Chapter 7
K
mart wasn’t Liesel’s top choice of stores to buy fashionable clothes, but it was the closest place, which meant they could get there and back as fast as possible. And, judging by the clothes Sunny and her kids were wearing and what they’d brought with them, fashion wasn’t really a priority.
Living in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with its large Mennonite and Amish populations, Liesel was used to seeing women dressed “plain.” For the Amish it was black dresses, while their more liberal Mennonite sisters wore dresses in different colors but all the same style. They all wore “coverings,” mesh caps worn over hair scraped back and rolled on the sides to be secured at the back in a tight bun. Sometimes they wore braids, the way Sunny had plaited Peace’s hair and her own. All of them looked like high-fashion models on a Paris runway compared to Sunny, who wore a long-sleeved, high-necked shirt and an oversize jean skirt that hung shapelessly to her ankles. She’d let Liesel give her one of Christopher’s old college sweatshirts to replace the one with the broken zipper, and it further obscured her body.
Now, standing in front of a rack of sweatpants and turtlenecks, Sunny shook her head and stared at Liesel with bleak eyes. “I can’t wear any of this.”
“What’s wrong with— Ah. You don’t wear pants. We can get you some skirts. Don’t worry.”
They’d already been up and down the children’s section, loading the cart with things for Happy. Becka had stopped by earlier with an old car seat and a couple bags of clothes for both Peace and the baby, along with a few toys her kids had outgrown. Ever the true friend, she’d given Liesel a look that said “call me later,” but hadn’t asked any questions.
Sunny stopped in front of another rack. This one had long, elastic-waisted skirts in dark colors. She held one up. It hung from her hips to her toes. She scrutinized it, mouth pursed, and held it up to the light. She fingered the material, then shook her head.
“It’s very thin,” Sunny said.
“We can get you some winter-weight tights. That’ll keep you warm.” Liesel tried to give her an encouraging smile, but Sunny wasn’t looking at her.
She spread her fingers under the material, showing Liesel how the hint of her flesh showed through. “It’s immodest.”
A funny complaint coming from a girl who’d stripped down seemingly without a second thought in front of a stranger, Liesel thought. “We’ll buy you a slip.”
Beyond them and across the aisle in the electronics department, all of the flat-screen televisions had been tuned to the same local channel, now showing the news. A petite brunette bundled into a trench coat and scarf stood in front of a tall, chain-link fence. The sound was off, but Liesel could see the banner running across the bottom of the screen.
ONE HUNDRED DEAD IN CULT SUICIDE
Sunny dropped the skirt and ran toward the televisions, leaving a stunned Liesel alone. She followed quickly, pushing the cart. By the time she got to Sunny, the girl had begun frantically pushing the buttons on the biggest television.
“Make it louder,” she said. “I need to hear what they’re saying!”
Liesel pushed past her gently to turn the volume up, her stomach already sick with anticipation of what they’d hear. The reporter gestured at the fence, emblazoned with Keep Out and No Trespassing signs. She pointed at the gates, wide open, and the cluster of buildings barely visible at the end of the long driveway.
“That’s Sanctuary,” Sunny said in a strangled voice. “Oh. They did it. They did it. Oh, no. They left. They all left.”
“Did what?” Liesel asked stupidly, since the explanation was right there in the reporter’s clipped nasal tones and the banner still running along the bottom of the picture.
CULT LEADER ORDERED MASS SUICIDE, AUTHORITIES BELIEVE
“They left,” Sunny whispered. She pressed her palms flat against the TV set for a second, and when she pulled them away, left a wet mark behind that for an instant made the picture beneath it extraclear before it faded.
Liesel didn’t know what that meant, but suddenly the reason that Sunny’s mother had sent her and the children to Christopher was no longer some strange secret or whim. “Oh, my God. They’re all dead?”
“They did it,” Sunny repeated and turned a stricken, vacant-eyed face to Liesel. “They left without us.”
Chapter 8
T
hey drank the rainbow and went through the gates, just the way Papa had said they all would. Her mother had spoken with a liar’s tongue and sent Sunny and her children away. Why would Mama have wanted them to be left behind?
Had her mother known of all the dark things inside her, the ones Sunny hadn’t made reports on? All those thoughts and desires Sunny knew were wrong—her craving for a meal from McDonald’s, for one thing. How once she’d taken the money from selling her pamphlets, only two dollars, and spent it on a cheeseburger. It had been the best thing she’d ever tasted, but she’d been so nervous about eating it she’d thrown it up almost at once. Maybe her mother knew about Sunny’s hatred of John Second. Her mother loved John Second. Maybe she’d somehow known how Sunny had dreamed so many times of what might have happened if she’d gone with Josiah when he left the family.
Maybe it was something else so dark and rotted that Sunny couldn’t even imagine it.
