by Megan Hart
“I’m sorry. I was dreaming. I had a nightmare. And then I woke up, and Peace was gone. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Peace burst into tears just as the patter of liquid on the tiles came from beneath the hem of her nightgown. Urine spread in a swiftly growing puddle around the little girl’s feet, then the soft plop of something worse.
“Oops,” Liesel said.
“What the—!” Christopher leaped across the room like he was going after a racquetball on the court to grab up a handful of paper towels. He tossed them onto the puddle, then took the entire roll and dropped to his knees. “Hey, kid, cut it out!”
That’s when Peace threw up on his head.
Chapter 6
“This is all you brought?” Liesel looked over what Sunny had laid out on the guest bed.
Heat settled in Sunny’s face again. It was bad enough that she’d embarrassed herself by screaming this morning when Peace had only been in the kitchen. Not stolen away by John Second to make sure Sunny understood how important it was to obey. It was worse that Peace had puked on Christopher and all over herself. The floor, too. Christopher was still in the shower, and Sunny had insisted on mopping the floor, but there wasn’t much to be done about Peace’s clothes.
Bliss was sleeping in a makeshift crib of pillows, and Happy had been sent downstairs to watch more television. Peace sat on the bed, hair still wet, tucked into a towel after the scrubbing Sunny had given her in a tub so big and shiny bright it had been intimidating. The nightgown she’d been wearing was in the laundry, and the clothes she’d been wearing the night before were filthy as well from the run through the woods. Liesel had put everything in the washer.
“I… We left in a hurry.” Sunny didn’t know what else to say. Liesel was blemished. Sunny shouldn’t talk about family things with her. Within the walls of Sanctuary it had seemed entirely normal that nobody had more than a change or two of clothes accessible to them at any time, but Sunny knew that out here in the blemished world things were different. Here, people indulged in excess and greed, the accumulation of material goods. Out here, people relied on things for comfort instead of listening with their hearts.
“Sunny, look at me.”
The zipper of Sunny’s sweatshirt was still stuck halfway. She tugged it over Peace’s head. The girl would swim in it, but it was better than nothing. She looked at Liesel…at her stepmother, she thought. Liesel was her father’s wife and therefore had an authority in this house that Sunny needed to respect.
“We can go to the store and buy you some new things for the kids. For you, too.”
At Liesel’s kind look, sharp and shameful tears pricked at Sunny’s eyelids. She took a deep breath to push them away. “Oh, no. I couldn’t have you do that.”
“Sunny, all of this—” Liesel gestured at the bed, where everything that had been stuffed into both their knapsacks had made only a tiny pile on the soft comforter “—I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but it’s worn-out. And dirty.”
Sunny nodded, biting her lip, and concentrated on tugging a borrowed comb through Peace’s curls. In Sanctuary, clothes were shared and then recycled when they became too worn to wear. But at least there they had other clothes to wear while dirty outfits were being washed.
“I have money,” Sunny said.
Liesel hesitated. “Of course, that’s fine. But if you don’t have enough, I’m sure your…dad…and I can cover it.”
Sunny smiled faintly at that. “I can’t think of him as my dad. I’m sorry. It just sounds funny.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
Liesel smiled. This time the warmth welling up inside Sunny wasn’t from embarrassment. She smiled back.
“You don’t have to call him Dad if you don’t feel comfortable,” Liesel said. “I think he feels strange about it, too.”
Sunny smoothed Peace’s hair through her fingers to get at a particularly bad tangle. Peace wriggled, complaining at the tugging. “Hush, my sweetheart. Just a bit more.”
Sunny looked up to see Liesel watching her closely, her head tilted a little. Liesel, caught, didn’t look away. She leaned against the dresser with a small smile.
“This is all a surprise to us. A good one,” Liesel added quickly. Sunny didn’t think she was telling the whole truth about that. “It’s just that we didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know, either.” Not that it would’ve mattered. The man who’d fathered her was blemished, not part of the family. Even if her mother had told her about him long ago, Sunny wouldn’t have considered him her father.
“She didn’t tell you about him? I mean, not ever?”
“Not until she told us it was time to go.” Sunny finished with Peace’s hair. “Do you have to use the toilet?”
“She doesn’t need a diaper?” Liesel sounded surprised.
Sunny looked up. “I know she had an accident in the kitchen, but she was just scared.”
“No, I mean… Never mind. It was an accident, I know that. I’m not upset.” Liesel laughed softly.
Liesel spent a lot of time saying things she didn’t mean, Sunny thought. Or thinking of things she meant to say but didn’t. Either way, it was clear she didn’t spend much time listening with her heart, because while Sunny might sometimes let her thoughts fly out of her mouth before she could restrain them, she always meant whatever it was she actually said. Liesel didn’t seem so certain of herself.
“Christopher might take some time to recover, though.”
Sunny winced, thinking of how he’d shouted and the disgust on his face when Peace had thrown up. Only a little had gotten on him, most had been on the floor or down her own front, but even so it had been bad, especially with the rest of the mess. “I’m sorry.”
Liesel shook her head. “I’m not upset about it. I’m just surprised that she’s not in diapers, that’s all. She’s so young.”
