Esther decided then and there that she would be the girl who goes to live in the wild, just like people did thousands of years ago. That was what Father said, anyway, that children had no right playing with toys or running around with nothing to do. That was the kind of idleness that let the devil in, that ravaged the soul and ruined any chance of salvation. Children like Esther got a head start in life because they learned how to work. They learned how to survive. Imagine the story she could tell Father if she went home after living in the wilderness for years without any adult supervision. She did imagine it. She saw his benevolent and proud smile as she recounted her tale.
Esther quickly changed into a dress and hurried back to the landing, almost forgetting to be quiet. She was about to tip-toe down the stairs when she saw Mary walking out of the lounge, brushing a few tears from her cheeks. Esther held her breath, watching as Mary took her keys from the family’s tidy-rack and walked out of view. Esther couldn’t see from this angle, but she heard Mary pulling on her shawl and shoes. She was going out. The front door opened and closed.
Inside the lounge, Elijah was quiet. For whatever reason, he wasn’t following Mary out of the house at all, he was going to stay there. Esther’s heart was pattering now, because she sensed that something was going to happen. She didn’t know what, but she knew it would be important, maybe even dangerous. Part of her wanted to go back to bed and turn off the lights, but she didn’t. She crept down the stairs, walked up to the lounge door and held her breath as she listened. With her ear pressed against the door, she heard Elijah’s snores. He’d already fallen asleep.
Just like Mary, she went into the hallway, took her coat from the hook, and pulled on her canvas sneakers. Then she slipped out of the door into the dark.
Chapter Fifty-Four
THEN
Up ahead, Mary’s sneakers shuffled against the tarmac making scuff-scuff sounds. Esther started to run to try and catch up with her mother. But then she heard her own shoes making those sounds and decided she didn’t want to be seen. It dawned on her that if Mary turned around and saw her, she’d have to go back to that house, and all of her dreams of escaping would be gone. She stepped onto the grass next to the road to muffle the sounds of her small feet.
All around her, the world was dark and silent. She saw a few people moving about inside their houses; dolls in a doll house. The yellow glow of the table lamps and light fixtures spilled onto their front gardens. In the distance someone was walking their dog around the green, but they hadn’t seen her. Esther glanced ahead to check Mary was still there. She was. She briefly considered not following her at all, because now would be the perfect opportunity for Esther to run away without Mary noticing. But then a thought popped into her mind. What if Mary was going to meet Father? Mary never left the house late at night like this. There had to be a reason for it. What if Esther left and missed her chance to see him again?
Up ahead, just visible beneath the streetlights, Mary turned off the road and strode towards the woods running the length of the village. Of course, Father would want to meet Mary somewhere like that. He loved wild places. In Arizona he rode up the mountains every day and spent hours meditating high up on the dusty slopes. She thought of breakfasts at the ranch, where the family sat around on long tables waiting to hear who Father would take with him. Mary told Esther that Father would often choose her to go. That was how Esther was made. They went up the mountain, they meditated together, and Mary came back to the ranch with Esther in her belly. Father had given her a gift.
The density of the houses thinned out until they were away from the road completely. Esther’s heartbeat quickened as she stepped through the entrance to the woods. There were no streetlights here and Esther was beginning to worry about falling over. Her feet tripped on stones. Thin strips of moonlight revealed the narrow path snaking through the trees, but it didn’t always show her the loose stones underfoot. In the distance, she could just about see her mother, but every time Mary veered from the path, Esther’s chest seized with panic. For that split second, Esther always thought she was alone but then she would catch up and see Mary’s pale figure in the distance. She was glad that Mary had decided to wear the cream woollen wrap she used as a coat on summer nights. At least it contrasted against the darkness.
A little further along, and Esther sensed that Mary was slowing down. At one point, Mary stopped and stood still, staring out into the distance as though waiting for someone. Esther had to jump behind a tree to make sure she wasn’t seen. She peeked out from around the trunk, eyes adjusted to the darkness, watching Mary remove a mobile phone from her pocket. Was she looking at a message from Father? Esther clutched the trunk of the tree tightly, waiting and waiting for something to happen. Was Father going to step out of the shadows? Or was Mary here to meet someone else?
A few moments later, Mary put her phone away and carried on up a narrow path. On trembling legs, Esther followed her. She stumbled her way up a steep incline as the thorns from the undergrowth snagged her socks and caught on her legs. She winced at the sharp slicing of the thorns before reminding herself to be brave. This was a test, and she could pass, or she could fail. Father didn’t like frightened children.
Mary wandered into the deepest, darkest thickets within the woods and Esther panicked, afraid she wouldn’t be able to see Mary at all. She forced herself to hurry, ignoring the slap of thin branches against her arms and shoulders. Esther rushed away from the path and ran with abandon into the woods. Her heart pounded. She was generally mature and confident for her age but in that moment, she had never felt more like a silly little girl who needed her mother. A scream remained lodged in her throat. The scream of being seven years old and lost in the woods at night, but she’d lost her voice in the panic. There was no longer any attempt to hide herself from Mary, she ran as fast as she could. But Mary wasn’t in sight anymore. There was nothing but the closing in of the trees and the loose stones under her feet.
