Chapter 2
Nina
I’ve done some things I’m not proud of in my life.
I’ve lied to my aunt and uncle, several times. Mostly through the sin of omission, not outright fabrication, but still. A lie is a lie. The Lord detests lying lips. And yet I do it so frequently. Here are just some of the things I’ve lied about:
Sometimes I crave sugar so bad that I sneak into the pantry when everyone else is asleep and take a handful of sugar cubes to bring up to my room. I don’t do it too often, but whenever I do, I don’t write about it in my weekly food journal. (Gluttony.)
I keep a stash of fashion magazines in my room.
They’re usually just the old ones that the library would otherwise throw away.
Helen saves some for me, and I slip them into my piano sheet music so Aunt Hope won’t see me bringing them into the house.
I like to look at the way the clothes are made and try to figure out what pattern I would use or what type of material something is made of. (Worldliness.)
I keep leftover scraps from the clothes I make for my family and practice making some of the outfits I see in my magazines.
They always turn out strange because the fabric is mishmashed and not quite right, but sometimes, I’m proud of how well they look.
(Pride.) I daydream about sequins and fabric and thread the way Harmony dreams about makeup. (Envy. Greed.)
It irritates me that Aunt Hope changed her name from Esperanza to be more white passing.
I hate that she dyes her hair a lighter brown and uses special creams so her skin won’t get as tan.
I hate it even more that Uncle Aaron still always uses her as his example of how the Lord loves all people, even if they committed “the terrible sin of being born brown.” He’s never said that in so many words, of course, but sometimes I feel like that’s the underlying truth no one is saying out loud.
I hate that I think that way, and I hate that I can’t stop. (Judge not, lest ye shall be judged.)
I stained the carpet once with cranberry juice and blamed it on Isaiah, when he was still too young to speak up for himself. (Dishonesty.)
I don’t defend my aunt and uncle to my friends because sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I think my aunt and uncle are too overbearing. Sometimes I resent all the rules they make me follow and all the things I’ve had to give up to make them happy. (Ingratitude.)
This last one might be one of my worst sins, because deep down I know my uncle and aunt are right to treat me the way they do. I’m a sinful person. My judgment might seem right to me, but I’ve made mistakes before—big mistakes. Mistakes that will follow me for the rest of my life.
So even though I chafe against my uncle’s rules, even though I sometimes wish I could live a normal life, I know this is what’s best. I’ve stumbled too many times to be left on my own.
I’m not someone whose judgment can be trusted.
I’m going to tell you a story now, and I’m going to tell it as a story.
A fairy tale. Not because I imagine myself as being as brave or strong or resilient as any of my favorite fairy-tale characters.
But because sometimes it’s easier to remember the things that have happened to me if I can think of them almost like they were happening to someone else.
If I can reimagine them as the kind of tale that might have a happy ending, if someone else were writing it.
The Orphan Girl and the Thief
Part One
When the Orphan Girl was eighteen, she made the biggest mistake of her life.
She can’t talk about it. Still. Ever. That isn’t what this story is about.
But it was the reason she was sent to a convent to take her vows—even though doing so would mean following the same religion that her relatives had once told her was so wicked and false. Anyone who would take her off their hands turned out to be not so very wicked after all.
The Orphan Girl was surprised to find that convent life wasn’t much of an adjustment after living in her uncle’s house.
She was told to be silent. She lived a life of prayer and scripture study and service.
The nuns called her by her new religious name given to her as a postulant, Agnes, which also wasn’t so different, since she was used to being whatever someone else wanted her to be.
About six months into the Orphan Girl’s postulancy, Sister Theresa recruited her, along with a few nuns and a handful of other postulants and novices, to serve at the local prison, ministering to anyone who was seeking Christ through Bible study and prayer.
That was where she met the Thief.
The Orphan Girl didn’t notice the Thief at first. She tried not to look too closely at any of the men during worship. It wasn’t because they were prisoners—after all, Christ had said to do good to those who were even the least of these my brethren.
It was because they were men. The Orphan Girl had a hard time trusting men. There were also too many memories of Uncle Aaron, keeping the family under his thumb. They could never challenge him, they could never raise their voices to him.
Then there were the memories she wouldn’t let herself think about, memories of the biggest mistake she’d ever made.
Men were dangerous, you see.
So the Orphan Girl always kept her eyes down on her Bible. At the end of each meeting, it was her job to gather up all the handouts that had been left behind.
On her third visit to the prison, the Orphan Girl noticed that someone had made a detailed drawing on one of the printouts. When she examined it more closely, she saw it wasn’t just any drawing.
It was a sketch of her.
