Take and Give

by Amanda G. Stevens

  “Maybe he’s like the apostle Paul,” a girl said. Then to Austin, “Are you a Christian now?”

  “No.”

  Becca folded her arms. “There’s no way Marcus Brenner traveled here with a con-cop. You obviously lied to him, like you were going to lie to all of us.”

  “Marcus was sick, he didn’t know where he was half the time.” Violet’s thumb was setting a new record for speed-rubbing against her wrist. “And if Austin hadn’t helped rescue him, the con-cops would’ve killed him. That should mean something, especially to you.”

  So this woman had been part of Marcus’s resistance movement. Austin didn’t have the energy to care. But these people were his jury, weighing it all, and he should care about that, at least. He pulled out his phone and stared at it, but calling again would be pointless. Dad had decided Olivia had talked long enough.

  It didn’t mean he’d broken Esther’s arm. He was being Vince Delvecchio, not letting Olivia talk to Austin for one reason: she wanted to.

  It also didn’t mean he hadn’t broken Esther’s arm. Olivia’s denial wasn’t enough.

  “Excuse me.” He left the crowd and, this time, pushed through the swinging doors to the solitude of the hallway. They could announce his sentence later.

  He kept walking, found an exit, paced up and down the parking lot in the dark. Moths fluttered around the floodlights. Crickets serenaded. Austin dialed the last number he wanted to call.

  “Hello.”

  “I’ll make this quick.” He sank onto some cement steps. How many entrances did this building have, anyway?

  “Austin? Is that you, son?”

  So his number wasn’t even recognized. Well, whatever. “Do you have Esther with you?”

  “She’s going into surgery as soon as they have a room for her.” His mother sighed. “I guess Olivia called you.”

  “Did he do this?”

  “You know how he throws things when he’s mad.”

  “Oh, I definitely know about that.”

  “Austin, please.”

  He rubbed a palm over his face. “You’re right. Let’s stay focused. Did he or did he not break my sister’s arm?”

  “Of course not. He’s never raised a hand to us.”

  Austin nodded, though she couldn’t see him. If he was thinking straight, he could admit the unlikelihood of Dad physically harming the girls. “So, he throws things, and Esther fell off the garage roof, and you’re going to tell me how they’re related.”

  “That child. You don’t need to be burdened with all our—”

  “Focus, Mom. And tell me.”

  “Esther’s been moodier than usual, more sensitive. I’m sure she’s just dealing with hormonal changes and such. But Vince seems to get to her more lately. He went off about something, and she’d left her pottery wheel on the coffee table.”

  And he’d broken whatever Esther had been working on, if not the wheel itself. “So she went up to the roof?”

  “We’ve had some contractors working on the house, and they left a ladder out. I think she wanted to have some time to herself, that’s all.”

  At this point, Austin could say a dozen different things. She didn’t want time to herself. She wanted to escape a father that breaks the things she cares about.

  Maybe one day it will be her bones, Mom. Or yours. But Mom would scoff at that. Only Austin’s bones had ever cracked at Dad’s hands.

  I want you to leave him. For the girls’ sake. That, too, would earn only an annoyed sigh.

  “Mom?”

  She must be expecting one of those things, because she sighed. “He didn’t touch her. This was an accident.”

  “I believe you.” What was he trying to say? What words had the last week loosed in him that now pushed to come out? “Has he ever talked to you about it? The … anger, I mean.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Shut up, Austin. You’re accomplishing nothing. “It’s just, there’s this girl I … but if … then I don’t ever want to have kids. A boy.”

  “Are you asking if having a temper is hereditary?” She laughed.

  Austin bent forward on the steps. “I guess not. Listen, I want to talk to Esther. As soon as she’s awake.”

  “She’ll be loopy, but I’ll let her know, and she can call you if she feels like it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He hung up and lowered his forehead to his knees. His limbs felt heavier than the typical crash from an adrenaline buzz. Maybe his father’s voice, his father’s low breathing directly in his ear had spiked his stress response more than usual.

  So Dad wasn’t broadening targets. Still, Esther was old enough now not only to feel it, the hurt and heaviness of living in that house, but also to know she felt it. Austin had to get her and Livvy out. He wouldn’t let them go through this—their hearts pounding out of control, the hot tingling in their hands, the wondering how someone had set them off this time. His sisters would never have to fight a piece of Dad inside them. Not if he could help it.

  He stood, and his legs quivered only a little. He had to tell Violet. He had to find a way to get home.

  And Jason?

  He’d have to be very, very careful.

  44

  Lee trudged up the church steps and peered through the glass door. She tried to open it. Locked. To be expected after dark, yet certainly a sign. She should go. But she had to—not apologize, that word was too formal. Too perfunctory. She had to express her remorse.

  It won’t matter.

  She couldn’t leave without trying to mend the wounds caused by her own words and actions. She tugged at the door. No one came.

  He made it quite clear he wants you to leave him alone.

  But not forever. Not Marcus. Her hand was steady as she pulled out her phone, typed a text to Violet, and didn’t send it.

