Chapter 66
Night Zero—The Fire
Betty
Four Years Ago
Betty was pissed off at Patience for sending her home to change for the Sabbath.
She liked how she looked, in Levi’s green sweater, in the jeans her mom had bought.
When her dad relaxed the dress code, her mother, in a rare moment of independence, had told Betty to get into the minivan and taken her to the local mall.
They’d eaten at the food court and bought two pairs of jeans, a pink sweater and a striped button-down at the Gap, and when they pulled back into their driveway, her mother met her eyes and said, “Don’t tell your father, okay?
But it’s your senior year, and I wanted you to have a few new things.
To look pretty. Not too pretty. But pretty. ”
Betty walked back to their house from the church.
The sun was starting to set, the summer humidity that would choke the region by August only beginning to take hold.
She kicked rocks, thinking of all the ways she could hold this against Patience at the Sabbath dinner, but if she did, if even a hint of unruliness crossed her face, her father would see it.
Whatever he decided next, for her punishment, wasn’t worth it.
She was almost eighteen now, and she’d overheard Matthew and her father discussing Matthew’s younger brother, how he would be a suitable match.
Then, of course, the formal official introduction, where her dad squeezed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise, as if he didn’t want to let her go and also didn’t want to let her run.
From him. From Silas. What was the difference at that point?
Betty thought Matthew’s brother was a beady-eyed idiot, who laughed too loud at her father’s jokes and seemed to take seriously only the Bible verses that suited his needs.
Not that Betty took any of the verses seriously, but she’d heard enough of the women in church murmuring about the way that Silas ogled them, how he drank too much wine at the congregants’ dinners, how Matthew had hired him to do construction work for the new building her dad had commissioned, but he mostly just bossed other people around.
Betty wanted to tell Patience to convey that she wasn’t interested, that she refused to be courted by this man.
But Patience, the Patience whose spine straightened and tone turned chilly when her dad or Matthew entered the room, didn’t feel like the same sister who spent their childhood whispering in the dark to her, teaching her how to protect herself.
Their father had gotten even more ardent, more controlling as Betty approached eighteen; she could see it in how he leered at her, hear it in how he called her into his office whenever she was at the church to ensure that Betty was being a good girl, that she was fastidious in her prayers, mostly that she was fastidious in abiding whatever new rule he had invented of late.
By then, though, Levi was gone, and Patience was gone.
She was the only person who could protect herself now.
She tossed the jeans and green sweater on her closet floor, pulled out a dress that had been her sister’s, so she knew Patience would approve.
She brushed her hair, applied Vaseline to her lips, and was happy to see that the June sun had given her cheeks a bit of a glow.
She was running late by then, and her dad punished people in front of the entire church for being late—she knew he would happily make an example of her, so she grabbed Levi’s old bike, pedaled down the same rocky road she’d come from.
Now it was dark, and dinner had definitely begun.
She pedaled harder, but she couldn’t make up for time that had already been lost.
She turned the corner onto the paved street of the church, and she wasn’t sure if she saw the fire first or felt it.
The rush of heat against her face, the way that the flames rose up and danced, like it was a celebration.
There were people huddled in small pockets, some screaming, some running around like they didn’t know what else to do.
She saw Patience on the outskirts, kneeling in the grass, an arm around each child, a hand covering their eyes.
Her hands clenched the bike’s handlebars.
She thought of Levi and his advice. When you get your chance to go, take it.
She spun the bike in the other direction.
And that was when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him.
Unmistakable. He had a runner’s gait because he’d run cross-country in high school, and a ramrod spine because his father used to spank him when he slouched.
She watched her dad disappear into the woods behind the church, and before she lost her nerve, she biked like hell in the other direction.