by S. F. Kosa
Behind them, the children cavorted while they waited for their meal. Parvaneh heard Xerxes calling her name, and she turned and waved. Xerxes grinned, his blond hair falling over his eyes. Octavia walked over to give him a snuggle, and he greeted her with open arms. Parvaneh felt a stab of jealousy.
“What made the day so good?” Darius asked even as his eyes found Parvaneh’s, sending a tingle down her back. “Maybe the best is yet to come,” he added.
“We’re going to have a lot more cleaning customers,” Fabia said loudly, clearly trying to draw his attention back to her. Parvaneh fought the urge not to smirk.
“And why is that?” Darius asked.
Eszter and Parvaneh exchanged looks as Fabia chattered about their encounter with the reporter. Octavia returned to the table and sat next to Ladonna, who was breastfeeding her baby as others set plates of beef stew in front of them.
“…and with that kind of publicity, we’ll probably need more people to be on the crew,” Fabia finished.
“What exactly did you tell this reporter about us?”
“I—” Fabia paused. The flat, cold tone of Darius’s voice had clearly given her a chill.
“He asked if we were a cult,” Parvaneh said.
“What?”
Fabia flinched. Octavia explained what she’d told the reporter about who they were, but it only made his expression harden.
“You know the world doesn’t understand us, don’t you?” He looked around. “You realize that the more they know about us, the more envious they’ll be, and the more they’ll try to destroy us.” His eyes narrowed as he turned back to Octavia. “You agreed to this?”
“Fabia thought it was important for us to do,” Zana said.
“Oh, is Fabia your guide now?” Darius asked.
Parvaneh’s heart was beating hard, but she wasn’t sure if it was dread or excitement. Danger dripped from every one of Darius’s words as he stood up and said, “Everyone, we’ll be meeting as one group tonight after dinner. Fabia requires our support to remember why she’s here.”
Fabia had turned ashen. “But I—”
“Shh,” said Octavia.
No one said much of anything as they ate. Parvaneh poked at her bowl while Eszter shoveled it in, apologizing even though she didn’t have to. She was eating for two after all. When they’d finished, Darius marched them to the meeting hall. A strange sort of excitement pervaded, evident in the darting looks and curious expressions. Even the children had been invited to the meeting; the ones old enough to run around made good use of the aisles and rows of chairs as their playground of the moment. Xerxes barreled into Parvaneh and wrapped his arms around her legs. As she tried to peel him off of her, he only held on tighter.
Eszter came over to help. “Come on, Xerxes. It’s time to go to the back,” she said as she pulled his arms. “The adults are meeting now.”
“I want to be an adult,” said Xerxes. “I’m already four. How many years is it?”
Eszter smiled. “It might be higher than you can count.”
Xerxes scowled as Parvaneh finally pried him loose. “I can count to a hundred!”
“Fabia, take off your robe and get up on the altar,” Darius instructed from the front.
Pale and miserable-looking, Fabia complied, shedding her robe and trying to cover her breasts as she mounted the dais.
“Kazem,” Darius said. “Pass out the switches.”
Parvaneh turned to see Kazem marching up the aisle carrying a bucket full of sturdy sticks he appeared to have gathered from the woods. He held it out as he reached the knot of them standing near the front, and everyone took one, including Xerxes. Eszter began to take it from him, but Darius put a hand on her arm. “No,” he said. “Let him have it. He’s a part of this community too.”
Parvaneh was nearly breathless as she took in the scene in front of her, each person with a stick. She moved closer to Darius, who was standing at the altar, looking down at Fabia’s dimpled, trembling form. “Do you submit to the wisdom of this group and to my guidance?”
Fabia sobbed. “I was trying to do something good!”
“You substituted your will for mine, and you overruled the others—you failed to listen to their wisdom. You failed to protect this body. You failed the deep consciousness.” He gestured around him, to everyone with sticks. “Do you accept that you failed, Fabia?”
“I’m sorry,” she cried.
