When you got rid of the weight of your misdeeds, Papa had told them, you could learn to float. Fly. And then you’d be ready to leave and go through the gates. Was that what had happened to her? Sunny shook off the remaining dizzy feeling. Or was she just too tired, too worn-out, like Liesel had suggested?
In the kitchen, Liesel pulled off her coat and hat, tossed them on a chair, poured Sunny some orange juice and then herself coffee. She sipped it from a mug and watched Sunny over the rim of it. Her hair stuck up in wild spikes.
“Do you meditate every day?”
Sunny sipped the juice. Sweet. It was like drinking…well, sunshine. She wanted to gulp it, greedy, but forced herself to take only the tiniest of tastes, one at a time. “Yes.”
“Did you all meditate?”
Sunny looked up, the juice like some sort of key that unlocked her tongue. “Yes. Every morning, afternoon and at night before we go to bed. In-between times we do it on our own, if we need a little extra.”
“Extra…what?”
Sunny turned the glass in her hands, feeling the cool glass on her palms. “Extra silence.”
Liesel shook her head a little. “I don’t get it. I’m sorry.”
Sunny looked around the kitchen, then at her father’s wife. “In order to leave this life and our physical vessels behind, we have to be able to put aside everything outside ourselves and go all the way inside, to the silence. We have to listen to that silence with our hearts, because that’s what tells us how far we have to go.”
It was Liesel’s turn to blink. She sipped her coffee, then held the mug in both her hands close to her face, as though bathing in the warmth. “So…during the day if you feel you need extra silence, you meditate?”
“People talk too much,” Sunny said. “And don’t listen enough.”
Liesel laughed. “I believe that’s certainly true. Yes.”
Sunny studied her. She’d gone out on the literature missions but had never been actively sent to recruit anyone. She’d never been called on to explain the family’s beliefs to anyone before, though she’d been given the same lectures as everyone else on how to recognize a potential seeker. Papa had said the best way to show someone the path was to walk it. He also said that everyone in the family had the obligation to lead as many people to the light as possible, through words and deeds.
“Do you want to try it?”
Liesel looked startled. “Oh, I…I don’t really think…”
“C’mon,” Sunny said. “It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I bet you’ll be good at it.”
Liesel looked at Sunny through one squinted eye, her mouth twisted, too. “What do I have to do?”
“Just listen. I’ll show you.” Sunny took Liesel into the living room and sat, demonstrating.
Liesel followed, but slowly, with a groan. “I might not be able to get back up.”
“Meditation helps anything, even aches and pains, whatever’s wrong with you. Daily meditation keeps away illness and lifts the spirit.” Sunny paused, having spouted what she’d always been told but now hearing her words as one of the blemished might. “It doesn’t hurt, anyway.”
Liesel laughed and ducked her head for a second. She looked self-conscious. “Okay. I’m up for it. Let’s go. What do I do?”
“Mostly, you just listen.”
Silence for a minute or two.
“What am I listening for?”
Sunny opened her eyes and smiled. “Not with your ears. Listen with your heart. Inside. Whatever’s inside.”
“Okay.” Liesel looked skeptical and shifted on the carpet. “How long does it usually take?”
Sunny laughed, surprised at how funny she found Liesel’s question. “Sometimes, a long time. Give it another few minutes.”
They were both quiet, until the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor of the entryway turned both their heads. It was Chris, dressed for work, brow furrowed. He lifted a coffee mug.
“What the… What are you doing?”
“Hi, babe.” Liesel winced and slowly uncurled herself to stand. “Sunny was showing me how to meditate.”
Chris recoiled, just a little, but enough that there was no doubt of his reaction. “I’m going.”
That moved Liesel forward to tell him goodbye. She followed him out of the hall, toward the kitchen. Sunny heard the low-pitched tone of a conversation that sounded as if it was trying hard not to turn into an argument, the rise and fall of voices in conflict and the mutter of her own name.
And try as hard as she could, she couldn’t hear anything else.
Chapter 16
“Liesel, what’s going on? They’re all dead, my God, we saw it on the news even down here, I had no idea that was close to you at all.” Liesel’s mother sounded briefly distant, as if she’d taken the phone from her mouth and put it back. “Down! Get down, Rascal! This damn dog, Liesel, I swear to you I’m gonna have him stuffed.”
Her mother’s constant complaining about her admittedly ill-mannered dog was one of the main reasons Liesel had never lobbied for a replacement after Buster died. She could picture her mom now, scolding the runty mutt with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. Liesel missed her mother suddenly so hard and so fiercely she had to put a hand over her eyes to keep herself from bursting into tears.
“How’s Christopher dealing with it?” her mom asked.
Liesel paused, not certain what she could say and wanting to be sure she could speak without sounding as though she was holding back sobs. “Okay, I guess.”
Her mom snorted. “No, not how well is he dealing with it. I mean, how is Christopher dealing with all this? What’s he doing about it?”
“What can either of us do about it? They’re here, they have no place else to go.”
Another snort. “I can’t believe he never told you before. That’s all. All those years, right in your backyard.”
“He didn’t know.” Before her mom could comment on that, Liesel added, “And they weren’t that close. Almost in the next town.”
“But they’d been there how long, doing God knows what? Sacrificing stuff, no doubt.” Liesel’s mother coughed loudly. “Damn it, I thought moving to Florida meant no more winter colds.”
It was the smoking, not a cold, but Liesel didn’t say so. “They weren’t a satanic cult, Ma.”
“They all killed themselves, didn’t they? What kind of religion makes you martyr yourself to get to heaven?” Her mother paused. “Well, Christianity favors that, I guess.”
“They’re not Christians either, so far as I can tell.”
“You never hear of any Jewish cults,” her mother said firmly. “Rascal, for God’s sake, get down!”
Liesel peeked through the half-cracked laundry room door to the kitchen, where Sunny and the kids sat at the table, folding towels. Sunny had asked what she could do to help around the house, and all three of them were making a good job of it. Singing, even.
“I’m sure there are some,” Liesel said absently. Voyeur, that’s what she was, watching them when they didn’t know she was. But how else was she supposed to see what they did when she wasn’t there?
Her mother made a derogatory noise. “Whatever. Listen, you have them in your house now, what’s going on with that? She’s what, almost twenty, you said? With three kids? Oy. I don’t think I need to tell you those kids are gonna have some problems.”
The children actually looked fine to Liesel. Better than fine, they were the best-behaved children Liesel had ever seen. Compared to Annabelle and her brothers, children Liesel actually loved, Sunny’s children were saints, even the baby.
“They’re kind of…Amish,” Liesel whispered.
At the table, Sunny showed Peace how to fold a tea towel into a neat square, t
hen shook it apart and held it out for the little girl to take. The result was messy, and Sunny laughed, shaking her head, to kiss her daughter’s curls before having her do it over.
“See,” she said so quietly Liesel had to strain to hear her. They all talked like that, soft and low, not quite whispering but something like it. “Like this.”
“I thought you said they weren’t Christian,” Liesel’s mom said.
“They’re not. I’m not sure what they are. It’s kind of like… I don’t know how to describe it.” Liesel had found the pamphlets she’d bought so long ago shoved in a desk drawer, but the crumpled papers hadn’t done much to enlighten her. “Hippies, maybe? Simple. Plain, like the Amish, but sort of otherworldly, too.”
“Oh, good Lord, not like those Heaven’s Gate people!”
The pamphlets featured illustrations and had been written by someone named John Superior, the man Sunny had called Papa. Printed on cheap paper with tiny, cramped text, there’d been a lot of information about keeping your “vessel” in the best condition you could. Something about if you put a plant in a pretty pot with good soil, it was more likely to grow and bloom, but if you put it in a pot that’s too big or too small, or with poor soil, it would only wither.
