Chapter III. 2007
CHAPTER III
“I’m going to talk to Henry. I can’t let her go, Vera. I can’t.” Her mother’s voice sharpened with a resolution Camilla had learned meant she would not change her mind.
Camilla wanted out. Out of the basement, out of the house, out of the entire compound.
She didn’t want to think her mother had kept her from participating in the Purity Ball all because of some childish memory.
That she would keep her from it again. As she pushed herself back from the door and toward the stairs, the apprehension she’d felt at first settled into a sharper frustration, and then anger.
For years, Camilla had been the punch line of every joke.
Openly laughed at because she was the preacher’s daughter, and still, even after high school graduation and turning eighteen, not allowed to participate.
Most of the girls were twelve or thirteen at the most when they attended their Ball.
She would be the oldest by far. She would look ridiculous standing next to those little girls.
Even Noah and Brianna regularly joined in, laughing hysterically as they asked if Camilla planned to wear white tights and Mary Janes with her gown.
It didn’t matter if they were joking. The whole thing was humiliating.
And all for what? Some long-ago neuroticism her mother still clung to while Camilla bore the brunt of the teasing?
Her bare feet sank into the runner’s plush carpet as she pushed herself up the stairs.
Her mother wouldn’t notice she’d not come down for Pilates.
Not with Vera there offering a shoulder to snivel on.
And her father would likely be in his study the rest of the day.
No one would be looking for her, and she wanted it that way.
The last thing she needed right now was any semblance of trouble because someone caught her sneaking out.
Grabbing a pair of shoes from her bedroom, she slipped back down the main stairs and breathed a sigh of relief when no one saw her grab the keys to the Jeep. Staff used it to shuttle equipment back and forth across the property on days they hosted luncheons, so no one would miss it.
She kept to the edges of the house, darting past the windows as she hoped no one was inside to see.
Or, if they did, they would think she was a squirrel or a leaf caught on the wind.
There and gone and not worthy of their attention.
She’d learned the external security camera blind spots a long time ago and avoided them, but their house was never quiet.
Never still. Housekeepers and chef staff and visitors and security …
it seemed as if there was someone always there.
Someone more than willing to report her to her father.
Because it didn’t matter that she was an adult.
She was his daughter. A representative of him in all things.
And she would be kidding herself if she thought he wasn’t capable of punishing her anymore.
The threat of his sending her on Retreat was ever present.
It was his money. His power. There was no question of her falling in line.
What else did she have but the life he provided her?
But what she had planned, she would keep secret. There would be no risk of her father finding out. Not if she did everything correctly.
As she crept toward the barn where they stored the Jeep, she couldn’t help but hold her breath.
An old habit left over from girlhood. A need to create some sort of ache inside her, a penance for her rebellion.
There were other moments—holding ice in her hand until its winter burn was too much; yanking a few strands of hair from the back of her head where no one would see; a safety pin on the soft flesh of her inner arm.
A sum of all her small sins laid bare on the altar of her body.
The barn was quiet, the main doors opening on silent, well-oiled rollers, and she slid into the cool dark.
The air tasted as it always did, of oil and dust and hay and things put away from lack of use, and she pulled it into her, relishing the sudden fullness in her chest. The air she denied herself flooded into her with a delicious sting.
The Jeep started easily, and she let the windows down, wanting the sensation of the wind in her hair.
Wanting to believe, even for a moment, she had some semblance of control over her life.
That she could choose to do something on her own without the ever-present threat of Jesus and her father.
Without her mother pretending she was still a little girl.
She swung the Jeep wide and then guided it onto the gravel road that led behind the house and then back to the main entrance.
It took twelve minutes to get to Noah’s house.
She parked at the entrance gate with its ivy-covered iron filigree, and then ducked behind the strangling vines, her hands searching for the secret entrance Noah cut when they were fourteen.
It had been a while since she needed to use it, but it was still there, and she pushed through, hoping he’d be out at the dog pens like he always was.
The Whitten family was known for its impeccably bred and trained German shepherds, sold to families intent on security. There were nights Noah slept out in the pens, surrounded by the dogs his father told him not to love. He’d never been able to help himself.
She crested the first hill, and then another, before she heard the dogs and then the sound of Noah’s voice calling out a series of commands.
The pens opened before her, a series of intricate gates and chain link, and there was Noah surrounded by his dogs, their tails beating frantically against the dirt as he held up his hand.
She brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled the way he’d taught her, and his head snapped up in alarm, his body tensing and then relaxing when he saw her.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he called as she trotted down to the pens. “What are you even doing here? You could have just texted me.”
“Didn’t want to risk anyone seeing anything they don’t need to.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
“There’s a few people I want you to text.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “About?”
She grinned. The word that came to mind was “wicked.” She wondered how long it would take for the shame to settle into her blood like it always did. For her father’s voice to overthrow her own. “This Friday night. We’re having a party.”
SOMEONE brOUGHT KEROSENE, and the bonfire Camilla, Noah, and Brianna built at the start of the evening was now an inferno.
The flames licked at the sky, sparks falling around them in a way a now fairly drunk Camilla found beautiful.
Behind them, a massive tree cast strange shadows, painted them all in dark that turned their faces angular. Hungry.
Camilla’s parents were out for the night—a dinner party with the Deans.
They would come home Scotch tipsy and stumble up to bed without worrying whether their daughter was safely asleep in her room.
Camilla would be home before they woke the next morning to nurse their hangovers with black coffee and ibuprofen.
Noah stood before the bonfire with Brianna as they chatted with Sam Rickard.
Camilla glanced back at the tree, looking for the only face she hoped to see, but he wasn’t there.
They all came—Noah and Brianna and Sam and Ariana and Rachel and Michael—but Grant Pemberton had not.
She should have known he wouldn’t bother with some fresh-out-of-high-schooler’s party, but it stung all the same.
Whatever significance she thought passed between them was clearly a product of her imagination.
Or her desire. Likely her desire. Wishful thinking had led her down yet another dead end.
Camilla stood and stretched her arms overhead, her cup balanced so she wouldn’t spill, and then made her way over to Noah and Brianna and Sam before settling on the grass in front of them.
Sam ran his hands through a perfectly unkempt swoop of blond hair and nudged her with the tip of his impractical leather loafer.
“Can’t believe you pulled all this off, Camilla.
” He gestured toward the bonfire with the flask he brought.
“Figured you’d be locked up inside your house, scared the Dark Sisters were coming for you. ”
Noah laughed and grabbed at Brianna, his best approximation of ghost noises coming out in a garbled wail that sounded more like a dying cat.
“Stop it. Someone is actually sick,” Brianna hissed, and sidestepped Noah. Her body shrank into itself. Closed off. Angry. Signs he should have easily read but didn’t.
“Oh, calm down, Brianna. Learn to take a joke,” Sam said. The boys’ laughter increased, the alcohol making them blind to the silence that had fallen over the girls. They fell into Michael, their wails choked beneath their idiotic glee as they contorted their faces into gaping, crooked mouths.
“It’s not fucking funny,” Brianna said, but they didn’t hear her. There was only enough space for their laughter. Their dismissal.
But the girls. They all knew. The fear. How it didn’t matter that the Sisters weren’t real.
They’d all grown up in The Path. They knew better than anyone how belief was more powerful than sight or logic.
Sight meant so little in the face of something as formidable as a little girl’s fear and belief.
But even if they shared the same Sunday school classes, heard the same platitudes week after week, Noah and Sam and Michael would never fully understand the depth to which the girls could believe in monsters.