When She Returned

by Berry, Lucinda

  Angry voices from downstairs broke into my homework session. I pulled my earbuds out and rushed down to see what was happening. Mom, Dad, and Meredith were in the kitchen arguing again.

  “That’s going too far. You crossed a line,” Mom was shouting at Meredith.

  Mom had never raised her voice before. What was going on? I was getting really sick of all the fighting.

  “I crossed a line?” Meredith pointed to a camera sitting on the dining room table. I’d never seen it before. “After everything you’ve been through, this is the thing that offends you?”

  “Yes.” Mom’s lips were set in a straight line. “You never asked my permission.”

  “I wouldn’t have had to ask you for anything if you’d told the truth when I asked you, but we all know you weren’t telling the truth, were you?” Meredith stood unmoving next to the table, facing Mom head on. Dad looked back and forth between them, like he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do or whose side he was supposed to take.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded, interrupting them.

  Everyone froze at the sight of me. Finally, Mom stepped back, and Meredith lowered her arm. Dad stayed rooted in his spot between them, his arms extended to hold them apart.

  “Meredith has been recording us in the kitchen,” Mom said.

  I balked. “You’ve been recording us? How?” Meredith was one of the least tech-savvy people I knew.

  Dad spoke without turning around to look at me. “Abbi, honey, I know this must look really confusing, but I’m going to ask you to just go back upstairs and try to get some work done. We can talk about this later.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know what’s going on.”

  Meredith took a step in my direction. “I think your dad is right. It’s probably best that you let us talk this one out alone.” She glanced in the direction of the stairs behind me. “Besides, if Shiloh wakes up, you can take care of her for your mom.”

  I shook my head. There was no way I was leaving.

  Mom spoke up. “I’m okay if she stays.”

  Meredith whipped around to face her again. “You’re okay if she stays?” She couldn’t hide her annoyance.

  “I don’t keep secrets from Abbi.” She gave me a tentative smile. I smiled back. I wanted our relationship to be built on the truth too. No lies.

  “So two against two unless you’ve changed your mind, Dad?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said, but he didn’t look happy.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, giving him all my attention and blocking out the others.

  He refused to look at Meredith while he spoke. “You know the arguments that your mom and Meredith have been having over the phone calls, right?”

  Was that what this was about? Why couldn’t Meredith just leave it alone? I nodded.

  “Meredith decided that she would record your mom talking on the phone, and your mom just discovered the camera.”

  “I stand by what I did,” Meredith said. “She didn’t give me any choice.”

  “How’d you record it?” I asked.

  “I ordered the camera I use for the birds in the backyard and hooked it up the same way.” She pointed to the top of the refrigerator. “Then I put it up there.”

  “You’ve been recording all of us?” I asked. My mind flitted through anything that had happened in the kitchen in the last few days. I had nothing to hide, but I felt slightly violated at the idea of Meredith watching me when I didn’t know. There was definitely something wrong about it.

  Meredith turned to Dad, bypassing me altogether this time. “It’s been up there for two days, and I just reviewed the video from last night, and guess who snuck down to the kitchen to make another midnight phone call?”

  “I can’t believe you would invade my privacy like that,” Mom cried.

  “Your privacy? You’re in our house. We have a right to know what is going on underneath our roof.”

  I turned to Dad. Every part of his body tensed with anger.

  “I don’t even recognize you anymore,” he said to Meredith, shaking his head in disgust.

  “Me?” Meredith yelled. “Why is everyone mad at me for this? She’s a liar!”

  Dad stepped closer to her. The veins in his neck popped out, and his voice shook with anger. “We are supposed—”

  “No. No. No.” Mom moved around Meredith and stepped between them. “Look, stop. Just stop.” She held her hands up in front of Dad, just like he’d done a few seconds ago to her and Meredith. “We’re not going to do this. Not this. I’ll go. It’s time.”

  “What? No, you can’t do that,” Dad said. His anger was immediately gone and replaced with concern.

  “It’s what’s best for everyone.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Dad’s voice cracked. “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll stay in a hotel until an apartment opens. I—”

  I jumped up before she finished her sentence and raced upstairs as fast as I could. I flung open my closet door and dug around for my duffel bag. I found it stuffed underneath a pile of empty shoeboxes. I flung it over my shoulder and headed back into my room, where I tossed in clothes before hurrying to the bathroom for my toothbrush and deodorant. I heard sounds in Mom’s bedroom and hurried in there.

  She was stuffing things in Shiloh’s diaper bag, like I’d done with my things. She’d already folded the towels they’d used in the bathroom and placed them in a neat stack at the end of the bed.

  “Where will you go? How are you going to get there?” Dad was circling around her as she packed. He kept reaching out his arms like he wanted to stop her and then quickly pulling them back.

  “I’ll find something,” she said. There was no fight left in her voice.

