6. Kara
6
KARA
I didn’t dare take my eyes off Hayley Jade. Firelight flickered over her sweet face, and I’d removed my veil without permission, not caring if I was caught in public without it. I refused to have my vision obstructed by anything when watching my daughter. Making sure she was safe was more important than it had ever been.
Alice tried to convince me to go and pack a bag, but I shook my head stubbornly. There was nothing in my room I wanted. Josiah had long ago stripped away everything I cared about. I had no idea how we were going to get out, or how we’d get away with no money or resources, but none of that mattered when Hayley Jade wouldn’t even be here in twenty-four hours if we tried to delay long enough to make a plan. If Josiah had his way, she’d be sold and shipped off.
I’d already lost her once.
I wasn’t going to lose her again.
It took another hour, but eventually Shari came back from the woods for the second time, more haggard and used up than I’d ever seen her. The second man, the one who’d bid on Hayley Jade, had taken his turn with Shari after all. A consolation prize when Josiah had refused him the thing he really wanted. The newcomer zipped up his pants as he returned to the circle, and Shari brushed fallen leaves and dry winter grass from her hair and the back of her top.
I wanted to hate her. For allowing my daughter to be here. For not keeping her safe.
Except, wasn’t I just as guilty? Just as helpless?
All I could do was pity the woman who wasn’t even protected by the sanctity of marriage. Josiah might have used my body whenever the mood took him, but at least he didn’t rent me out to his friends.
“Take the girl home, Shari,” Josiah demanded. “Make sure she is clean and presentable tomorrow. I’ll need some photos of her so we can get things underway.”
Shari hesitated.
Josiah’s gaze sharpened. “Is there a problem with that? You were told long ago what the Lord’s plans for this girl were. She is not part of our flock. She is tainted with the evil of the man who made her. She cannot be allowed to stay within our walls, especially not as beautiful as she is. You saw what happened here tonight. She is a temptation that will divide our men.”
Shari nodded quickly. “Of course. I will follow the Lord’s word, Brother Josiah. I will have her ready.”
Josiah ran his finger down the side of her face and lifted her chin, so she was forced to look him in the eyes. “That’s more like it. The Lord will be pleased by your obedience, as am I. Now take the child and go. ”
Shari gathered up Hayley Jade who was slumped over on the log seat, too tired to stay awake any longer. She didn’t stir as Shari strode from the campfire, Hayley Jade in her arms.
“Go,” I said to Alice. “Pack whatever you need but do it quickly and silently.” I swallowed thickly, not sure if what I was going to say next was the right thing to do or not. But I had to try. “Wake our sisters and tell them to come with us.”
Alice shook her head quickly. “We can’t! They’ll never come! Naomi and Samantha do everything right. You know they do. They’ll alert everyone, and we’ll never get out.”
She was right, but guilt crushed me at the thought of leaving them behind. “Will you be able to sleep at night if we leave them, knowing what we know now? Jacqueline is barely older than a child, but beautiful enough to turn men’s heads everywhere she goes. I’ve seen them staring at her, Alice! And not just in this perverted little circle where darkness and alcohol make them brave. They stare at Jacqueline in church like they’re a pack of hungry wolves and she’s a rabbit. No shame that everyone can see them. You know she’ll be next. All of our sisters will be.”
“Naomi and Samantha long for husbands,” Alice argued.
She was right. They did. I bit my lip with a sigh, then finally nodded, agreeing with her. Naomi and Samantha were made for this life in a way that Alice and I were not. I tried to be everything that was expected of me but failed at every hurdle. Alice didn’t even try. One of those newcomers could be the man who decided he wanted her, and then Alice’s life, which might have been reasonably good up until now, my father somewhat tolerant of her antics, would become identical to mine. She’d be a slave to her husband, there only to serve his needs and raise his children.
He’d eat up every ounce of her sparkle and leave her as dust.
Naomi and Samantha would thrive with those boundaries. Alice would shrivel up and die, and so would my bright-eyed daughter.
I couldn’t save them all.
“We leave Naomi and Samantha,” I agreed. “You’re right. They’ll never come. But we have to take Jacqueline.”
