But why are the words in there? The thoughts? Where are they coming from?
Listen with your heart. That’s what Papa always told them, and though Sunny never felt she’d reached the level Papa had expected, sitting here now on the stone bench she wonders if that really matters.
Sunny listens with her heart.
She listens hard, she listens long. She thinks of everything she was taught and believed. What she still believes, and what no longer makes any sense.
Nothing makes much sense.
Dr. Braddock had told Sunny she wasn’t crazy, and Sunny believes that. But Dr. Braddock also said that the family—including Sunny’s mother—were if not crazy, at least badly mistaken and led astray. Dr. Braddock did her best to make Sunny believe her mother did the best thing she could by sending Sunny and her kids away before they could all leave together…
But Sunny is no longer so sure that’s true.
“It’s never too late to come back to us,” Josiah had told her. “We’re your family, and we’ll always be here for you.”
But how can she go with him? Take her children from this house, from Liesel and Chris and everything they’ve grown so used to? Her children have become attached to material things, indiscriminate in their use of the earth’s favors. Her children eat candy, watch television. Break their toys and toss them in the trash.
They have become worldly, and whose fault is that? Her own. Sunny has failed her children.
She’s afraid of taking her GED test, applying to college, finding a better-paying job. She’s terrified of leaving her father’s house. She has to admit that she’s become attached to plentiful food, the freedom of money in her pocket. She’s become accustomed to the face she sees in her mirror, a girl with painted lips and hair hanging loose. Sunny has also failed herself.
She doesn’t want to go with Josiah and live three or four to a room again. Back to scrubbing floors on her hands and knees. Her belly hungry all the time. Her clothes dirty and worn. And worse, owning nothing, sharing everything.
She does not want to become one of Josiah’s wives. She’s not sure she’d like to be his one true wife, but Sunny is certain she doesn’t want to share her husband. Not with anyone.
“You should have left with all of them.” The angel’s voice is stronger this time. “Look at everything bad that’s happened to Liesel and Chris since you got here. Look at what will happen to your children. Already they’ve forgotten how to listen.”
With their hearts, Sunny thinks. They have forgotten how to listen with their hearts. Peace wants to wear makeup and pretty dresses. Happy will go to school. Neither of them will remember the family or Sanctuary. And Bliss will never know it at all.
“It’s not too late.”
No, Sunny thinks. No, it’s not too late.
Chapter 48
“You have my phone number, and your dad’s. The number of the bed-and-breakfast is on the fridge.” Liesel paused to study Sunny’s expression. She looked amused. “What?”
“You told me this already.” Sunny laughed.
Liesel sighed at herself. “I know. I just want to be sure you have all the information. I’d feel better if you could drive.”
Sunny hadn’t yet taken the driver’s test, though Chris had been teaching her every night for the past two weeks.
“You’ll only be gone for two nights, Liesel. We’ll be fine. You should go and have a good time. You need it,” Sunny added.
They did need it. It had been months since Liesel and Christopher had had any time to themselves as a couple, and with the baby on the way romantic time alone was going to be even harder to come by. He’d surprised her with a weekend away at a bed-and-breakfast they’d stayed in while they were dating. Not too far away…just far enough.
“We’ll be back some time on Sunday afternoon—”
“Liesel. Go.” Sunny pushed her gently toward the door. “My dad’s waiting for you.”
Liesel let herself be urged toward the front door, the car in the driveway and her waiting husband. It wasn’t until they were a few miles down the road, the windows open to let in the warm September breeze and the radio blasting classic rock, that she thought of something strange. It was the first time Sunny had called Christopher her dad.
Chapter 49
“One more game,” Sunny says, “and then it’s time for bed. What will we play?”
“Rosy Posie!” Peace dances in a circle, her blond braids flying.
Sunny shakes her head. “No. Not that one. Pick another game, my sweetheart, and then we’ll have a snack and go to sleep. We’ll all go to sleep.”
Happy chooses Candy Land, and Peace pouts but agrees. Bliss is allowed to choose the red gingerbread man, though Sunny has to flick the spinner for her and count the spaces. They play, all of them together, until Happy is near the end and Bliss’s eyes are drooping. Peace, seeing she can’t win, pushes her piece off the edge of the game board and complains of hunger.
“Good thing it’s time for a snack. Put the game away first,” Sunny says. “We don’t want to leave a mess for Liesel.”
The children put away the game, then gather at the table where Sunny gives them chocolate pudding. Their favorite. She likes it, too.
“Tastes funny,” Happy says, but eats it.
Peace has no complaints except that she’d like more. Baby Bliss makes a face, scrubbing at sleepy, drooping eyes, and Sunny spoons a few more bites into the baby’s mouth before offering the rest to her other daughter.
She’s given them far more than she usually would have…but they are children and pudding is sweet. They gobble it all and lick their spoons, trusting her the way she once trusted her own mother when she handed Sunny a paper cup of juice.
They really should have baths, but instead she simply wipes their faces clean with a damp cloth. They throw away their wasteful paper napkins. They put their bowls and spoons in the dishwasher that claims economy and energy saving but is wasteful, too.
Upstairs, Sunny puts them down in her big bed, the three of them so small yet taking up so much space. She lays herself down beside them, her face turned for a moment toward the window. Outside the glass the sky is turning dark. She can see the top of a tree but not the grass of the backyard. Not the garden. She can’t see the angel.
She can’t hear her anymore, either.
For the first time in a long, long time, Sunny closes her eyes and drifts. The bed beneath her dips and sways like a boat on the ocean, which now she will never see. It doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters anymore.
There’s a weight on her chest, her throat feels tight, but both those sensations are as far away as the stars peeking out from the night sky. Her fingertips have gone numb. Sunny waits to see the gates, but there’s nothing but a steady, low buzz in her ears and the taste of metal on her tongue.
She’s still too heavy. She can’t fly away. Her children, they’ve done nothing wrong, they have nothing to keep them from going ahead of her. Through the gates. She wants her children to go through the gates, she wants to go, she wants to take them by the hand and lead them through to the great, vast world of peace and bliss and happy. Not this world, this place she can’t fit inside no matter how hard she squeezes herself.
She wants to save them.
She wants to save herself.
But now the angel speaks, her words slow and dripping like honey from a spoon. From the moon. Is it Sunny’s voice? Is it her mother? Is it something else? Maybe the voice of the earth, of God, a god, a goddess, someone or something out there in the night sky.
A star?
“It isn’t time to leave.”
That’s all. There are no more words. They aren’t accusation, condemnation, they aren’t refusal or betrayal.
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All they are is truth, and Sunny knows this because all at once there is a light so bright behind her eyes it blocks out all the stars. There is no going through the gates. All there is, is here and now, this place with nothing to get to. This life is not something to get through.
Life is all there is.
And her fingers fumble, numb-tipped. Tap-tap on the keypad of her phone. Too late, so tired, but she forces her mouth to make the words, her throat to push them out past everything she’s done to silence herself forever.
“Josiah,” Sunny says. “I need you.”
Chapter 50
“He’s beautiful.” Sunny touched the baby’s cheek with a soft fingertip and beamed at Liesel. “Hello, Ian. Look, Peace. See how sweet?”
Peace shifted from her spot on Sunny’s lap to look in on the baby. Liesel had been afraid her nose would be put out of joint by the new arrival, but she’d taken on Ian as her “own real baby.” She kissed him now.
“Him sleeping, shh.” Peace struggled to get off Sunny’s lap and ran out across the grass to play with Happy and Bliss, who were playing tag with Chris.
Sunny watched them go. “She’s getting so grown up.”
“That’s what they do.”
Sunny looked at her. “They’re beautiful, too. Thank you, Liesel. For everything.”
They’d had this conversation many times over the past year, the words always the same and not really needing a response now. Liesel spoke instead with her actions. She hugged Sunny. Sunny hugged her back.
They sat without speaking to each other for a while, both of them cooing over tiny Ian’s every gurgle and bit of drool. And then it was time for them to go. Chris buckled Ian into his car seat while Liesel took care of Peace, and Sunny helped Happy, who insisted he could do it himself but accepted his mother’s help with a minimum of whining.
There was that awkward moment at the end of the day the way there always was after these visits, when Sunny stood and watched them drive away with her kids as she stayed behind.
“Mama,” Happy said as Chris started the ignition. “When will you come home with us?”
Chris and Liesel exchanged a look, but it was Sunny who stepped in with the answer. She leaned into the car to kiss her son’s head and stroke her hand over his hair. She touched his cheek.
“Maybe next time, my sweetheart.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him, because he didn’t ask again. Sunny closed the door and stepped back to let them pull out. The long, rolling driveway looped around the grounds, so she disappeared and came back into view three times before they finally got to the main road.
“Wave goodbye to Mama,” Liesel told the children, and they did.
Sunny couldn’t possibly see their faces inside the car from this distance. But they could see her, and that was what counted. They waved goodbye to her, and she waved back.
Chapter 51
In the dark and in the quiet, Sunny listened. Not with her heart, but her ears. The soft sounds of the ocean rushed over her, along with a pretty, soothing melody. The track was called “Ocean’s Kiss,” and was from an album Chris had loaded onto her iPod for her. She played it now on the speakers set up on her nightstand, close enough that she could reach to switch the song to any one she wanted.
