who found my mother on that park bench, didn’t convince you to join—the reverend’s smile and way with words would do it in a heartbeat.
Seven Sins: Durham Boys, Book 2 Page 21