“Do you accept this lesson we’re giving you?”
“I’ll accept anything you want,” she whimpered. “I won’t do it again.”
“Sometimes,” said Darius, “the lesson has to be felt in the bones.” He nodded at Kazem, who raised his stick and brought it down hard on Fabia’s butt.
She screamed.
“Everyone,” said Darius quietly. “Please show love to Fabia by offering her this lesson.” He stepped back, and Parvaneh realized he didn’t have a stick in his hand. He was depending on them to deliver the guidance.
Parvaneh was happy to.
She smacked Fabia across the back and noted the red mark it left. Then she did it again. The others were smacking their sticks down with varying degrees of intensity. Eszter seemed hesitant to cause pain, but she obeyed just like the rest of them. Xerxes appeared at her side, in Darius’s arms. “Go ahead,” Darius instructed. “Help Fabia learn the lesson.”
“I don’t like how you play with me,” Xerxes shouted, and he whapped her in the head with the stick. “And I don’t like when you pull my hair and tell everyone you didn’t!” He hit her again. “And I don’t like the way your breath smells, and I don’t like the way you sing!”
Darius caught the boy’s hand before he struck again. “This isn’t to punish Fabia for doing things you don’t like,” he said calmly. “We’re helping her to learn humility and how to listen to others.”
“But I want her to listen to me,” Xerxes said loudly. “Because she always tells me to be quiet.” He yanked his stick back and whacked her again.
Parvaneh hit Fabia again too, but no longer because she wanted to hurt her. What she wanted more than anything was for Fabia to quit screaming, to quit being so pathetic, to quit acting exactly like Mama had every time one of her boyfriends got mad and took a crack at her. Hunched in a corner, worthless and weeping, caring only about herself, expecting her tears to make other people care, but of course they didn’t. Of course they didn’t.
“Parvaneh, that’s enough,” Darius said, grabbing her wrist before she could take another shot.
The others had all stopped as well. They were all staring at her. Darius gently pulled the stick from her hand, a few flecks of blood clinging to its rough surface. Fabia had fainted, or maybe she was faking it, but either way, she was limp, eyes closed, bruised and bleeding and pink all over. Parvaneh turned away, feeling a twinge of nausea.
“Octavia, Eszter, take care of Fabia. Our meeting is over for tonight. Ladonna, Zana, Roshanak, take the children to bed.” He gave everyone their orders, calmly instructing them as if it were any other night, but there was a strange, fevered light in his eyes. And then he turned to Parvaneh and said, “Come with me. You and I will meditate.”
Parvaneh knew exactly what it meant, exactly what he wanted and needed. She fought a smile as she followed Darius to the door of his private room.
Chapter Fourteen
Bend, Oregon
December 11, present day
I lie in the hospital bed, the flowered curtain the only thing between me and the world. I’m hazy with pain, but the meds they gave me have dulled it a bit. I flinch when the doctor, the one who told me we’d decide what to do after the X-ray had come back, pulls back my fabric shield and rolls a laptop on a cart to the side of the bed. His badge identifies him as Malcolm Chikere, MD, attending physician. His voice is resonant and soothing, but what he has to say is not.
/> He turns the laptop to reveal my X-ray displayed on the screen. “A pretty clean break, radius and ulna, both of your arm bones, right at the base of your hand. See?”
“Yep,” I say, exhaling a slow, nauseated breath. My head is swimming with horror. Did I really see her, or was that my delirious brain putting a face on all my terrified thoughts? “Are you going to cast it up so I can get out of here?”
“We need to talk about that, actually. How long have you been a runner?”
“About twenty years.”
“Are you aware that you’re underweight?”
I want to roll my eyes, but even the thought makes me dizzy. “I’m not anorexic, okay? I eat. I’m just a vegan. And I run. So I’m thin.”
“You reported that your weight was 110 pounds, and your height is five five. That means your BMI is 18.3, which makes you underweight, technically speaking.”