Silent tears rolled down her face. She tried again to scream, but her throat was raspy and raw. A pathetic whimper emerged from her throat and died on her lips. In the distance, she thought she heard a man’s voice, raised, as though chastising Mary, and Esther tried as hard as she could to shout out the word Father. But as she was pulling the breath into her lungs to call to him, she slipped down a bank. She hit the ground hard, banging her head against a rock, and then she tumbled and tumbled until there was nothing but darkness.
As she was slipping in and out of consciousness, Esther wondered whether she’d heard her Father at all. She suspected that she hadn’t.
Chapter Fifty-Five
THEN
Esther woke beneath bright lights and Mary’s watery gaze. She was thirsty and reached for the plastic cup on the table next to her bed. Her mind was quite fuzzy, and she was slowly taking in her surroundings, from the blinking strip lights to the stiff sheets over her body, to the swing doors leading into the room.
“Esther? Esther, are you all right?”
The chair scraped against the resin floor as Mary stood. She offered Esther the cup of water, guiding it to her lips. The room-temperature liquid was enough to soothe Esther’s dry throat and help bring her back to reality. Her memories came to her in flashes. Mary and Elijah fighting in the lounge, then Mary leaving the house late at night. Running through the woods. Falling hard against a rock. She remembered lying in the mud, half-conscious, for hours, imagining the sound of a man’s voice. Father’s voice. He told her to be still, and that he would be coming back for her soon. He told her to be a good girl.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Mary said, stroking Esther’s hair. “For everything.”
Her words meant nothing to Esther then. All she wanted was the truth. Outside the room, she sensed the bustle of a hospital and wondered where Elijah was. She blinked, took a sip of the water and held back tears.
“Where’s Father, Mommy?” Esther said.
Mary reacted in the same way she always reacted when E
sther brought up Father. She recoiled and grimaced. Then she glanced towards the door and her shoulders slumped.
“You know where he is. He’s in Arizona.”
“On the ranch?”
“Yes.”
“Then who were you talking to in the woods?”
She frowned in confusion.
“No one, honey.”
“Why did you go into the woods?”
Mary sighed, lifted her head and brushed away tears. “I was going to meet Fran. I thought maybe she could help. I was sad because I had a fight with Daddy. But she didn’t turn up.”
Esther paused for a moment. Was she lying? “So Father wasn’t there? But I heard him.” Her memories were all jumbled up. While barely conscious in the mud she’d heard Father talking to her, and that was why she’d imagined him there with Mary. It was all a trick in her mind.
Mary’s words came out slowly and shakily when she answered. “I’m sorry you followed me and got hurt. I had no idea you were there.” She stroked Esther’s hair again. “I thought you were tucked up in bed like a good girl.”
Esther started to cry. “Am I in trouble?”
Mary planted a kiss on her forehead. “No, sweetie, you’re not. But…” She glanced towards the door again. “But you need to promise not to tell anyone about seeing me in the woods. Okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll blame me for you getting hurt, that’s why.” Now Mary started to cry. “They’ll call me names. They’ll say I’m a terrible mom and that I don’t deserve you. They don’t like me here, that’s obvious.” She angrily brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Maybe they’d try to take you away from me and you wouldn’t like that would you?”
Esther hesitated but she shook her head.
“I swear I didn’t see you in the woods, Esther. I swear it. You know I would’ve taken you home, don’t you? You know I’ll always take care of you. I love you more than anything. You’re my daughter. Mine. You know that don’t you?”
Esther nodded her head. Mary liked to say things like that a lot and every time her intensity was scary.
“You’re my sweet little girl.” She kissed her forehead again. “I’m so sorry I didn’t see you. I’m so sorry you got hurt.” There were footsteps getting louder, approaching the room. Mary grabbed Esther’s hand. “Please don’t tell Daddy you saw me in the woods. He’d be angry with me.”
Before Esther could answer, the door opened, and Elijah walked in. Mary looked up anxiously, but Esther simply frowned.
Elijah’s eyes widened. His expression broke out into a wide smile. “She’s awake!” He rushed over to the bed and kissed Esther on the cheek. “Thank the Lord.” He pulled Mary into a hug, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room.
Esther watched with disdain. She could accept Mary’s request not to say anything about the woods, but she would never believe Elijah was her daddy, or that he cared about her. No, she had only one Father, and she intended to go home to him.
Chapter Fifty-Six
NOW
Fran hurried back to the police station with the pamphlet clutched between her sweaty fingers. It must have been an odd sight for the people of Tucson, a harried woman in Birkenstocks and an ill-fitting straw hat rushing down the sidewalk with sweat pouring down her face. Once Fran had her revelation, she’d turned back to the young man in the suit to ask him a few questions, but he’d already begun walking away. From there she’d sprinted after him waving the leaflet, but he turned a corner and melted away into a shop or a restaurant. She stopped to catch her breath before noticing an address printed on the reading material. Maybe that was enough. She turned back on herself towards the police station, speeding past the art gallery, feet scurrying along the hot tarmac.
