“I think I know now. I think it was part of God’s plan.”
Another pause. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Paolo said at last.
“There’s a woman here. Dinah, my boss. The daughter of the family that owns this ranch. She’s a victim of abuse at the hands of this preacher type who apparently is the top dog around here.”
“Yes?” Paolo said cautiously.
“She’s in this weird and toxic church that believes this guy, Phinehas, is the mouthpiece of God and infallible.”
“Uh-oh.”
“The poor girl has been his unwilling mistress for—get this, Paolo—ten years. Ten years.”
“Why doesn’t she do something about it?”
“I don’t think she can. Not by herself, anyway. But we’ve been talking for days now, nonstop, and it’s all coming pouring out of her like she’s never had anyone to talk to before in her life.”
“She probably hasn’t. Imagine what the risks would be.”
“Exactly.”
“And this is the plan of God how?”
“As you know, I spent a lot of hours in the research library studying this very thing. I think I can help. At the moment I’m not doing anything but listening and mucking out chicken manure, but I think somehow I can help.”
“Is that why you’re not on the next plane headed to San Francisco? It seems like you are very involved with this woman.”
“I am, Paolo. But not the way you think. If God went to all the trouble to educate me and bring me here, I’m going to stay and find out what he wants me to do.”
“If you say so, mi hermano. I’ll pray for you.”
“I appreciate that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a chicken on my chair, and I need to put her to bed.”
Amid Paolo’s laughter, Matthew hung up. When he picked up Schatzi and took her out into the barn, he was still smiling.
Chapter 15
JUST BEFORE LUNCH the next day, the phone rang. Dinah and Matthew were in her dad’s room so Matthew could try on a few of his clothes. In the middle of the bed, propped up on the pile of shirts, pants, and sweaters, Tamsen lay in her little terry sleeper, kicking happily and gumming the spotless cuff of what had been Morton Traynell’s best Sunday shirt.
Dinah’s father had been a heavier man, but he and Matthew were about the same height. Dinah held one of his newer shirts up against Matthew’s chest. “This one might work,” she said. “Try it on while I get the phone. And keep an eye on Tamsen. She rolled over on the changing table this morning and you never know when she’s going to do it again.”
She jogged into her mother’s room, where the only upstairs extension was, and grabbed it on the fourth ring. “Traynells.”
“Dinah, it’s Auntie Meg.”
Oh, dear. What was going on down in Pitchford? “Hi, Auntie. How is everyone?”
“We’re all fine, dear, including your mom. That’s what I called to tell you. Elsie has been thriving, I’m happy to say, to the point where she’s getting restless.”
“Is she able to use her hand?”
“Mostly. And except for what they call asymmetric loss of movement in her face, you’d never know she had a stroke. She’s been doing exceptionally well.”
Dinah was used to feeling ambivalent about a lot of things. The thought of Phinehas had evoked revulsion and fear mixed with a helpless need for his approval. Same with her dad. But her feelings for her mother had been less those of love than of the knowledge that she should love her—and felt instead an odd balance of tolerance and dismay, with a little frustration mixed in.
What kind of horrible person felt like that about her own mother?
The kind that suspected she had collaborated in some awful way with Phinehas. Or, if collaboration wasn’t the right word, then at least turned a blind eye to what was going on. The night she had given her mother a stroke was burned into her memory, as was the knowledge that her mom thought she’d brought Phinehas’s behavior on herself.
Great. Thanks for the support, Mom.
“Dinah, did you hear me?”
“Sorry, Auntie Meg. I’m glad to hear mom is doing so well.”
“Uncle John and I feel she’s ready to come home now, dear.”
What?
“We’ll be driving up after lunch, so we should see you around three.”
“Today?”
“Of course, today.” Margaret’s sharp voice softened into humor. “Why, have you let the place go to rack and ruin since she’s been gone? Better get out the vacuum.”
Right, as if her mother ever did anything more exhausting than the dusting and the dishes. Dinah was the one who kept the place spotless, and with the house sitting in a sea of gravel over spring mud, that wasn’t easy.
“Thanks for the warning,” she told her aunt. “See you around three.”
“Don’t you want to talk to your mother?”
“I’ll catch her up when she gets here,” Dinah said hastily. What could she say? Gee, Mom, Phinehas is gone but he threatened me before he left. Tamara left her baby here, and Linda Bell is spreading gossip about it as fast as she can. Oh, and I hired a literature professor while you were out.
No, the truth was she had nothing to say to her mother that she wouldn’t see herself once she got here. “I’m off to do the vacuuming,” she told her aunt. “Bye.”
Matthew looked up when she paused in the bedroom doorway. “What do you think?”
He modeled her dad’s shirt and a pair of the pants they’d bought when the pounds had started falling off him. Matthew had cinched the waist in with a belt, but on the whole, the corduroy pants fit pretty well.
“Those are good.” She nodded with approval. “So is the shirt. If you turn up the cuffs you won’t notice the sleeves are a bit short.”
Matthew was putting on weight, she noticed. And not in a bad way, either. He’d lost the hopeless look and stood straight in front of the mirror as if he liked the person he saw.
