“Has Abby ever disappeared before?” Lena repeated.
Esther’s voice was almost a whisper. “Sometimes she would go over to the farm without telling us.”
“Just across the street?”
“Yes, just across the street. It’s silly to think we were upset. The farm is an extension of our home. Abby was safe the entire time. We were just worried when supper came and we hadn’t heard from her.”
Lena realized the woman was referring to a specific time rather than a series of incidents. “Abby spent the night over there?”
“With Lev and Papa. They live there with Mary. My mother passed away when I was three.”
“Who’s Mary?”
“My oldest sister.”
“Older than Lev?”
“Oh, no, Lev’s the oldest child. There’s Mary next, then Rachel, then Paul, then me.”
“That’s quite a family,” Lena said, thinking their mother must have died from exhaustion.
“Papa grew up an only child. He wanted lots of children around him.”
“Your father owns the farm?”
“The family owns most of it along with some other investors,” Esther replied, opening one of the cabinets and taking down a three-pound bag of sugar. “Papa started it over twenty years ago.”
Lena tried to phrase her question diplomatically. “I thought cooperatives were owned by the workers.”
“All the workers have the opportunity to invest after they’ve been on the farm for two years,” she explained, measuring out a cup of sugar.
“Where do these workers come from?”
“Atlanta, mostly.” She stirred the lemonade with a wooden spoon to mix the sugar. “Some of them are transients, looking for a few months of solitude. Others want a way of life and decide to stay. We call them ‘souls,’ because they’re very much like lost souls.” A wry smile touched her lips. “I’m not naïve. Some of them are downright hiding from the law. We’ve always been hesitant to involve the police because of this. We want to help them, not hide them, but some are avoiding abusive spouses or parents. We can’t protect just the ones we agree with. It has to be all or none.”
“Involve the police in what?”
“There’ve been thefts in the past,” Esther said, then added, “I know I’ve spoken out of turn, but Lev wouldn’t likely mention this to you. We’re very isolated out here, as you probably noticed, and the local sheriff isn’t too keen to drop everything and come running just because a pitchfork has shown up missing.”
Pelham wouldn’t come running for anything but dinner. “Is that all it’s been? Missing pitchforks?”
“Some shovels have been taken, a couple of wheelbarrows.”
“Any wood?”
She gave Lena a look of confusion. “Well, I don’t know about that. We don’t use much wood on the farm. You mean like stakes? Soybean plants don’t vine.”
“What else has been missing?”
“The petty-cash box was stolen out of the barn about a month ago. There was, I think, around three hundred dollars in it.”
“What’s petty cash kept for?”
“Running to the hardware store, sometimes buying a pizza if folks have been working late. We process the plants here ourselves, which is a lot of repetitive work. Some of the souls we get aren’t highly skilled, but others find themselves bored with it. We move them into other areas of the farm, like deliveries, accounting. Not big accounting, but going through invoices, filing. Our goal is to teach them a useful skill, give them some sense of accomplishment, to take back into their real lives.”
It sounded like a cult to Lena, and her attitude got the better of her when she said, “So, you bring them back from Atlanta and all they have to do in return is say their nightly prayers?”
Esther smiled like she was humoring Lena. “We only ask them to go to services on Sunday. It’s not mandatory. We have fellowship every evening at eight, and they’re welcome then as well. Most of them choose not to attend, and that’s perfectly fine. We don’t require anything but that they obey the rules and behave respectfully toward us and their peers.”
They had gotten way off the point, and Lena tried to steer her back. “Do you work on the farm?”
“Normally, I school the children. Most of the women who come here have kids. I try to help them as much as I can, but again, they’re usually not here for long. Structure is all I can give them.”
“How many people do you have at a time?”
“Around two hundred would be my guess. You can ask Lev about that. I don’t keep up with employment records and such.”
Lena made a mental note to get those records, though she couldn’t keep her mind from flashing on a bunch of young kids being brainwashed into giving up their worldly possessions and joining this weird family. She wondered if Jeffrey was getting the same impression in the other room. “You still school Abby?”
“We talk about literature, mostly. I’m afraid I can’t offer her much beyond the usual high school curriculum. Ephraim and I discussed sending her to a small college, perhaps Tifton or West Georgia, but she wasn’t interested. She loves working at the farm, you see. Her gift is helping others.”
“Have you always done that?” Lena asked. “Homeschooling, I mean.”
“We were all homeschooled. All of us but Lev.” She smiled proudly. “Paul had one of the highest SAT scores in the state when he entered UGA.”
Lena wasn’t interested in Paul’s academic career. “That’s your only job at the farm? Teaching?”
“Oh, no,” she laughed. “Everyone on the farm has to do everything at some time. I started in the fields, just like Becca is doing. Zeke’s a little too young now, but he’ll start in the next few years. Papa believes you have to know every part of the company if you’re going to run it someday. I got stuck in bookkeeping for a while. Unfortunately, I have a talent for numbers. If I had my way, I’d lie around on the couch all day reading. Papa wants us to be ready when something happens to him.”
“You’ll run the farm eventually?”
