I hurried to get her from our room. We shared a cabin along with four of the other girls. There were three sets of cots in two rows. Willow sat on hers, nervously chewing her fingernails, something she hadn’t done in months. She’d worked hard at breaking the habit, and it hadn’t been easy, since she’d had it since she was a little girl. Abner had told her that nail biting was the same as eating away at herself. If he caught her doing it, there’d be a reckoning.
I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. “Look, you can do this. I know you can. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”
“Oh please,” she said. “You’re just saying that. Remember how you called me a spoiled hippy baby?”
I laughed. “Yeah, but that was before I knew you.” I squeezed her tightly. “Come on—let’s go. Don’t think about it. The longer you sit here, the more worked up you’ll get.”
“Is it really that awful?”
“It is.”
She slapped my thigh. “You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say that it’s not going to be as bad as I think it’ll be, and I’ll be fine.”
“Then I wouldn’t love you like I love you.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “It’s pretty terrible. It’s going to be as bad as you think it is—”
“Oh my God!” She giggled. “You’re seriously not helping.”
“Shut up; listen to me,” I said through my laughter. “But you will get through it. Everybody does. It just feels like you won’t, but you will.” I stood, pulling her up with me. We headed out of the cabin and into the gathering place.
We were the last to arrive. Everyone stood waiting, eyes filled with encouragement. They started clapping when we got inside the large tent. She’d never made it this far. The family rushed to hug and embrace her. She turned to look at me before being engulfed by them, a big smile on her face. Her cheeks streamed with wet gratitude. I blew her a kiss as they carried her to the front of the room with Abner. Everything was set up just like it’d been two days earlier for Sol’s.
“Which scripture governs this ceremony?” Abner asked in the same way he’d been doing for all the ceremonies. Hands went up. He called on my cabinmate, Lee.
“No one can see the kingdom unless they are born again.” She recited it like a script.
He smiled. “Very good. We must get that step right.” He scanned the room, making eye contact briefly with each of us so he could make sure we knew the seriousness of what was about to happen. The intensity was the same no matter how many times we’d done it.
Just like that, the ceremony began. Willow was wrapped up like me and everyone else who’d gone before. Same mat. Same blanket. Same everything. Her body looked so much smaller when it was wrapped up like a burrito. My heart ached for her. I forced myself not to move. She sobbed loudly as the sheet went over her head.
“Stop! Stop!” she cried. “I can’t do this. I changed my mind. I changed my mind.”
Abner ignored her and started pressing on her covered mound, which only made her cry harder. People moved around Abner despite her protests. They pushed on her body like they’d pushed on everyone’s body, but her body was so small. How were they not crushing her?
“You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me! Please!” her tortured screams rang out.
Sol and I jerked our hands back. Abner shook his head and pointed to her covered body. “Keep going. You must keep going. Don’t stop now.” He grabbed my hand and shoved it back on her, pressing his hand down on mine. Her small body writhed underneath our hands. He let go and grabbed Sol next.
“I can’t breathe. Please, I can’t breathe.”
It took everything in me to keep my hands in place.
“Fight for the light! Fight for the light!” we chanted. We were well versed in the routine. Transition was the hardest part, just like real labor. “Prove your worthiness to the Lord!”
“Help!” Her scream was so raw I felt it in my guts.
“Get away from her!” I screamed, pushing Daniel off her. He grabbed me and slammed me to the ground, pinning my arms behind my back. “They’re hurting her. She wants them to stop. I’ve got to help her,” I cried. “Please, I’ve got to help her.”
“This is all part of her journey. She’s looking into her awakening right now,” Abner called.
Nobody stopped. I fought against Daniel, but he kept me pinned, forcing me to watch the scene in front of me with my face smashed to the floor. Willow’s body thrashed around while everyone waited for her to break free. Her cries were silent. Just whimpers. This time, there was no hand. Time dragged. Everyone kept looking at Abner with hesitations in their movements, but he yelled at them to continue pushing. It kept going on and on.
She should’ve come out. Too much time had passed. Why wasn’t she out?
“You must break free if you want to be free. Leave the darkness behind you.” The determination in his voice was unwavering. Daniel slowly let me up. I stood with the others encircling her, hands at my sides. Her body stopped moving underneath the sheets. She wasn’t making any more sounds. I clasped my hand over my mouth.
“You can step back,” Abner said.
Relief washed over me so hard it made my knees buckle. It was finally over. Thank God.
We stepped back as Abner untangled the sheets from her body. She’d tied herself in knots. It seemed like it took forever to unwrap her, but when he finally did, Willow lay on her stomach. He turned her over, and she flopped on her back. Her lips were blue, her eyes wide open in terror, unblinking. He unwrapped the other blanket from around her. Her arm flopped to the ground. He put his face up to hers. Bekah and I rushed forward, pushing Abner and the others aside.
“Get off her!” I screamed.
