Epilogue #2
Then the little girl grew up and realized her mama was sick.
When she was old enough to understand, Pa told the little girl that her mama was filled with evil spirits.
He said it was her job now to take care of the house and her siblings.
He told her she needed to become a mother for her own mama. And so she did.
Years passed. Soon the little girl was no longer a girl at all, but a young woman. And one fine day, she was walking in the woods, looking for saffron, when she saw an angel standing in the trees.
A woman, standing still as a blade of grass, wearing clothes so bright it looked like she was glowing. At first, the girl thought it was her mama, restored to health. Then the angel spoke.
She told the little girl a terrifying story, too horrible for her to ever believe. The angel said the little girl’s parents were not parents at all but wolves. If you want a better life, the angel said, then you and your siblings must come with me.
But the girl didn’t want a better life. She didn’t even know what that could possibly mean. She began to think this woman was no angel, and so she ran back into the house and vowed never to return to the woods again.
Then one day, not long after the first time they met, the angel reappeared in the kitchen of the girl’s house. The request was now a demand: It’s time for you to come with me. And so she did.
The little girl in the woods was me. Mary Heller Mills.
It’s been five years since I left Yesteryear Ranch.
I live in Santa Monica now, in a small apartment with my older sister, Clementine, and my little sister, Maeve, and my brothers, Noah and Abel.
It was Clementine’s idea to move here. She always wanted to live by the ocean but had refused to move away from town until she found a way to save us from our parents.
The day we left Yesteryear, she broke her apartment lease. It was time, she said, to begin again.
In the last five years, my life has changed completely.
One of the police officers I met the day we left the ranch gave me a journal and said I should write everything down, that so many things were going to happen, and so quickly, that I’d be happy to have a record of this time period.
He felt really guilty after I told him I only knew how to write my family members’ names.
Then he gave me an audio recorder instead.
One day, he said, I would be able to write it all down, but for now, if I couldn’t write, I could speak.
I’m glad he told me that. If I hadn’t had that audio recorder, then I might never have been able to write this book.
The story you are about to read is in many ways a very sad one, so I would like to give you my ending up front: I’m okay.
I survived. I have my real family with me: my sisters and my brothers, a grandmother I never knew I had, an aunt who calls me weekly.
I take reading and writing classes at the local community center.
Most of my classmates are people who want to learn how to speak English.
They’re all very patient with me, even though I’m definitely the furthest behind in class.
On Saturdays, I work as a grocery bagger at the Whole Foods down the street, and on Sundays, we all go to a church in Ocean Park.
During service, our pastor talks about a God who is so very different from the God my parents taught me to know.
I am starting to think that church might just be another word for people.
After service, if it’s sunny, Clementine buys us donuts and then we walk to the beach.
We’ve been living here for years, and still, she can’t see the Pacific without crying.
Clementine says our mother will never read this book, but I know she will someday. And so I want to address her directly now, before I tell my story, the whole story, of what it was like to grow up on, and eventually escape from, Yesteryear Ranch:
Hello, Mama. I miss you.
Isn’t that funny? Even after everything, I still miss you.
I miss your temper and your jokes and your strange little moods.
I miss what it felt like in the rare moment that a true smile lit up your face.
I want you to know I’m sorry you got so lost in Yesteryear.
I’m not sure if it’s your fault, but I don’t think that matters as much as some people say it does. I know it was hard for you either way.
There’s a lot about our life that makes me sad, but do you know what makes me the saddest, Mama?
How much beauty you’ve missed. Because it really is beautiful: this future you prayed we would never get the chance to see.
I think you’d like it if you gave it a chance.
But that’s something I’ve learned in the years since I left the ranch: you cannot change people who refuse to be changed.
You can only love them. So here it is, all the love I have to give, pressed into the pages of this book.
I hope you read this book one day, all the way to the end, because as it turns out, the place where your life ends is exactly where mine begins: the moment when I saw the world and wanted every part of it.
The moment happened when we reached the end of our long dirt road. The car slowed to a stop. I tried to understand what was laid out in front of me.
“Highway,” Clementine said. “This is what we call a highway.”
The children were crying in the back seat. They didn’t understand. I stared at the smooth gray road, then I shrieked as a truck roared past, shaking the car frame. I thought I was going to die.
“The car’s going to pick up speed now,” Clementine said. “It’s going to go much faster than you’re used to. But I need you to trust me when I say: you’re safe.”
A trio of cars barreled past, one after another. How did they not slam into one another? What kind of world was this? How would we ever survive it?
And yet: the only future more terrifying to me than the one where we merged onto this highway was the one where we turned around. “I trust you,” I said, because I had to.
She reached for my shaking hand. “Hold on tight.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. Squeezed her fingers. Braced for impact. But there was none. Just a muffled rushing sound and a rising sensation in my stomach.
A moment later, I opened my eyes. We were flying, hurtling into the future, toward a world I couldn’t yet begin to imagine.
For the first time in my life, I smiled.