Imprints

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  The work on the quilts had been abandoned, and the women, old and young, gathered around Harmony, talking with her and basking in her light, and I realized something at that moment. Gabe might be the charismatic figurehead for Harmony Farm, and Dar’s compelling speeches might attract many new converts, but Harmony was the reason it all worked at the core. That the women loved her was apparent, and she seemed to care about them, too.

  Where did that connect with the murder of Inclar and Victoria’s fear? With Marcie’s disappearance? Harmony could be exactly what she seemed, or she could be something far, far worse.

  The voices in the room fell silent, and eyes wandered to where I stood in the hallway looking in. With the new damage to my face, I wasn’t surprised my presence would have such an impact. Harmony smiled and drifted toward me, followed by some of the others, including Spring and her son.

  “Good morning, Autumn.” Harmony dipped her head, but her eyes slid past my face, going to someone behind me. I turned and saw Gabe emerging from a door farther down the hallway. His handsome face was drawn, and he looked older than I remembered, but when he came into the room, he greeted everyone with a smile and gentle words, turning on the charisma like a switch. He might not be as good a speaker as Dar or as vibrant as his wife, but he knew how to work people, especially those starved for emotional nurturing.

  Harmony took her husband’s arm. “I’m just about to give our new members a tour, Gabe. Would you like to come along?” At a nod from Harmony, all the women except Spring returned to their tasks. A few were smiling at the couple, but I noticed most of the older women stood together on the far side of the room, their faces carefully blank. I didn’t know what that meant.

  “I really shouldn’t.” Gabe rubbed his fingers over her hand. “I need to discuss some things with the boys here.”

  That’s when I noticed the three men, who must have come in the wide back entryway after I’d passed and were now awaiting Gabe. Not just any men. One was the guard I’d bested by pure luck. He had a white bandage around his head, but besides that he looked healthy. From the cuts and bruises on the other men’s faces, I guessed they had been Jake’s attackers. I ducked my chin and didn’t meet the guard’s eyes, turning to Spring and her son. A baby was always an excuse to tune out any conversation, and I was thankful Silverstar let me take him from his mother’s arms. I made sure to keep the bruised side of my face away from the men.

  “Okay, then,” Harmony said to Gabe. “Go take care of your business. We’ll miss you.” On her tiptoes, she gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and for a brief instant, his tension eased. “Have fun,” he said.

  Harmony laughed. “We will.”

  I dared a peek at the men and was relieved to see that no one was interested in me. Even so, I held my breath. An instant of recognition, and I might be rotting in the same hole as Marcie.

  Harmony motioned us to come with her, and I followed quickly, leaving Spring to take up the rear. “Is he too heavy for you?” Spring asked, running to catch up.

  “No, not at all.”

  “I think he weighs a ton. Sixteen months, and he’s as tall as most two-year-olds.”

  “We could leave him with someone here,” Harmony suggested.

  “No, it’s okay. If Autumn gets tired, I’ll carry him.” Spring was wearing a Harmony Farm T-shirt today, like I was, and except for the fading bruises that told of a hard life, she looked too youthful and carefree to be the mother of the boy I carried.

  Harmony stopped a child and asked him to round up the rest of the newcomers, but Jake and the other two recruits were nowhere to be found. I began to feel a little uneasy. Where was Jake?

  “Looks like it’s just us,” Harmony said with her customary laugh. “More fun that way,” she added conspiratorially.

  “We could wait,” I suggested.

  “No. Gabe or Dar can take them around later. I really want to show you our herbs right away. See what you think.”

  “Would it be okay if I took something to my room?” I asked. “It’s the poultice I made earlier.”

  “Sure.” Her gaze deepened as she took in the color of my eyes for the first time in the sunlight. Like her husband, she didn’t bring it up, and I was grateful.