All dead in cult suicide.
That’s what the television said. All dead. Suicide. They made it sound so nasty, something terrible and shameful. They didn’t know anything about the family, she thought as the buildings outside the car window became empty fields, then trees. This was the road she’d stumbled down so early in the morning. Or maybe it was another one, so many places in this world, so many things to see, and she was still alive to see them all.
Josiah had been on the TV screen. A woman had been shoving a microphone toward him. His familiar face had been more than serious, grim even, but he’d looked out from the TV as though he could see Sunny right through it.
“Sunny, are you… We’ll be home soon. We’ll get you home.”
Liesel wasn’t taking Sunny
home.
Home was Sanctuary. Liesel was taking Sunny and Bliss back to the big yellow house at the top of the steep driveway, where she would feed Sunny’s children junk and sedate them with television. Where Sunny would sleep in a bed so soft it had to be made of sin.
Sunny curled her fingers against her palms, feeling the sting of her nails in her skin. Pressed harder. Small pain, getting deeper. She pressed so hard her fists shook, and she tucked them between her knees to keep them still.
Sunny thought again of Bethany, the things she’d shouted about the world. Sunny had made her own lists over the years of wordly things she wanted to taste or touch or smell or try. She’d drifted to sleep at night imagining the tug of denim between her legs instead of her own flesh pressing together beneath a long skirt. She’d lifted her hair from her neck, thinking how it would feel to cut it all off. Pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to take the place of cosmetics.
That was why she’d been left behind.
“We’re here,” Liesel said as she pulled into the garage. She twisted in her seat to look at Sunny with wide eyes. Her mouth had thinned with a grief Sunny didn’t understand. Liesel hadn’t known any of the family. “We’re home.”
Liesel was waiting for something, though Sunny didn’t know what it was. More tears, probably. Shame, prickling, heated her face at the memory of how she’d lost control in that store. Mama would’ve been ashamed.
From the backseat, Bliss let out a cry, so Sunny had the excuse of focusing on that. She got out of the car to unbuckle her daughter from the complicated straps of the seat they’d forced her to use. She pressed her face to Bliss’s sweet baby head, nuzzling the fine hairs before cradling her. Liesel was still staring as Sunny lifted Bliss out of the car.
“I’ll be okay.” Faced with Liesel’s obvious anxiety it seemed the thing to say, and the words tripped easily enough from Sunny’s lips. “We’ll all be okay.”
Liesel nodded. “Yes. You will.”
They were both lying. Her mother had sent her out into the world, and that had been bad enough. Sunny’d been found unfit, left behind, abandoned. That was worse. But the worst part of all was not that she’d failed to make her vessel pure enough to leave with the others. The worst part was knowing she’d been given what she’d always secretly hoped for, she was out here in the world, and nobody was coming to take her home.
Nobody ever would.
Chapter 9
A
t the sight of his mother, Happy jumped down from the stool and ran to her with a cry. She got on one knee to greet him, holding him at arm’s length and studying his face. She looked up at Christopher with a faint smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Peanut butter?”
“Yeah…is that okay? They’re not allergic or anything, are they?” Christopher looked back and forth from her to Liesel, who’d gone to the fridge with a glass to get herself some crushed ice and chilled water.
Sunny shook her head and stood, holding on to Happy’s hand. “No. They like peanut butter.”
“He wouldn’t eat it. Said it wasn’t dinnertime,” Christopher said with a self-conscious laugh that didn’t sound like his. “I guess you have pretty strict rules where you…live.”
The ice crashed into the glass. Sunny looked at Liesel. “I need to feed Bliss, and Peace probably needs a nap. Maybe Happy, too.”
Liesel nodded. Her smile felt like a grimace. “Sure, you go on. I need to talk to Christopher.”
When Sunny had taken the kids from the room, Christopher looked at Liesel. “What the hell is going on? Did you guys have a fight or something? She’s definitely a little weird, I know that—”
“They’re all dead.”
Christopher blinked. “What?”
Liesel swallowed frigid water, thinking it might somehow make the words easier if they fell from a numb tongue. “All of them, in that compound. They’re all dead. They killed themselves yesterday in some sort of mass suicide. Some cult thing.”
A broken, strangled cry tore from her throat. She clapped her hand over her mouth and went to the sink to dump the water down it. The clink of the glass against the stainless steel was very loud when she put it down. She turned to him.
“It was all over the news. We saw it on TV
at Kmart,
for God’s sake. And yesterday, when I was running, when I slipped on the ice? I saw the ambulances and the police cars heading in that direction. I saw all those cars, but I didn’t think… I didn’t know—”
“Hey. Shh, hey.” Careful not to press her bruises, Christopher took her in his arms again. “Slow down. How do you know they’re all dead?”
