She looked up.
“Change her,” he suggested gently. Then he went down to the kitchen. He wished there were something stronger to put in the tea than milk. But of course there wasn’t. No alcohol, no cards, no jewelry, no color in the house. Just plenty of abuse, lies, hatred, and hypocrisy.
How could any healthy thing grow up in such a place?
He plugged in the kettle, took a bottle out of the fridge, and put it in the microwave. And how could he stay, and be sucked down into all this?
Because he could leave. It would take some time and a lot of humiliation, but eventually he could hitchhike his way back to California, get his things out of Paolo’s garage, and cobble together some semblance of a life. He could thank Dinah for her kindness, take his week’s pay, and go.
He could, but he wouldn’t.
It wasn’t gratitude that kept him here, or fear of hunger on the highway. No, there was only one thing that would make him overcome his disgust at the ugliness of human nature—including his own—and force him to stay where it was manifesting like mushrooms after rain.
Dinah.
He would stay because one after another, everything a woman could reasonably be expected to trust had been taken away from her. He would stay because if he didn’t, the river might get the better of her again. And most of all, he would stay because he wanted to surprise that smile, the one that illuminated her whole face—the one he’d only seen once in all the time he’d been here—into existence again.
And, since he was examining other people’s motives, perhaps he should examine his own. He’d omitted a few pertinent facts in his conversations with Dinah when he’d first come to the ranch. He’d fled California because of a girl’s accusations—not because they were true, but because, despite the fact that his name had been cleared by the school’s investigation, everyone still believed they might have been. He had been accused of sexual abuse when he was not guilty. Phinehas had been accused of nothing, when he was guilty. If Matthew stayed, he might get the chance to even the scales a bit.
Not the most honorable of motives, but it would do.
When he came back upstairs with the bottle, the pot of tea, and two mugs carefully arranged on the cover of a flat book because he hadn’t been able to find a tray, the baby was staring around in fresh horror at her surroundings and howling. Dinah was gone.
He put the tea things down on the floor with a clank, and before the volume got much higher, he was able to get the nipple into Tamsen’s mouth.
He balanced her on his left arm, held the bottle at the correct angle with his right, and went in search of Dinah. She hadn’t gone far, if the retching in the bathroom were any indication. When she didn’t come out after a few minutes, he bumped the door open with his shoulder.
“Dinah?”
She sat on the floor with her back against the bathtub. The tissue she’d evidently used to wipe her mouth was crumpled in one hand, and her head was bowed.
He realized with a sense of inevitability that God had led him to this town, this house, this woman, for a reason. Maybe this moment was that reason.
He folded himself into a comfortable position next to her on the chenille bath mat, taking care not to bump the baby. There was plenty of room; the bathroom was a huge, old-fashioned one with a black-and-white checkered floor. Near the head of the tub, partially concealed by a fern, were the sheared stubs of the old pipes—presumably relics of a claw-footed tub that had stood here. At least there had been that much change over the years. Much of the rest of the house looked as it must have at the turn of the century.
He wondered if the family’s values had changed at all in the interval. Likely not.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Her voice was a whisper of sound in the silence, broken only by the baby’s energetic attack on the bottle.
“I know,” he agreed. Best if he stuck to brief replies. He wasn’t sure what kind of emotional lava was bubbling under the surface. Best if she did all the talking.
“It wasn’t just me,” she said in a wondering tone. “All those years of sacrifice, and it wasn’t just me. He said I was a vessel sanctified unto him, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t.”
“No.”
“I thought if I gave myself, if I made myself a living sacrifice the way it says in Romans, it would save the others. Tamara, girls in other cities, I didn’t know. I thought if I made him come back to me, it wouldn’t happen to someone else.” Her breath hitched. “But it did. It still did.”
The bile rose in his throat at the thought of the tall, distinguished man twisting Scripture to fit his own dark desires, convincing a sheltered, innocent girl that what he was doing to her was the will of God. The baby moved restlessly as his arm tightened around her, and he made his muscles relax. Two traumatized females in one room would be more than he could handle. One was making him feel badly out of his depth as it was.
“Nothing you could have done or said would have changed what he was doing,” he said at last.
“I wanted it to,” she said sadly.
“You’re not responsible for what happened to Tamara and any other girls he abused. You couldn’t have stopped it. No matter what you sacrificed, he would still take what he wanted. He is responsible, not you. He needs to be stopped.”
“You can’t stop Phinehas.”
“Why not?”
“Matthew, he’s the senior Shepherd.”
“What about the church board? There must be some kind of governing body to hold the ministers accountable for what they do.”
“Only God.” From her tone, God was in on it with Phinehas, and couldn’t be expected to help.
“No other authority? No church elders?”
“There are Elders, but if anyone even whispered something like that out loud, they would be put Out. It’s like challenging God. Just like refusing him is refusing to do God’s will.”
“Dinah, God doesn’t ask people to do evil.”
“He asks us to make sacrifices for others. Phinehas said that if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be able to go on as a Shepherd. That my love gave him strength to give everything to the lost sheep. And if I stopped, the souls he couldn’t reach would go to hell and it would be on my head for all eternity.”