But she liked this one the best.
She listened to it every night and sometimes during the day through her headphones while she went around on the walking path. She walked that path every day, never running the way Liesel liked to do. It was still good exercise.
Now she let the music send her drifting toward sleep. There would probably be dreams, but when she woke she’d know them for what they were. She didn’t have trouble telling the difference between what was real and wasn’t anymore.
Tomorrow she’d get up early. She might have a session with Dr. Braddock or study for her GED. She might watch some television, though honestly nothing much ever appealed to her. She might talk to Josiah on the phone. She’d let the day take her wherever it led and appreciate whatever she had.
And maybe next week, when her father and his wife brought their son and her children to visit her, Sunny might be ready to go home with them. Maybe next time, she’d said, and she knew that one day that would become the truth.
But for now she lay in her dark and quiet bed with her eyes closed, listening to the music and the sound of the ocean…and nothing else.
* * * * *
Questions for Discussion
Sunny’s mother is the one who decides to send her daughter and grandchildren into the world of the blemished, despite everything she’s always claimed to believe. Yet it’s likely she knew of the abusive aspects of life within the family, specifically those perpetrated by the man she loved, John Second. Did Trish saving Sunny and the kids negate what she’d allowed to happen for years? What do you think really prompted her to save them?
Liesel has wanted children for a long time, yet she is surprised by the difficulties she faces in taking care of three children under the age of four, as well as a teenager. Do you think most women have unrealistic expectations of motherhood? Did Liesel, or was her situation so difficult because it was unusual?
Discuss how you think you would react if it was suddenly revealed that your spouse had a child you knew nothing about. Would your inclination be to welcome him or her in? Would you see them as a potential threat to your relationship?
Christopher never discusses his first marriage to Trish with Liesel. The arrival of Sunny in his life obviously brings back painful memories he finds hard to deal with. What do you think makes it so difficult for Christopher to relate to her?
Though it’s mentioned that Sunny undergoes counseling with Dr. Braddock, she discontinues it after a relatively short period of time. Would it have helped or made no more difference to Sunny if she’d stayed in therapy for a longer time?
Do you think couples without children have fewer issues or troubles? How did not having children affect Liesel and Chris’s marriage? How would you characterize their marriage before Sunny? Discuss how their relationship might have been different if they’d had a baby of their own before Sunny’s arrival.
Some mainstream religions are criticized for what are thought to be unusual practices or beliefs—plural marriages, living apart from society, shunning technology, publicly “spreading the word.” Why are we uncomfortable with some practices? Do you feel some groups have more validity than others?
Sunny is wary of Josiah, even though her memories of him are mostly positive. Yet in the end, he’s the one she calls for help. How did you see Josiah—as a force for good in Sunny’s life, or as a potentially dangerous tie to the past?
The basic beliefs of the Family of Superior Bliss are taking care of the earth and the members’ “vessels” through positive actions such as caring for the environment and avoiding toxins. Obviously, that message became warped. Why does Sunny cling to the past hard enough to feel as though she didn’t fit in either place? Why might someone feel drawn to a join a group like the family?
In the end, Sunny’s children are being raised by Liesel and Christopher while Sunny herself remains hospitalized and in counseling. “Maybe next time” is the message she gives her children when they ask when she’ll be going home with them, and the one she thinks of when she’s alone. Where do you see Sunny in six months, a year, five years? Is it realistic that she will ever get beyond the programming she experienced her whole life? Would it be terrible if she rejoined Jos
iah as part of the family instead of living a “normal” life?
Acknowledgments
Special acknowledgments to a few people who helped me with some technical details:
Jim Thomas, retired sergeant from the Cincinnati Police Division—thank you for your answers to my questions.
Detective Leah Apple, who also provided me with some specific and important details.
The delightful limecello also came to my aid.
—If I got it right, it’s because they helped me. If I got it wrong, it’s all my own fault.
And finally, I could write without music, but I’m so very glad I don’t have to. Turn the page for a partial playlist of what I listened to while writing All Fall Down. Please support the artists through legal means.
Listening Guide
“The Banality of Evil”—Nine Horses
“After Afterall”—William Fitzsimmons
“Swans”—Unkle Bob (played it more than three
hundred times)
“Breathe Me”—Sia
“Lux Aeterna”—Clint Mansell
“Everything”—Lifehouse
“This Is Calm”—Christopher Dallman
“Josiah”—Aiden James
“Simple Gifts”—Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss
“The Sound of Silence”—Simon & Garfunkel
“Beeswing”—LJ Booth
“Somebody Loved”—The Weepies
“The Chain”—Ingrid Michaelson
“Oceanic 815”—Michael Giacchino
“Lullabye”—Arcady
“All Through the Night”—Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning