The moment Ilka stepped into the funeral home, she knew; she saw it on everyone’s faces. Her mother and Jette had told her father that she hadn’t paid Artie’s health insurance, and that Artie now had very serious money problems because of her.
He turned to Ilka in anger. “How could this happen? Why in the world did you go through my mail? Something as important as—”
“Hold on just a minute, Paul!” Jette said. “You were dead. Somebody had to take care of things. And it’s also true, like Ilka says, that you should have used a payment service to make sure important bills like that were taken care of. What if the postal service had lost the letter? It happens all the time in Denmark. And we consider ourselves lucky if a bill reaches us before it’s due. You can’t count on anything with the mail, and you certainly can’t blame your daughter.”
“If she hadn’t interfered, Sister Eileen would have taken care of it. And this wouldn’t have happened.”
Ilka knew her father felt helpless, and that he was deeply unhappy about Artie’s situation. But she whirled around to face him and exploded.
“I have heard enough out of you! I tried to take care of your business while you’ve been gone, and I could have done better, I admit it. But don’t fucking stand there and accuse me of interfering, because believe me, I did not want to interfere, it’s the last thing I wanted to do.”
Tufts of the white hair surrounding his head seemed to bristle as her father rose furiously from the table to shout back at her, but Ilka cut him off.
“If we’d found Lydia, all these problems would have been solved. She has enough money to cover Artie’s hospital expenses, and I’m absolutely sure she would do it. But I don’t know where she is. And us standing here yelling at each other isn’t going to help.”
“But I thought she was here,” her mother said. “Wasn’t that why you had us move to the hotel?”
The four of them stood looking at each other, but Ilka didn’t at all feel like explaining. All she could think about was what Jennings had said about the God Squad, how he was scared they’d never see Lydia again.
She started to turn and walk away, but her father cleared his throat and calmly said, “I know where she is.”
It took only one second, one step for Ilka to be in his face. “Where?”
“I’ll take you there.”
Ilka summarized what Calvin Jennings had told her while they drove. Her father shook his head at Isiah Burnes and the “peace force” he sent after people who broke the rules of his religious regime.
“Did you ever have the feeling she was hiding people in the apartment?” Ilka was thinking about the rollaway bed folded up under the window. “Or did she borrow your car, maybe?”
Her father stared out the passenger window a few seconds. “Once in a while she wanted to borrow the hearse, and of course I let her if we weren’t using it. I assumed it had something to do with her parish. And you always want to help if you can.”
“But she didn’t belong to any parish.”
“No, she didn’t, as it turns out.”
Quite a while went by before the towering chimney came into sight and Ilka realized where her father was taking her. She glanced at him. They hadn’t spoken about his relationship to Dorothy, though Ilka had the feeling the two of them had been in contact after he’d returned from Key West.
She turned into the driveway leading to the old farm and crematorium. “How long has Lydia been here?”
“Since yesterday. She called me and said she’d asked Dorothy to come get her at Artie’s house.”
“Called? So you knew Lydia was around? Why didn’t you say something about it?”
“Because you’d already left. And I haven’t seen you until now.”
“So that was where you and Leslie were last night?”
She parked in front of Dorothy’s front door, and he turned to her. “Do you think Lydia can help Artie?” he said, ignoring her question.
Ilka nodded, but before he could ask anything else, she stepped out of the car.
Dorothy came out of the old crematorium and walked their way.
“Ilka wants to talk to Lydia,” her father said. “They parted under difficult circumstances, I think you could say, back when she drove down to Key West to get me.”
That’s putting it diplomatically, Ilka thought. She could still hear Lydia spitting words in her face, saying she hoped for Ilka’s sake that they’d never see each other again. As they walked to the door, Dorothy reached over and put her arm around Ilka. A type of intimacy had formed between them on the evening Ilka sat on Dorothy’s sofa and listened to her explain how Fletcher had forced her father to not contact Ilka. That night convinced her that Dorothy loved her father, which was a comfort to know; by then she’d realized how lonely her father had been in Racine.