She liked that person, too. The very fact that he was so pleased to have these castoff clothes made her smile.
He cocked an eye at her. “Was that Pitchford on the phone? How is your mother?”
Her smile dropped away. “She’s coming home this afternoon.”
“That was fast. It hasn’t been two weeks yet, has it?”
“Two weeks yesterday. Apparently everyone is very pleased over her recovery.”
“Except you?”
Dinah went to the pile of clothes on the neatly made bed and began to sort through them without disturbing Tamsen’s little nest. There had to be more shirts and maybe some work pants in here that Matthew could wear.
“Dinah?”
She threw a pair of brand-new jeans back on the pile. “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy she’s coming back? That I’m looking forward to apologizing for giving her a stroke?”
That was the problem with Matthew. Now that she’d told him everything, she had nowhere to hide. And he’d been there that night. Had dealt with her suicide attempt. She’d told him what had happened and he hadn’t judged her. When was he going to start? Now?
“Do you really think it was you who caused her stroke?” he asked gently. “Do you think you have the power to cause blood clots?”
“Of course not.”
“So what do you have to apologize for?”
“For bringing it on!” she shouted. Tamsen started, and her face crumpled up to cry at the harsh sound. Dinah rubbed the baby’s stomach and tried to lower her voice. “For upsetting her so badly she turned gray and passed out.”
He shook his head. “Not logical. Odds are the stroke was waiting to happen, if that migraine was any indication. Your confronting her was a coincidence in timing, not the cause.”
“I still upset her.”
“I don’t doubt you did. You may need to deal with the fallout from that.”
That was a truth Dinah had already faced. She still wasn’t sure he was right about
her not causing the stroke. He hadn’t been in the room, hadn’t seen Elsie’s eyes bulging with suppressed fury and pain. If she wasn’t responsible for that, who was? Anybody? God?
“What do you think upset her?” Matthew took the pair of jeans she’d thrown down and began sorting through the pile for more possibilities.
She gave him a dry look, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled Tamsen into her lap. “It was either me accusing Phinehas of rape or me accusing her of allowing it to happen. She didn’t act like a mom once in all those years. She still doesn’t. The night you came, he came to my room two doors away and she never made one move to help me.”
“She has as much to lose by speaking up as you do, doesn’t she?”
“She isn’t the one being raped, Matthew.” She slung the ugly words at him, perversely hoping they’d hurt him as much as they hurt her.
“I didn’t mean that. Of course she isn’t. But whether she speaks up against him or you do, what would the result be?”
It was hard to stay furious at a man who so obviously put her interests first—and more, was willing to say so out loud. That was more than anyone had done for her, ever.
“What would happen if we spoke?” The consequences were so dire and so numerous it was hard to get them all in one reply. “No one would believe us, for starters.”
“The widow of an Elder? And the daughter of one?”
“Phinehas is our Shepherd. They’re set apart, given special gifts from God in order to do His work.”
“That doesn’t make them immune to criticism. Or criminal liability.”
“It makes them immune in other ways, though. We’d be accused of having a bad spirit, of being malicious and evil minded. Gathering would be taken out of our home, though it might be anyway, since there isn’t an Elder here anymore.” She looked up from the baby. “And our reputations would be trashed. My reputation is pretty much all I have right now.”
Tamsen made a cooing noise and reached for Dinah’s nose. She talked around the little hand that explored her face. “The worst that could happen, though, is that we’d be Silenced.”
“What does that mean?” Matthew asked.
“It means no one can speak to us for seven years. There are degrees of it, but that’s the bottom line.”
“Ah. Shunning. What happened to your friend Julia.”
“No, talking to someone who’s Out isn’t near the sin that breaking Silence is. We talk to outsiders all the time. But talking to someone who was once Elect and has lost their salvation is like talking to a dead person. It’s definitely frowned upon.”
“So Claire took a risk to tell you she’d done so.”
“Yes.” Matthew had concluded the same thing as she had. There was nothing to prevent Dinah from running to Melchizedek and deflecting the spotlight from herself by telling him what Claire was doing.
Nothing but this brand-new, fragile thing that might be friendship between them. Claire had put her own safety in Dinah’s hands—something no one had done before.
All kinds of things were happening that had never happened before. How strange and wonderful and scary.
“Meantime, about your mother?”
“What about her?”
“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps it was more than just outrage over your accusations about Phinehas that upset her so much?”
“What do you mean?” What could be worse than accusing Phinehas in the way she had?
“I don’t know. How long has she known him?”
Dinah thought back. “My whole life. Some of my earliest memories are of trying to reach the piano keys when he was playing. I couldn’t have been more than three.” Tamsen lost interest in Dinah’s moving lips and latched onto her fingers instead. “But I think what did it is me accusing her of allowing it all this time.”
“I can’t imagine any mother doing so.”
Dinah slanted him a wry look. “Try.”
“Oh, I believe you,” he said hastily. “But something must have driven her to it. Don’t you think?”
“I really don’t care if something did.” Dinah got up and adjusted Tamsen on her shoulder. The baby saw Matthew by the mirror and made another cooing noise. “The point is she allowed it. She let it happen without doing a single thing about it.”