“That sounds like emotional blackmail.” His voice was gentle, though his blood felt chilled. “He must be very good at it.”
She buried her head in her arms, crossed on her knees. “I’m so stupid. So ashamed.”
Somehow he managed to hold the bottle with his left hand so that Tamsen could still reach it, and slipped his right arm around her shoulders.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, dear.”
Small sounds came from beneath her arms, and her body shook with weeping. He didn’t know if she could hear him or not, but it had to be said.
“Phinehas is an abusive criminal who should be handed over to the police. He took advantage of you and hurt you. None of this is your fault.”
She still did not respond; in fact, he wondered if she remembered he was there. Nonetheless, he stayed beside her until his back began to ache, his arms around two of the victims of Phinehas. A clock downstairs struck a quarter after midnight and he realized that, at last, the terrible day that had begun with such joy was done.
DINAH WOKE WITH a jolt when the baby let out her fire-engine noise next to her. She stared at her for a moment, wondering how a kicking, yelling infant had got into her bed, and then the events of the previous day flooded her memory.
She clenched her teeth against the pain in her knees, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and crawled out of bed to see if she could find a bottle.
There was another one in Tamara’s baby bag. It was empty. A quick search produced no formula, no expressed milk, nothing resembling food of any kind. Could babies drink regular milk? She couldn’t remember, and the noise was deafening.
A bleary glance into the fridge told her there was no milk, anyway. There was nothing for it. She was g
oing to have to go to town.
Tamsen didn’t want to go to town. She didn’t want to be changed. She wanted her breakfast, and when it wasn’t forthcoming, she shrieked with rage and frustration as Dinah pulled on the first dress that came to hand, staggered down the stairs and out to the barn, and bundled her into the truck. She screamed down the highway. She roared in the drugstore, where thankfully the cash register was open and there was actually baby formula in stock. By the time they got into the truck and back out on the highway, hysteria was competing with exhaustion and—Dinah was convinced—the advanced stages of starvation.
Somehow the instructions on the package registered in her brain and she got the bottle filled, to the right temperature, and into Tamsen’s mouth.
The silence in the kitchen was like cool cream on a sunburn.
Matthew came in with an egg carton full of eggs and took them both in with a glance.
“Was that the truck I heard?” She was too drained to do anything but nod. “You had to go to town for formula? Dinah, there are two of us here. Why on earth didn’t you ask me to go?”
She looked up at him. “I didn’t even think of it.”
He put the eggs in the fridge. “Next time, do think of it. You don’t have to do everything on your own. You don’t have to take care of everyone. I’m your hired man, remember?”
“Hired men don’t usually look after abandoned babies.”
“Perhaps not, but I haven’t done anything hired men usually do since I got here. I’ve fished a woman from the river and fed a baby, been a night watchman and buried a beloved companion. I haven’t pitched hay or driven a tractor even once.”
She couldn’t help the smile that trembled briefly at the corners of her mouth. “I knew there was a reason I hired you. You’re versatile.”
“I have another useful skill. I can make very nice poached eggs, if you would like some.”
This time the smile was a bit more solid. “I would love some.”
Tamsen finished the bottle and Dinah put her on her shoulder to burp, too tired to care if the baby spit up all over what she belatedly realized was her Sunday dress.
“Better use this.” Matthew handed her a tea towel from the drawer.
Tamsen promptly spit up on it, and when Dinah had cleaned her up, she sat the baby on her lap so they could look one another over.
Half of her was afraid to know, to have what Danny had said confirmed in the innocent flesh of this child. Ambivalence was a familiar emotion. She hated Phinehas, but he was the only one who paid her any attention. She’d been told that her salvation depended on loving God, and Phinehas by extension, but how could you love someone who abused you, whom you couldn’t ask to stop?
That was a mystery she was too exhausted to figure out.
And now here was this baby. Her niece. Child of the girl she loved with all her heart, a child that under normal circumstances—say, if Tamara and Danny had been married—she would have adored and spoiled and been “favoritest aunt” to.
But here she was, this child of violence and power and hatred, sitting in her lap with not one single person on the planet who wanted her to exist.
When you looked at it that way, only Dinah and Matthew stood between her and an adoption agency, and for all Dinah knew about such matters, it could be a grim possibility.
“She doesn’t look like him.” Tamsen’s gaze, which had been rambling around the room, returned to her. “Her eyes are brown, like Tammy’s.”
“Brown is a dominant gene.” Matthew sounded absent as he concentrated on cracking eggs into the simmering water.
“Good.” If she had to look into the ice-blue eyes of Phinehas every day, it would be a lot harder to love this little scrap.
The baby’s nose was a turned-up dab, and she saw Tamara’s wide-lipped grin and her dimpled chin. The forehead could be Phinehas’s or her father’s, but she preferred to think it was the latter. Bit by bit she erased any possibility of recognition from Tamsen’s face.
She tickled the palm of her niece’s little hand, and the baby’s fingers wrapped around her forefinger. There were the hands of Phinehas, long and aristocratic. “You’re going to be a piano player when you grow up, aren’t you?” she murmured. Phinehas could play their old upright as though it were a concert grand. But hands weren’t like eyes. You couldn’t see disgust and desire and the unflinching need for control in hands.