On the front doorstep, she stopped; she could see Lydia in the living room window. An indescribable sense of relief washed over her, knowing the tiny woman was safe inside the house, yet at the same time Ilka was angry to find out she’d been so close by. The feeling vanished, though, when Lydia opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. Ilka saw none of the woman’s desperation and rage that had frightened her at the rest stop, where the bleeding man lay on the ground.
“You found the bag,” Ilka said. She explained that she’d left it at the hospital with Artie because she’d been afraid the Rodriguez brothers would return.
“I guessed as much,” Lydia said.
There was a look in her eye Ilka had never seen before, a determination. She’d made up her mind.
“Thank you,” she said, so quietly that only Ilka heard her. “For helping me.”
Ilka nodded at her, silently accepting that the way they’d last parted was history, something they wouldn’t ever discuss.
Lydia stood by the coffee table as Ilka sat on the sofa. “Someone wanted me to tell you hello—Calvin Jennings. He’s the one who came around asking for Lydia Rogers, that day you found out you’d been recognized.”
Lydia nodded. “I know who he is.”
“He can help you.” Ilka shivered, even though the door to the back room and stairway was closed.
She described how Jennings had sought her out at the hotel. “He was the one you talked to when you called in about the shooting at your brother’s house, is how I understand it.”
Something shifted in Lydia’s eyes.
“Fernanda told us what happened that day,” Ilka said.
Lydia nodded again and waited.
“He wants you to go back to Texas with him, to act as a witness against Isiah Burnes.”
That clearly startled Lydia, but still she said nothing.
“He can get the charges against you dropped. He can prove the cult planted the evidence.”
“They did it?” Lydia slowly walked over to the easy chair and sat down with her hands folded in her lap.
Ilka told her how Jennings had left the police and was now a private investigator. “But he still has connections to the police in San Antonio. I think he’s determined to stop God’s Will and clear your name. A great injustice against you, is how he put it. He also told me you and Alice Payne work with the underground railroad that helps women and children get away from the cult.”
Lydia looked up, her face pale now.
Quickly Ilka reached out across the table to her. “He’s on your side.”
“How can we be sure of that?”
Her father’s voice startled her, and Ilka turned and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Why should we trust him? He could just as well be working for the Rodriguez brothers.”
Lydia shook her head and looked down at her hands. “I think he’s here to help. When I saw him out in front of the funeral home, I got scared. I thought he’d come to tell me something had happened to Alice. Or that she’d sent him to warn me. That’s why I wanted to just get out of there.”
Her voice was husky, and Ilka realized that Lydia was touched, even relieved. Or maybe it was from knowing she was no longer alone, that someone believed her and wanted to help.
Her father wouldn’t let it go. “But can we trust him?”
Lydia nodded. “His own daughter joined God’s Will when she was seventeen or eighteen. She fell in love with a guy in the cult, but a year later she committed suicide. I didn’t know Jennings back then, or his daughter. She was several years older than me. But he was the one my brother contacted for help, back when he was planning on getting his family out of there. That’s why I called him. I wasn’t aware he knew Alice Payne, that she was helping women who wanted out. Alice and my brother helped me escape, and she supported me later on, too. It takes a long time to change your head when you’ve been raised a certain way all your life. Back then I lived with Alice and her husband.”
Ilka glanced into the kitchen.
“Dorothy knows all about this,” Lydia said.
“Jennings told me your parents were members of the cult,” Ilka said. “Are they still alive?”
Lydia shrugged. “I don’t know which one of the men was my father. Nobody cared about that, we were all children of Isiah Burnes. He could be the one—my mother claimed he was. But it could just as well have been any one of the others. I haven’t seen my mother since she sent Ben and me to Texas. She stayed in Utah with my two younger sisters. I was thirteen, my brother was fourteen. It was the year before he was excluded. He tried to find her once when he was in his mid-twenties, he wanted to get back at her for what she’d done to us. Ben had this enormous need for revenge and justice. We both wanted her to pay for the childhood she gave her children.”
Dorothy came in with coffee.