Bekah knelt and put her head to her mouth, feeling for her breath. I squeezed Willow’s hand. “Please be okay, please,” I cried.
“I don’t think she’s breathing,” Bekah said.
Ekon pushed through the crowd and shoved Bekah to the side, moving into CPR immediately. Time stood still while we watched him, waiting for any sign of life. He worked harder and faster. Bekah and I locked arms, willing her to breathe. Abner came up behind Ekon and placed his hand on his back.
“Enough,” he said.
Ekon removed his hands from Willow’s chest and sat back on his heels.
I lunged forward. “Don’t stop! You have to keep going!”
Bekah pulled me back, hugging her arms tightly around me. I let out an involuntary sob. Ekon grabbed one of Willow’s wrists and felt for a pulse. He looked up at Abner and shook his head before closing her eyes.
Abner laid his hand on her forehead. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
I jumped up and pushed him away from her. “No, we can still save her. We have to save her!” Abner put his arms around me, and I flailed against him, pounding on his chest.
“She’s gone, Kate. Willow is gone,” he said before releasing me. I crumpled into a heap on the ground.
Chaos erupted. Everyone was screaming, trying to get close to her, crying.
“Enough!” Abner’s scream cut through the noise. Everyone froze at the sound of his voice. “You must get yourselves together this instant,” he said, disgusted with us. He knelt next to Willow and whispered something in her ear. The space erupted in collective sobs. He covered her lifeless body with one of the torn sheets. The sobs grew louder. Abner put his finger to his lips. “Hush, everyone. There is no reason to cry. How many times have I told you that there is a natural order to things? How many times?”
Nobody spoke.
“God weeds out those who are too weak to survive. We are not exempt from any of God’s rules.” His eyes scanned the room, but no one returned his stare. “Let this be a lesson to all of you.”
TWENTY-FIVE
MEREDITH
NOW
Kate pushed open the glass doors of the police station and stepped outside. I�
��d waited in the car during her first appointment, because sitting in the police station for two hours sounded awful. I’d planned on going to Starbucks, but I’d never even put my keys in the ignition. As soon as I’d shut the door, all the questions I had kept buried just outside my awareness assaulted me, and I hadn’t moved from my seat as they played themselves out.
As I watched her duck her head and cover Shiloh’s like she did every time they were outside, I reminded myself to be quiet and let her do the talking. I’d acted like such an idiot on the way over. It was similar to how I’d felt driving Abbi to middle school by myself the first few times. The awkward tension between us had been so strong I hadn’t been able to wait for her to get out of the car, even though I made sure not to let on that I felt that way. At least Kate’s silences were different than Abbi’s had been all those years ago. Distrust and preteen disdain had filled hers, and she had purposefully ignored me. Kate simply didn’t need to fill up space with empty words, and something about it unsettled me, which only made me talk more. I’d ended up babbling the entire drive about nonsense.
She clasped Shiloh into her car seat before sliding into the passenger side. I turned the heat on for her. She was always shivering, no matter how warm it was.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she said without looking at me.
I pulled out of the parking lot and made a left, heading down to Highway 12. I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. Her face was turned to the side as she stared out the window, so I couldn’t see her expression. I was dying to know how her session had gone. But it felt too nosy and motherly. I wasn’t trying to slide into that role with her. It was already strange enough driving her around.
She didn’t speak the entire drive, and not talking made me break out in a cold sweat by the time we got inside. Our house felt so much bigger with everyone gone. Camille’s team had packed up their last bit of gear this morning and had brought it down to the station. The expansiveness only magnified the quiet that had filled the rooms after their departure. She took off her shoes and scurried up the stairs with Shiloh. Her bedroom door clicked shut.
I quickly texted Scott that we were home. He had done everything he could to stall this morning before he left for his first day back at work, even though he had tried to act like that wasn’t what he was doing. He had made a sandwich for lunch even though he always ate at work, because the company meals were better than anything either of us could have made. He had drawn out the process as long as possible and then had said he needed to check his email one more time before leaving. He’d already texted me three times asking for an update on how she was doing, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock.
None of his texts asked how I was doing. He hadn’t stopped to consider that this morning might have been difficult for me too. And unlike him, who had a routine he could easily fit himself back into, I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a traumatized cult survivor who was also my husband’s former wife. Dead wife, technically.
Like now. Was I supposed to go up there and ask if she was okay or leave her alone? And it’d be lunchtime in a little over an hour. Did I make lunch for myself or include her? If I made it for both of us, should I call her down to eat with me? Leave it out for her? What did I do for the rest of the day? Was I supposed to pretend she wasn’t there?
Scott’s inability to see how hard some of this was hurt. Obviously, what I was going through paled in comparison to what they were going through, but this wasn’t easy. None of it had been. It didn’t help that he’d barely touched me since she’d been back. Last night I’d made an effort to connect with him before we fell asleep, and he’d pushed my hand off him, mumbling something about being exhausted. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to make love. He hadn’t hooked my pinky with his like we did every night as we fell asleep, and that hurt more than his rejection.