  I handed Silverstar to Spring and went back inside to the kitchen, hoping no one had cleaned the mug. No one had. In fact, the kitchen was exactly as I’d left it, and Victoria was nowhere in sight. I rummaged through the many drawers until I found a tiny container that would hold my mixture and spooned it in, placing the dirty mug and spoon in the sink. They contrasted with the mounds of clean, drying dishes on the long countertop. So many mouths to feed and not a dishwasher in sight. If that didn’t give a new meaning to the word tedium, I didn’t know what did. Sighing, I hurriedly washed the mug and spoon.

  My appetite was back. I couldn’t resist gulping down another piece of bacon, which was delicious despite being cold. I swallowed quickly. There, a little strength to tide me over.

  From outside the kitchen, a movement caught my eye. I glanced toward the far end of the hallway and saw Victoria emerging from what I’d thought was Dar’s office. She blinked once at me, her round face chalky, and then put her head down and scurried back to the kitchen. Frowning, I made my way out onto the porch.

  “Look who we found,” Harmony sang out from the cast-iron chairs on the porch where she and Spring had settled to watch a group of children playing basketball while they waited for me.

  To my relief it was Jake, lounging against the railing next to them. “Hi,” I said.

  “I hear we’re going on a tour.”

  “Just have to put this in my room.” I showed him the herbs.

  “I’ll walk you there.”

  “Men aren’t allowed inside,” Harmony called after him.

  Jake nodded at her, all charm, tipping an imaginary hat. “I’ll wait outside, then.”

  “Except for Dar,” I muttered as we started across the square. “He comes inside. At least he did to take away my money and my radio. And make me sign that contract.”

  “What have you been eating?” Jake asked.

  “Eating?” I feigned innocence. The sun was high enough that it was shining down on his face now, newly shaven. I wondered when he’d had the time to do that.

  “You have grease on your lips.”

  “Can’t be. We’re fasting for three days, remember?” I ran my tongue over my lip, and sure enough, there was bacon grease.

  He followed the movement, amusement dancing on his face. “I smelled bacon cooking when they hauled me up before dawn to milk the cows. Leave it to you to find it.”

  “Hey, I went through a lot last night.” He, I noticed, didn’t have a mark on him.

  “I know.” His expression sobered. “Your face looks bad.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I mean, like it hurts.” There was tenderness in the words, and perhaps—perhaps—just a little bit more.

  “Looks worse than it is.” Truthfully, my muscles and the cut on my arm that he couldn’t see hurt far more. At least the wrist was feeling better. “It’ll just take me a moment,” I said outside the singles’ quarters. For some reason, I felt reluctant to meet his eyes. Maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t see what I hoped to find there.

  I hesitated when I passed the supply closet, remembering the key in my suitcase. We might need it today, if not on our tour, then later. Or maybe when the police arrived. But if I was going to carry it, I wanted something to wrap it in, even if it would be in the pocket of my jeans. A bit of homespun cloth from the first-aid kit would do the trick.

  I looked both ways before slipping into the bathing room and then into the supply closet, wrapping the key carefully several times. At the last moment, I stuck it inside my bra instead of my pocket, close to my underarm, hoping the imprints wouldn’t leak through too much. If things turned bad, I didn’t want anyone to find the key on me.

  A woman was in the hall when I stepped from the closet, but I
smiled at her as if I had every right to be there, and she nodded back. Once in my room, I saw that someone had made my bed. Shaking my head, I opened the top drawer of my dresser to put in the herbs.

  I froze. Something wasn’t right, though it took me a minute to figure out exactly what. When I did, my heart skipped a beat. The earrings Ethan had given me, the ones he could use to track me, were no longer in the drawer.

  Chapter 19

  My earrings are gone,” I told Jake as we walked a few steps behind the others on our way to what Harmony lovingly referred to as the cow barn.

  After Jake joined the tour, Harmony had taken us back inside the main house and shown us the common rooms, including the kitchen Jake supposedly hadn’t seen yet, and the big laundry room across the hall from the huge room where the women worked on their quilts. Then we’d toured the married housing, consisting of separate bathing areas for the men and women and rooms slightly larger than those in the singles’ house, each with a smaller attached room for the children. In neither building had we seen any sign of a false wall or hidden room.