  From the other side of the building, the main entrance, a car was running. Voices drifted closer. Lee sent her text. She couldn’t converse civilly with anyone right now, not until she spoke to Marcus and heard, saw, his response.

  As a long-haired silhouette jogged toward her down the backlit hall, the strangers—a family of four—rounded the corner of the building and spotted her.

  “Hello?” The man hurried toward her. “We were told this is the shelter of Kearby.”

  “It is,” Lee said.

  He gestured to a woman, midfifties like him, and two teen boys. “We’re here from Nevada. We didn’t think we’d make it.”

  Violet opened the door before the man could elaborate. “Lee! Where’ve you been?”

  “These are new refugees,” she said. “A member of the church should be informed.”

  Violet glanced past her, and her eyes lit. “Hi. Come on in. I’ll go get somebody for you.”

  They straggled inside, tired eyes and rumpled clothes and smiles.

  “I’m Benjamin Schneider,” the man said, “and this is my wife, Hannah, and our two boys.”

  “Lee.”

  “Good to know you.”

  In the next few minutes, Benjamin speed-talked through an entire story of their road trip trials—a flat tire and a Good Samaritan who stopped to help but then asked too many questions. Lee would have tuned him out on her best social day. This wasn’t.

  When Benjamin brought the story around to its moral—gratitude to God for bringing them through every obstacle—Lee waited for the heat of anger, the cutting words that would stun him into silence. Perhaps she was too tired for them. She tried to analyze further, but her thoughts seemed to have weight, too much to lift. She might never have been so tired in her life as she was right now.

  After concluding his story, Benjamin tilted his head at her. “So where are you from, Lee? Let me guess, Minnesota?”

  “Michigan.”

  “And you came for refuge
?”

  “Yes.”

  Benjamin’s wife smiled. Did she speak? At all?

  “We nearly had to split up,” Benjamin said. “Prayed we’d be able to find each other again, if separating proved necessary, but we made it over together in the end.”

  In merciful rescue, Violet approached with Austin and an elderly bearded man. Violet and the stranger were immersed in comfortable chatter. She might as well have lived in this town, participated in this church, all her life. How did she manage such true warmth? Perhaps some people were born with an inviting fire inside, and some with a heart of sharp icicles.

  Or perhaps Lee had chosen this, too.

  Violet reached Lee’s side with a grin. “Everybody, this is Austin and Walt.”

  The bearded man beside her extended his hand to Lee. “Walton Cantrell.”

  “Lee Vaughn.”

  “A pleasure, Lee.” He turned to the Schneiders and exchanged names and handshakes. “Y’all have excellent timing. With newly arrived folks, we like to give you a quick education on what to expect here—‘here’ being our church as well as our new country. You can ask questions, too. There’s a group gathering in one of our conference rooms right now, if you’ll follow me.”

  No gathering, not now. Lee watched them start to walk away, Violet nearly bouncing on her feet. Benjamin had already begun a conversation with Walton when Austin looked back and stopped.

  “Lee?”

  “I’ll join you later.”

  Violet said something to Walton, and the others disappeared around a corner while she jogged back down the hall. She focused not on Lee but on Austin.

  “Did you talk to Lee?”

  Austin sighed. “Violet.”

  “You need to let her talk you out of this.”

  “No one’s going to talk me out of it.”

  Perhaps Lee should care, but at the moment … “Before we go to any meeting, I’d like to check on Marcus.”

  Violet’s frown smoothed. “I did, about half an hour ago, because he seemed really worn out when Will brought him back. He’s sleeping, and his breathing sounded good.”

  Sleeping easily. Waking him to unburden herself would be selfish. Go ahead, then. It would be in character. She shut her eyes.

  “Lee? You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She focused on these two people, these … companions. Austin’s hair was ruffled from the finger-raking habit she’d mostly observed when he’d been driving too long. The knitting between his eyes might be a headache. Violet’s frowning, wrist-rubbing worry was directed all at him.

  “What’s happened?” Lee said.

  As Austin began the story, Violet moved to stand at his side and curled her hand around his forearm. Her thumb rubbed a slow rhythm below the crook of his elbow. He clearly left out details, but Lee didn’t need them.

  “You cannot go back,” she said.

  “I have to. My sisters—”

  “Mayweather aside, you have no legal guardianship. They’re minors. They can’t live with you simply because they want to, especially the younger one, not without some sort of evidence of abuse. You just stated your father hasn’t physically harmed them.”

  He pulled in a harsh breath.

  Violet’s other hand latched onto his wrist. “That makes sense. Your mom would have to file charges or something. Right, Lee?”

  “Correct.”

  “See? You can’t go back there and kidnap them from your mom’s house.”

  “Esther would go,” he said through his teeth.

  “You have no means to support two children, Austin.” And Lee couldn’t assist with that yet, not with her accounts frozen by Constabulary order. “Realistically, you won’t succeed in this if you try to do it now.”

  He pulled away from Violet and paced to the visitors’ desk, stacked with paper programs and more Bibles than Lee had ever seen in one place, much less on one surface. He rubbed a hand over his hair and ducked his head.