Someone had drawn her from the shoulders up, wearing her black tunic, her head, neck, and hair covered by her coif. Her expression was serene and downcast, only the faintest hint of light showing in her eyes.
The drawing didn’t take any liberties. It didn’t capture anything that couldn’t have been easily observed by any one of the men.
It shouldn’t have felt as deeply personal as it did.
But the fact that someone had observed her so closely rattled the Orphan Girl.
Whoever the prisoner was who had drawn this, he was a skilled artist. He’d only used what appeared to be a basic pencil, but she recognized her own expression, the slight tilt to her head, the way she tucked her chin slightly under.
Her long, naturally dark lashes and the curve of her mouth.
The shadows from the light overhead, playing out across her features.
The Orphan Girl threw the picture away. She always regretted that afterward, but in the moment, she worried it would be vain to keep it.
When they met with the prisoners the next week, though, the Orphan Girl circumspectly cast her eyes around the room as Sister Theresa took everyone through a reading of Psalms. Everyone was looking down at their printouts of the verses.
One pair of eyes, though, was focused on her.
The Orphan Girl had never seen eyes like those before, and she hadn’t since. They were pale sage green, with just the slightest hint of hazel in them. And they were watching her so closely, as if tracing every faint shift of her expression.
The Thief’s face was beautiful—there was no other way to describe it.
The Orphan Girl had never thought of a man as being beautiful before, but he was.
His dark blond hair was buzzed down almost to the scalp, which only intensified the symmetry of his face—his strong jaw and sculpted nose.
He had a tattoo of what looked like a dragon climbing up his neck from underneath the collar of his shirt, which should have made him look dangerous, maybe a little scary; but this roughness was contrasted sharply with his lips, surprisingly full for a man’s, plush and soft looking.
When their gazes met, the Orphan Girl felt like someone had turned on all the lights in her body. She quickly looked away, back down at the Bible, her hands shaking under the table.
She didn’t dare look up again for the rest of the meeting.
But afterward, when the Orphan Girl went to gather the handouts, she saw another sketched version of herself waiting.
This time, she was looking up and straight ahead.
The way the Thief had drawn her, it was as though her dark eyes were staring straight off the page, gazing out at her. And at him, as he’d drawn her.
The Orphan Girl felt a complicated series of emotions in response.
A thrill at being singled out, at being seen.
Followed by an immediate sense of shame, because she was so susceptible to vanity.
Then worry, because vanity could be a very slippery slope into far worse sin, as she’d learned once before.
Then guilt, because she ought to tell someone what was happening.
Then more guilt, because she didn’t want to say anything, because she knew that then it would stop. No more drawings, no more Thief.
So the Orphan Girl didn’t say anything. (Lying by omission.)
That silence opened a door between her and the Thief, and in the weeks that followed, the sketches kept coming. Sometimes he would write her messages—short little notes, mostly, that could have been for anyone, but she knew they were for her.
My name is Cass.
I like your smile.
Your eyes are incredible.
I could draw your face for the rest of my life and never get bored.
The Orphan Girl started to pay more attention to the Thief in their weekly meetings, doing so as subtly as she could, so no one else would notice.
She tried not to let him notice, either, but whenever he caught her watching, he would smile at the Orphan Girl, and it would send her heart into a gallop.
Made you look, he’d write to her when that happened.
But the Orphan Girl noticed things about the Thief, too, that he probably would have been just as surprised to learn.
The way the other men interacted with him, and the guards, too.
They sometimes teased him about being so good-looking.
The Orphan Girl guessed that’s where his name probably came from—Cass, short for Cassanova, because he was so charming.
She worried that meant he had lots of women writing to him, visiting him, maybe even waiting for him on the outside.
He must have noticed that, too, because one day he wrote her a simple message:
I only have eyes for you.
On that day, he only drew the Orphan Girl’s eyes, nothing else, staring out from the page.
There was such an intense expression in them, a mixture of hope, of worry, of longing, of fear.
She didn’t know how he managed to capture all of those feelings in nothing but a pair of eyes, but she saw them all there. She saw exactly how he saw her.
These silent exchanges of details and shared looks and scattered words went on for weeks and weeks.
It all added up to a bunch of nothings, but it began to feel like everything to the Orphan Girl.
It was the only thing she had to look forward to all week long.
It was the only time she felt like she wasn’t invisible.
No, that wasn’t entirely right. Her whole life, people had commented on what a pretty girl she was, then what a beautiful woman, but that kind of praise had always made her feel uncomfortable.
She didn’t want most people to notice her or single her out.
It felt like they only did so because they wanted to take something from her.
With the Thief, though, it didn’t feel that way. It felt like he was giving her something by noticing all those little things about her.
It was the first time the Orphan Girl wanted to be seen.