“You are such a cantankerous little thing,” she said. “How did Tamara produce you?”
Matthew buttered the toast and slid the eggs onto a plate for her. “Can you manage?”
“I don’t know.” She settled the baby in her lap and let her kick and wiggle while she ate.
Matthew dished up his own breakfast and sat beside her. Briefly, he bowed his head and she realized she hadn’t said grace for her meal.
Grace was a habit, like washing one’s hands before dinner. The truth was she didn’t like thanking God for meals when she had absolutely nothing else to thank Him for. She waited until Matthew picked up his fork, and went on with her eggs.
It felt strange, off balance, to eat with a baby on one arm. How would she manage to cut a steak, for instance? “I wonder if there’s a high chair around here,” she said aloud.
“That sounds like long-term thinking.”
“No, just practical. Aunt Evelyn will find Tamara sooner or later and we can get Tamsen back where she belongs. But in the meantime, I guess I’d better look around for baby stuff.”
“I HOPE YOU know something about caring for babies.” Matthew followed Dinah up the attic stairs, marveling at how quiet the house was with Tamsen asleep. They’d grabbed the opportunity to do some detective work and see what they could find in the way of baby clothes and equipment. “What I know could fit in the nipple on her bottle.”
“My knowledge is seventeen years old,” Dinah confessed. She opened the attic door and stood to one side as he joined her. “A little girl’s idea of looking after her little sister is trying not to poke her with the diaper pins and sticking a bottle in her mouth when she’s hungry. There has to be more to it than that.” She paused, surveying the room under the peaks of the roof by the light of the bare bulb overhead. “Good grief. Look at all this stuff. It’s going to take all day to find anything in here.”
That was just for starters. Matthew didn’t know how long the family had been on this place, but there were at least three generations’ worth of belongings up here. A three-speed bicycle leaned against an Art Deco-era chest of drawers. Boxes were stacked on top of boxes, all labeled Books. That might be interesting, but definitely not at the moment. A number of lamps missing bulbs crowded the surface of a cedar chest, and across the back of the room, a clothesline sagged under the weight of what looked like fifty or sixty dresses. He narrowed his eyes.
“Were those your mother’s?”
Dinah looked up from a box she’d opened labeled Dinah Baby. “Those are color. Women in my family haven’t worn color in three generations. Those are probably Great-Grandmother Sarah’s, from before she met the Shepherd. We’re a favored family because of her.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, when the original Shepherd came here, only two families would give him a place to stay or listen to the gospel he brought. So as the Elect grew, those original families were called the First Fruits of the harvest, or just favored families. We have Gathering in our home, and the men of the family are Elders, as it was in the first days. Hey, look. Here are some sleepers of mine. And bibs and stuff.”
Still trying to work out the tenets of this odd religion, Matthew said, “But what if there are only girls in the family? Such as this one, for instance.”
Dinah held up a crocheted, pale-aqua blanket with an old stain in the middle. “The McNeills—the other family—had girls, too. So when Madeleine married, her husband Owen Blanchard became Elder.”
“Rather like British primogeniture,” he commented. “Property goes to the eldest son, or th
e son of the eldest daughter.”
“That’s going to be a problem in my case.” She didn’t sound as if she cared much that a four-generations-old tradition was going to end with her.
“No husband, no son? How unsporting of you.”
“No way.” Her voice was hushed, and it sounded as though the words were being forced between her teeth. “Here’s another box with Tamara’s baby things. Have a look around and see if you can find a high chair. And a crib. She can’t sleep in the car seat forever.”
That closed that subject. Matthew didn’t press her. It was nothing to him whether or not this odd group got its elder or not. From what he’d seen, the sooner it atrophied and died out, the better, starting with its leadership.
No, what concerned him was Dinah’s attitude toward men and children. What did that mean for her little niece? For relationships in general? For Dinah’s future?
And what made it his business, anyway? She was his employer, nothing more.
Buried under what looked like miscellaneous car parts and several lines of toasters and mixers—all in pieces—Matthew finally found a high chair. It was chrome and the seat was padded with yellow vinyl, so odds were good that it had belonged to an earlier generation of Traynells than Dinah. It would do just fine for the newest generation.
“I’ve found the high chair,” he called over to where she knelt on the plank floor, filling a box with pastel plunder.
“And I’ve got sleepers, clothes, and bibs. That leaves diapers and formula from the store, right? Anything else we’ve forgotten?”
“How can I forget when I don’t know what the requirements are in the first place?” He was only half joking. “In the absence of a Babies 101 textbook, what we need to do is to get on the Internet and do some research.”
She looked up at him and began to pack the unwanted things back in their box. “The closest terminal is at the library, downtown by the post office and the police station. You get half an hour on it before the librarian kicks you off.”
“Don’t you have a computer?” He couldn’t imagine any household in America not having one. He himself had two, back in California in the boxes in Paolo Martinez’s garage. He’d considered bringing his laptop along, then discarded the idea as silly. What sane person went on a walking tour with a laptop? It would just have been stolen along with his wallet, and he’d be in exactly the same position.
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