Alice nodded determinedly. “I can do it. I can make her understand. You get Hayley Jade. I’ll get Jacqueline. Meet me outside our place as quick as you can. It’s closer to the road.” Her eyes were bright with excitement. “We’re really doing this?”
Dread pooled in my stomach.
Alice saw this as a big adventure.
While I knew it was anything but. Alice had never been outside the walls that had been erected around our community. She’d been so sheltered, daydreaming about what life beyond the fences would be. Romanticizing it. No idea what the actual reality was.
But I knew. I’d been her once. I’d left and gone exploring, only to realize the world outside was worse than what I had in here. It was dark and depraved, no happiness to be found.
I didn’t want to leave the commune.
But Josiah had left me no choice.
Alice disappeared into the darkness, and I did the same, leaving the light of the bonfire behind me, praying the men would all stay there for hours more, drinking away the night until they were too intoxicated to get up and notice we’d gone.
Maybe if I was lucky, they’d all pass out, the fire would burn low, and the night frost would take them.
Something inside me delighted in the thought of their deaths, but I quickly banished the thought, knowing it stemmed from the evil inside me I hadn’t been able to shake in the five years since I’d returned from the outside.
Those demons still lurked inside me. It was yet another reason the Lord would not bless me with a pregnancy.
And I was about to make it so much worse. Step by step into the darkness, I could practically feel my insides blackening.
I was ruined.
But my determination to get Hayley Jade to safety mattered more than the state of my soul.
I caught up with Shari as she left the woods and entered the main area of the commune. We didn’t have streets as such, at least not with signposts and names, but there were well-worn paths between the central gardens and the modest homes that had been built around the edges.
Shari took a path I knew well. It led to the small cottage I had once lived in with my baby.
Back before I was wife number one.
My heart ached at the sight of it now. The little home I’d created for my daughter, that had been given to Shari when I’d been given to Josiah. I paused a few feet away and watched Shari enter her home, the lights flickering on and spilling out around the edges of the curtains.
“What now, Kara?” I mumbled out loud, breathing into my ungloved hands to warm them. I could practically hear a clock ticking in my head, counting down the seconds until Josiah would leave the bonfire and realize I wasn’t in my bed.
I froze when the door to Shari’s cabin opened before I could even decide what to do.
Shari stared right at the shrub I was hiding behind. “Are you coming in or just hanging around out there waiting to get caught?” she whispered.
Shock held me immobile for a moment, but Shari waved me in impatiently again, and slowly, I rose from my crouched position.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
I passed by her and into the home I’d once known so well.
Shari closed the door behind me, then the two of us stared at each other in the tiny living room of the cabin I’d once called home. Nothing much had changed. All the furniture was still the same as when I’d left. Only now, the handful of baby toys that had sat in a wicker basket in the corner was replaced with a small desk with crayons and paper, and a ragged doll.
Shari followed my line of sight and picked the toy up off the floor. She held it close to her for a moment and then reluctantly held it out to me. “She’ll need this. Here. Take it. The crayons and papers too. She likes to draw.”
I didn’t dare move, my heart pounding. Was this a trap? Something her and Josiah had conjured up together to test my loyalty ?
Shari’s expression shifted to desperate. “Take it!” She threw the items at my chest, so I had no choice but to grasp them before they fell to the floor.
Shari found a small backpack in the mudroom closet and started pulling tiny clothing from a laundry basket of fresh-smelling, neatly folded clothes. She shoved as many as she could fit into the backpack and then thrust that at me too.
I stared down at the bag full of Hayley Jade’s things and then back up at Shari. “I don’t understand.”
Shari’s expression turned angry. She glared at me with barely concealed hate. “You’re taking her, aren’t you? Getting her out of here?”
“I…” I closed my mouth, too scared to say a word. My brain screamed this was a trap. That this woman and Josiah were working together to trick me.
Shari moved in until we were practically nose to nose. She stared at me with such intensity I desperately wanted to turn away and yet I didn’t dare anger her further.
