Authors: Donna White Glaser
Neither was Maliah.
Except maybe on the inside. That’s probably why
she clung to the makeup, I reasoned. To cover the ugliness that was probably
leaking out.
Given everything I had been going through, it
should have been a small thing, but lately, I had been consumed with feeling
vulnerable. Being forced to walk around with my face bared somehow made
everything worse. Because no matter what anybody else said, Maliah wore makeup.
She could’ve washed her face in boiling water and
laundry detergent and I would remain convinced she was lying through her Dusky
Rose—stained lips.
Ironically, her lecture began by describing the
standards expected for Elect women regarding modesty in clothing and
deportment. Then she handed me a manual and a cloth-covered writing journal and
told me I needed to keep a detailed log of my daily sins.
“Father offers confession once a month in a
private session. You’ll need the journal to remember everything. You’ll also be
assigned a female mentor,” she said. “You’ll meet weekly with her for scripture
study and to discuss your progress, if any. It’ll be one of the higher standing
women, such as myself. In fact, maybe I’ll suggest working with you to Father.
Wouldn’t that be fun?”
I smiled. “So much fun,” I said while silently
grinding my teeth to powder.
She went on to describe the chores and options for
work within the church structure. I learned those who entered the church
already employed in a decent job—or a job that helped further some aspect of
the Elect—were encouraged to continue on there. The out-workers.
Everyone else was funneled into several of the
Elect-owned businesses in neighboring communities: the restaurant, the
combination-gift-and-craft store called the Farmers Market, and a custom
furniture shop. It still didn’t seem like enough income to run an organization
this size. Then Maliah asked about my work history.
Her lip curled. “A therapist?”
We had a brief glaring contest.
I won.
“Well, we could always use extra wait staff before
the holidays.” She glanced out the window as a car pulled up. Momentarily
distracted, we watched as a lanky passenger unfolded his body from the vehicle
in sectioned installments.
I brought Maliah’s attention back to the subject.
“That’s fine. I waitressed my way through college. Grad school too.”
“Of course, there are assigned chores here as
well,” she said. “We’ll have to figure out where you might help out, although
with your skill set…” She shrugged as if finding any possible use for me would
be hopeless.
“Maybe the kitchen?” I ventured. I liked Jala, and
it would put me in the thick of the community, side by side with several
gossips.
“No,” Maliah said. She took her time, drawing it
out. “I think… maybe the kennels.”
“The kennels?” Okay. This time I reacted.
She smiled slightly with her big, fat, fake lips.
“Yes, that should work. You like dogs, don’t you? Everybody likes dogs.”
“Well…”
A knock. A woman, flustered and clutching her
hands together as if in prayer, entered.
“A
bigail, I’m in
a meeting.” Maliah sounded like an irritated CEO.
“I’m sorry, but there are some policemen here to
talk to you.” Abigail looked over her shoulder into the dim hallway where two
men waited. As she hovered in the doorway, the taller of the two slid past her,
stepping into the office.
An ill-fitted, generic-blue suit contributed to an
initial expectation of gangly awkwardness. Despite this, his manner and movements
were sharply controlled and his eyes, fixed on Maliah, steady and noncommunicative.
“Mrs. Nichols?”
“Yes?” Maliah answered politely, but with a
distanced wariness as if answering a trick question.
“Ma’am, we’d like to speak to you in private, if
you would?” Without waiting for her response, he turned to Abigail and me.
“Perhaps you could wait in the office next door.”
My good-girl, listen-to-the-cop instincts were
warring with my rampaging curiosity. I had no choice but to follow directions
and leave.
“Maliah, do you want me to stay?” Abigail offered,
ignoring Tall Guy’s frown.
“No, thank you. But maybe you could call Father?”
For the first time, Maliah’s steely control broke, and a quiver ran through her
last words.
They shut the door as we retreated to the church
office. Abigail rushed to a phone and punched in three numbers for an inside
line. After several seconds of silence, she hung up.
“Nobody’s answering,” she said.
“Are you trying to call Father?”
“Yes. I know he’s home, but he doesn’t always pick
up.”
“What do the cops want?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t tell me, but it has to do with
Enoch. They asked for his wife.” Abigail shifted back to her immediate concern.
“I just wish I knew what to do. Father has to be told.”
“Do you want me to run over to the house and tell
him?”
“Of course not. You can’t just barge in there.”
Yeesh. Obviously there were rules about
approaching Father. I mulled over what I had learned about the hierarchy.
“What about Moses or Eli?” Apparently those two
were approachable because she sent me off to find them.
It wasn’t until I was standing on the porch that I
realized I had no clue how to find either man. But I knew someone who might.
I was in luck. Jala was pretty sure I would find
Eli in the barn taking inventory, so I hurried across the spindly scrub grass
and let myself in through the heavy wood door. I paused, letting my eyes adjust
to the dim interior.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. Really, fear
had short-circuited my brain, causing my muscles to lock. For several moments,
I worked at relaxing. Epic fail. I just had to wait it out. Even panic couldn’t
last forever.
Bars of sunlight dense with hanging dust motes
slanted in through chinks in the wall planks. The section I stood in held four
large empty stalls, two on each side of a wide cement aisle. A battered
wheelbarrow, handles shined smooth from decades of use, held a mound of manure
and squatted next to a plastic bag filled with wood shavings for bedding.
Behind them, an enormous set of sliding double doors led deeper into the
structure. Directly in front of me—so close that I might have tripped over them
had I continued forward while sun blind—rose a set of thick planked stairs to
the second floor. Bales of stacked hay rimmed the opening overhead, obscuring a
clear view of the loft.
I stood still, listening.
The thin sound of whistling, like an auditory
haunting, rose from the barn’s interior, too faint to pin down the direction.
Moving to the set of double doors, I heaved them open a couple of inches. Lost
the tune.
Moving back to the stairs and up a couple of steps,
I picked out the haunting melody as “Amazing Grace.” Hoping I wasn’t going to
run into the ghost of Farmer Brown, I shakily climbed the stairs.
The space surrounding the stairway opening, almost
a quarter of the whole area, was traditional hay loft. Bales stacked like
bricks, and about as solid, rose twenty feet high. A chute, which I’d missed
when down below, provided a convenient hole to drop bales through to the
livestock. Dangerous, if you weren’t paying attention to where you walked, but
standard in old barns.
The rest of the haymow was turned into storage for
the church’s shop. Aisles of furniture ran across the barn’s width, a broad
center aisle bisecting the middle. The whistling drifted from the maze, echoing
off the timbered, upside down Noah’s-ark barn ceiling.
I finally did what I should have done earlier and
called out. “Hello?”
The whistling stopped.
“Yo.” Eli’s deep voice graveled through the dusty
air, and he appeared midway down the aisle.
“The police are with Maliah. She asked for Father,
but he’s not answering the phone, so Abigail sent me to find you.”
As soon as I had delivered the message, I realized
what a seamless transition I had made from investigative outsider to involved
group member. Here was the first chance I had gotten to speak with Eli in
private, and I was babbling about church business. He set a clipboard on a
cherry bureau and moved down the aisle to me.
“Guess I better go see if she needs my help,” he
said.
He sure was awfully willing to fly to her aid all
of a sudden.
“I’m sure she can take care of herself just fine.”
My voice was dry enough to spontaneously combust and set the barn on fire.
Reaching my side, a small smile tugged at his
lips. No fool, he. His ability to laser through my defensive smoke screens had
always been the scariest thing about him.
He stood motionless in front of me. Silent.
Chocolate brown eyes locked on my own, searching, drinking me in. Heat flushed
through me and my breath caught short in my chest, lungs competing for space
with a wildly thumping heart. New form of panic attack.
Grabbing a fistful of shirtfront, he pulled me
into a bruising kiss. Nothing ambivalent about his reaction to our reunion. He
released me just as abruptly, and I nearly dropped to the floor.
“She in the lodge?” he asked, moving to the
stairs.
Still in a full-lust flush, I stared open-mouthed
at his retreating flannel-clad back.
“She wears makeup, you know!”
His laughter bounced off the timbered ceiling as
he trotted down the stairs.
As I left the barn, I had a choice of heading back
to the dining hall and sharing the news with Jala or returning to the office to
see if Abigail had learned anything new. After consideration, it was doubtful
Abigail would spill anything.
A flicker of movement from the farmhouse danced at
the edge of my vision. The window curtains were drawn back against the morning
sun. Had someone been watching me?
Abigail’s shrill reaction at my offer to take a
message to Father still irked me. It would have made a perfect opportunity to
make contact with the church leader and observe his reaction to police
involvement.
Although… It wasn’t like he would know I had been
ordered not to.
My footsteps slowed in contrast to my racing
thoughts. Moses might be in there, too. And I had been told to fetch him,
hadn’t I?
Before I lost my nerve—or started to think
sensibly—I turned off the driveway and trotted up the path to the front door. I
knocked and waited. Knocked louder. From the window in the door I could see a
tiled foyer and hallway leading to the back of the house. A door at the end of
hallway stood partially open, revealing a truncated view of a blue-and-white
kitchen beyond. Very cheery.
The tiny seed of bravado that had sprung up inside
me withered and died before I could knock a third time. I had either been
mistaken about the movement or was being ignored. The waning adrenaline left a
tinny taste in my mouth. Time to go.
As impulsively as I had left the driveway, I
turned and bounded down the stairs. My hasty retreat might have been to blame
for my ramming into Father, knocking us straight off the porch and into the
bushes. Unexpectedly straddling an irate church leader with my skirt hitched up
around my hips, and twigs digging furrows into my legs deep enough to plant
corn in, propelled me into another full-blown panic attack. Which meant I was
now panting and sweating while barelegged and astride said church leader.
Beneath me, Father lay gasping as well, eyes
rounded like chocolate donuts, staring up at me in utter disbelief. As
comprehension dawned, his face flooded a purple-red color, and his panting
shifted into teeth-gritting hisses. Not a very spiritual look at all.
From above us, somebody’s hands grabbed under my
pits and hauled me nearly to my feet before tossing me aside on the lawn. This
time I fell on the grass, which was marginally better than irate church leaders
or spiky twigs. Moses pulled Father to his feet, anxiously checking for
injuries and brushing dead leaves and dirt from the man. Father had landed on
top of the Elect manual; the writing journal lay tossed underneath a bush.
“I’m fine,” Father said. He pushed Moses’ss hands
away, stiff-arming his second-in-command back a step. They both turned to glare
down at me.
I sprawled at their feet like a deranged beggar
woman. In the melee, my hair had escaped its bun, swirling around my head like
I had stuck my finger in a socket. Moses’ss gaze shifted, and his beady eyes
crawled up my legs to where my skirt twisted and rode high on my thighs.
“Woman, who are you?” Father’s outrage roared
across the yard. I did the only thing I could think to do.
I groveled.
Flinging over onto my stomach, face to the ground,
I clutched at Father’s pants leg.
“Forgive me. Oh, please. Forgive me.” He pulled
his legs out from my grasp and backed away. I barely restrained myself from
croaking a plea for alms. Would have been over the top, even for this
ridiculous scene. Rising to my knees, I lifted tear-filled eyes to the men. Moses’ss
expression softened, but whether from lust or pity was anybody's guess.
Father’s face, on the other hand, remained inscrutable. He glanced around the
yard as if suddenly realizing the bizarre spectacle we made.
“Bring her inside,” he growled. Pivoting, he
strode up the stairs and into the house.
Moses continued to stare down at me. Meeting his
eyes, I waited in silence. He held his hand out as if asking for the next
dance. Placing my hand in his, I dropped my eyes submissively, letting him help
me to my feet. He gathered my scattered books. Still silent, I followed him
into the house.