Sunny considered this. Peace was just over two years old. “She’s been using the toilet for a few months now.”
Clearly, this wasn’t something Liesel had expected. She shook her head slowly. “Wow. That’s some accomplishment.”
What did that mean?
Liesel must’ve seen her confusion. “None of my friend’s kids got out of diapers until they were over three years old.”
Sunny had been reprimanded many times for her inability to hold her tongue, and she was no better at it now. “That’s ridiculous!”
Liesel laughed and shrugged, though she did give both Peace and Sunny another curious look. “That’s what my friend Becka said about it when she was trying to get them out of diapers. But I think that’s normal, isn’t it? Never mind. That was a dumb thing to say.”
It was normal for the children in the family to be using the toilet by Peace’s age. Sunny’d already said too much. She found a rubber band in the pocket of one of the backpacks and slipped it onto her wrist while she quickly braided Peace’s hair into a smooth twist, then used the band to secure it tightly at the nape of her neck. She should do the same to her own hair. Leaving it unbound and uncovered this way made her feel more naked than if she’d taken off her dress, but the rubber band she’d been using had snapped this morning.
“Do you have another rubber band?”
Liesel put a hand to her own hair. She wore it short, cropped like a man’s. Like Bethany’s. “Oh, sorry. I don’t have any hair bands or anything like that. We can get some from the store. We can leave the kids here with Christopher while we go shopping. It’ll do him some good.”
Bliss was still sleeping, and Sunny paused, remembering his reaction to Peace’s accident. At home she’d have thought nothing of leaving her children in another’s care, just like nobody there would’ve blinked at leaving their children with Sunny. Everyone shared the responsibilities. But, as w
ith everything else, Sunny was immediately reminded that here was not there.
“It’ll be fine,” Liesel reassured her. She’d turned to look into Sunny’s face. “Christopher’s a good guy. He can’t handle puke, but he’s a good guy.”
Sunny nodded uncertainly. Bliss would probably sleep for another hour, then wake hungry. “I should take the baby, though. She’ll need to eat.”
Liesel chewed at her lip for a second. “Right. Right, I didn’t think about that. And you don’t have a car seat for her or anything, right?”
Sunny shook her head. “I can hold her on my lap.”
“Oh, wow. No. That’s against the law, Sunny.” Liesel shook her head harder than Sunny had.
“I didn’t know.”
“How’d you get here?”
Sunny was silent for too long, she could see that in Liesel’s face. “We walked. And…a man in a truck gave us a ride. He didn’t say anything about a car seat.”
He hadn’t said much of anything. It had been sort of scary, as a matter of fact, the way he’d looked them over before opening the door to let them in. He’d asked only where they were going, driven in silence and dropped them off at the bottom of the driveway without waiting to see where they went.
Liesel visibly flinched. “Oh. How’d you get her home from the hospital? Didn’t they give you a car seat then?”
Sunny blinked. “She’s never been in the hospital.”
“But surely when she was born—” Liesel stopped. “You didn’t have her in a hospital.”
“Hospitals are places the blemished go to die,” Sunny blurted, then bit down on her tongue. Hard. She cast her face in stone to keep from betraying anything else.
“The blemished? Is that what you call us?”
Sunny nodded.
Liesel murmured something Sunny couldn’t quite hear. “I guess it’s better than some of the other things we could be called, huh?”
Sunny lifted a hand before she thought, but kept herself from touching Liesel’s shoulder. “It’s just that you’re not one of us. That’s all. It’s not meant to be disrespectful. You can’t help it.”
“Let me call my friend,” Liesel said after a moment. “I think she has a car seat and some baby clothes she could lend you.”
She’d said lend, but Sunny knew Liesel meant give. This generosity pricked tears into Sunny’s eyes that she refused to let fall. It wasn’t that she was unused to being given things. Papa had said there was never any shame in taking what other people didn’t want or couldn’t use, whether it be from local charity organizations or Dumpsters behind the shopping malls. People threw away so many things with life still in them, it was more shameful to let them go unused than to take them.
This felt different. It felt like pity, and no wonder, because it was pitiful to show up on someone’s doorstep with three kids wearing dirty, worn clothes. Like refugees.
Papa had said the blemished were greedy, selfish, full of the need to take and acquire, but all Liesel had shown Sunny so far was the desire to give. She didn’t know what to think about this, just that it embarrassed her to have Liesel think she didn’t know how to take care of herself or her children.
But…wasn’t that the truth?
“That would be great,” she said. “If your friend has those things. I can pay her for them, I have money.”
She’d said that already, and in fact hadn’t actually counted the money her mother had given her. She had no idea how much was in the wallet. She didn’t really know how much things cost when it came right down to it, because she’d never been allowed to handle money for spending.
“Oh, honey, don’t you worry about that. Becka’s my oldest friend, she’s like a sister to me. Which means she’ll be happy to help you. That’s what happens when you’re like…well. You’re family. Right?”
To this, Sunny had nothing to say. She had a family, and her mother had forced her to run from it. Still, she managed a small smile. “Sure. Thanks. Right.”
It was a lie, and Liesel seemed to know it. She didn’t say anything though, just nodded and gave Sunny’s shoulder a squeeze. She touched Peace’s curls lightly, twining one around her finger. “Let me call Becka.”
Sunny nodded. Forced a smile. She had no other choice.
Chapter 7
Kmart wasn’t Liesel’s top choice of stores to buy fashionable clothes, but it was the closest place, which meant they could get there and back as fast as possible. And, judging by the clothes Sunny and her kids were wearing and what they’d brought with them, fashion wasn’t really a priority.
Living in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with its large Mennonite and Amish populations, Liesel was used to seeing women dressed “plain.” For the Amish it was black dresses, while their more liberal Mennonite sisters wore dresses in different colors but all the same style. They all wore “coverings,” mesh caps worn over hair scraped back and rolled on the sides to be secured at the back in a tight bun. Sometimes they wore braids, the way Sunny had plaited Peace’s hair and her own. All of them looked like high-fashion models on a Paris runway compared to Sunny, who wore a long-sleeved, high-necked shirt and an oversize jean skirt that hung shapelessly to her ankles. She’d let Liesel give her one of Christopher’s old college sweatshirts to replace the one with the broken zipper, and it further obscured her body.
Now, standing in front of a rack of sweatpants and turtlenecks, Sunny shook her head and stared at Liesel with bleak eyes. “I can’t wear any of this.”
“What’s wrong with— Ah. You don’t wear pants. We can get you some skirts. Don’t worry.”
They’d already been up and down the children’s section, loading the cart with things for Happy. Becka had stopped by earlier with an old car seat and a couple bags of clothes for both Peace and the baby, along with a few toys her kids had outgrown. Ever the true friend, she’d given Liesel a look that said “call me later,” but hadn’t asked any questions.
Sunny stopped in front of another rack. This one had long, elastic-waisted skirts in dark colors. She held one up. It hung from her hips to her toes. She scrutinized it, mouth pursed, and held it up to the light. She fingered the material, then shook her head.
“It’s very thin,” Sunny said.
“We can get you some winter-weight tights. That’ll keep you warm.” Liesel tried to give her an encouraging smile, but Sunny wasn’t looking at her.
She spread her fingers under the material, showing Liesel how the hint of her flesh showed through. “It’s immodest.”
A funny complaint coming from a girl who’d stripped down seemingly without a second thought in front of a stranger, Liesel thought. “We’ll buy you a slip.”
Beyond them and across the aisle in the electronics department, all of the flat-screen televisions had been tuned to the same local channel, now showing the news. A petite brunette bundled into a trench coat and scarf stood in front of a tall, chain-link fence. The sound was off, but Liesel could see the banner running across the bottom of the screen.
ONE HUNDRED DEAD IN CULT SUICIDE
Sunny dropped the skirt and ran toward the televisions, leaving a stunned Liesel alone. She followed quickly, pushing the cart. By the time she got to Sunny, the girl had begun frantically pushing the buttons on the biggest television.
“Make it louder,” she said. “I need to hear what they’re saying!”
Liesel pushed past her gently to turn the volume up, her stomach already sick with anticipation of what they’d hear. The reporter gestured at the fence, emblazoned with Keep Out and No Trespassing signs. She pointed at the gates, wide open, and the cluster of buildings barely visible at the end of the long driveway.
“That’s Sanctuary,” Sunny said in a strangled voice. “Oh. They did it. They did it. Oh, no. They left. They all left.”
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“Did what?” Liesel asked stupidly, since the explanation was right there in the reporter’s clipped nasal tones and the banner still running along the bottom of the picture.
CULT LEADER ORDERED MASS SUICIDE, AUTHORITIES BELIEVE
“They left,” Sunny whispered. She pressed her palms flat against the TV set for a second, and when she pulled them away, left a wet mark behind that for an instant made the picture beneath it extraclear before it faded.
Liesel didn’t know what that meant, but suddenly the reason that Sunny’s mother had sent her and the children to Christopher was no longer some strange secret or whim. “Oh, my God. They’re all dead?”
“They did it,” Sunny repeated and turned a stricken, vacant-eyed face to Liesel. “They left without us.”
Chapter 8
They drank the rainbow and went through the gates, just the way Papa had said they all would. Her mother had spoken with a liar’s tongue and sent Sunny and her children away. Why would Mama have wanted them to be left behind?
Had her mother known of all the dark things inside her, the ones Sunny hadn’t made reports on? All those thoughts and desires Sunny knew were wrong—her craving for a meal from McDonald’s, for one thing. How once she’d taken the money from selling her pamphlets, only two dollars, and spent it on a cheeseburger. It had been the best thing she’d ever tasted, but she’d been so nervous about eating it she’d thrown it up almost at once. Maybe her mother knew about Sunny’s hatred of John Second. Her mother loved John Second. Maybe she’d somehow known how Sunny had dreamed so many times of what might have happened if she’d gone with Josiah when he left the family.
Maybe it was something else so dark and rotted that Sunny couldn’t even imagine it.
All dead in cult suicide.