Goodbye Paradise

  “Oh,” Josh breathed. He tucked his feet closer to mine in the bed.

  “So, Archer taught her a lesson. He let a couple of his pals come over one night. He tied her down, and they all took turns.”

  Josh’s eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, hell.”

  “I know.” I took Josh’s hand and kissed it. “I want to just fly there and shoot him.”

  “Poor thing,” Josh said, his eyes flicking toward the house. “That’s what you overheard the other night?”

  “Yeah.” I kissed his hand again. “So when this baby is born, we can’t breathe a word about who she looks like. Because Miriam doesn’t know who the father is.”

  I watched Josh take a deep, shaky breath. “Okay. But why did she have two black eyes? Because what you’re describing would have happened months ago.”

  “Yeah. From what I could gather, Archer wanted to make an example of her. He stopped treating her like a proper wife. Since she got pregnant the way she did, he called a whore and slapped her around in front of the other wives.”

  Josh squeezed his eyes shut again. “Too bad you pawned that gun.”

  I kissed him on the forehead. “I know. The good news is that Miriam might get a chance to send him to jail. I looked it up on the internet. You can prosecute a rape in Wyoming no matter how long ago it was. So she can settle in here for years before she decides whether to tell the police what happened.”

  Josh groaned. “That poor girl. She’ll probably be too afraid to ever set foot there again.”

  “Mmm,” I pulled him closer to me. “I didn’t tell you this to make you feel bad. But it is bad.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “At least I understand now why you flipped.” He wiggled closer to me. “I’m glad Miriam got away from him.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re a gentle soul, Caleb.”

  “Not as gentle as you,” I whispered. And that was the truth.

  * * *

  Another half hour went by, both of us lost in our thoughts.

  “I could just lie here all day.” Josh’s words were muffled by the pillow.

  It made my heart swell to hear that. He hadn’t kicked me out of bed. “That works for me. But eventually, we’ll need groceries.”

  Josh flopped onto his back. “Yeah. We have to feed ourselves now.”

  “Not totally. Maggie said we should still have dinner with them every night.” I reached over a put a hand on his belly. Today I planned to touch Josh any chance I got. I wasn’t even going to let him out of my sight.

  I cuddled closer to him, while we both listened to the silence. “Please forgive me,” I whispered eventually.

  The short pause before he spoke almost gutted me. “I need you to love me, even when things get hard.” he said.

  “I do, though. Always. I’m going to prove it to you.”

  The only question was how.

  * * *

  Eventually, we got up and showered together.

  “Let’s go to the store,” I said afterward. “We’ll get food for our new fridge.”

  Josh smiled, grabbing his coat. “Okay. We should ask Maggie if there’s anything she needs, though.”

  “Good idea.”

  A few minutes later, though, I felt a little nervous walking into the house. Surely my reputation had suffered since last night. When I’d told Daniel my plan to marry Miriam, he’d told me I was crazy. And that was before he’d had to drive Josh out at midnight to pick up my drunk ass.

  And then there was Miriam. We used to be close. But in the forty-eight hours she’d been here, I’d barely spoken ten words to her, because I was busy freaking out.

  Today was Saturday, and well after the milking, so the whole family was sitting in the living room, drinking coffee. Maggie had some classical guitar music playing on the stereo. She and Daniel sat on the couch, each with a section of the newspaper. And Miriam sat in the rocking chair, with Chloe on her lap.

  Josh stopped in the doorway, and I drew up beside him. In a maneuver that I would have never considered before, I put an affectionate hand on the back of Josh’s neck. In front of God and everyone. “Hi,” I said softly, as they all looked up.

  “Hi,” Daniel said carefully, letting his newspaper fall into his lap. “How are you this morning?”

  I cleared my throat. “Saner, I think.”

  Daniel grinned, as did Miriam. She looked up to the place where I’d rested my hand on Josh’s skin, and her smile grew.

  For a moment I just stared at Miriam. The bruises on her face had faded almost to nothing. She was beautiful, and so, so young. Impossibly young.

  “I need to…” the words got stuck in my throat. Because I’d just spent two days trying to figure out what it was that I really did need to do. Marrying Miriam was not the answer. But it left me with little else than a few words. “I need to apologize to Miriam. Can I do that?”

  Miriam’s smile faded. “Don’t, Caleb. What happened to me isn’t your fault.”

  “It is, though.” My voice was rough, and I wondered if I could do this without it breaking. “The day I left, I should have taken you with me. The three of us…”

  She shook her head. “You tried, sweetie. You told me I could put on my coat and go.”

  Everyone looked at me then, their faces inquisitive.

  Had I really said that to her? I thought back to our frantic conversation in the pantry of Miriam’s family house. At any moment, we might have been discovered. There was barely any time to say goodbye, let alone plot another escape.

  I had told her she could come, though. I’d said those words. But there had been a catch. “I didn’t… I didn’t push, Miriam. Because I was worried about Josh, and I knew I was running out of time. It was almost meaner to throw it out there that way. I didn’t give you even an hour to think about it.”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. You said to put on my coat and meet you at the main gate. And for a second, I was ready to do it. But then I made a different decision. My father was ill, and I was worried about my mother. I stood there and chose, Caleb. I didn’t want to leave them.”

  “He was ill?” She hadn’t told me that.

  She nodded. “He died a little while after you left. Mom is remarried to Elder Michael. But Michael is out of favor now. So Mom and I both ended up in unfortunate situations. She’s the one who told me to run away last week. She gave me Maggie’s phone number, and all her kitchen money. And she sent me away.”

  “I’m still sorry,” I said, my voice rough.

  Her eyes were filling, but she smiled anyway. “I know, Caleb. Me too. But it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

  “I want to help, though.” My voice finally broke on the last word, and so Josh slipped an arm onto my back.

  “You will,” she said, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “You can help me in so many ways. I’m just across the yard.”

  Blowing out a breath, I felt my shoulders relax for the first time in two days.

  I needed a minute to compose myself, which Josh seemed to sense. So he changed the subject. “We were heading to the grocery store, actually. Our new fridge is empty. Do you guys need anything?”

  Maggie stood up. “Go after lunch. I have two quiches in the oven. I’ll make you a shopping list while they cool.”

  “Someday you’ll have to stop feeding us, Maggie,” I said.

  “I don’t see why,” she returned. “It’s a few eggs and some flour, big guy. Get over yourself.”

  I was trying. Really I was.

  “We’ll need more coffee,” Daniel said, following Maggie out of the room. “I’m putting it on the grocery list. If you’re really willing to make a trip to that zoo on a Saturday, I’ll take you up on it.”

  “Deal,” I promised.

  “Down,” Chloe said suddenly.

  Miriam helped the little girl slide off the chair. She toddled over to us. “Bosh,” she said, raising her arms. “Up.”

  My partn
er bent over immediately and lifted her into his arms. “Hi there,” he whispered. “You miss me?”

  “Baba.”

  “Yeah?” He lifted her a little higher and smelled her backside. I recognized that as one of those childcare maneuvers that separated the naturals from those who were just phoning it in. “Let’s take care of this diaper first. And then we’ll find you some milk.” He headed up the stairs with Chloe in his arms.

  I watched him go, admiring him until the backs of his long legs disappeared upstairs.

  When I turned around again, Miriam was smiling at me. “Cute.”

  My cheeks heated. “Yeah, he is.”

  She giggled. “I meant you, silly. Come and talk to me.” She got up and took her sister’s place on the couch.

  I sat down beside her, and she kicked her stocking feet into my lap. Sitting here like this was forbidden on the Compound. Because the path to hell was paved with friends touching each other’s feet.

  “I can’t get over the hospital Maggie took me to. I thought all babies were born at home.”

  “Yeah,” I said, squeezing her instep. “I’ll bet that seems pretty strange. But if anything goes wrong, they can help.”

  “I have to stay two nights.” She made a face. “Maggie said she’ll stay with me. But I don’t want to take her from Chloe.”

  “I’ll stay a night,” I suggested. “And Maggie can stay the other one. We’ll split it.”

  Miriam turned her smile on me. “You know I love you, right? But I was thinking of asking Josh if he’d take a shift.”

  I tipped my head back against the sofa and laughed. “That just figures.”

  “Don’t be mad. But I’m a little scared of babies. And he…”

  “…Isn’t,” I supplied.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was soft. “I’m happy that you have him, Caleb. I truly am.”

  There wasn’t a thing I could say to that, except the obvious. “Thank you.”

  “I thought we were doomed, you know that? Both of us. And I won’t pretend that the last year was easy. But I’m so optimistic now.”

  “I’m glad,” I ground out, because my throat had seized up completely. And suddenly I was losing a battle with tears that I didn’t even know I’d been fighting. My chin sagged onto my chest, and a sob came heaving from my throat.

  “Oh, noooo!” Miriam crooned. She scrambled into a kneeling position, grabbing my head against her giant curvy body.

  I hated breaking down. But that was the thing about tears—they didn’t care. It had been so long since I let any out that now they poured out of me like a river. Another sob burst forth. “I’m sorry,” I said for the thousandth time.

  “Shh,” she said. The sound of her voice was precious to me. Miriam was one of my oldest friends. I’d been looking out for her for as long as I could remember. I thought it was my duty. The part I didn’t understand, though, was that I didn’t have to do it alone.

  I cried anyway, though. I shed tears for those who wouldn’t wake up here with us tomorrow: for whichever girl Asher targeted next, and for my own mother, who used to knit me new socks every year. I shed tears for the kids who wouldn’t go to a real school, and for the boys who liked boys and were terrified to admit it.

  I’d come so far, and yet there was no way I’d ever be able to fix all the things that were wrong.

  A few minutes into my crying jag, Josh appeared at my other side, his hands free of Chloe. He must have pawned her off on someone else, because he shoved me over a few inches and took a seat on my other side.

  Now both my oldest friends were holding me while I struggled to breathe normally again.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. That was my only job this morning. But it was so hard to set my burdens down, that even this seemed impossible.

  When my sadness finally lifted, I found my head on Josh’s shoulder. He stroked my hair slowly, patiently.

  “Josh?”

  “Mmm?” he said.

  “Can we get married?”

  His breath caught, and then I felt his smile against my forehead. “You do mean to each other, right?”

  I squeezed his knee. “Yes. Would you do that for me?”

  “I would like that very much,” he said in a small voice.

  “Oh, man,” Miriam said, raising a hand to her face. “Now you’re going to make me cry.”

  “So?” I gave her knee a little pinch, the way I would have done when we were kids. “Why should I have all the fun?” Sitting here together, a warmth spread through my chest. I took a deep breath through my sniffly nose and felt calmer again. “We’ll hold off on the wedding until after you have the baby,” I said. “So you can fit into one of Maggie’s dresses.”

  “I know a good catering company,” Josh said.

  “We won’t even need them,” I said. “We don’t have very many people to invite.”

  Miriam sat up a little straighter. “Let’s send invitations to everyone on the Compound. Archer will probably have a heart attack reading it. If we’re lucky, he’ll go face down in the mashed potatoes.”

  Yesterday, the sound of the word “Archer” had made me furious enough to boil my blood. But now I actually laughed. “Wouldn’t you just love to see the looks on the Elders’ faces?”

  The three of us sat there in a row on a couch, chuckling over this bit of humor. We used to sit like this on the school bus in second grade, when Miriam was in kindergarten. “Like bumps on a log,” my mother had always said.

  Josh held my hand, his thumb stroking my knuckles. Miriam made wedding jokes. And we were happy for once, just sitting and talking and having nowhere we needed to go, until Maggie called us in for quiche.

  Twenty-Eight

  DEAR WASHINGTON,

  THANK YOU for the Christmas card. Our second one! It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a year since I sat in your truck, wondering how Caleb and I were going to survive the next week.

  I have news.

  And I started writing this letter a hundred times, and couldn’t figure out how to tell you. So I’m just enclosing this invitation instead. Sorry if I’m giving you one heck of a surprise.

  There isn’t a whole lot else to say, I guess, except I hope we can still be friends. If we can’t, that will make me sad, but I’ll still think of you as someone who changed my life.

  My love to Brenda.

  Josh

  JOSHUA ROYCE AND CALEB SMITH

  Cordially invite you to join them as they exchange vows in a celebration of marriage

  * * *

  02.14.15

  4 o’clock in the afternoon

  * * *

  Ralph’s Tavern

  2900 South Boulevard

  Hintenville, MA

  * * *

  Reception to follow

  Twenty-Nine

  THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR wedding, Josh and I spent a quiet evening on Maggie and Daniel’s sofa.

  We’d been very busy that week. My fiancé was now taking GED courses at a community center in Pittsfield, in between babysitting gigs and the occasional catering job.

  In fact, we had a marked-up calendar hanging in our new kitchen helping us map out who needed the car and for how many hours. Sometimes I had to borrow Daniel’s truck in a pinch, though Josh wouldn’t drive it. “I can’t park that boat,” he complained. Although by now he was a very good driver.

  In addition to our busy work schedules, we tried to get out together sometimes, too. Once a week, we ate dinner at a restaurant, just the two of us. “Date night,” is what Maggie called it. Money wasn’t quite so tight now, so we spent a little cash on things like movie tickets and the occasional bar tab.

  We’d met Jakobitz and Danny a couple of times at the Tavern for a bite and a beer. Josh was just so-so on all their betting talk, but he did like the burgers and fries. And once, Danny decided to teach Josh to shoot pool, which I thought was sure to be a disaster.

  How wrong I was. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my fiancé, t
he pool shark. There was just something about all those angles which spoke to Josh. By our second trip back, he was beating strangers in the bar.

  “Damn,” Jako complained after Josh won his five dollars. “You should study engineering, or some shit. After you get that high school equivalency.”

  “Agricultural engineering,” Josh muttered, lining up a shot.

  “What?” I asked.

  He sunk a combination shot before answering me. “It turns out you can get a degree in how stuff should work on a farm.”

  “Cool. Really?”

  “Really. I’ve been reading up.”

  So I made a mental note to figure out how to pay for some college classes for Josh. I wanted that for him. In fact, the best revenge I could think of against the Compound was for Josh to earn a college degree and make a better living than any of the assholes who used to rule over us.

  The night before our wedding, I wasn’t thinking about revenge, though. It was quiet in the living room, after Maggie, Daniel and Miriam had gone to bed. We sat at opposite ends of the sofa, our legs tangled up in the middle. I was trying to wrap my head around what was happening tomorrow.

  We were having a wedding, of all things. Back when we still lived on the Compound, even in my wildest fantasies there was no wedding for Josh and I. At best, I’d imagined us living together somewhere as closeted “roommates.” But even that had seemed like a pipe dream most of the time.

  It’s really quite shocking to get what your heart desires.

  At the other end of the sofa, Josh adjusted Miriam’s nine-week-old baby girl, who wiggled against his chest.

  Wilhelmina (or “Willy” for short) was a bit of a night owl. She hadn’t learned to sleep through the night, yet. So Josh was doing a favor for Miriam by sitting up with her. In a half hour or so he would give Willy a final bottle, then sneak her into the crib in Miriam’s room. This afforded the new mommy an extra two hours sleep that she would not otherwise get.