“But don’t you think that—”
“I’m going to make lunch.” Dinah cut him off, too upset at his disloyalty on this topic to care how rude she sounded. “And then you’d better get yourself out to the barn while I break the news of your existence.”
IF IT HADN’T been for Tamsen and her enthusiastic reception of solid food, lunch would have been strained and silent. Matthew’s strategy for handling her, Dinah had learned, was just to be quiet and go away. Then he’d come back and take the problem up again when Dinah was calmer and could have a conversation instead of an argument.
On the topic of her mother, though, that wasn’t likely. What did he know of the horror of those minutes before her bedroom door opened, when she had prayed that, just once, one of her parents would get up and come out into the hall and catch Phinehas in the act?
At ten minutes past three, Uncle John’s big blue sedan rolled up the driveway and came to a stop by the front steps, where Claire had parked the other day. He helped Elsie out of the car and up the stairs as though she were fragile, as though Elsie’s monumental selfishness wasn’t already on the lookout for her own safety. Always the dutiful daughter, Dinah kept her thoughts to herself and kissed her mother on the cheek as she came in.
“Welcome back, Mom,” she said.
Elsie’s glance darted around the room, looking for—what? Signs that Dinah had thrown a huge party in her absence? Evidence of change?
The only changes were on the inside, and Elsie couldn’t see those. She would hear about them, though. The days of Dinah’s invisible, silent presence making everything comfortable and smooth were over. Dinah had found her voice in those long days of one-sided conversation with Matthew. Honesty felt good. It kept the air clear, to the point that she could actually feel the April sun when she went outside and breathed the cool breeze scented with the crocuses and snowdrops that had poked their shy heads above the soil.
Dinah planned to keep the air clear inside the house as well. No more forbidden subjects. No more suffering silence. And above all, no more lies and covering up.
Elsie sat on the couch with a sigh as heavy as if she’d climbed Mount Everest. Then she gaped at the sight next to her on the cushions.
Tamsen gaped, too, at the strange, horrified face above her. Then she burst into noisy, frightened tears.
“Who—is that—?” Elsie gasped.
“Yes.” Dinah scooped the baby up and cuddled her in the easy chair, where she quieted at hands that had become familiar and that she’d learned she could trust. Tamsen hiccuped, gnawed her fingers, and gazed distrustfully at her elders.
“This is Tamsen Dinah Traynell, your new granddaughter.”
“So it’s true that she left the baby here.” Elsie’s voice was hushed. “I thought that Jezebel was just stringing us a line to upset us.”
“If you mean Aunt Evelyn, she was just as upset as anyone. Tammy told her she was coming up for a visit, nothing more. Sit down, Auntie Meg. Uncle John, you too.”
Cautiously, they sat in a row on the couch, where they all stared at the baby.
“She does have Tamara’s eyes,” Auntie Meg conceded at last. “Do you think she’d let me hold her?”
Dinah handed her over, expecting fireworks. But Tamsen was obviously a good judge of character. She settled into Margaret’s lap and made a grab for her wristwatch.
“She came when I was gone?” Elsie asked, watching the baby with distress. Her fingers smoothed her skirt over and over, as if erasing defects in the fabric that only she could see.
“You were still in the hospital.”
“She waited until I was safely out of the way before she forced you to break Silence?”
> Dinah couldn’t tell if her mother was angry over that or if it went deeper. Maybe she was disappointed that she’d missed Tamara’s visit. She decided to err on the side of kindness.
“I don’t think it was that at all. She wanted to visit you. At least, she said so. Then, when I got back from doing something on the property, she was gone.”
“And no word?” John asked. Dinah shook her head. “What about the baby’s father? Did she tell him anything?”
Here it was. Dinah took a deep, steadying breath. “I went to see Danny Bell and he says he’s not the father.”
“Of course he’d say that,” Elsie retorted in disgust. “As soon as Tamara is located they’ll have to get married. Quietly.” She looked around the room. “It’s probably big enough in here. Goodness knows who would come, but we have to make the effort anyway. Linda Bell will be happy about one thing: Danny will be Deacon, though he’s not who I would choose for such a privilege.”
“I believe him,” Dinah said quietly. “He’s not Tamsen’s father. Don’t plan the wedding just yet, Mom. He told me he never wants to see Tamara again.”
“Well, if he isn’t, then who is?” Margaret wanted to know.
The next ten seconds would change her life, Dinah thought. If she was brave enough.
“Phinehas,” she said.
“Thank our dear Lord for Phinehas,” Elsie sighed, clasping her hands. “If it hadn’t been for his visits I don’t know how I would have pulled through. He’s been such an encouragement to us, hasn’t he, Meg?”
Dinah tried again. “No, that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m exhausted.” Elsie heaved her small frame off the couch as though it weighed three hundred pounds. “John, could you help me up the stairs to my room? I’ve had all I can take for one day. Dinah, maybe you can put together a tray for me. Just something light. Eggs and toast, maybe.”
Dinah watched them go upstairs, one halting step at a time. Have it your way, Mom, she thought. But we are going to talk about this, whether you want to or not.
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