She thought about making a quick loop around the perimeter of the store to double-check, then decided to head straight out into the parking lot in case Meg was making a run for it. She cut between two unmanned checkout counters, trying not to think about what it would be like, arriving back at the compound without her Trainee, having to explain that she’d left her alone in the supermarket, of all places.
The automatic doors parted sluggishly, releasing her into the night, which seemed to have gotten noticeably colder. She was just about to break into a run when she saw, to her immense relief, that it wouldn’t be necessary. Meg was standing right in front of her, a contrite young woman in shapeless white clothes, holding a piece of paper in front of her chest.
Sorry, it read. I couldn’t breathe in there.
* * *
IT WAS way past midnight when they got back to Ginkgo Street, slipping between two concrete barriers and signing in at the sentry house. These security measures had been put in place a couple of years earlier, after the police raid that resulted in the martyrdom of Phil Crowther—a forty-two-year-old husband and father of three—and the wounding of two other residents. The cops had entered the compound in the middle of the night, armed with search warrants and battering rams, hoping to rescue two little girls who, their father claimed, had been abducted and were being held against their will by the Guilty Remnant. Angered by what they saw as Gestapo tactics, some residents threw rocks and bottles at the invaders; the outnumbered cops panicked and responded with gunfire. A subsequent investigation exonerated the officers, but criticized the raid itself as “legally flawed and badly executed, based on the uncorroborated allegations of an embittered, noncustodial parent.” Since then—and Laurie had to give Kevin most of the credit for the change—the Mapleton Police had adopted a less confrontational attitude toward the G.R., doing their best to employ diplomacy rather than force when inevitable disputes and crises arose. Even so, the memory of the shootings remained fresh and painful on Ginkgo Street. She’d never heard anyone even speculate about the possibility of removing the traffic barriers, which in any case doubled as memorials, spray-painted with the words WE LOVE YOU, PHIL—SEE YOU IN HEAVEN.
They’d been assigned a bedroom on the third floor of Blue House, which was reserved for female Trainees. Laurie normally lived in Gray House, the women’s dorm next door, where an average-sized room accommodated as many as six or seven people, all of them in sleeping bags on a bare floor. Every night was a somber, adults-only slumber party—no giggles or whispers, just lots of coughing and farting and snoring and groaning, the sounds and smells of too many stressed-out people packed into too small a space.
Blue House was highly civilized by comparison, almost luxurious, just the two of them in a child-sized room with twin beds and pale green walls, a soft beige carpet that felt good against your bare feet, and, best of all, a bathroom right across the hall. A little vacation, Laurie thought. She got undressed while Meg was showering, exchanging her dirty clothes for a loose-fitting G.R. nightgown—an ugly but comfortable garment sewn from an old sheet—then knelt to say her prayers. She took her time, focusing on her children and then moving down the list to Kevin, her mother, her siblings, her friends and former neighbors, trying to visualize every one of them dressed in white garments and bathed in the golden light of forgiveness, as she’d been taught to do. It was a luxury to pray like this, in an empty room with no distractions. She knew that God didn’t care if she was kneeling or standing on her head, but it just felt better to do it right, her mind clear and her attention undivided.
Thank you for bringing Meg to us, she prayed. Give her strength and grant me the wisdom to guide her in the right direction.
The Night Watch had gone pretty well, she thought. They’d lost track of Grice and hadn’t run into anyone else whose files they’d reviewed, but they saw a fair amount of action in the town center, accompanying people from bars and restaurants to their cars, and walking home with a trio of teenage girls who chatted cheerfully among themselves about boys and school as if Laurie and Meg weren’t even there. They’d had only one unpleasant encounter, with a couple of twentysomething jerks outside the Extra Inning. It wasn’t horrible, just the usual insults and a crude sexual invitation from the drunker of the two, a good-looking guy with an arrogant grin, who put his arm around Meg as if she were his girlfriend. (“I’ll fuck the pretty one,” he told his buddy. “You can have Grandma.”) But even that was a useful lesson for Meg, a little taste of what it meant to be a Watcher. Sooner or later, someone would hit her, or spit on her, or worse, and she’d have to be able to endure the abuse without protesting or trying to defend herself.
