8. Kara
8
KARA
A lice wasn’t at the meeting spot.
I stared up at the house I’d grown up in. It was one of the original properties, built back when these lands had just been a hundred-acre farm, surrounded by a couple of polite neighbors we would wave at as we traveled into town once a month for supplies.
Josiah had bought the land to the south of our property first, and then soon after the property that bordered our northern fence. What had started as a friendship between my father and the new owner next door had grown until we were calling him uncle, and then brother.
I’d been a stupid, na?ve kid. I hadn’t understood what was happening as the land around us became dotted with small cottages, and more and more people moved in.
But even if I’d been older, like my parents, I doubted anyone could have foreseen what this place would become over the course of the next two decades. Even five years ago, the commune had been nothing like it was today .
The fences had seemed important. Necessary for keeping us safe.
But now I saw them for what they truly were. Designed to keep us in. Small. Scared.
“Come on, Alice,” I mumbled, desperately searching the windows for any sign of her moving around on the other side. But there was nothing. Had something happened? Surely a light would have come on if my parents had caught her.
I glanced up toward the road, knowing it was there even though I couldn’t see it. It was a mile or two, but it should be an easy walk, since we could follow the main driveway. Once we were beyond that, it was miles more to the nearest town though.
Panic lit up inside me again. This was never going to work.
I glanced down at Hayley Jade beside me. She stared dead ahead, completely silent and unmoving.
But she was here. She was alive. If I didn’t do something, that wouldn’t be the case in twenty-four hours’ time.
“Come on.” I tugged her hand, and together we ran across the frosty front lawn of my parents’ house. I put my finger to my lips when we reached the stairs, and silently, the two of us crossed the old wooden porch.
They had never locked their doors. Nobody here did. It was easy to turn the handle and push open the heavy wood, though I cringed when it gave a tiny, short squeak of protest.
The mudroom on the other side was familiar. It was exactly the same as it had been when I’d lived here years before. The jackets hanging on the walls and the boots lined up neatly in rows were all larger than I remembered, a clear reminder that while Josiah had kept me sequestered away, my sisters had all grown up.
All except one.
I couldn’t leave Jacqueline behind. Or Alice.
“Stay here,” I whispered to Hayley Jade, praying she wouldn’t try to run back to Shari. “Remember what…” I swallowed hard. “Remember what your mama told you. Be still and quiet and you’ll be safe.”
She sat on the bench seat I nudged her toward but didn’t agree. She didn’t seem like she was going to run though.
That would have to be enough. I moved silently through the house, up the stairs that led to the bedrooms and around the corner that led to Jacqueline’s and Alice’s bedrooms.
“Oof,” Alice grunted softly, colliding with me in the hall. She put her hand over her heart when she recognized me. “Shit, Kara, you scared me half to death. I thought you were Mama. I was about to make up some sort of lie about sleepwalking.”
I ignored her, my gaze sliding past her to my youngest sister.
Jacqueline’s eyes were wide with fear. But a determination shone behind them.
“Are you okay?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
She nodded quickly.
She wasn’t, but she would be. Somehow. I motioned for the two young women to follow me and I swiveled silently on my heel, heading back the way I’d come
Down the stairs. Through the living area and to the mudroom where Hayley Jade sat exactly where I’d left her.
Thank God.
“Let’s get out of here.” Alice shouldered her backpack now that she had room. “We need to get up to the road and through the fence before those douchebags at the fire run out of beer to drink and women to abuse. Sayonara, house. I won’t miss you.”
Alice gave the finger to the stairs we’d just come down, and Jacqueline gasped. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t know what had gotten into my sister. She’d always been a bit unpredictable, a little wild, but I’d never seen her this openly disrespectful.
It wasn’t the way we’d been brought up.
Alice strode for the door, taking Hayley Jade’s hand and pulling her along with her.
I followed, pausing at the doorway to look back over my shoulder at Jacqueline.
She stood frozen, stuck between the life she knew upstairs and the unknown that lay beyond the gates.
I held my hand out to her. “Come on,” I urged. “Alice told you why we had to leave, right?”
Jacqueline nodded.
But she didn’t move.
She was reacting much the same way Hayley Jade had, reminding me she was barely more than a child herself. She needed me to be the strong one.
Which was a role I was wholly unfamiliar with.
“Trust me.” I tried to keep the wobble out of my voice. “I’ll keep you safe. You just have to come with me. I swear, it will all be all right.”
The overhead light flickered on .
Jacqueline and I both froze.
“What’s going on?” Naomi sleepily rubbed her eyes and blinked in the sudden light, even though she was the one who’d created it. Her eyes widened as her gaze landed on me, without my veil on. “Kara? What on earth are you doing here? Does Brother Josiah know…” Her forehead furrowed in confusion when she noticed Hayley Jade’s backpack slung over my shoulder, and a similar one strapped to Jacqueline’s back. Her shoulders straightened, and any remaining grogginess disappeared. “Why do you both have backpacks?”