She made her way into the building, removing the hat to let the aircon cool her damp scalp. While waiting in a queue behind a man in a wide cowboy hat and a woman in denim shorts, she examined the bright stock photo on the leaflet. Young, attractive faces smiled up at her, hugging each other beneath a cloudless blue sky. She knew they weren’t the real members of the organisation. They were models. It was a carefully constructed image to provide a level of comfort. Find salvation in love was the tagline.
The officer on the front desk cleared her throat and Fran realised it was her turn. She asked for Detective Woodson.
“He just left the station,” she said. “He had a case to attend to out of the city. Do you want to leave a message?”
“Could you tell him Fran Cole came to see him? And could you tell him it’s about the… the…” Fran glanced down at the leaflet. “The Children of James.”
The officer rolled her eyes. “What’ve those kooks been up to now? Did one of them steal something from you?”
“No, nothing like that. Are they known troublemakers around here?”
She raised her eyebrows. “They didn’t use to be. They tended to keep to themselves but lately… yes.”
“Why lately?” Fran probed.
“I’ve heard a few things,” the officer said. “Rumours here and there. It sounds like they’ve hit on hard times and a bunch of them come into the city to shoplift and pickpocket and whatnot. We keep getting a ton of calls about them. Have you checked your purse? Because you’re gonna want to do that.”
Fran glanced at her handbag for a moment, distracted by this new information. She told herself to focus. “Thanks, I will. So, they’ve been around for a while then?”
“As far as I know, they moved here from some other state in the nineties. Folk weren’t too happy to have them here and there were some protests, but they stayed, and to be fair, they mostly kept out of trouble and seemed to be pretty harmless. It was all Wall Street brokers and ad executive types back then. Why is it always the highly-strung that have a breakdown and move out to the desert to meditate and eat kale? They do whatever weird shit they want to do on the ranch, and we leave them the fuck alone unless they’re causing trouble.”
“How come they’ve fallen on hard times?”
She shrugged. “You’d have to ask them. I guess rich people aren’t as interested in cults now as they were in the eighties and nineties. The world changed. People realised they weren’t going to find God giving away their money to phonies. What did you want the detective for, anyway, hon?”
Fran unlocked her phone and showed the officer the picture of Mary and Esther. “I just reported these two girls missing. But now I think they might be part of the cult.”
“Do they dress like the pioneers moving to the Western colonies?”
“Yes!” Fran said.
“That’ll be where they are all right.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
THEN
Esther was happier than she’d been for months. It was a sunny day, and the air was warm, though not as hot and dry as Arizona. She sat on the backseat of their car rental with the window wound down, waiting while Mary and Elijah put the last of the suitcases in the trunk. Elijah had made the announcement shortly after they’d found graffiti spray-painted across the door to their house.
“Enough is enough. We’re leaving,” he’d said, staring at the paint. “It’s time to go back to where we belong, and you know what that means, Mary. You know we’ve been kidding ourselves trying to live here away from the family.”
It’d been music to her ears. Esther couldn’t even express the amount of hatred she had for Leacroft. She even hugged Elijah, thanking him, something she never, ever did.
Elijah left shortly after the announcement, ignoring Mary’s pleas. “I’m going to get rid of the car,” he’d said. “We need the money. There’s a dealership nearby and we can sell it fast there. But I’m taking your passport, Mary. Don’t get any ideas.” He grabbed her by the throat. “If you run, I’ll find you.” She’d started crying as soon as he was speeding away, and since then she hadn’t stopped. Her sobbing filtered through the floorboards when Esther was packing her suitcase.
She tried to ignore Mary’s s
obs as she folded her clothes. She was methodical, making sure to remember every item. The yellow dress with the bows lay on top of the pile. But one thing she didn’t pack was that stupid book that didn’t make any sense. No, she was leaving that in Leacroft.
Once Mary had pulled herself together—and Elijah had returned with the rental—she’d insisted on Esther going to wait in the car while she sorted the last of the packing. In fact, she’d taken Esther’s small suitcase from her. She did everything with wet eyes and unwashed hair that hung limply around her thin face. When she spoke, which wasn’t often, she sniffed heavily after every sentence. But Esther couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Didn’t Mary want to go home? Didn’t she want to see Father again? It made no sense to her. They’d been happy on the ranch. They’d been a family.
It didn’t take long to fill the rental, and soon they were pulling out of the driveway and rolling through the village. Esther glared at the tiny houses, the pale faces and silver hair of the residents, the patch of green grass with the pathetic playground, the traffic lights, and the corner shop, and then they were out of that place. She leaned back against the seat as they pulled onto a highway, and started to imagine her fingers were an axe, cutting everything that blurred past her eyes in two. When she exhaled, it was like she was ridding herself of Leacroft and everything it stood for: the worst feeling for a child, one of control and restriction and utter stillness. Soon all of that would be lifted.
At some point Esther fell asleep with her head resting against the leather. She woke with a dry mouth and the sound of echoing car engines in an enclosed space. Her door was open, and Mary was unclipping her seatbelt. She rubbed her eyes and saw Elijah stacking suitcases onto a trolley.
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