Meg emerged from the bathroom, smiling bashfully, her face pink, her body lost inside her tentlike nightgown. It was almost cruel, Laurie thought, draping a lovely young woman in such a dull and baggy sack, as if her beauty had no place in the world.
It’s different for me, she told herself. I’m just as happy being hidden.
The water in the bathroom was still warm, a luxury she no longer took for granted. In Gray House there was a chronic lack of hot water—it was inevitable, with so many people living there—but regulations required two showers a day regardless. She stayed in for a long time, until the air was thick with steam, which wasn’t much of a problem since the G.R. prohibited mirrors. It still felt weird to her, brushing her teeth in front of a blank wall, using chalky no-name paste and a crappy manual brush. She’d accepted most of the hygiene restrictions without complaint—it was easy to see why perfumes and conditioners and antiaging creams might be considered extravagances—but she remained unreconciled to the loss of her electric toothbrush. She’d pined for it for weeks before realizing that it was more than the sensation of a clean mouth that she missed—it was her marriage, all those years of mindless domestic happiness, long, crowded days that culminated with her and Kevin standing side by side in front of the dual sinks, battery-operated wands buzzing in their hands, their mouths full of minty froth. But that was all over. Now it was just herself in a quiet room, her fist moving doggedly in front of her face, no one smiling into the mirror, no one smiling back.
* * *
DURING THE Training Period, the Vow of Silence wasn’t absolute. There was a brief interlude after lights-out—usually no more than fifteen minutes—when you were allowed to speak freely, to verbalize your fears and ask any questions that had gone unanswered during the day. The Unburdening was a recent innovation, meant to function as a kind of safety valve, a way to make the transition to not talking a little less abrupt and intimidating. According to a PowerPoint Laurie had seen—she was a member of the Committee on Recruitment and Retention—the dropout rate among Trainees had declined by almost a third since the new policy had been adopted, which was one of the main reasons why the compound had become so crowded.
“So how you doing?” Laurie asked, just to get the ball rolling. Her own voice sounded strange to her, a rusty croak in the darkness.
“Okay, I guess,” Meg replied.
“Just okay?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to just walk away from everything. I still can’t believe I did it.”
“You seemed a little nervous at the Safeway.”
“I was afraid I was gonna see somebody I knew.”
“Your fiancé?”
“Yeah, but not just Gary. Any of my friends.” Her voice was a bit wobbly, like she was trying hard to be brave. “I was supposed to get married this weekend.”
“I know.” Laurie had read Meg’s file and understood that she was going to require some special attention. “That must’ve been hard.”
Meg made a funny sound, something between a chuckle and a groan.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said. “I keep waiting to wake up.”
“I know what that’s like,” Laurie assured her. “I still feel like that sometimes. Tell me a little about Gary. What’s he like?”
“Great,” Meg said. “Really cute. Broad shoul
ders. Sandy hair. This sweet little cleft in his chin. I used to kiss him there all the time.”
“What’s he do?”
“He’s a securities analyst. Just got his MBA last spring.”
“Wow. He sounds impressive.”
“He is.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if there weren’t any room for debate. “He’s a great guy. Smart, good-looking, lots of fun. Loves to travel, goes to the gym every day. My friends call him Mr. Perfect.”
“Where’d you meet?”
“In high school. He was a basketball player. My brother was on the team, so I went to a lot of games. Gary was a senior and I was a sophomore. I didn’t think he even knew I was alive. And then, one day, he just walked up to me and said, Hey, Chris’s sister. You want to go to a movie? Can you believe that? He didn’t even know my name and he asked me on a date.”
“And you said yes.”
