Chapter 33
33
This, this was horrible. So horrible.
She didn’t know what to do.
Leaving again… and her father said they were never coming back this time. She was going to have to leave Value forever.
But that was the last thing she wanted to do. Dinah… Dinah was happier in Value than she had ever been anywhere before. She had a job, she had friends, she had a life.
She didn’t want to go back to Colorado. She hated Della. She just hated it there. They didn’t even know if they would have a house there now. And since everyone from the church they knew had been arrested, her friends Esther and Naomi had disappeared forever.
Judah was crying. He was so afraid.
He didn’t want Hezekiah and their father to go to jail for what they’d done for Father Rei.
If they went to jail, what would happen to the rest of them? Dinah and Judah couldn’t make enough money to take care of their mother, too. They just couldn’t.
But… she didn’t want to leave Value behind. Tears coated her cheeks. She didn’t know what to do. She just didn’t.
Her father was yelling, she didn’t dare argue. Not… when he was like this.
They were leaving. Tomorrow. She had until tomorrow to figure this out.
Maybe… she should stay behind. It would keep the feds from being suspicious maybe. Not think they were all running away. She and Judah could stay, though, and could tell everyone that their family was visiting an ill grandmother or something.
It would be a lie, and that was most definitely a sin, but would it really hurt this once? If it protected her family? Her father and Hezekiah, they were big, strong, healthy. They could work. But Judah, he didn’t fit in anywhere, not really. And her mama had never worked a job before. She just cleaned and took care of the family.
Dinah’s stomach churned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She had a life here, plans. She had wanted more than what her mama had.
But none of that mattered now. Because Judah had put them all in danger years ago with that blond FBI man, and that man was here, and their father wasn’t about to wait for the police to figure out what he had done. Her father was making them leave to hide what he had done. That was all.
He didn’t care about what was best for all of them, he just didn’t.
Why hadn’t she ever really realized that before ?
Her father had said… Reverend Riordan was at the hospital the other day. He’d recognized her father, her father was sure of it. He was afraid… of what Reverend Riordan would do.
And the man from the FBI. He was looking for someone; her father insisted on it. He said… why else would that man be in Value ? At the very hospital where her father and brother worked?
Why would Reverend Riordan be there, too?
Dinah pushed to her feet, stepping into the dim hallway. Judah was still in his room, crying as he threw his things into a box. He looked, and acted, so much younger than what he was. Broken and afraid. It was easy to see why the police had believed him when he had lied about his age, playing the part of some lost, innocent boy when the Nebraska church was raided that night.
Judah’s friends had all been arrested. But Judah had walked away; the police had believed their mama when she’d said Judah was younger than what he was. When she’d given the police Nathanial’s birth certificate that night instead. Nathanial had been dead ten years, then. But he’d been born five years after Judah. And Judah always did what Mama told him, always said exactly what she said to say. Their father and Hezekiah had been away from home that night.
Somehow, the feds had never found them .
Until now. Until now.
And that FBI guy, Agent Lake, the one Dinah had spoken to herself that night in Nebraska. The blond, beautiful one. He had been kind, but… so terrifying. And now he was here.
And he wasn’t leaving. He’d been at the barbecue. He’d been at the hospital. Her father had seen him, himself. And the redheaded woman. Adonijah’s twin.
She was in Value now, too.
Her father was panicking. If that woman saw Hezekiah, she might recognize him. And she’d been at the diner today. With Agent Lake, and a pregnant woman. She’d looked right at Dinah and asked if they had ever met before.
What were they supposed to do?
She didn’t want her younger brother to go to jail. Judah would die there. She did not want them to find her brother now. She just didn’t. Fear for Judah made her want to vomit.
She stepped into the room. Judah paused for a moment and looked at her. She just looked at him. He was so young. Only twenty-three. And so scared. So small. He was so small. Weak. Her father said he was one of the broken ones sometimes, too. “Where did Father say we are we going?”
He didn’t look up. “Colorado, again. For a few months, to throw them off the trail. Then Wyoming, maybe. Heard there’s a factory hiring in Masterson County now. He said… he said I had to get a job now too. Since this is my fault. I can’t just stay home taking care of the place for Mama now. I have to work, bring in money. Since what I… took… that day is almost gone.”
Father Rei had given Judah a backpack, made it look like one a teenager would carry. Inside it had been all of the church’s important treasures, documents. Including the money. Judah had buried that bag that day.
He’d gone back and gotten it later, right before they had fled Nebraska.
That money… Judah had told them Father Rei had said to use it, to protect the church canonical papers. That kind of thing.
Her father had used it to buy groceries, instead.
Judah named the towns, not Della, not Evalyn, not Garrett. New ones. But still in the same area. Where the rest of the Holy Ones her father was always going on about had once been planning to live.
He wanted to be one of the Holy Ones more than anything.
But maybe she didn’t want to be one of the Holy Ones.
Maybe she wanted to be normal. To have a real life, like the women she knew in Value. Maybe she’d just like to wear a pair of jeans once in a while, to let her hair down. Or even cut it off. It got so heavy. Maybe she wanted to wear makeup sometimes, too.
Was it so wrong?
Here in Texas, she had felt free. She hadn’t had to stay home with her mother all the time. She’d felt so free and alive here. She was even making real friends. Not just… church friends. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, Judah. I do.”
Judah just looked at her. “You don’t have a choice.”
Her hands curled into fists. “We could stay. The two of us. You could get a job here, and I make good tips. I’ll be thirty in three years, Judah. I am an adult. And so are you.”
He shook his head. “No, we can’t. Father says we can’t. We have to leave.”
“Is this about you, or about what you took?”
The records. She’d seen them before.
Father Rei’s books, too. Judah hadn’t just taken the backpack he’d been given by Father Rei. He had taken Father Rei’s journals, too. With… all of his prophecies and the lists of what the True Hope Lifers were supposed to do.
What they had done.
Judah had taken the Truth. Father Rei had told him he was the keeper of the Hope Life Truth.
Judah… said it was what he had been called to do.
No matter what their father said now.