“For what? Did you kill her?”
Sunny looked again at the sky. “Nobody killed her. She didn’t die. She left, to go through the gates. It’s a good thing. You should be happy about it.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m not. Are you? Really?”
“No,” Sunny whispered without looking at him.
He started down the stairs. Sunny went after him. He turned to look at her, one hand held up as though she’d tried to grab him, when she hadn’t even made a move to touch him at all.
“Don’t.”
“You should tell your wife not to be sad,” Sunny said.
“I won’t tell her anything. All of this is bad enough, I won’t tell her any sort of crazy talk.” The old man’s lip curled. His eyes opened wide. He stabbed a finger at her. “And don’t go getting any ideas, either. About coming around. We don’t know you. You’re nothing, you hear me? You’re not anything to us! So don’t you think you can come around and stir up a lot of old memories.”
This time when he walked away, Sunny didn’t go after him. The door opened behind her. Chris, eyes and nose red, jerked his chin toward the old man getting in his car across the parking lot.
“What did he want?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I was trying to tell him not to be sad, but he didn’t want to listen.”
“He never liked me very much,” Chris said. “I’m not surprised he wasn’t nice to you. He should’ve been, though. I’m sorry, Sunny.”
She looked at him, surprised that he could take blame for something that had nothing to do with him. “Why?”
Chris looked surprised, too. “Because…he’s your grandfather. He’s your family. He should be happy you’re here.”
“Are you happy that I’m here?”
“Of course I am.” He put a hand on her shoulder, strong fingers squeezing. Sunny thought he would pull her close for a hug, but he didn’t. He released her with a sharp nod, as though they’d shared something significant.
Maybe they had.
Chapter 12
The doll’s name is Baby-Wets-a-Lot. Grammy sent it for Liesel’s birthday. Mom laughs at the bright pink package, and when Liesel pulls out the pack of special diapers, she makes a face.
“Just what we need, right? More pee-pee and poo-poo? Hey, Liesel, Mommy has a real Baby-Wets-a-Lot right here.” She hikes baby Robbie higher on her hip. “Any time you want to change a diaper—”
“These are special diapers,” Liesel says.
“Believe me,” Mom says, “your brother’s are pretty darned special, too.”
Robbie needs feeding and a nap, so Mom leaves Liesel and Gretchen to coo over Baby-Wets-a-Lot’s cute little outfits and her special bottle that you fill with water to feed her so she pees. Gretchen has lots of doll babies, but Liesel grew out of them a couple years ago. At least, she thought she did, but faced with the excitement of a doll with real bodily functions, she discovers a newly maternal desire.
“Let’s put her in my carriage,” Gretchen suggests. “We can take Baby for a walk in the yard!”
Liesel shakes her head. “Her name’s not Baby.”
“It is! Mommy said so!”
“Nope.” Liesel really likes to tease Gretchen, who’s only two years younger but still acts like worse of a baby than Robbie sometimes. “Her name’s…Prunella.”
Gretchen wrinkles her nose. “That’s a bad name.”
Liesel makes a shocked face and cradles Prunella against her. “Shh! Don’t hurt her feelings!”
It’s just a silly doll, but Gretchen will believe it has feelings. She still talks to her stuffed animals and arranges them every morning on her bed. She pets them, or in the case of the plastic ponies, brushes their hair while she sings to them. Grammy really should’ve sent Gretchen the doll.
But she didn’t. Prunella belongs to Liesel. Gretchen frowns and crosses her arms, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Liesel takes Prunella out into the yard anyway, under the big shady tree. There she takes off the doll’s dress. She and Gretchen marvel at the doll’s plastic nipples. Then at the small hole between the doll’s legs.
“That’s where the pee comes out.” Gretchen sounds amazed.
Liesel already filled the bottle with water. They take turns feeding Prunella, until a minute or two later, the diaper gets wet and soggy. Then they change it. That’s fun for about another minute, but then Liesel’s bored. They go inside the house to get some lemonade, because that will make the pee yellow.
“I think we should make her poop.” Liesel whispers this with glee, but Gretchen looks horrified.
It doesn’t really matter, because Liesel can get Gretchen to do anything she wants her to. That’s how Liesel makes her sister climb up into the cupboard to get the box of chocolate pudding. They mix it up together in Liesel’s bedroom while Mommy is taking a nap with Robbie.
The “poop” goes in, but it doesn’t come out.
“Maybe she needs more to drink.” Gretchen fills the bottle with more lemonade. They force it into Prunella’s mouth.
They wait.
And then…
“Poooooop!”
It dribbles out of the tiny hole in Prunella’s butt and into the diaper. Gretchen and Liesel dare each other to taste it, and Liesel sticks a finger in it. She chases Gretchen down the hall, both of them screaming, until Mommy comes out of her bedroom with that face on. The one that means they’re in trouble.
Liesel doesn’t find the doll again until a few weeks later, under her bed, and only then because of the smell. She sneaks it into the garbage when her mother is busy with Robbie. Prunella’s ruined, and even though Liesel doesn’t like dolls very much anymore, she cries when she stuffs stinky, moldy Prunella under the banana peels and eggshells and coffee grounds. It was the last time she’d played with a doll or changed a diaper until Becka’s kids came along.