She laughed again at the suggestion, as if running a company was something a woman couldn’t possibly manage. “Maybe Zeke or one of the boys will. The point is to be ready. It’s also important considering our labor force isn’t particularly motivated to stay. They’re city people, used to a faster way of life. They love it here at first— the quiet, the solitude, the easiness of it compared to their old lives on the street, but then they start to get a little bored, then a lot bored, and before they know it, everything that made them love it here makes them want to run screaming. We try to be selective in our training. You don’t want to spend a season teaching someone to do a specialized job when they’re going to leave in the middle of it and go back to the city.”
“Drugs?” Lena asked.
“Of course,” she said. “But we’re very careful here. You have to earn trust. We don’t allow alcohol or cigarettes on the farm. If you want to go into town, you’re welcome to, but no one is going to give you a ride. We have them sign a behavioral contract the minute they step foot on the place. If they break it, they’re gone. A lot more people than not appreciate that, and the new ones learn from the old-timers that when we say an infraction gets you sent back to Atlanta, we mean it.” Her tone softened. “I know it sounds harsh, but we have to get rid of the bad ones so that the ones who are trying to be good have a chance. Surely, as a law enforcement officer, you understand that.”
“How many people come and go?” Lena asked. “Ballpark, I mean.”
“Oh, I’d say we have about a seventy percent return rate.” Again, she deferred to the men in her family. “You’d have to ask Lev or Paul for an exact percentage. They keep up with the running of things.”
“But you’ve noticed people coming and going?”
“Of course.”
“What about Abby?” Lena asked. “Is she happy here?”
Esther smiled. “I would hope so, but we never make people stay here if the
y don’t want to.” Lena nodded as if she understood, but Esther felt the need to add, “I know this all may sound odd to you. We’re religious people, but we don’t believe in forcing religion onto others. When you come to the Lord, it must be of your own volition or it means nothing to Him. I can tell from your questions that you’re skeptical about the workings of the farm and my family, but I can assure you we’re simply working for the greater good here. We’re obviously not invested in material needs.” She indicated the house. “What we’re invested in is saving souls.”
Her placid smile was more off-putting than anything Lena had experienced today. She tried to work with it, asking, “What sort of things does Abby do on the farm?”
“She’s even better with numbers than I am,” Esther said proudly. “She worked in the office for a while, but she started to get bored, so we all agreed she could start working as a sorter. It’s not a highly difficult job, but it brings her into contact with a lot of people. She likes being in a crowd, blending in. I suppose every young girl feels that.”
Lena waited a beat, wondering why the woman had yet to ask about her daughter. Either Esther was in denial or she knew exactly where Abby was. “Did Abby know about the thefts?”
“Not many people did,” Esther said. “Lev likes to let the church handle church problems.”
“The church?” Lena asked, as if she hadn’t already figured this out.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and Lena wondered why she started just about every sentence with an apology. “The Church for the Greater Good. I always just assume everyone knows what we’re about.”
“And what are you about?”
Lena obviously wasn’t doing a good job of hiding her cynicism, but Esther still patiently explained, “Holy Grown subsidizes our outreach into Atlanta.”
“What kind of outreach?”
“We try to carry on Jesus’s work with the poor. We have contacts at several shelters for the homeless and abused women. Some halfway houses keep us on their speed dial. Sometimes we get men and women who have just gotten out of jail and have nowhere to go. It’s appalling the way our penal system just chews these people up and spits them out.”
“Do you keep any information on them?”
“As much as we can,” Esther said, returning to the lemonade. “We have education facilities where they learn manufacturing. The soy business has changed over the last ten years.”
“It’s in just about everything,” Lena said, thinking it would be unwise to mention that the only reason she knew this was because she lived with a tofu-eating, health-food nut lesbian.
“Yes,” Esther agreed. She took three glasses out of the cabinet.
Lena offered, “I’ll get the ice.” She opened the freezer and saw a huge block of ice instead of the cubes she’d been expecting.
“Just use your hands,” Esther said. “Or I could—”
“I’ve got it,” Lena told her, taking out the block, getting the front of her shirt wet in the process.
“We have an icehouse across the road for cold storage. It seems a shame to waste water here when there’s plenty across the street.” She indicated Lena should set the block in the sink. “We try to preserve as many of our natural resources as we can,” she said, using an ice pick to dislodge some shards. “Papa was the first farmer in the region to use natural irrigation from rainwater. Of course, we have too much land for that now, but we reclaim as much as we can.”
Thinking of Jeffrey’s earlier question about possible sources of cyanide, Lena asked, “What about pesticides?”
“Oh, no,” Esther said, dropping some ice into the glasses. “We don’t use those— never have. We use natural fertilizers. You have no idea what phosphates do to the water table. Oh, no.” She laughed. “Papa made it clear from the start that we would do it the natural way. We’re all a part of this land. We have a responsibility to our neighbors and the people who come to the land after us.”
“That sounds very . . .” Lena looked for a positive word. “Responsible.”