“Technically speaking. Okay…”
“Your film is suggestive of some bone loss, Ms. Rodriguez.”
“What does that mean?”
“When I see a wrist film like this, it usually belongs to an eighty-year-old lady who’s been smoking for fifty years.”
“So…not good?”
He frowns at the image of my bones. “You’ll need another test to confirm, but I can tell you right now that your bone density is abnormal, suggestive of osteoporosis. Has your doctor ever spoken to you about the possibility?”
I haven’t been to the doctor in years. “What does this have to do with my weight?”
His smooth brow furrows. “Individuals with eating disorders are at higher risk for developing early onset osteoporosis. And this”—he points to my X-ray again—“is the kind of thing that happens to people who have early onset osteoporosis. You reported that you fell while running. That kind of incident shouldn’t have snapped your wrist like this, not in a woman your age.”
I stare at the film, a black-and-white tally of my own fragility, how easily I can break.
He closes his laptop. “Do you have back pain?”
I gesture at the middle of my back. “It just started a few months ago. It’s worse when I run, but I don’t want to stop doing it. It’s good for me.”
“It’s another symptom. You’ll need more imaging to confirm, but you may have some small fractures in your vertebrae, as your bones aren’t quite strong enough to manage the stress you’re putting on them.”
“I’m only thirty-eight,” I say quietly. “I know I have white hair, but I’m not old.”
“Unfortunately, your body’s acting like it is,” he tells me. “Do you have regular periods?”
“Never really have.”
“Ms. Rodriguez, I can cast your arm, but I think we’re dealing with a larger problem here.”
“Can it be reversed? The premature aging and bone loss?”
His gaze drops from my face to the floor. “You can arrest it, maybe. But you really need to talk to your GP. And you may have other health issues. Osteoporosis is silent until it’s not. But I think your body is trying to tell you something. And I think you should listen to it.” He clears his throat. “The nurses are prepping the room for the casting, so we’ll get you in there soon so you can go home sometime tonight. Sound good?”
I nod, just to get him to leave. And after he does, I sit behind my curtain, staring at my splinted arm. Until recently, I was proud of myself. Of my own determination. Of my cleverness. Oh, I thought I was so clever. I thought no one could ever find me, figure it all out. I thought that if I covered enough miles, I could stay ahead of everything I left behind, the fires and bodies and blood and my own crimes, the way I killed people I once loved. But here I am, only a few miles from the place where I first started running, from the graves and ashes of my victims. And unless I really was hallucinating, only a few rooms away from the person, one of so very few, who could set my world on fire again.
I have to see her again. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m right.
But it turns out that I don’t have to go find her. I don’t have to move at all. She opens the curtain, dressed in her scrubs, her Crocs, her black hair short now, in waves against her skull, her brown skin lined with a few marks of age but still surprisingly smooth. She comes in with a clipboard, and I hold my breath as we lock gazes. “Ms. Rodriguez?” she asks. “I need to get some insurance verification, as we didn’t get to do that when you first arrived. It won’t take long.”
I blink at her. The voice is the same. The face is the same. Does she recognize me? Maybe she doesn’t. I look different. It’s been twenty years.
And if the doctor is right, I’ve apparently aged a lot more than she has.
Her hand shakes as she puts pen to paper. It sends my heart rate into a zone that sets off the monitor, beeping madly. She turns to it with eyes that narrow as they read the numbers. “No need to be nervous,” she says and punches a button that silences the sound.
With a dry mouth, I tell her my full name, my birth date, my employer, my insurance plan, but that my card is in my purse, which is at my parents’ house, and she’ll have to let me call it in later. She tells me that she should be able to find everything she needs with the information I’ve given her. She thanks me. Stands up. Puts her shaking hand in her pocket. Pauses before pulling the curtain back. “I can tell you recognize me,” she says quietly. “But you… I thought you were dead. We all did.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve never seen you before.” I squint at her name tag. It says her name is Essie Green, but I know now that’s not what it used to be. Just like she knows that my name isn’t Dora Rodriguez.