  “It’s all gone,” he said quietly. “The great job. The money I saved. Getting ready to support them if I had to. None of it means anything here, the degree and the training and …”

  His hand pressed flat against the desk. He sighed.

  “Austin?” Violet didn’t move toward him.

  “Never mind. Let’s go to this meeting. We need all the information we can get.”

  “I know where it is,” Violet said.

  Lee followed them with nothing else to do, nowhere else to go.

  The conference room was full. She never should have bothered to hope for a small meeting. She followed Austin and Violet into the room and found a place to stand against the wall, half her view blocked by the Schneider family who had stopped only feet ahead of her. In the space between their bodies, she glimpsed about a dozen more people seated at the table or in chairs dragged from other rooms. A floodlight shone from the parking lot outside the north wall’s vertical windows. All attention was glued to Walton, who stood at the head of the room facing them, a whiteboard at his back bearing a rainbow of children’s signatures and a game of hangman. The answer was Galadriel and the hanged man had all his limbs. Lee stepped to one side to view the room better.

  Marcus was seated at the table, his back to her.

  She stationed herself behind his chair. “Marcus?”

  He glanced back and did not smile, not even with his eyes.

  “I thought you were sleeping.” It came out as an observation, calm and secure. The tension eased in her shoulders.

  “Will came and got me.”

  No doubt with instructions from Marcus not to let him miss anything. Around them, other conversations were hushing. Lee allowed theirs to do the same. Marcus’s hand curved around the table edge, but he seemed steady. The moment his arm trembled, she would …

  Would what? Try to force him to bed? No. She had to stop … looking at him as if he were dying.

  Violet stood to her left, their arms just brushing in the crowded space. Better Violet’s arm than anyone else’s.

  “Welcome, all.” Walt’s feet were planted apart. “To this church and this country. To freedom.”

  He said the words as if he’d said them many times, but sincerity rang in them. Several people around the table nodded acknowledgement. Walt spoke for about ten minutes, explaining the available programs at the church and how they were structured, including an email network of available jobs in Kearby and the surrounding cities. They even had an email list for those in need of transportation—carpools and cars for sale. Arriving here without a vehicle must not be so extraordinary.

  So much support, none of it driven by a desire for publicity. People were fueling this—not an organization but individuals who cared.

  “A final thing,” Walt said after going over meal schedules and other miscellany. “The most important thing. In the last two months, there’s been a new threat ascertained to some of you. Not all of you. The Constabulary isn’t legally present here, but they are present.”

  Marcus’s knuckles went white against the pebbled beige tabletop.

  “Working in the open isn’t an option for them, since they have no jurisdiction. None of you are going to be arrested walking down the street. Most of you don’t have to worry about this at all, but we’ve discovered that certain state Constabularies have sent agents with specific targets—namely resistance workers who had influence back home.”

  A chill slithered up Lee’s spine. If Michigan came after anyone …

  “Why?” Violet’s voice broke. “Why can’t they just let everyone go?”

  Marcus’s shoulders pulled back into a line of tension that had to cost his ribs. Lee’s hand moved to touch his shoulder, then fell to her side. Not now.

  “What we’ve figured is that there’s too much resistance, more than we know. They need to send a me
ssage, and high-profile people, any of y’all who were making a difference before you had to run …” Walt folded his arms, further rounding his shoulders. “You could be a target, and as a church body we request that information from you. For our sakes as well as yours.”

  Silence soaked into the room. Across the table from Marcus, a woman pushed her chair back and stood. Rebecca. About ten years older than Lee, brown hair, brown eyes, feminine curves. She’d eaten at their table tonight. Marcus had called her Becca, didn’t have to tell Lee this was Becca Roddy from the Ohio resistance.

  “Are you asking for a head count now?” Becca said.

  Walt’s mustache twitched. “Or later, if you’d like some anonymity with the congregation at large.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.” She smiled and waved. “Hi, I’m Becca, and I distributed Bibles illegally.”

  Laughter wafted throughout the room. Becca’s glance rested a moment too long on Marcus, then moved on. Violet shifted from one foot to another, and Lee waited too. He’d speak, raise his hand, force himself to his feet. Something. He trusted these people. He’d already shown that. But he was still.

  Benjamin Schneider broke the quiet. “There’s no way they have legal grounds to do what you’re saying. You think they’d actually publicize it, coming here and taking people back? And the media would go along with it?”

  Multiple people around the room pinned him with hard looks. Of course they would.

  A lanky blond man sat a few chairs from Marcus. He flattened his palm against the table and half stood. “Will you want Becca”—he nodded at her—“and anyone else to talk to someone, a Texas cop or a criminal lawyer or someone? Is that required?”

  “No.” The word snapped from several people.

  Distrust of law enforcement wasn’t logical in this new place, yet it coiled in Lee’s gut as well. At the very least, they had to be cautious.

  “No,” Walt said. “Nothing is required of you—not even coming forward. We won’t make you fill out a questionnaire or anything of that sort. Your safety is your business. But we can offer help if you think you need it.”

  Help? What would that entail?