  “At least let me give you some money,” Dad said. He turned to leave so he could go back downstairs to get his wallet and noticed me standing in the doorway with my bag slung over my shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

  “I’m going with Mom.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I’m not asking your permission.” I reached down and grabbed one of her bags lying on the floor. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  MEREDITH

  NOW

  It’d been over two hours, and Scott still wasn’t back. He’d insisted on driving the girls to their hotel and checking them in, but it couldn’t have taken him this long. Not unless he’d driven them to another city, but there was no way he’d do that. He would never let Abbi stay so far away from him. I couldn’t believe he’d let her go with Kate. Her heart was set on it, but he should have put his foot down.

  He was probably driving around trying to calm down. He might not be so upset if he’d watched the video, but he had refused to look at the screen even when I shoved my phone in his face. I’d gotten the idea to record her when Dean had mentioned something about the videos they’d reviewed earlier that day, and I had planned to analyze her phone calls in the same way they’d analyzed the footage of her mumbled pacing. I cared about what she was doing at night, even if nobody else did. The audio was terrible and the video fuzzy—nothing like the high-tech gear the FBI had used—but she had unmistakably been talking to someone.

  I kept thinking Scott would change his mind about blindly trusting her if he saw it with his own eyes. He needed to see how Kate had sneaked downstairs twice to make sure I wasn’t following her before making her call. The second time she’d hidden behind the wall in the living room for over thirty minutes, staring at the foot of the stairs. There was no doubt that she had been waiting to see if I would come downstairs behind her. It wasn’t until she was convinced she hadn’t been followed that she had tiptoed into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. She had quickly punched in the number and had spoken with her hand cupping the receiver in hurried whispers for several minutes, her eyes never leaving the doorway to the kitchen.

&nbs
p; Who was I kidding? It wouldn’t matter what was on the video. Nothing would change how he felt about her. It’d been almost a month, and we had never had a conversation about how this would affect our relationship. Not once. He hadn’t asked how I was doing or what I was feeling. Not a single compassionate comment hinting that he’d thought of how difficult it might be for me during all this. If proving that she was lying and sneaking around our house at night wouldn’t change his perception of her, then nothing would. That much I knew for sure.

  I was the replacement wife, and, like any good replacement wife, my time had come to an end. I had never stood a chance once Kate came back into the picture. My services were no longer needed. I wanted to collapse into a heap of tears on the kitchen floor, but I forced myself to get up. I couldn’t be a mess when he got home. I had to hold on to my last shred of dignity.

  I let out a deep breath and wiped away the mascara smeared underneath my eyes. What would I do without Scott? I willed my body to move. I’d been through crisis before. The key was to focus on what was directly in front of you at the time and do it. All I needed to do at the moment was pack a bag. I’d figure out the rest from my hotel room.

  My luggage was in the garage, stacked next to the plastic containers of Christmas decorations and boxes of old photo albums. I grabbed a suitcase and headed back inside. I didn’t notice Scott’s car in the driveway and almost ran into him on the landing of the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, with his hands on his hips.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I hadn’t meant to sound mean. It just came out that way. I moved past him and into our bedroom.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You can’t leave.” He reached for my bag, and I twisted away from him.

  “You won’t even notice that I’m gone.” The sadness of the moment seeped into me.

  “That’s not true, and you know it,” he said.

  I turned my back on him and started opening my dresser drawers, trying to keep my emotions at bay so I could think straight. I needed to pack enough things so that I wouldn’t have to come back to the house for at least a week. I needed time to think, and I couldn’t do that here. Not when I had to see him every day or watch how he interacted with Kate. He placed his hand on my back.

  “Meredith, please stop,” he said tenderly. “Will you just turn around and look at me? For a second, please?”

  I couldn’t turn around because I might stay if I looked in his eyes, and I couldn’t stay when I knew how he felt, despite whatever he was about to say to me. Whatever he wanted to say, he would only be saying it because he was a good guy, and that was what good guys did. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he’d honor his commitment to me, but that was all he’d be doing—honoring a commitment. His heart would always be with her.

  It always had been.

  KATE

  THEN

  “Is this a phone?” I asked Abner as he handed it to me. We didn’t use phones. They were one of the ways that the darkness had taken over the rest of the world. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one.

  “It is, and now it’s yours. Feel better now?”

  He searched my face for approval as I took it from him, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t need a phone. Or want one. Its presence had already brought heaviness into the tent.

  “It’s for when I’m away with the children. I have one too. Do not use it unless it is an emergency. I do not want to be interrupted during this critical period,” he said. “If something should happen to one of the children, then I will call you. Write both of these numbers down.”

  I scurried to the corner, searching through my backpack for my notebook. My movement woke Shiloh, and she immediately started crying. She always went from dead asleep to ear-piercing shrieks in two seconds. I paused, torn between finding the paper and comforting her before her cries irritated Abner.