  Jake frowned at my whispered statement. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I put them in my top drawer last night after my bath, and today they’re missing. I searched the whole dresser.” I didn’t tell him about Victoria coming out of Dar’s office. The two weren’t really connected, were they? She would have no reason to turn over my earrings. It’s not as though she knew something was odd about them. Still, they were missing, and that meant someone suspected me.

  A shiver crawled up my spine, as though unseen eyes followed us through the trees. “We have to hurry and find Marcie,” I said. “This is getting too weird.” I regretted not leaving with Ethan last night. Tawnia was going to kill me. I hoped she had the chance.

  “I’m thinking that if they have a hidden room, it probably won’t be in a high traffic area,” Jake said. “Otherwise people would hear them shouting, wouldn’t they?”

  “Maybe they have and are too scared to care.”

  But he was right. We certainly hadn’t heard shouting or crying during our sneaking around last night.

  We’d entered an area where the trees were different. Fruit trees, at least half a dozen varieties.

  Harmony paused and waited for us to catch up with her. “This is where we’re building the new married housing.” Sure enough, the ground next to the trees was broken and already large cinderblocks were in place as a base.

  “With flush toilets?” Jake asked.

  “Yes, and separate bathing rooms, one for each family.”

  “Good reason to get married.”

  Harmony quirked one eyebrow. “I can think of a lot better reasons.”

  So could I, but after my experience at the outhouse last night, I agreed completely with Jake.

  Harmony motioned us onward, picking up the pace. “And through these trees, we have our biggest barn and pasture, and our grain silos. This is where we house all your typical barn animals and milking cows, calves we are raising for beef and turkeys and goats. You get the idea. There’s a chicken coop out back.”

  “Even room for a spare rat or two?” Jake asked.

  Harmony trilled her infectious laugh, tossing her head so the ebony tresses caught the sunlight. “More than that, I’d guess. They eat anything, so they keep the place clean, and the cats keep the number of rats down, so it’s a good balance.”

  Spring sneezed. “Excuse me,” she muttered. A gray and white cat came toward us, winding its body between Harmony’s legs and heading toward Spring, who backed away. “I’m afraid I’m allergic to cats,” she said.

  “Oh, sorry.” Harmony shooed the animal away. “I’ll have to remember that when we give you your work assignment. Have you had any trouble so far? We do have a few cats hanging around here.”

  “It’s not usually a problem if they’re kept outside,” Spring said. “But I don’t make a habit of petting them, just in case.”

  “Good.” Harmony put an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t you wait out here while I show the others inside the barn?”

  The barn was big and resplendent with a recent coat of red paint. The roof was shiny and made of metal, which I thought was rather practical. I’d been in several barns hunting for antiques, and this one was no different. Large loft for storing hay, stalls for the animals, a barrel of grain, tools on hooks, even space for a tractor. Several young men were cleaning and repairing leather items, while three younger boys chased a chicken. No sign of a hidden room.

  “Did you really milk a cow this morning?” I whispered to Jake.

  He nodded. “Right there in that stall. Clumsy thing stepped on my foot.”

  “I’ll stay away from her, then.”

  Harmony led the way outside again. “There’s another barn and field for the horses on the other side, behind the outhouses, which we’ll see in a while, but if we go through the fields instead of back through the housing area, you can see our greenhouse.” Her eyes went to my bare feet, where the white bandage on my toe was already dirty. “It’s a bit of a hike. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “My feet are tough,” I said. “As long as we aren’t running, I’ll be fine.” Running from a crazed killer, that is.

  “She never wears shoes,” Jake put in. I glared at him, and he added quickly, “At least that’s what she claims.”

  “Why?” Spring asked.

  So I went into the whole convoluted explanation about shoes throwing out my back and my parents being hippies and how I’d liked to freak out my schoolteachers. “Mostly, it’s a habit,” I confessed. “I hate shoes, so I don’t wear them.”