“I don’t want trouble,” she says.
“I’m not here to make any,” I tell her. My pain is amping up again, sharper with every word out of her mouth.
“Keep it that way. Or I’ll tell them who you are.”
I force out a laugh. “I’m sorry, but do you do this to all the patients who come in here with splintered bones?”
Her face smooths, but her big eyes are somber and seeing as ever. “You must have thought you were smart. You obviously still do.”
“Honestly, right now, all I am is confused.” I have no idea what the right move is—do I admit what we both know and ask for her help, or do I double down on my attempt to gaslight my way through this? I don’t know enough about what she’s like now to tell me the right answer. But I do remember what she said on that final night: We all have a part to play, and I don’t have a choice. Neither do you.
I don’t feel like I have much of a choice now, either. But it’s not the time to match wits, because I have none. “I really need more pain meds. Assuming you have everything you need, Ms. Green, could you please ask the nurse when I could have another dose?” I stare at her face. I do not look away. I tell myself I have nothing to fear even though I am a liar of the worst sort.
But it works. She looks away. Nods. Leaves.
It’s only after she’s gone, after the swell of relief has subsided, and after the nurse administers another dose of morphine that it hits me, along with the opioid: Ladonna knows who I am—and I’ve just given her everything she needs to find out a whole lot more.
I’ve lost track of time in this windowless room in the ER, but the clock tells me it’s after nine. It occurs to me that I should have called Hailey to let her know, though I’m not sure how this works anymore. Twenty years ago, when they took me in, I fell into their rhythms easily, compliantly. I hid the burns on my legs, silently screamed as I cleaned and dressed them in the bathroom late at night, hid every trace of ooze and ick, did my laundry at three in the morning, scrubbed the insides of my pant legs until they wore thin, bit my tongue bloody, and smiled with gratitude that was real. They didn’t ask much of me, just that I eat meals with them, help keep the house clean, and get my life back on track.
They thought I was a hom
eless runaway, drifted down from Portland in search of a better place. I was a monster in their midst, desperate to hide my true self. The first few months, as the smoke and ash settled and the cult catastrophe right up the road was the only thing people talked about, I was terrified that at any moment, Ben Ransom would come to the door and point the finger at me. I was convinced someone would realize who I was and that I’d escaped and that I’d done something terrible.
But here I sit, cast up to my elbow, aching and damned. My options tumble in my head: give up and confess, run and hide, stay and fight. The first is impossible and enraging. I’ve worked too hard for too long. The deaths I caused… I had convinced myself they would have happened anyway, or maybe they were deserved. It never quite fit, but it was enough to help me turn away, keep going. No confessing, then. No giving up.
I could run. I’ve changed my name before; I could do it again. I’ve been anonymous before, no friends, no relatives, on the move. I know how to survive. But it’s exhausting to consider, especially because my body seems to be falling apart. I have a job now. Health insurance, which it suddenly seems like I desperately need. A few fragile friendships, like with Miles and Valentina. I’ve reconnected with Hailey and Martin, and that feels good too. No running, then. I’d be lucky if I didn’t break my ankle on the way out the door.
That means I have to figure out how to make sure Miles never discovers that Shari Redmond, a.k.a. Ladonna, a.k.a. Essie Green, is right down the hall. She’s here in Bend. She might have killed Tadeas. Marie could have as well. The thing that bothers me, though? It’s how he was killed. Those knife wounds, planned out. X marked the spot. Stabbing by number.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. They unhooked my IV a few minutes ago and told me I could go when I felt able to. Noah and Arman left a while ago—Arman told me where he parked the car and gave me back my key. Noah insisted he’d check in with me tomorrow, even when I said it wasn’t necessary, and then he sheepishly informed me that his story is in my inbox already. I reach for my phone with my good arm. The battery died a few hours ago, so I slide it into the pocket of my leggings. I’m glad they didn’t make me undress and wear a hospital gown—I hate questions about the scars.