  “Give her to me,” Abner ordered, as if he could read my mind.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got her. This will only take a second,” I said, willing her to quiet herself. He found her crying intolerable.

  “I said give her to me.” There was no room for argument.

  I stood and unwrapped her. Her tiny body was curled into a ball, face scrunched up beet red. He took her from me in one swift swoop. I hurried back to my backpack and found my notebook.

  “422-3876.”

  I scrawled down each digit. “Can you say it one more time?” It was hard to hear over her cries.

  He repeated himself, and I double-checked each one. Shiloh had worked herself up to the point where she was going to be too frustrated to eat. Abner was circling the room with her. “Quiet, now, child. You be quiet,” he said in the same voice he used to command us all.

  “Abner, she’s just a baby. She doesn’t understand what you’re saying to her,” I said.

  “Nonsense. She knows exactly what’s going on. She’s willfully disobeying.”

  A knot of anxiety balled in my stomach.

  “I said, be quiet, child,” he told her another time, but her cries didn’t relent. Before I could stop him, he slapped his hand over her mouth, so big it covered her tiny nose and mouth. She quieted instantly. Her body writhed underneath his. “Quiet now. There you go. Quiet.”

  “Give her to me!” I screamed, ripping her from his hands.

  His hand smacked me across the face. My skin stung as my teeth cut through my lower lip. He grabbed me by my hair and yanked me up, tightening his grip. “You do as the Lord commands. Do you understand me?”

  Blood pooled in my mouth. “I understand, I understand,” I said as the blood drained down my throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit me, just the first time it’d been in the face. He released me, and I staggered backward, clutching Shiloh. I dropped my head down. “I’m sorry, Abner. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

  He pointed to the tent entrance. “Get out.”

  Margo and I had emerged from the birthing tent a few days ago, and so far neither of us had put our babies down. We wore them at all times. Each minute counted. Margo had pleaded our case to Will, but he’d barely let her speak before making it clear he sided with Abner. The children were the Lord’s—not ours—and giving them over to Abner to work with their souls so young would have a huge impact on the kingdom.

  “You should hear Will. He’s just like, ‘I don’t see what the big deal is; they’ll be back.’ Uh, they’re babies?” She rolled her eyes. “He would’ve let Abner get him pregnant if he could have.”

  I twisted toward her in shock. “Margo!”

  “You know it’s true.”

  Normally one of us would’ve laughed, but nothing about this was funny. How could one person take care of two infants in the middle of nowhere? Even the most skilled child expert couldn’t do it alone. And where would they be? They didn’t have a shelter or supplies. Would he take them someplace? Where would he take them? How would they get there? My brain spun with constant thoughts, and I hadn’t expected to sleep at all last night, but I did despite my worries. My sleep was fitful, continually interrupted with images of Abner returning from the woods empty handed, saying he’d lost our babies. It was awful.

  We watched him as he made his way across camp with Miles. Our eyes had been glued to them whenever they were around, studying Abner’s interactions with Miles. I had noticed things I’d never seen before, like how he flinched every time Abner moved fast and the way he was never more than a certain distance from him, as if an invisible cord was tied to him, but not in a good way. He cowered in fear whenever Abner raised his voice. Margo had seen it all too. We didn’t need to talk about what it meant. We’d had to pull Abner off adults when his punishments went too far. What would happen if he lost control with the children and no one was there to stop him?

  I double-checked to make sure no one was around before quickly filling Margo in on what had happened last night. “I thought he was going to smother her,” I whispered out of the corner of m
y mouth, keeping my eyes straight ahead.

  Margo instinctively kissed the top of Zed’s head. “What will he do when he can’t quiet them?”

  “What about what we were talking about before?”

  “Leaving?”

  I nodded, looking behind us again.

  “I’d never make it. I lose pieces of blood every time I walk.” Her hands were still buried in the bubbles of the dish soap. We’d been relegated to light dish duty until further notice.

  “You’re still bleeding like that?”

  “Yes, and I’m scared. It’s been a week. That’s too long. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to pass out just from standing up.” She dropped her voice even lower. “I think I’m going to die here.”

  “Don’t say that,” I hissed. “You can’t talk like that.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve accepted it,” she said. There was no fight in her voice. “My baby is going to die, and so am I.”

  “Stop it.” I pulled her hands out of the water and dried them on a towel. “Your baby isn’t dying, and neither are you.”

  Her eyes rolled slowly as she tried to focus on me. “Save your baby, Kate.”

  I pointed to the tree stump behind her. “Sit. You need to drink water. You’re dehydrated.”

  She started laughing, but within seconds her laughter had moved into tears. I grabbed my water and brought it up to her lips. “Drink this.”

  She took a sip. “I still love him, you know. Even after everything that’s happened. All this time.”

  I assumed she was talking about Abner, because I shared the same conflict, but I followed her eyes to the gathering area and found them centered on Will.