I grasped her hand, nothing to say to her but the pure, honest truth. “Jacqueline is in danger. So are you. All the women here are. We’re leaving. Tonight.”
“Leaving? Leaving where? The house? Where are you going?”
I shook my head fast, my heart pounding at how long we were taking and how every second we stood down here was another second we risked being caught. But I had to try. Try to convince her to come with us. “We’re leaving the commune.”
Naomi ripped her hand away so quick it was like I’d burned her. And from her expression, I may as well have just burst into Hell-spawned flame.
“You don’t have permission,” she protested.
Jacqueline’s eyes watered. “Kara and Alice heard the men talking about selling women…”
Naomi squeezed her eyes shut tight, like a toddler who thought that if she couldn’t see, then no one could see her either. “No. They must have misheard. Now go back upstairs before Mama and Daddy catch you talking such nonsense. ”
“It’s true,” I whispered urgently. “Please, Naomi. Just listen to me. You’re all in danger.”
My sister’s eyes narrowed. “The only person we’re in danger from is you, Louisa Kara. There’s a reason Brother Josiah keeps you locked up in that house. It’s so your evil doesn’t spread.”
My heart split in two at my sister’s hard, cold words.
“Naomi!” Jacqueline gasped. “Don’t talk like that! She’s our sister.”
Naomi shook her head. “She hasn’t been my sister for a long time.”
Her expression hurt more than any of the beatings I’d taken. Any of the cruel words my husband had taunted me with.
The only thing that hurt more was losing my daughter, and I wasn’t about to do that again.
I nodded at Naomi and the scorn and indignation in her eyes. She might have hated me in that moment, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same. There would be no coming back here after this night. This would be the last time I’d ever get to see her. “I’ll miss you, Sister,” I said quietly, meaning every word. I turned to Jacqueline. “Come on. We need to go.”
Naomi grabbed Jacqueline’s arm and glared at her. “You are doing no such thing. I don’t care what Kara and Alice do. They’re grown women, and if they want to disrespect Brother Josiah and our Lord by leaving, then that’s on their souls. But they aren’t dragging an innocent child down with them. I will scream this house down and have Mama and Daddy here in a second if you so much as take a step outside this house, Jacqueline. You are not going to be dragged down by them. I won’t stand for it. You’re a good girl.”
I was suddenly glad Hayley Jade was outside somewhere with Alice, out of Naomi’s sight. If she’d known we were taking her too, she would probably already be screaming.
Unless she believed that innocent little girl was also as evil as the woman who’d given birth to her.
“Let her go,” I begged Naomi in a frantic whisper, checking over my shoulder for the others, but I couldn’t see them through the open door. “Please. You don’t know what you’re doing by keeping her here.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Naomi argued, her voice rising with every syllable. “I’m staring down the Devil, protecting an innocent from his clutches.” She shook her head at me with a look of pitying disgust. “There’s no hope for you, Louisa Kara. Go. Leave our house and our community, we’re all better off without you.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
Naomi’s eyes softened just the tiniest bit, like maybe she realized she’d gone too far. But she didn’t admit it. “Leave Jacqueline and I’ll give you a five-minute head start before I raise the alarm.”
“Naomi!” Jacqueline whispered. “You can’t tattle on them! I won’t go, but you can’t say a word! If they’re caught…”
I didn’t even want to think about it. The punishment would be the worst I’d ever received.
But Naomi held her frame tight and shook her head. “I won’t have Brother Josiah thinking I was unfaithful or that I kept this a secret. Five minutes is being more than generous.”
Five minutes? We were never going to get out in five minutes.
Naomi didn’t relent though. “Time is ticking.”
I frantically glanced to Jacqueline, knowing I couldn’t stay.
She nodded. “Go,” she said quietly. “I’ll be okay.”
I had to hope she would be. I had to pray our father would be man enough to stand up to Josiah if the time came.
I had to accept I couldn’t save both her and my daughter.
Hayley Jade had to come first.
I turned and fled from the house, silent tears streaming down my face in the cold, dark night of winter.
My breaths frosted around my lips, and my heart rate tripled until I could barely breathe. Panic coursed through my veins, terror pushing me on.
Alice and Hayley Jade waited for me at the edge of the clearing.
Alice stared at me, taking in my tears and swore low under her breath. “She’s not coming, is she?”
I scooped Hayley Jade up from the ground and shook my head, my throat too choked with tears to say anything. But the panic didn’t subside.
Naomi was a good woman. She was exactly what Josiah wanted. I had no doubt in my mind that when she said she was giving us a five-minute head start before she raised the alarm, she meant every word.
“Run,” I choked out to Alice. “God, please. Run.”