“Pot? Maybe they were dopeheads,” Liesel’s mother said when she described this.
“Shh. She’s singing.”
Liesel strained again to hear what Sunny was singing. There was an Amish-owned market not too far from here that sold close-to-expiration products, along with banged and bumped things. Liesel had never trusted the dented cans for human consumption, but when Buster was alive had often shopped there for dry dog food. The Amish workers often sang while they worked, harmonizing over their cartons of off-brand canned beans and expired cleaning products. That’s what reminded her of Sunny now, along with the clothes and the quiet, almost meek attitude.
“I used to sing to you, Liesel. That didn’t make me Amish.”
“Shh,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“…ring-a-ring-a-rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes,” Sunny sang softly, her voice sweetly lilting, out of tune. “We all fall down!”
“All fall down,” Happy cried with a giggle and knocked over the pile of washcloths he’d so carefully folded. “Again!”
“Sure, do it again,” Sunny said.
How many times would they fold and refold that same basket? Liesel thought just as the dryer buzzed, making her jump. She said a word that made her mother tsk-tsk at her.
“What are you doing, spying on them?”
“I’m just watching.” Liesel tugged open the dryer door to let out a waft of heated air that smelled of fabric softener. She began pulling out the laundry and dumping it into the basket. “How do such small people make so much laundry, Ma?”
Her mother laughed. “One of the unanswerable questions of every mother, honey.”
Liesel wasn’t really anyone’s mother. But she thought of leaving the bedroom door open and how that had made her feel. This laundry, these tiny socks and shirts, this soft blanket she held up to her nose to catch a whiff of baby scent even though all she smelled was detergent…those were all part of being a mother, too. Or so she thought.
“Liesel Eloise, are you crying? What’s going on?” her mother demanded.
But Liesel couldn’t tell her mom exactly why she found herself weeping into a pile of baby clothes because her mother had always been carefully kind enough never to ask her oldest daughter when she might give her a grandchild. “Ma, I have to go.”
“Go, go. You call me later, let me know how it all went. Or if you need anything. You hear me?”
“I hear you, Ma.”
“I love you, babydoll.”
“Love you, too.” Liesel disconnected the call, then slipped her cell phone into her pocket. She lifted the basket of laundry, surprisingly heavy considering the size of the garments loading it down, and nudged open the door with her hip. “Whoooooo wants to help me fold more laundry?”
It was a question of the silliest sort—who liked laundry? Annabelle would’ve rolled her eyes and run away. Peace and Happy, on the other hand, both looked up with bright grins and clapped their hands in what Liesel had to assume was unfeigned excitement.
She looked at Sunny, who had shadows under her eyes and looked only a little less thrilled. “This is the last load.”
Sunny nodded. “I don’t mind. It’s easier than scrubbing the floors.”
Liesel looked automatically to the floor, which looked fine to her. “Are they dirty?”
Sunny smiled. “Aren’t floors always dirty? We walk on them.”
“Sure, but…I mean, they’re not too dirty. Are they?” Liesel put the basket on the table with a thump that tumbled one of the piles of washcloths over.
“All fall down,” Happy crowed, his little sister repeating it.
“You know, that’s a fun game, too. Not just a song. We could play if you want.” Liesel tipped the overflowing basket onto the floor next to the window seat.
Sunny gasped, but quieted when she saw Liesel had done it on purpose. “A game? What kind of game?”
“Peace, Happy. C’mere.” Liesel gestured so the kids each got down from their chairs. She looked at Sunny with a stupid grin on her face, feeling all at once light and strange. “You want to play?”
“I’ll just watch.”
“Suit yourself. Here.” Liesel took one of Peace’s tiny hands, then one of Happy’s. “You hold each other’s hands, too. And then we do this, ready?”
