Refuge in Laurel Valley (Laurel Valley)

Prologue

Laurel Valley, Idaho

She’d seen her father’s death.

Marnie Whitlock lay curled into a ball on the narrow twin bed, whimpering as pain shot through her body.

The brutal heat of the day had carried into night, and there was no air-conditioning in the small, two-bedroom house she’d lived in her entire life.

The old wooden window in her room was swollen with age, but she’d managed to raise it a few precious inches earlier that day.

The breeze barely stirred the worn Priscilla curtains hanging at the window—thin cotton ghosts that had forgotten they’d once been white.

She shivered under the thin, nubby sheet as fever crept through her body. She couldn’t remember ever hurting as badly as she did in that moment. In one year and three days she’d taste freedom. She’d pack her bags and never set foot in Laurel Valley again.

The vision had come to her only hours ago, rising up from some deep place inside her when she’d needed it most. When she’d stood beneath that oak tree with blood running down her back and looked her father in the eye.

She’d seen his end—seen it with a clarity that had given her the strength to send him running into the night.

And she’d felt nothing but relief.

That should have scared her. Once upon a time, it would have. But Marnie Whitlock had stopped being scared of her own thoughts somewhere between the first beating and the hundredth.

Pain rolled through her now in waves. Ribs.

Back. Face. The shoulder he’d dislocated when he’d thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

She catalogued each injury with the detachment of long practice, noting what would bruise, what would heal, what she’d have to hide when she went to school on Monday.

If she went to school on Monday.

The fever made her thoughts slip and slide like creek stones under running water.

Time fractured. She was almost seventeen and lying in the dark, her body broken but her spirit somehow still intact.

She was four and learning what it meant to be cursed.

She was twelve and understanding that silence was survival.

She was every age she’d ever been, all at once, all the broken pieces of herself scattered across the years.

Two miles she’d walked to get home. Two miles with blood soaking through her borrowed clothes and her feet developing blisters in Sloane’s too-big shoes.

She’d peeled the ruined shirt from her back, weeping as the dried patches pulled and tore her flesh.

She’d stolen one of her father’s oversized undershirts from the laundry basket—he wouldn’t be needing it anymore—and crawled into bed to wait.

To wait for her father to die.

Innocence was such a fragile thing.

She hadn’t been innocent since the age of four—since the first time he’d taken the tanned leather belt he wore like a religion around his waist and beat her bloody.

Her mother had stood by helpless, wringing her hands and wondering if her turn was coming.

But she never interfered or tried to protect her daughter from the vicious arcs of the belt.

The memory rose up from the dark places where she kept it locked away, summoned by pain and fever and the particular quality of late-night silence that made everything feel too close, too real.

She didn’t want to remember. But the past didn’t care what you wanted.

It came when it was ready, dragging you back whether you fought it or not.

It had been Christmas. Or what passed for Christmas in the Whitlock house.

Someone from the church—Mrs. Beasley, probably, with her kind eyes and her endless, ineffective pity—had dropped off a tree.

Small and scraggly, already shedding needles, but a tree nonetheless.

Her mother had set it up in the corner of the living room, and for one brief, shining moment, four-year-old Marnie had felt something like hope.

She should have known better.

Even at four years old, Marnie knew she’d done wrong.

Daddy said she had the devil inside of her, and her mama always told her to watch what she said.

It was her own fault she got the beating.

Daddy didn’t like hearing about it when she saw things that weren’t right in front of her own eyes.

And she’d been sassy on top of it because she’d asked how come there weren’t any presents under the little Christmas tree someone had given them.

“My friend Sloane has lots of presents under her Christmas tree. How come we don’t have any?

You’ve got all that money you won at poker just sitting in your glove box.

You’re supposed to provide. Mrs. Beasley at church said it’s a man’s duty to provide for his family.

And Mama had to put back all those groceries when we were at the store yesterday because she didn’t have enough money. ”

“Marnie.”

Her mother’s voice had been barely a whisper, threaded through with terror. She’d looked back and forth between her child and her husband, appalled. “We’ve got what we need. Don’t sass your daddy.”

But it was already too late. The words were already out there, already taking shape between them—solid and damning as evidence at a trial.

“How do you know about the money in the glove box, Marnie?”

Her father’s voice had been soft. Gentle, even. He hadn’t looked away from the television, hadn’t moved from his secondhand recliner. And somehow that made it worse. The calm before the storm. The eye of the hurricane.

She’d looked to her mother, but there would be no help from that corner. Her mama kept her head down, kept washing dishes that were already clean, kept her hands moving because maybe if she was busy enough, useful enough, small enough, she’d be safe.

“I saw it,” Marnie had said, clutching her nightgown in her small fist, the cotton wadding up against her chest.

“You went outside and saw it in my truck?”

Even then, at four years old, she’d heard the offer beneath the question. The chance to lie. To say yes, she’d been snooping like any curious child. To give him something normal, something he could punish in normal ways.

But she’d been too young to understand the gift he was offering.

She’d hesitated in answering and he’d turned his head to look at her—frigid blue eyes the color of a lake in winter.

“You were snooping through my truck?” he’d asked a different way, giving her one more chance to take the lie and run with it.

She hadn’t taken it.

“I just saw it,” she’d whispered, her heart thudding in her chest like something wild and trapped. “Like in a dream.” Her daddy was scary most days. But when he looked at her like that—like she was something unnatural, something wrong—he was the scariest thing in her world.

She’d felt the warmth running down her legs before she’d even registered the shame of it. Her bladder releasing in fear, the puddle spreading across the worn linoleum while everyone stood frozen. No one moved. No one spoke.

He’d stood up slowly and towered over her small form, and she’d heard her mother’s whimper from the kitchen as she continued with the dishes.

“What else did you see?”

“I—I don’t know,” she’d stuttered out, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know the men at the table. You were just playing cards.

And then you took all the money and put it in the glove box.

You drove into town and that lady was waiting for you on the steps.

How come you kissed her but you never kiss Mama? ”

That was the last question she asked before his belt swished through the loops—a long hiss and slither, like a snake moving through grass. Then the lightning crack of leather against skin as the belt landed across the middle of her back.

Again and again until the world narrowed to nothing but hurt and the sound of her own screaming.

He’d taught her something that day, in that small house with the pathetic Christmas tree in the corner. He’d taught her that truth was dangerous. That seeing things—knowing things she shouldn’t know—made her wrong. Made her bad. Made her deserving of whatever came next.

No—Daddy hadn’t liked her saying those things at all.

One year and three days until she turned eighteen.

The hours crawled by. Pain ebbed and flowed like a tide. Fever burned through her, making the shadows dance and shift across her walls. She drifted in and out of consciousness, caught between waking and dreaming, between past and present.

And then it came.

Not a vision this time. A knowledge that settled into her bones like truth. The screaming. The flames. Just as she’d seen it.

She felt it the moment his life ended—felt it like a cord being cut, like a weight lifting from her chest. The house seemed to exhale around her. The air shifted, became lighter somehow.

He was gone.

Relief flooded through her, so powerful it brought fresh tears to her eyes. Not tears of grief. Tears of release.

“He’s gone,” she whispered into the darkness.

Marnie closed her eyes and let herself breathe.

Her father was dead.

And she was finally, truly free.