Now, Liesel held a squirming, sobbing infant who refused to be soothed no matter what she did. She’d changed Bliss’s diaper, rocked her, tried to give her water, since that was all she had. Sunny had agreed to leave the baby behind when she went with Christopher to the morgue, but had seemed appalled at the suggestion Liesel give Bliss some formula while she was gone. Liesel understood breast-feeding was natural and everything, but it didn’t do her much good with Bliss red-faced and furious from hunger. The other two kids had settled happily enough in front of the television in the den with bowls of dry cereal, but the baby was inconsolable.
“Shh,” Liesel said. “Shh, shh.”
She tried to remember a lullaby her mom had sung to her, but all she came up with was a slowed-down and way less falsetto version of Prince’s “Kiss.”
The wailing didn’t even turn Happy’s or Peace’s little heads, but it was starting to set Liesel’s jaw on edge. She sang under her breath as she paced in front of the living room window, bouncing the baby in her arms until, finally, Bliss collapsed in exhaustion against her. Then she pressed her lips to the baby’s soft head and breathed in. She expected the sweet baby smell of powder and wipes, but coughed instead on the sour stink of a dirty diaper and unappeased fury.
It reminded her of that long-ago doll she’d tossed aside under the bed in favor of other games. Liesel gathered the boneless, sleeping baby closer instinctively, though she’d never told anyone what she’d done with that doll and there wasn’t anyone here to judge her anyway.
Christopher pulled into the driveway. Minutes later, Sunny came into the kitchen, then through to the living room. Liesel wouldn’t have thought the girl would have many smiles after identifying her dead mother, but Sunny’s face beamed when she held out her hands for her daughter.
“How was everything?” she asked.
Liesel’s bruises still ached, and the unac
customed weight of a twelve-pound infant in her arms for hours had exacerbated the pinching warmth in her neck, shoulders and back. Her belly still griped with cramps. Still, she smiled. “Great. Everything was great.”
Christopher’s face showed it hadn’t been as great for him, and when Sunny took Bliss upstairs, Liesel followed him into the den with a cold bottle of beer. He’d already poured himself a glass of whiskey from the decanter they hardly ever used. When she slid onto his lap, he shifted to hold the glass out of the way.
“Hey,” Liesel said. “How was it?”
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. He drank first. The smell of the whiskey, thick and peaty, reminded her of their wedding night. Christopher’s kiss had tasted of liquor and they’d laughed and laughed about sneaking away early from the reception to get into their suite.
“How do you think it was?”
His answer made her feel stupid and like the weight of her on his lap was too much, so she got off to prop herself on the arm of the chair instead. She sipped at the beer she’d brought for him, though she didn’t care for the taste.
“She’s dead,” he added, though she hadn’t said anything else. “That’s it, it’s done. That’s all there is to it.”
“What about the funeral?”
“No funeral,” he said. “She left a letter. They all left letters. Christ, Liesel, it was like something out of a horror movie. I recognized her handwriting. She always made this little half circle instead of a dot over the i in her name. She knew what she was doing.”
Liesel rubbed his shoulder and after a hesitation, Christopher leaned against her. She kissed the top of his head. “I’m sorry.”
But she wasn’t, not really. She was sad for him and for Sunny, and those three children, but only because they’d all lost someone who’d meant something to them. She was sad in a vague way and sick to her stomach at the thought that a group of people could be so easily led into taking their own lives for some reason she couldn’t begin to process. But sorry about Trish specifically? Not really.
Still, she tried. “Do you want to…talk about her?”
“Nothing to say.” Christopher got up, shaking the chair and making it feel so unsteady beneath her that Liesel got up, too. He poured himself another measure of whiskey, though this time he swirled it in the glass, holding it to the light, and didn’t actually drink.
“Do you want to talk at all about any of this?”
He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He drew in a breath, then another. And another, his shoulders lifting. She’d never seen him off balance about anything—she was the one who freaked out about fender benders and giant spiders, while Christopher dealt with whatever life pitched at him by hitting it out of the park.
Christopher sighed and held out an arm. She went to him for a hug and warmed herself in his embrace. In silence, he rested his chin on top of her head.
“This could turn out to be a good thing, Christopher.” When he didn’t answer, she took his hand. Squeezed it reassuringly. “A really good thing.”
Chapter 13
The uniformed man sitting across from her seemed nice enough. His name was Officer Smith. He had a friendly smile. Kind eyes. Sunny didn’t trust him at all. Papa had often warned them to avoid the cops when they were passing out literature, because they could be arrested for soliciting without a permit. Sometimes the police had come to Sanctuary to investigate complaints about different things, and when that happened, it had always been bad for all of them. There’d been punishments. To keep them safe, Papa said. To make them extra-aware of how their behavior outside could bring trouble inside.
“Let’s go over everything again, just to make sure I have it all straight. We’re just trying to figure some things out. Okay? Just a few more questions.”