She began to sing the childhood song as she walked in a slow circle around the pile of warm laundry she’d dumped on her not-too-dirty floor. When had she last played this game? With Annabelle, maybe never. Becka’s daughter had been born too sophisticated for games like this. Before that, long, long ago, when Liesel herself had been a toddler, maybe she’d played this with her own mother.
“…all fall down,” she cried, and pretended to fall into the pile of clothes.
Peace and Happy stared.
“You do it,” Liesel said.
Happy looked doubtful. “Fall into the clothes?”
“Yep. Right in ’em.” Liesel shot Sunny another grin, but Christopher’s daughter looked as confused as her son had. “Ready? All fall down!”
Peace didn’t hesitate this time, just launched herself into the pile with a scream of glee. “Whee!”
Happy looked at Liesel.
“Go on,” she encouraged. “It’s fun.”
Happy let his knees bend, slowly crumpling onto the somewhat squashed pile of laundry. Peace rolled onto her back, little legs kicking, her laughter loud and infectious. Liesel joined her.
Sunny looked disturbed. “That’s…a real game?”
“Sure,” Liesel said, holding out her hands for both children to grab. “Let’s do it again. In the fall we can do it in the big piles of leaves Grandpa will rake up in the yard.”
“Who’s Grandpa?” Happy’s small fingers linked in Liesel’s.
Liesel glanced at Sunny.
“She means Christopher,” Sunny said. “He’s my father, so that makes him your grandfather.”
Happy’s brow furrowed. “So then…what’s you?”
“She Weedul,” Peace said, full of scorn. “Dat her name. Weedul.”
Sunny burst into a flurry of giggles she tried to hide behind her hand, and gave Liesel an apologetic look with eyes bright above the dark circles. “Oh…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…”
“It’s okay.” Liesel laughed, too. “I’ve been called worse, I guess.”
“I know her name,” Happy said, still solemn. “I mean, what’s she called? If he’s Grandpa?”
Liesel’s laughter faded a little bit, and
she wiped at her eyes. She looked at Sunny with a shrug. “What would you like to call me, honey?”
“Weedul-ma!”
Happy shook his head. “No, Peace, that’s dumb!”
“Happy,” Sunny said sharply. “That’s not how we talk. Do you want me to have to make…a report…?”
Sunny stopped, voice trailing off, then drew in a shivery breath. “Never mind that. Just don’t talk like that to your sister. Apologize.”
“I’m sorry, Peace.” Happy hugged his sister far more willingly than Becka’s sons would’ve…and again Liesel was struck with just how good these kids really were.
“You’ve done such a good job with them,” she said impulsively. “They’re such good kids.”
Sunny looked up, brow furrowed very much like Happy’s. Looking again a lot like Christopher. “Happy was quite naughty just now.”
“Not terribly.” Liesel ruffled his hair.
“Pway again?” This was Peace, tugging at Liesel’s shirt hem and looking up with those striking blue eyes. “Pwease? Weedul-ma?”
“Can we call you Nana?” Happy asked.
Sunny drew in a small, sharp breath, and gave Liesel a sad look. “That’s what they called my mom.”
“Oh…well…Happy, why don’t you call me Liesel. Grandma would feel a little funny to me.” Liesel took Peace’s hand, then Happy’s.
“Where it feel funny?” Peace poked Liesel with her free hand.
“In her heart, probably.” Sunny cleared her throat as though around emotion, though her eyes were dry. “Liesel’s very young to be a grandmother. Aren’t you?”
“I guess,” Liesel said, looking down at the two children holding her hands, “I’m old enough. C’mon, then. One more time, let’s play. Then how about we bake some cookies, okay? That’s what grandmothers do, right?”
“Let’s pway!” Peace cried, and this time when they came to the end of the song, she and Happy both fell down into the pile of clothes, their faces bright with laughter.
Chapter 17
“Let’s play a game.” This is John Second, he is Papa’s true son, and he’s looking at Sunny with a smile that makes her want to run away. “Come over here, Sunshine.”