  “I bet you don’t make your bed, either,” Jake said.

  He knew I didn’t. “What’s the point if you’re just going to get back in it?”

  Harmony laughed. “You’re my kind of person, Autumn.” I remembered the bacon she had stolen and had to agree. Of course, she might be involved in a murder, and I most definitely wasn’t.

  As we passed the barn, we saw two older men in a clearing, their skin wrinkled and brown, working on a tractor. If I could judge by the laughter floating over to us, they were enjoying the company and the sunshine. A few younger men had spread out under a tree, talking, though they jumped to their feet when they spied Harmony.

  “Go back to what you were doing,” she told them with a laugh and a wave. They didn’t, though, grabbing buckets and disappearing into the barn.

  We arrived next at a field of herbs, lush and green under the warming sun. Living in a city, I’d never seen so many herbs growing in one spot or so many different herbs growing together. Herbs for healing and cooking—and for selling, of course. I shared a gaze of wonder with Jake, who was even more excited than I was. He walked on the path toward a long, squat greenhouse, mumbling under his breath as we passed different rows, “Comfrey, peppermint, lavender, sweet basil, milkthistle, yarrow, chamomile, feverfew, lemon balm, cayenne.” I was glad Harmony was ahead and couldn’t hear him. I laughed, feeling the last bits of terror fading away in the sunlight.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jake said with feeling, as we reached the greenhouse. His eyes were on the long drying racks that ran the outside length of the greenhouse, encased in screens that kept the bugs out while the herbs dried naturally in the sun.

  “There’s more inside.” Harmony studied Jake for a long minute, and I wondered what she was thinking. If she was any kind of smart, she’d have realized that most builders didn’t get that excited over herbs.

  Inside the greenhouse, I wasn’t surprised to see Essence seated on the ground by a bed of seedlings, watering them carefully. Next to her was a slight young man with bright red hair and freckles all over, and I knew him at once for the boyfriend who’d given her the pretty vase in our room.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The boy quickly shoved something into his pocket, his eyes meeting mine and his face arranged in a carefully bland smile. “Hi.”

  Essence nodded her sharp fa
ce in my general direction, but her slanted eyes didn’t meet mine.

  “Shouldn’t you be doing your chores?” Harmony asked the boy, who nodded, jumped to his feet, and shot out the door, his steps a little unsteady.

  There was a sweet smell in the greenhouse, one I recognized from my youth. Even hippy parents who didn’t believe in smoking pot themselves knew other hippy people who did. It took me only a few minutes to locate Essence’s stash in the corner of the greenhouse, growing lush and unchecked.

  “Marijuana,” I whispered to Jake. He looked closer, his mouth rounded to an O.

  “Beautiful plants, aren’t they?” Spring gushed. “All this greenery is so inspiring.”

  Harmony smiled at us, her hands folded across her stomach. I could see in her stance that she was proud of what she and Gabe had built with their followers and also that she had not a clue in the world that Essence was growing pot.

  Or was that an act? For all I knew, she and Gabe put drugs in everyone’s food at night so they would be willing slaves forever. But I was beginning to like Harmony, and I didn’t want to think of her like that.

  After leaving the greenhouse, we crossed fields of vegetables and grains used for feeding those on the farm and also for sending to the factory in Rome, where rotating shifts of disciples ground the grain and made most of the muffins and breads they sold in the towns. “We don’t use preservatives, so the finished products only last five days without a change in freshness and taste,” Harmony said. “But we have a truck that freezes them, so we take out in the morning only those we’ll sell that day. When the truck is empty, someone drives it back for more. It works really well, and a few stores order from us quite regularly now.”

  “So that’s what goes on at the factory,” I mused. “I heard someone mention it.”

  “We work in rotating shifts. You’re welcome to sign up for a shift in a few months, but we like people to stay close to the farm for the first while. You know, to really get the feel of life here.”