“Are you kidding? I felt like I won the lottery.”
“You hit it off right away?”
“God, yeah. The first time he kissed me, I thought, This is the boy I’m gonna marry.”
“It took you long enough. That must’ve been what, eight or nine years ago?”
“We were in school,” Meg explained. “We got engaged right after I graduated, but then we had to postpone the wedding. Because of what happened.”
“You lost your mother.”
“It wasn’t just her. One of Gary’s cousins, he also … two girls I knew in college, my father’s boss, a guy Gary used to work out with. A whole bunch of people. You remember what it was like.”
“I do.”
“It just didn’t feel right, getting married without my mother. We were really close, and she was so excited when I showed her the ring. I was gonna wear her wedding dress and everything.”
“And Gary was okay with the postponement?”
“Totally. Like I said, he’s a really nice guy.”
“So you rescheduled the wedding?”
“Not right away. We didn’t even talk about it for two years. And then we just decided to go for it.”
“And you felt ready this time?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just finally accepted the fact that my mother wasn’t coming back. Nobody was. And Gary was starting to get impatient. He kept telling me that he was tired of being sad all the time. He said my mom would have wanted us to get married, to start a family. He said she would’ve wanted us to be happy.”
“What did you think?”
“That he was right. And I was tired of being sad all the time, too.”
“So what happened?”
Meg didn’t speak for a few seconds. It was almost like Laurie could hear her thinking in the dark, trying to formulate her answer as clearly as she could, as if a lot depended on it.
“We made all the arrangements, you know? We rented a hall, picked out a DJ, interviewed caterers. I should’ve been happy, right?” She laughed softly. “It felt like I wasn’t even there, like it was all happening to someone else, someone I didn’t even know. Look at her, designing the invitations. Look at her, trying on the dress.”
“I remember that feeling,” Laurie said. “It’s like you’re dead and you don’t even know it.”
“Gary got mad. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more excited.”
“So when did you decide to bail out?”
“It was on my mind for a while. But I kept waiting, you know, hoping it would get better. I went to a therapist, got medication, did a lot of yoga. But nothing worked. Last week I told Gary that I needed another postponement, but he didn’t want to hear it. He said we could get married or we could break up. It was my choice.”
“And here you are.”
“Here I am,” she agreed.
“We’re glad to have you.”
“I really hate the cigarettes.”
“You’ll get used to them.”
“I hope so.”
Neither one of them spoke after that. Laurie rolled onto her side, savoring the softness of the sheets, trying to remember the last time she’d slept in such a comfortable bed. Meg only cried for a little while, and then she was quiet.
GET A ROOM
NORA HAD BEEN LOOKING FORWARD to the dance, less for the event itself than for the chance to make a public statement, to let her little world know that she was okay, that she’d recovered from the humiliation of Matt Jamison’s article and didn’t need anyone’s pity. She’d felt defiantly upbeat all day long, trying on the sexiest clothes in her closet—they still fit, some even better than before—and practicing her moves in front of the mirror, the first time she’d danced in three years. Not bad, she thought. Not bad at all. It was like traveling back in time, meeting the person you used to be, and recognizing her as a friend.
The dress she’d finally settled on was a slinky red-and-gray wraparound with a plunging neckline that she’d last worn to Doug’s boss’s daughter’s wedding, where it had received a slew of compliments, including one from Doug himself, the master of withholding. She knew she’d made the right choice when she modeled it for her sister and saw the sour look on Karen’s face.
“You’re not wearing that, are you?”
“Why? Don’t you like it?”
“It’s just a little … flashy, isn’t it? People might think—”
“I don’t care,” Nora said. “Let them think whatever they want.”