Sunny nodded. Liesel and Christopher had taken the children into the other room, and her lap felt empty without a baby on it. She had a mug of hot tea on the table in front of her, but she didn’t want to drink it.
“Your mother woke you, is that right? Your mother is…” He looked at a small notebook. “Patricia Bomberger?”
Sunny nodded. “Yes.”
“She’d already packed for you?”
Another nod. “Yes. She gave me a backpack with some clothes in it. And some money.”
“Where’d she get the money?”
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t a lie. It hadn’t occurred to Sunny before, but her mother must’ve stolen it. Probably from John Second. Sunny swallowed, hard.
“She told you to take your children and get out.”
“She told me to go to my father’s house.”
“And you’d never been here before? You had no previous relationship with your father? That would be Christopher Albright.”
“My mother left him before I was born. I never knew him,” Sunny said quietly. “The only father I ever knew was John Superior.”
“John Alvarez,” said the cop’s partner, Officer Dugan, reading from his own small notebook. “Also known as John Superior, John the Prophet and John Mashiach.”
“I don’t know if he had other names. He was John Superior to us.”
“Your children called him Papa,” said the cop.
Sunny hesitated. “Yes, we called him Papa. He was our spiritual father.”
The cops exchanged a look. “And John Alvarez had two biological sons, is that right? John Alvarez Junior and another son? Josiah? He’s the one who notified the police about what had happened.”
Sunny hesitated. She’d said nothing about Josiah to them, but they already knew. They’d already known a lot of things about the family. “How did he know? He left a long time ago.”
“He and—” Officer Dugan paused to check his notes “—John Alvarez Junior had a falling-out? They fought?”
“After Papa died, they didn’t agree on Papa’s teachings. So…” She looked back and forth to the police. “How did he know what had happened?”
Silence. The cops looked at each other again, then her. Officer Dugan cleared his throat. “We’re really not at liberty—”
“Apparently, John Alvarez contacted his brother to tell him the…plans.” Officer Smith leaned forward just the slightest bit. “Unfortunately, Josiah Alvarez didn’t get the message in time and wasn’t able to notify the authorities before…well…”
Sunny tried to make sense of this. “Why would John Second have called him?”
“Miss Albright—”
Startled, she looked up at Officer Smith. “What?”
There was no need for last names in the family. It had never occurred to her they would think of her as Christopher’s daughter, with his name. It had never occurred to her that legally, it probably was.
“Had John Alvarez Junior, alias John Second, been behaving erratically or…um…was there a change in his behavior?” This came from Dugan, who wasn’t quite as nice as Smith.
Sunny thought about the lockdowns. The forced fasting. The punishments had become more frequent, more severe over the past year. “John Second was angry that some people thought Papa had lied to us about what we needed to do to get through the gates. He said we all needed to work harder, that it was our fault Papa hadn’t left the right way. He blamed us.”
Officer Smith gave her another kind smile, but this one didn’t reach his eyes. “Did you know he was going to order everyone in the compound to kill themselves?”
“We had drills.” Sunny drew in a breath and fought to keep her voice steady. “Rainbow drills. It was important that we be ready.”
Dugan sighed. “Ready for what, exactly?”
Sunny lifted her chin. They were blemished; of course they’d never understand. “To leave. Ready to go through the gates.”
“By killing yourselves?”
“Physical bodies can’t reach the spiritual plane.” Papa’s words sounded strange in her voice. Tasted weird. “Our physical bodies are the vessels we use to contain our spiritual bodies until the time comes to go through the gates. That’s why it’s so important to take care of them, because a flaw in the physical can scar the spirit.”
She’d said too much, she saw it in both their faces. Skepticism. Disdain. Pity. She’d seen it before, on the faces of the people she’d offered literature to.
“I need to ask you again, Sunny. And you need to answer me honestly, okay?” Officer Smith leaned forward just a little, those kind eyes sincere but digging far too deep inside her. “The night you left, did you know that John Second was going to order everyone to take the pills that would kill them?”
Sunny shook her head. Her throat ached and her eyes burned, but she lifted her chin and took some more deep breaths to give them nothing but a face of stone. “No. I didn’t. I thought it was just another drill, like all the others.”
Officer Smith stood, and after a second, so did his partner. “That’s all we have to ask for now.”
Sunny didn’t stand. She warmed her hands on the mug. “What’s going to happen to me? And my children?”
The officers exchanged glances. Once again it was Officer Smith who answered her. “Your father and his wife have already assured us that you all have a place here with them. The social worker who was here earlier—”
“Mrs. Umberger.” That had been the woman’s name. She’d had kind eyes, too, but her gaze had been sharp enough to pick out anything dirty, unsafe. Sunny’d seen social workers in Sanctuary, checking to make sure they weren’t living in squalor or beating their children. This woman had looked around Liesel and Christopher’s house as though it were a dungeon made from a garbage heap.
“Yeah. She’ll have to write up a report—”
“A report?” Sunny frowned. Report was what they did in Sanctuary when someone chose not to share their discretions and needed someone to do it for them.