39. Evelyn
When Caleb called, Laszlo wasn’t home.
“Evelyn, my sweet little lamb. I have missed you.”
The second he said my name, my world was upended. I fell down the rabbit hole, shrinking, my library expanding to a gigantic cavern. The shadows on the wall shifted, ominous, threatening. My head was filled with a tidal wave of blood, my heart aching in my chest.
I didn’t remember that he ever called me his sweet little lamb before, but his words called back to a time in my mind from before memories. A sense of rightness.
“You have a weird way of showing it,” I bit back, bracing for a reprimand that never came. My hand trembled as I held the phone. I worked on this with my therapist, with Laszlo, but the reality was different.
“Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, as do his humble servants.”
There was nothing humble about Caleb. He fashioned himself as the authority, the one who saw through the church’s lies and exposed them. I had predicted wrong about how this conversation would go, and I lost my footing.
“Why now?”
“You always did need to understand. I couldn’t make sense of that when you were small. Why you couldn’t have faith in my word, when your mother demonstrated her place so well.” There was a hint of regret in his tone, something that was foreign on his lips. I didn’t like it.
I dropped the phone to my desk and put him on speaker. I glanced at the camera in the side of my home office, but the light was off. Laszlo wasn’t watching me, and I hoped he would. I was unmoored in his absence, and I cursed Caleb for calling when I was alone. Why did I answer?
Because I wanted Caleb to call. I hoped…
I didn’t dare think about what I hoped, letting it remain an ephemeral blur on the horizons of my awareness.
“You always were special, Evelyn. I wish I had told you that more, when you were younger, when it mattered. I cared for my flock, but in doing so, I neglected my own child.”
My throat seized, my lungs shrinking. I couldn’t get enough air. I gulped, gripping the edge of my desk, watching my knuckles turn white. There was a scent of soil accompanying his words, fresh, natural. My windows were closed. Why did I smell dirt?
“I should have been a better father to you. A better shepherd. I loved you. I love you. But I couldn’t show favouritism.
Not to a girl.” He loved me? Loves me? “That was why I didn’t marry you off, why I promised you to Henry.
I knew he would take care of you. He always did favour you, even when you were a girl. Remember?”
Flashes. Him helping me up, bandaging my foot after I stumbled. Complimenting my cooking. Giving me a knowing smile behind Caleb’s back. But then he kept growing, changing, morphing into someone I didn’t recognize. His father’s son, as cold and closed off, as cruel and unfeeling.
“I remember,” I muttered under my breath. My throat tasted of acid.
“He’s waiting for his betrothed to return.”
Anger churned in my stomach.
“I can’t.”
On the other end of the line there was the sucking of a breath, and the shadows on my wall seemed to lengthen. My head spun, and I closed my eyes, swaying with dizziness.
“You can, and you will. You are mine to do with as I please, Evelyn. I have been more than patient with your little charade, but the Lord is calling you home.”
“You’re calling me home.”
“I am the Lord,” he seethed through his teeth.
It had been a long time since I heard his voice, and still, it propelled me back with the force of his disdain. I wanted to turn and run. To him or from him? Sometimes it felt the same.
“No.”
“What was that?” Fury rose in him, igniting each word in flames.
“No, you’re a man. A cruel man who only sees others as pawns to use, to manipulate, to control.”
He reminded me of Mr. Bodrov, the man Laszlo worked for when we first met. They were different, but underneath the external expression of insecurity was the same need to control, to punish those who refused to be controlled.
It was helpful for me to think of him like that, and distance him from the image of the father I longed for all my youth.
“You forget yourself, Evelyn.”
“No. No! I don’t forget myself! I’ve spent all this time remembering who I could have been before you cut me up!”
“And who do you think you are?”
The words were a chittering threat in my ear, and I was lost in a void. My room swallowed me, and I groped for something, anything, to pull me back. There was nothing. Just me. Small, stuck in a body three times too small. Pain radiated out of me, terror.
“I’m Lyn.” My voice was thin. I couldn’t even hear it. Wasn’t certain I spoke it aloud.
“I’m Lyn.” The words were shakier, but louder. They give me a ladder, something to climb out of this pit. “I’m a jewellery maker. I’m clever, and stubborn, and a good wife for a man who loves me. But more than that, Caleb, I am no longer yours to claim!”
“You will obey me, girl!”
“No! You are nothing! You destroy everything you touch. What Lord would want you as a servant? A manipulative child predator.”
My hand clapped over my mouth.
I’d never said those words out loud before. Couldn’t think them, not in such a straight forward way. I knew it was the truth, even when I was young, but everyone accepted him as our saviour. No law made by man could contain him, or his followers.
But my mother was a fifteen-year-old girl when he impregnated her.
He was a grown man with a ten-year-old child.
There was an unsettled silence, and I felt gagged by my heart. I clawed at my throat, begging for a breath that was too shallow to cure me of the dizziness. I gulped for more, struggling against an invisible grip on my neck, and then it was gone, and the call went dead.