A jittery, mostly pleasant sense of anticipation—Saturday-night butterflies—took hold of her in Karen’s car, a feeling she remembered from college, back when every party seemed like it had the potential to change her life. It stuck with her through the entire drive and the short walk through the middle school parking lot, only to abandon her at the front entrance of the building when she saw the flyer advertising the dance:
MAPLETON MEANS FUN PRESENTS:
NOVEMBER ADULT MIXER
DJ, DANCING, REFRESHMENTS, PRIZES
8 P.M.–MIDNIGHT
HAWTHORNE SCHOOL CAFETERIA
Mapleton means fun? she thought, catching a sudden mortifying glimpse of herself in the glass door. Is that a joke? If it was, then the joke was on her, a no-longer young woman in a party dress about to enter a school her children would never get a chance to attend. I’m sorry, she told them, as if they were hiding in her mind, judging everything she did. I didn’t think this through.
“What’s the matter?” Karen asked, peering over her shoulder. “Is it locked?”
“Of course it’s not locked.” Nora pushed open the door to show her sister what a stupid question it was.
“I didn’t think it was,” Karen said testily.
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Because you were just standing there, that’s why.”
Shut up, Nora thought as they stepped into the main hallway, a bright tunnel with a waxed brown floor and a multitude of institutional green lockers stretching into the distance on either side. Just please shut up. A collection of student self-portraits hung on the wall across from the main office, above a banner that read: WE ARE THE MUSTANGS! It hurt her to look at all those fresh, hopeful, clumsily rendered faces, to think of all the lucky mothers sending them off in the morning with their backpacks and lunch boxes, and then picking them up at the curb in the afternoon.
Hey, sweetie, how was your day?
“They have an excellent art program,” Karen said, as if she were giving a tour to a prospective parent. “They’re strong on music, too.”
“Great,” Nora muttered. “Maybe I should enroll.”
“I’m just making conversation. You don’t have to get all huffy about it.”
“Sorry.”
Nora knew she was being a bitch. It was especially unfair given that Karen was the only date she could scrounge up on such short notice. That was the thing about her sister—Nora didn’t always like her and hardly ever agreed with her, but she could always count on her. Everyone else she’d called—her allegedly close friends from the mommy group in which she could no l
onger claim membership—had begged off, citing family obligations or whatever, but only after trying to talk her out of coming here at all.
Are you sure it’s a good idea, honey? Nora hated the condescending way they called her “honey,” as if she were a child, incapable of making her own decisions. Don’t you want to wait a little longer?
What they meant was wait a little longer for the dust to settle from the article, the one that everyone in town was probably still whispering about: PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: “HERO” DAD’S STEAMY TRYST WITH PRESCHOOL HOTTIE. Nora had only read it once, in her kitchen after Matt Jamison’s surprise visit, but once was enough for all the grisly details of Doug’s torrid affair with Kylie Mannheim to permanently engrave themselves on her memory.
Even now, two weeks later, it was still hard for her to accept the idea of Kylie as the Other Woman. In Nora’s mind, she was still her kids’ beloved teacher from the Little Sprouts Academy, a lovely, energetic girl, fresh out of college, who somehow managed to seem innocent and wholesome despite having a pierced tongue and a tattoo sleeve on her left arm that fascinated the toddlers. She was the author of a beautiful evaluation letter that Nora had once believed she would treasure forever, a carefully observed three-page analysis of Erin’s first year at Little Sprouts that praised her “uncommon social skills,” her “inexhaustibly curious mind,” and her “fearless sense of adventure.” For a couple of months after October 14th, Nora had carried the letter everywhere, so she could read it whenever she wanted to remember her daughter.
Unfortunately, there was no doubt about the veracity of the Reverend’s accusations. He’d rescued an old, apparently broken laptop of Kylie’s from the trash—the guy at the computer store had told her the hard drive was shot—and used his recently acquired data recovery skills to unearth a treasure trove of incriminating e-mails, compromising photos, and “shockingly explicit” chat sessions between “the handsome father of two” and “the fetching young educator.” The newsletter included several damning excerpts from this correspondence, in which Doug revealed a hitherto hidden flair for erotic writing.