“Ben may have been thrown out of the cult, but he was never really free of it, of what it had done to him. It’s hard to understand, I realize that. And most of us don’t like talking about it. Boys were raped, just like the girls. It was just that we were worth more, because we were fruitful and could multiply, all that. I had a self-induced abortion when I was fourteen, and after that I couldn’t get pregnant. Now I think it saved me, even though I nearly died back then. The day after my brother turned fifteen, they took him away, to New Jersey. It’s a long drive from Texas, with two armed men in the car. I wasn’t told anything about it; one day he was just gone, and nobody would say anything when I asked.”
Lydia looked at Ilka’s father. “That’s when I first tried to run away, but they caught me, and after that they kept a close eye on me. I heard about Alice Payne when I was twenty-two, and I finally managed to escape—my brother had contacted her and asked her to help. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get in with a message for me, Burnes’s security people would find out.”
“The God Squad.”
Lydia looked at Ilka in surprise.
“Jennings told me about them,” Ilka explained.
“Nobody gets in without their approval. Alice is a gynecologist, and she gets called in when there are complications. Otherwise the cult has their own doctors and midwives, so it’s only when something goes wrong that they get help from outside.”
“So you think Jennings can be trusted?” her father said.
Lydia nodded. “Definitely. Because of what happened with his daughter, he might be the person willing to go the farthest to stop Burnes. And if what happened down in Texas was their revenge on me for running away, if that’s true, well…”
Lydia was clearly shaken, as if that new piece of information had finally soaked in and sounded plausible to her. “I’d like to talk to him, but he’ll have to come out here. It’s too risky for me to go into town if the Rodriguez brothers are still looking for me.”
“I agree,” Ilka said. She handed Lydia her phone and the card Jennings had given her.
They all waited in silence as she made the call. Lydia stared down at the coffee table while she spoke with Jennings. From her short answers, Ilka concluded she was prepared to give testimony against Burnes, if the police managed to arrest him.
“And you’re sure the police will listen to me?” she asked for the second time.
Ilka pieced together that Jennings had told her about the new police chief in San Antonio, that things were much different now. And it sounded as if Jennings had the same records of drug deliveries as those that had been in the bag, including a list of people the drug ring had paid to cross the border with the dead babies.
Ilka thought about Javi Rodriguez. She realized that her own sense of justice had changed since learning what had happened earlier; she was much more willing now to accept that her father and Lydia had gotten rid of him.
“I can’t leave right at the moment,” Lydia told Jennings, her eyes still locked onto the table. “There’s something I have to take care of first.”
Dorothy looked uneasy, but Lydia hung up after promising to call again as soon as she was ready to meet him.
Ilka was worried too. What if the San Antonio police weren’t as willing to work out a deal with Lydia as Jennings believed they were? The minute she stepped into police headquarters, she risked being arrested and ending her days in one of the country’s most isolated prisons. Ilka had googled sentencing in Texas, and she knew how brave Lydia was to trust Jennings.
“What is it you have to do?” Ilka’s father looked at Lydia as if he already knew he wouldn’t like her answer.
She stared into space for a moment then glanced at Dorothy before rising from the sofa. A few seconds later she had opened the door to a room at the back of the house and called up the stairs.
Ilka’s father straightened up in his chair. Dorothy had laid a blanket around his shoulders, and it slid to the floor when a woman showed up in the doorway.
“This is my youngest sister, Jane-Maya,” Lydia said.
Ilka gaped at the woman. She was in her late twenties, maybe thirty. Two girls still in their nightgowns walked in behind her. Ten and twelve? Ilka wasn’t sure; guessing ages wasn’t her strong suit. The daughters stared down at their bare feet.
“They’re going to have a new life now, outside of the cult,” Lydia explained.
Dorothy carried in an extra chair so they all could sit down. She brought in more coffee and two glasses of fruit juice for the girls. They sat glued to each other and their mother on the sofa, hands folded in their laps and eyes averted. Their hair was gathered in ponytails that hung all the way down their backs.
