Quake's Forbidden Property

Prologue

WHITNEY

Nine years old…

“What are you doing?”

I whirl around and glare at Ryan. He’s twelve, and I hate him.

I don’t even care that Sister Beatrice would make me sit in silence for hours if she knew how I felt.

Ryan has been mean to me from day one. It’s bad enough that my parents didn’t want me anymore, but he makes it worse by his constant teasing and bossy ways.

“Nothing,” I mutter before turning back around to stare into the room reserved for families coming to pick up their new additions.

Ryan steps up beside me, and I wrinkle my nose at his smell.

He’s one of the kids who gives the nuns a hard time when it comes to taking a bath or shower.

Boys and girls are separated at Sacred Haven Children’s Home, but it’s impossible not to hear him getting in trouble.

A few times I’ve heard the way he screams and cries, and I always feel bad for him, but then he does something like get close, and his stink makes the pity disappear.

“You know that’ll never be you, right?” he taunts as I watch the man and woman gush over Bethany, the baby they came to adopt.

Yes, it will!

Twelve years old…

“Go to your room, Whitney.”

Tears fill my eyes, but I turn around and walk toward the room I share with the other girls waiting for a family of their own.

At breakfast, Sister Beatrice announced that a couple was coming to meet some of the children, but then she said that they’re only interested in those under five years old.

I refused to leave, which only resulted in a standoff with Sister Mary Jane.

I’d have won, too, if Sister Beatrice hadn’t returned to the dining hall.

“Keep telling yourself that.”

I stop walking and face Ryan. He moves to stand against the wall, and the smirk on his face is so smug that I want to punch him.

“Telling myself what?”

“That you’d have won,” he says, and when I tilt my head, he continues. “You tend to mutter what’s going through your head when you think you’re alone.”

“Shut up.”

“Oooh, be careful. Wouldn’t want one of the nuns to hear you say that.” When I stay silent, he takes a step toward me. “When are you gonna learn that no one wants a kid that was already given away by their parents?”

You’re wrong!

I scurry the rest of the way to my room, and later, after all the kids are sent to bed, I struggle to sleep. I don’t know how long I lay here before slipping from beneath the blanket and creeping out of the girls’ wing.

The building is different at night. It’s quieter, softer, less intimidating.

I don’t even realize where I’m going until I reach the chapel. Pushing open the double doors, I step inside. The candles aren’t lit, having been extinguished hours ago, but the moonlight that streams through the stained-glass windows illuminates the space.

I slide into the pew closest to the doors and stare at the cross that hangs above the altar.

“Why?” I whisper. The one-word question encompasses so much.

Why did my parents leave me here when I was five?

Why didn’t anyone want me?

Why did every family who walked through the front door choose someone else?

My eyes burn, but I refuse to let the tears fall. I’ve spent so much time with wet cheeks, and I’m tired of it.

“Twelve,” I say, my eyes remaining on that stupid cross. “Twelve kids have been adopted this year, but not me. Why?”

No answer comes. There’s no voice from the heavens, no soft whisper from God, no miracle. But something inside of me still shifts.

My loneliness eases, as does the ache that always seems to be in my chest. I have no clue what causes it, but at this moment, I choose to believe one thing…

Maybe God is simply waiting, listening, and silently guiding me toward something better.

With that thought in mind, I return to the shared room, tiptoeing past the sleeping kids and climbing into bed. I don’t have any more answers than I did before stepping into the chapel, but I do sleep better than I have in years.

Fifteen years old…

“Still think someone’s gonna want you?”

It’s taken ten years, but I think I finally understand Ryan. I always thought he was mean, but now? I realize he’s just as sad and broken as I am.

I shrug. “There’s time,” I say, although I don’t believe it anymore.

He slings the brand-new duffel bag the nuns gave him over his shoulder.

It’s one that was donated, and it looks like every other bag given to those of us who turn eighteen and walk out of Sacred Haven with nothing more than the contents of the bag—a few articles of clothing, a toothbrush, some hygiene products, the cash we save from our allowance over the years, and a Bible—and a jaded spirit.

“Right. Time.” His face contorts into a bitter scowl.

“Time isn’t your friend, Whitney. It isn’t going to pass in a haze of magical rainbows that will somehow wrap your life in color and good things.

” Ryan reaches out and tugs on a strand of my hair.

“When you turn eighteen and are kicked out of this hell hole, look me up.”

That’s the only goodbye I get from the boy who tormented me for years.

“Whitney, come on inside.”

I turn around and see Sister Beatrice standing in the doorway. Her gaze is trained on Ryan as he disappears down the winding drive that leads to the home, and her expression is… soft?

“You’re going to miss him,” I say when I join her to go inside.

She sighs. “I miss every child who leaves.”

“Yeah, but…” I shake my head in an effort to shift the pieces of a puzzle I didn’t even know I was trying to solve. “He was always getting in trouble.”

Sister Beatrice chuckles, but the sound is wet, like she’s choking on a sob. “It’s the troublesome ones who need us the most, need God the most.”

I go to bed with those words playing on a loop in my brain.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months, and months turn into years. Other kids come and go while I remain.

There are moments when the bitterness becomes overwhelming, but I try to reflect on that one night long ago in the chapel. Ryan is gone, no one has come for me, but I keep telling myself I’m not alone.

Maybe getting older has made me wiser, or maybe I’ve simply gotten used to being left behind. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, as I spend more and more time with the younger children.

I help them with homework, read them stories before bed, and sit beside them when families visit and choose someone else.

When I’m sixteen, Emma and Ethan enter Sacred Haven, and their sibling bond spurs jealousy in me.

After four months, Ethan is adopted while Emma is left behind.

I sit with her while she cries herself to sleep for two weeks straight.

Every single night she cries, I lose sleep because something in me desperately needs her to see that she isn’t alone, that someone cares.

On night ten, she asked me if anyone would ever want her, and I repeated the words Sister Beatrice and the other nuns spent years telling me: You’re loved.

“What if nobody picks me?” she asks, sniffling.

“They will,” I assure her.

“How do you know?”

Because God hasn’t forgotten me.

The answer appears in my mind so quickly that it startles me, but I don’t say it out loud. I can’t because I’m not sure I completely believe it, but this little girl doesn’t need me to believe the words I tell her, she just needs me to say them.

So, I smile and squeeze Emma’s hand. “I just know.”

Strangely, the more I say the words to other kids, the more I start to believe them for me. Not because anyone has come for me. Not because there’s any hope that I’ll be adopted at my age.

No. I start to believe them because I stop waiting for all those things. I stop waiting for someone to save me. I’m too busy helping save everyone else.

Now, on my seventeenth birthday, I step into the chapel where Sister Beatrice is replacing prayer candles. She looks up from her task and smiles at me.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” she replies.

I hesitate but only for a moment. “Do you ever regret becoming a nun?”

“No,” she says immediately. “Never.”

“Not even when life is hard?” I press.

“Especially not then.”

“But…” I frown, not having expected this response. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Sister Beatrice lights a candle before explaining. “Whitney, God doesn’t call us because we have all the answers. He calls on us because we have a purpose, and that call is often loudest in the dark.”

I glance around the chapel as I process her words. “And this is your purpose? Taking care of kids who aren’t yours, loving children who no one else loves?”

“I know it is.”

The certainty, the unwavering conviction in her voice, is fascinating. I don’t understand it, but I really wish I did.

Eighteen years old…

“Happy birthday, Whitney.”

I blow out the invisible candles on the invisible cake.

Three years have passed since Ryan left, and this is the first birthday that he didn’t call.

It shocked me the first time Sister Mary Jane told me he was on the phone, but his calls became a regular thing.

That’s why, when they stopped eight months ago, I gave up.

At first, I was angry, hurt. He’d spent so much time and energy making me hate him, but other than the nuns, he’s the only person who was a constant in my life since I was five. When a week went by without a phone call, then two, then a month, my anger turned into worry.

The truth is, I’ve spent years pretending I wasn’t sure if God existed because it was easier to doubt His existence than admit I was angry with Him. Every seemingly unanswered prayer, every missed adoption, every birthday spent in a children’s home… I’d blamed God for it all.

But as months passed without a word from Ryan, I found myself praying anyway. I didn’t pray because I suddenly believed or had faith. I prayed because I was scared. I prayed because it’s what the nuns have always done when they’re scared.

I prayed because it’s all I knew and all I had left.