TWENTY-SIX
ABBI
NOW
I stared out the passenger window as Dad drove me to school, wishing I was at home with Mom and Shiloh. It was my second day back, and I was dreading it. Going to school meant so much less time with them, since Mom was trying to get Shiloh on a regular schedule. She got her ready for bed around seven, and I didn’t get home from school until after four, so that only left me three hours with them. I was barely going to be able to see them during the week. I crossed my arms on my chest.
“Can we talk about Mom?” I asked. I’d wanted to talk about her yesterday, but he’d spent the entire ride going over what I was supposed to say to any of the questions that I got from people about Mom. It wasn’t that difficult—basically, say nothing—but he was so worried that I’d slip up and say something I wasn’t supposed to. Thankfully, we didn’t have to worry about the media, because they weren’t allowed on school grounds.
He nodded, as eager to talk about it as me. It’d been almost three weeks since the knock on our door that changed everything, and we’d barely gotten to talk about things alone. There had always been somebody else in the room or someone nearby who might overhear. At least we’d be able to talk about things on our drives in the morning.
“What are the plans for her when she moves out?” I asked.
“Did she say she’s moving out? When did she say that?”
“Dad, chill. No, Mom hasn’t said anything to me about moving out, but I figured she must’ve talked to you about it.”
He shook his head. “She hasn’t said anything to me. Do you think she wants to move out?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I told you we haven’t talked about it.”
“Do you think she’s thinking about it?”
“Dad, come on. Listen to me. That’s not the reason I’m bringing it up.” He could be so frustrating when he got fixated on one thing, and it was so annoying. “At some point, Mom is going to have to move out, and when she does I was thinking that I would go with her.”
His face paled, and he gripped the wheel. “I don’t know about that, kiddo. We would have to really think about it.”
“But that’s just it—I have thought about it.” He knew me better than that. I didn’t do anything without thinking about it, usually too much. That had always been my problem. “I only have two years before college, and I want to spend as much time as I can getting to know Mom and Shiloh before then.” He wanted to object, but he knew I was right. College would be here in no time, and my heart had been set on Georgia Tech since I was in sixth grade, and, even if I didn’t get in, I was committed to going to college somewhere out of state. Living with them would allow me to get to know them in a way that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.
We rounded the corner past a Michaels craft store, and the school came into view.
“What does your mom think about it?” he asked.
“I haven’t said anything to her about it yet. I wanted to see what you thought about it first.”
He raised his eyebrows with surprise. “You did?”
“Of course.” His opinion would always be first on my list. Nothing would change that.
“I’m going to have to run it by Meredith to see what she thinks,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not that serious. Can you wait to say something to her? All I wanted to do was let you know that I wanted to do it when Mom was ready. I don’t want to make a big deal about it until then.” We made a left into the car pool lane. I grabbed my backpack from between my feet. “Please just think about it.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek as he slid into line behind a blue minivan. “I love you, Dad.”
KATE
THEN
We buried Willow—plain and simple. It didn’t matter how many times Abner said we were returning her to the earth. We put her in the ground and shoveled dirt on top of her, chanting scriptures about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. My head swirled with what we’d done. We had suffocated her. That was what we had done, no matter how much they wanted to sugarcoat it or call it another name. We were responsible
for another person’s death. There was no moving past that, even though Abner acted like it was all meant to be as if it had been part of the master plan all along. Everyone agreed with him, like they always did. It sickened me. My insides had begun to bleed, anger and grief twisting knots into my guts every day.
My brain had been unplugged. Disconnected. I watched myself perform from somewhere above. Getting up each morning before the sun. Thirty minutes of meditation before heading out to the field. Working in the fields all day. But I was gone. Willow had taken me with her into the earth.
Bekah’s screams pierced through the night, traveling across camp. She writhed in agony on the mattress. She’d been that way for over twelve hours and couldn’t take any more. Her pain had passed words a long time ago.
Margo crouched at the head of the bed while I knelt at her feet. She pressed cool washcloths on her forehead while I tried to help work the baby down. Nothing about her labor had been normal. I didn’t need to be a doctor to know that blood at the onset of labor was not a good sign. She’d been in mind-numbing pain ever since.
The family had immediately gathered in the tent, and they’d been engaged in continual meditation ever since. It hadn’t been that long since we’d lost Willow. The soil on top of her grave was still fresh. We couldn’t lose anyone else. We’d hoped to have the baby here by sunset, but it had gone down hours ago, and there hadn’t been any progress.
“We have to do something,” I cried as Bekah arched her back and shuddered from the war going on inside her body.
“She needs a doctor,” Margo said. She hadn’t stopped saying it since two feet had peeked their way through Bekah’s vaginal opening instead of a head.
“That’s not going to happen, and you know that,” I hissed at her. We’d begged Abner to let us take her to the hospital, but he’d refused.
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