“Most people think it’s a lot of trouble for nothing,” Esther said. “It’s a difficult situation to be in. Do we poison the environment and make more money that we can use to help the needy, or do we maintain our principles and help fewer people? It’s the sort of question Jesus often raised: help the many or help the few?” She handed Lena one of the glasses. “Does this taste too sweet for you? I’m afraid we don’t normally use much sugar around here.”
Lena took a sip, feeling her jaw clench into a death grip. “It’s a little tart,” she managed, trying to suppress the guttural sound welling in her throat.
“Oh.” Esther took out the sugar again, spooning more into Lena’s glass. “Now?”
Lena tried again, taking a less generous sip. “Good,” she said.
“Good,” Esther echoed, spooning more into another glass. She left the third alone, and Lena hoped it wasn’t meant for Jeffrey.
“Everyone’s particular, aren’t they?” Esther asked, walking past Lena toward the hall.
Lena followed. “What’s that?”
“About tastes,” she explained. “Abby loves sweets. Once, when she was a baby, she ate almost a full cup of sugar before I realized she had gotten into the cabinet.”
They passed the library, and Lena said, “You have a lot of books.”
“Classics, mostly. Some potboilers and westerns, of course. Ephraim loves crime fiction. I guess he’s attracted to the black and white of it all. The good guys on one side, the bad guys on the other.”
“It’d be nice,” Lena found herself saying.
“Becca loves romances. Show her a book with a long-haired Adonis on the cover and she’ll finish it in two hours.”
“You let her read romances?” Lena asked. She had been thinking these people were the same kind of nutballs who got on the news for banning Harry Potter.
“We let the children read anything they like. That’s the deal for not having a television in the house. Even if they’re reading trash, it’s better than watching it on the tube.”
Lena nodded, though in her mind she wondered what it would be like to live without television. Watching mindless TV was the only thing that had kept her sane the last three years.
“There you are,” Lev said when they entered the room. He took a glass from Esther and handed it to Jeffrey.
“Oh, no,” Esther said, taking it back. “This one’s yours.” She handed the sweeter lemonade to Jeffrey, who, like Ephraim, had stood when they entered the room. “I don’t imagine you like it as tart as Lev does.”
“No, ma’am,” Jeffrey agreed. “Thank you.”
The front door opened and a man who looked like the male version of Esther walked in, his hand at the elbow of an older woman who seemed too fragile to walk by herself.
The man said, “Sorry we’re late.”
Jeffrey moved, taking his lemonade with him, so that the woman could take his chair. Another woman who looked more like Lev entered the house, her reddish-blond hair wound into a bun on the top of her head. To Lena, she looked like the quintessential sturdy farmwoman who could drop a baby in the fields and keep on picking cotton the rest of the day. Hell, the whole family looked strong. The shortest one was Esther, and she had a good six inches on Lena.
“My brother, Paul,” Lev said, indicating the man. “This is Rachel.” The farmwoman nodded her head in greeting. “And Mary.”
From what Esther had said, Mary was younger than Lev, probably in her midforties, but she looked and acted like she was twenty years older. She took her time settling into the chair, as if she was afraid she’d fall and break a hip. She even sounded like an old woman when she said, “You’ll have to excuse me, I haven’t been well,” in a tone that invited pity.
“My father couldn’t join us,” Lev told them, deftly sidestepping his sister. “He’s had a stroke. He doesn’t get out much these days.”
“That’s quite all right,” Jeffrey told him, then addressed the o
ther family members. “I’m Chief Tolliver. This is Detective Adams. Thank you all for coming.”
“Shall we sit?” Rachel suggested, going to the couch. She indicated Esther should sit beside her. Again, Lena felt the division of tasks between the men and women of the family, seating arrangements and kitchen duties on one side, everything else on the other.
Jeffrey tilted his head slightly, motioning Lena to Esther’s left as he leaned against the fireplace mantel. Lev waited until Lena was seated before helping Ephraim into the chair beside Jeffrey. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and Lena knew that he had probably gotten quite an earful while she was in the kitchen. She couldn’t wait to compare notes.
“So,” Jeffrey said, as if the small talk was out of the way and they could finally get down to business. “You say Abby’s been missing for ten days?”
“That’s my fault,” Lev said, and Lena wondered if he was going to confess. “I thought Abby was going on the mission into Atlanta with the family. Ephraim thought she was staying on the farm with us.”
Paul said, “We all thought that was the case. I don’t think we need to assign blame.” Lena studied the man for the first time, thinking he sounded a lot like a lawyer. He was the only one of them wearing what looked like store-bought clothes. His suit was pin-striped, his tie a deep magenta against his white shirt. His hair was professionally cut and styled. Paul Ward looked like the city mouse standing next to his country-mouse brother and sisters.
“Whatever the case, none of us thought anything untoward was happening,” Rachel said.
Jeffrey must have gotten the full story about the farm, because his next question was not about the family or the inner workings of Holy Grown. “Was there someone around the farm Abby liked being around? Maybe one of the workers?”
Rachel provided, “We didn’t really let her mingle.”
“Surely she met other people,” Jeffrey said, taking a sip of lemonade. He seemed to be doing everything in his power not to shudder from the tartness as he put the glass on the mantel.
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