Shari’s eyes blazed as hot as the bonfire. “Listen to me, Kara, and listen to me good. Take that little girl and run. Run as far and as fast as you can.” She strode to the couch and lifted one of the sagging cushions. Beneath it, she withdrew an envelope and pushed it at me. “Here. Take this. It’s not much, but it should get you a bus ticket.”
With trembling hands, I looked down into the open envelope. Inside was a handful of small bills. Maybe two hundred dollars altogether. I snapped my head up in shock. “Women can’t have money here.”
Shari sniffed. “You think I don’t know that? That’s why I had it hidden beneath the couch. ”
“How…”
Shari sighed. “The only way women have ever made money when they have nothing else to give. You saw what happened tonight. You think that’s the first time? The newcomers don’t know Josiah doesn’t allow us women to have money. Many are in the habit of tipping to ease their guilt.”
My heart broke for the woman. She was older than me, maybe even closer to my mother’s age. I grasped her hand. It was cold, and I rubbed it briskly between mine. “Come with us. You don’t have to stay here and keep doing this.”
But the woman shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve been saving that money for years, knowing this day would come and I would have to protect that child. But I have nowhere to go. Nobody to help me. If I leave, I’ll just end up doing the same thing I’m doing here, but with no home, and no community around me.” She stared down the hall to where I knew there was a small bedroom. “I would have done it, for her.” She shifted her gaze back to me. “But you have a shot on the outside, Kara. You have a sister out there who will help you, right? I remember seeing her once years ago, when she came to visit your family, back before Josiah closed us off.”
I swallowed thickly and nodded. “Rebel.”
“You’ll go to her?”
I bit my lip. I hadn’t spoken to my sister in years. Not since shortly after I’d married Josiah and lost Hayley Jade. “It’s the first place they’ll look for me.”
Shari nodded. “You don’t have much choice though. Go. Ask her to help you find somewhere safe. Somewhere they won’t find you. That money will get you and Hayley Jade there, and maybe pay for some food for a day or two. But you’re going to need more.”
I knew she was right. I had no other contacts. No other way of getting money. The last time I’d left the commune with nothing had ended with me desperate and foolish.
Despite our lack of contact, Rebel would help me. She was a good person. Even though our communication had ended when Josiah had taken my phone, she wouldn’t send me away.
“Mama?” a tiny voice called from down the hall.
Both Shari and I turned.
My heart broke in two when Hayley Jade ran down the hallway and wrapped herself around Shari’s legs.
When she’d said Mama, she hadn’t meant me.
Shari knelt on the floor, so she and Hayley Jade were eye height. “Listen to me, Jade. I’m not your mama.” Her voice wobbled, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I got to be for a little while, and I will always love you like you were my own. But I can’t be what you need anymore. You’re going to go with Sister Kara, okay? She’s your mama now.”
Hayley Jade snuck a peek up at me, her eyes filled with fear. “No! I don’t want to.”
My knees shook, threatening to give out.
Shari’s voice wobbled. “I know, sweetheart. But you can’t stay here anymore. You have to leave.” She wrapped her arms around Hayley Jade quickly, crushing the girl to her chest before urging her to me. “Take her.”
“No!” Hayley Jade clung to Shari, digging her fingers into the woman’s skirts, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t want to go! Mama, no! ”
Shari gave a tiny sob. “Take her, Kara,” she urged, her face crumpling and her voice breaking. She pushed Hayley Jade to me again. “Please! Just take her and go. Don’t get caught. Make sure she has a good life away from this place. She’s your daughter. She always was.”
My heart broke in two, gratitude filling me for the woman who had taken my spot but was now giving it back to me. I reached for Hayley Jade, grasping her arm.
She opened her mouth and let out a blood-curdling scream.
I froze, despising that my touch had produced that sort of response in my own child.
Shari shook Hayley Jade hard. “Stop that. You won’t say a word. You won’t make another sound. Not if you want to be safe. You hear me? Not one. Now do as I say and go.”
Silent tears of fear and betrayal fell from Hayley Jade’s eyes.
But not a sound left her little lips as I tried to pick her up again. Shari covered her with a black coat and then urged me toward the door.
“Come with us,” I begged her again.
But Shari had already closed the door, leaving me outside in the frost with the daughter who feared me, and absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing.