He grinned and shook his head.
“Why not?” he said. “Faith was wonderful to look at, she had a sweet disposition, and she was godly without being a pain about it.”
“So what’s not to like?” Kane said.
“Yeah, that’s it,” the young man said, “what’s not to like? But then her mother got sick. And she changed. And we just kind of drifted apart.”
“How did she change?” Kane asked.
The young man stared at his folded hand for a minute.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She was just different. We were still friends, but we weren’t so close. And then, when she decided to go to the regional high school and started hanging out with that Johnny Starship, well, I just quit thinking about her very much.”
“Hanging out with him,” Kane said. “You mean they are involved? Like girlfriend and boyfriend?”
The young man looked at his hands again.
“I’m not sure,” he said, giving Kane an embarrassed smile. “The truth is, I don’t know much about relationships outside of Rejoice.”
“I don’t know much about relationships inside Rejoice,” Kane said. “Tell me about them.”
The young man looked at his hands, then at the wall, then at Kane again.
“It’s okay,” the detective said, “what you say to me won’t go outside these walls, unless there’s a crime involved.”
The young man laughed.
“I don’t mean to be mysterious,” he said, “but it’s hard to know what to think about things myself, let alone what I should say to an outsider.”
He straightened up in his chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“The accepted practice is this,” the young man said. “Until you’re sixteen, there’s no dating and everything is done in groups. After that, if the adults think you are mature enough, you can walk out with someone. But what you can actually do with that person is carefully circumscribed and closely watched. After a year or so of that, if you are still interested in each other, the two of you can become engaged and take instruction that leads to marriage.”
“Whew,” Kane said, “that sounds pretty strict.”
“I suppose it does,” the young man said with a smile, “but this is a Christian community, so things like godly behavior and chastity are important here. Besides, like any community, Rejoice has an interest in people knowing one another well enough, and what marriage requires well enough, to make an informed decision.”
“And young people accept this and do what they’re told?”
The young man laughed.
“Not all of them, but it’s not really like a set of rules. It’s more like what I think they call cultural norms. Most people do things in this way because that’s the way they’re done. Some people don’t, but enough do that it’s the accepted way. Besides, it’s not always two young people involved.”
“Pardon me?”
The young man gave Kane a funny look.
“I would have thought that would be obvious. Rejoice is a small place, and the number of marriageable people here at any one time isn’t that large. So it’s not always two sixteen-year-olds walking out. In fact, it is normal to have some disparity in ages, and not at all unusual to have a considerable difference.”
“So you could have sixteen-year-old girls and . . .” Kane said.
“Forty-year-old men,” the young man said. “Just so. Or forty-year-old women and sixteen-year-old men. There was just such a disparity in the ages of my parents—that is, my father and my real mother.”
“So your mother . . .” Kane said.
“Is in her sixties,” the young man said, “but she doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Is divorce common here?” Kane asked.
The young man looked at his shoes for a moment.
“I’m not sure I want to talk about that much,” he said. “Technically, there is no divorce in Rejoice. But let’s just say that when two people don’t want to live together anymore, they find a way.”
Kane decided to let that go.
“Did Faith have any older suitors?”
“I wouldn’t know, unless they’d started walking out. But I can think of several unmarried men in Rejoice, and I can’t imagine that none of them is interested in Faith. Judith might know. She and Faith were best friends once, and I think they still talked.”
“Okay,” Kane said. “Thanks.”
Matthew Pinchon stood up and turned to go.
“Just one more question,” Kane said. “You seem like an intelligent young man. Don’t you find all these rules and customs a little confining?”
“They are meant to be confining,” the young man said. “We are trying to confine ourselves to Christian behavior. Those of us who don’t want to do so are free to leave. Those who stay accept the confines of living here.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Excuse me?”
“What if they don’t accept the rules, but continue to live here anyway?”
The young man gave Kane the same funny look.
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Wasn’t that, in a way, what Faith was doing?”
“Not really,” the young man said, doubt in his voice. “Maybe. I don’t know. But given who she is, the elders would be reluctant to act against her.”
“You mean, because she is the daughter and granddaughter of the leaders of Rejoice?”
“That, and Faith really is an extraordinary person. If she is truly gone, that’s a real loss to the community.”
“If the elders had acted against her, what would they have done?”
“I’m not really sure. Counseled her, I suppose. If that didn’t work, they might have posted her name on the Wall of Shame in the community hall here. We set a lot of store by public censure. And if that didn’t work, they would have banished her.”
“Have people been banished?”
The young man gave Kane a look he couldn’t read.
“I’m not really the person to ask about that, and I have to go prepare for my trip. So if there is nothing further?”
Kane waved a hand, and the young man left, to be replaced by Rebecca.
“What did you do to Matthew Pinchon?” she asked, sitting across from Kane.
“What makes you think I did anything to him?” Kane asked.
“He didn’t offer me any advice or instructions when he came out,” the girl said with a laugh.
“Does he usually?” Kane said.
Rebecca gave Kane a shrewd look.
“If you think Matthew was somehow involved in Faith’s disappearance, you’re wrong,” she said. “He still loves her, it’s true, and he’d never harm her.”
“How do you know that?” the detective asked.
The girl smiled.
“I have been studying Matthew Pinchon since I was twelve years old,” she said. “I want to know everything I can about the man I’m going to marry.”
It was Kane’s turn to smile.
“Does he know about the impending nuptials?”
“Not yet, but when the time is right, he will.”
Rebecca sounded thirty rather than fifteen when she said that, speaking with a certainty and maturity that impressed the detective.
“Are all the women in Rejoice so sure of their futures at such a young age?”
“You mean, was Faith this certain?” the girl said. She stopped to consider. “I don’t know. When you grow up in a place this small, in a culture that treats you like a woman much sooner than the larger world would, you begin considering your future much sooner than you might otherwise. I think I want to stay here, and if I stay I might end up married to someone twice my age, and I’m not sure I’d like that. So I’ve settled on Matthew.”
“And Faith?”
“Faith doesn’t seem to have settled on anything. Everyone used to talk about Faith and Matthew like their marriage was a foregone conclusion. But then, well, Faith just wasn’t there anymore.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Rebecca gazed over Kane’s shoulder for a moment, then refocused on the detective.
“I don’t know just how to describe it,” she said. “I mean, she looked the same and did all the same things, but it was like she’d shut down all of her emotions. She was more like a Faith robot than the flesh-and-blood Faith.”
The girl was silent for a moment.
“Of course,” she said with a shake of her head, “her mom was dying, or maybe had just died, so that’s probably what did it. Faith and her mother were close, much closer than she was with her father.”
“What can you tell me about their relationship, Faith’s and her father’s, I mean.”
“Faith loves her dad, I think, but Elder Thomas Wright is a tortured soul. I think he’s trapped by being the son of the founder and, if that weren’t the case, would have left Rejoice long ago.”
Kane looked at the girl. The silence stretched out. Rebecca blushed.
“Like I said, when every unattached male is a potential partner, if you’ve got any brains you pay attention.”
“Okay,” Kane said. “And what about Faith’s relationship with her grandfather?”
“Faith avoided her grandfather, but why should she be different from any of the rest of us? Except Matthew, I mean.”
Kane grinned at that.
“You seem to be close to blasphemy there.”
Rebecca grinned back.
“I know, or at least lèse-majesté. But you can live in a small town and believe in a faith without liking everyone else who does.”
“What about Matthew? I take it he has a more charitable view of Elder Moses Wright.”
“That’s true, and it’s something I’ll have to break him of. But he takes special instruction from Foaming Moses and is always talking about what a great man he is. If Foaming Moses were a woman, I’d be jealous.”
Kane made some notes.
“What do you know about Faith’s friends and activities at the regional high school?” he asked.
“Not much, I’m afraid. We don’t have much to do with the kids outside Rejoice socially. We see them and know their names and say hi and stuff, but we don’t spend much time with them. The rumor was that Faith was seeing Johnny Starship. But if she was, she’d have been careful to hide it.”
“Why’s that?”
“A girl from Rejoice involved with a boy from outside would be bad enough, but with Johnny Starship it would have been much worse. His brother and father are involved in sinful business. And besides, his father and Elder Moses Wright are total enemies.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, one’s a preacher, and the other’s a whoremaster.” The girl blushed at the word. “What more reason do they need?”
He finished with Rebecca soon after, and while he waited for Judith to come in, he thought about what he’d been told. He didn’t know what to think about a place that seemed to allow forty-year-old men to marry seventeen-year-old girls. These things were routine in other countries, he knew, but not in America.
“Maybe Rejoice isn’t really part of America,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” Judith said, taking a seat. “Rejoice is its own place.”
“Sorry,” Kane said. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I seem to be talking to myself more and more as I get older.”
The girl reached over and patted Kane’s hand.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Rejoice must be a confusing place for an outsider.”
In the normal course of events, Kane would have thought nothing of the girl’s gesture. But after talking with the other teens, he wasn’t sure how to react to a young woman who was, in this place, of marrying age. Best to put that out of your mind, he thought, taking up his notebook and pen.
“Are all the young people in Rejoice this mature?” he asked.
“Not all,” Judith said, “but in a small place all of the adults know you and have expectations for you. The religious nature of Rejoice adds to those expectations. And because there are so few of us and so much to do, you are given responsibility earlier. Most of us respond to all this in the right way.”
“I suppose that makes sense, but I’m not used to speaking with young people who think and talk so much like adults.”
“Oh, we can talk like kids, at least among ourselves. But a lot of even that conversation is about Rejoice and our roles in it and what that means for our lives.”
“Did Faith talk about those things?”
“For a long time she talked about them more than most. Then she stopped.”
“About the time her mom died?”
“Just after, I’d say. I noticed because up until then, we’d been best friends. Then she started spending more and more time alone. I asked her about it, and she just said she needed time to think. So we just kind of drifted apart.”
“Do you know why Faith changed?”
“I don’t,” Judith said, “but Faith has pressures the rest of us don’t, being the Princess of Rejoice and all.”
“What?”
The girl laughed.
“That’s what we called it when we were kids. ‘The Princess of Rejoice.’ Because her grandfather is the founder and her father has taken over from him, everyone expects Faith to marry the next leader. A dynasty, you know.”
“Is she headed in that direction? Does she have older suitors here?”
“I’m sure she could have them if she wants, but I don’t think she is seeing anyone here. And I don’t see how she could be without the entire community finding out.”
“Is that experience speaking?” Kane asked.
Judith laughed.
“I won’t say that I haven’t thought about it, but it just seems so impossible to do anything here without everyone finding out.”
“How does Faith feel about being the Princess of Rejoice?” Kane asked.
“She was okay with it when we were younger. It seemed kind of fairy tale-ish to us then. But as we got older I think it bothered her. I’m not at all sure Faith wants to stay in Rejoice, let alone be its princess. And I think she is having doubts about our religion.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Not really, but one of the ways she changed was that she just started watching the services, became a spectator, you know. She just sits there and never takes part.”
“Do you know anything about her life outside Rejoice?”