“The reporter on the news said so. The paper, too. A hundred people, all dead. They didn’t release how it happened, just that they found them all together. Dead. Don’t you get it? That’s why Trish sent them to us. She must’ve known.” Liesel swallowed convulsively, nausea rising. “Oh, God. We have to call the police, don’t we?”
All those people. Dead at their own hands, dead like those poor jerks in Jonestown who drank the Kool-Aid. Was that how they’d done it? Or had they put themselves to sleep with plastic bags over their faces and matching sneakers like those Heaven’s Gate fools?
“Did the news say what happened?”
“Just that the police found only bodies. No survivors.”
Above them, the ceiling creaked with footsteps. Both of them looked up, then at each other, connected by something more than twelve years of marriage and familiarity. Christopher pulled her close.
“There were at least four,” he said.
“I think we have to call the police, Christopher.”
“Yeah. I guess we have to.”
Liesel swiped at her eyes. “Sunny didn’t seem surprised. Do you think she knew? I mean, ahead of time. Do you think she left that place knowing?”
“If she did, then she’s smart, don’t you think?”
Liesel pressed herself against him with a soggy sigh. “All those people. There were children in there, Christopher. The news didn’t say how many, but there had to be kids.”
His hands rubbed her back in slow circles. She waited for him to say something comforting, but he stayed silent. She looked up at him, thinking how he would kiss her and tell her everything was going to be all right, and then he’d do something to make that true.
“Christopher?”
“I’ll call the police.” He kissed her forehead. Then he let her go.
Chapter 10
M
ama shakes her awake and says, “Come on, Sunshine, wake up, it’s time.”
Mama means it’s time to leave. Papa’s voice is talking over the speakers. Mama pulls a sweatshirt on over Sunny’s nightgown and takes her by the hand, out into the hall.
The lights are too bright, the sounds too loud. Sunny hangs back and Mama tugs her by the hand. No time for dawdling. You never, never run, but you don’t dawdle, either.
In the chapel, they take their places on the hard wooden floor. It hurts Sunny’s knees, hurts her bum. There’s a splinter in her finger, but she doesn’t dare cry. She puts it in her mouth to suck it, feels the sharp piece of wood sticking out and tries to catch it with her teeth but can’t.
John Second has a tray with paper cups full of juice. White pills, red pills, some blue, a few are yellow or green. Papa always calls them the rainbow, but it’s not really. Not enough colors for a rainbow. John Second holds up the tray to show them all. Mama and Sunny are near the front, so they can see. What about the people in the back? They are far away. Can they see what John Second is showing them?
Mama pinches her. “Turn around. Pay attention.”
Papa is very tall. He stands with a hand on Josiah’s shoulder. Papa’s two true sons take the cart with the trays. Up and down, up and down the aisles while Papa talks.
Take a cup, hold it up. Fill it from the pitcher. Maybe, Papa says, the rainbow is dissolved into the juice tonight. If it is, are they ready to leave? Who’s ready to leave tonight and go through the gates? You have to be ready, your vessel prepared, you have to be ready to go without anything on your conscience.
“If you have something to report,” Papa says, “now’s the time. Because you can’t get through the gates with a dirty, broken vessel, and what breaks your vessel faster than the weight of your bad behavior?”
The splinter pricks and stings. Thief’s hands. That’s what Sunny has. And a liar’s tongue, because even though Papa says it’s time to report, she says nothing. Not about the food she steals from the kitchen, not about anything. Nothing.
Other people report. Papa listens and nods. Sometimes he points to the stick on the wall, and John Second takes it down to use. Tonight nobody’s sent to the silent room. That’s good.
Sunny drinks the juice. She watches as the rest of them do, too. Watches as they all fall down. She waits and waits to fall down herself, but nothing happens.
“Get down here!” Mama has a rasping, angry whisper, but her eyes look scared. They look toward John Second, who is staring their way. “On the floor, Sunshine!”
And then she knows it’s just another practice. The rainbow wasn’t dissolved in the juice, they’re just supposed to pretend it was. Her face is pressed to the dirty wooden floor so close she can see the splintery bit that poked her finger. She hopes it won’t poke her eye. That will hurt way, way worse.
“So,” Papa says, “it’s not time to leave. We can’t get through the gates. They’re not opened. They’re still closed, because at least one of you has a vessel that is still not ready. Who here has not made a full report?”
And though Papa waits and waits, nobody else says anything. They look at each other until finally someone steps up and makes a report about someone else. Then another. And then it seems everyone has something to say about someone else, and Papa looks pleased even though the juice is all gone and the sun has come up and it’s still not time to leave.
Lots of people talk about other people and themselves, admitting to every small thing, but nobody says anything about Sunny, and she says nothing about herself.
And she knows it’s her fault they didn’t get to leave.