Ilka took note of a large, reddish-brown splotch on the skin of the oldest girl, just above her nightgown’s collar. A burn mark, or a wide scar. Suddenly she felt Lydia’s eyes on her and realized she was staring at the girl’s neck. She quickly looked away.
“My sister and her girls are going up to Canada, where our other sister lives.”
It was obvious the two were sisters, Ilka reflected. They had the same delicate features and flat nose. Jane-Maya wasn’t much taller than Lydia, either, though her eyes were light blue and Lydia’s were brown. She had the same long ponytail as her daughters, and she wore a long dress buttoned up to her neck.
“We got her out four months ago, and now she’s found a place up there for all of them. She has three kids, so they need quite a bit of room.”
Lydia smiled tenderly at her sister and nieces; the warmth in her eyes became her. Ilka listened as Lydia explained that her two sisters had stayed with their mother at the cult’s headquarters in Utah until a few years ago, when she’d finally managed to contact them through one of Alice Payne’s friends, a lawyer.
“It took a long time for us to find each other. In more ways than one.” Leaving the cult had been a difficult decision, Lydia explained. “Both my sisters were married to Isiah Burnes, and that gives you status and a better position in the hierarchy. But it also makes it much more difficult to get out.”
“But wasn’t Isiah Burnes your father?” Ilka said.
The steely look returned to Lydia’s eyes as she nodded wordlessly.
Ilka left it at that. Something inside her softened up; she’d never seen Lydia this way, sensitive, emotional, so different from the desperate and angry woman she’d been down in Kentucky.
“I can’t go with Jennings until I get Jane-Maya and my nieces to Detroit. Our sister will pick them up when they cross the border.”
Ilka had no idea where Detroit was in relation to Racine, nor did she know the city was located on the US-Canadian border; geography was another of her weak points.
“I can drive them there.” Ilka glanced over at Jane-Maya, who was looking away. “How far is it?”
“It’s a six-, seven-hour drive from here,” her father said.
“Can we borrow the hearse?” Lydia asked.
Suddenly Ilka understood why it had looked so routine when Lydia had crawled up into the coffin, back when they fled from the Rodriguez brothers. “You want to smuggle them out of the country in a coffin!”
Her hand flew to her mouth; she shouldn’t have said that out loud, in front of the woman and her daughters. But they showed no reaction.
“It’s the only way. They don’t have passports or IDs. Isiah Burnes doesn’t allow it.”
Ilka nodded thoughtfully. Of course Lydia could forge the necessary papers, she thought; after all, she’d forged her father’s death certificate.
Ilka had made up her mind. “I want to do this. When do we leave?”
Jane-Maya and her daughters on the sofa didn’t look like they cared who drove them, but Lydia thought it over.
“Tomorrow,” she finally answered. “If you’re serious about this. You should leave around ten; that way you’ll hit the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel around rush hour.”
Ilka nodded. That meant Lydia could leave with Jennings tomorrow too, as soon as Ilka took off.
“But there are a few things to do first,” Lydia said. “I’ve rented a storage unit in a warehouse three blocks away from the funeral home.”
Ilka knew that must be in the industrial zone farther out from downtown, though she’d never been there.
“There’s a large coffin inside, an XL, or oversized as we call it. It’s easy to get to. There’s also a cart to roll it out on, but you can back the hearse up all the way to the door.”
“I can go with you,” her father said, but Ilka shook her head and said she could handle it.
“While you’re driving here in the States, they can sit up in the coffin if you close the curtains in back. Just so no one can see inside. But when you get to the Canadian border, to customs and immigration, they need to be lying down inside the coffin. As long as the papers are in order, they won’t check inside.”
Bizarre, Ilka thought, but she nodded. “We could even leave today.” She glanced over again at Jane-Maya.
Lydia shook her head. Everything had been coordinated with their sister in Canada, she explained. Then she stood up and asked Ilka and her father to follow her outside.
“They came directly from Alice’s,” she said when they reached the front steps. “The plan was for them to stay with Fernanda a few weeks before going on, but Alice couldn’t get hold of her, and neither could I. So she drove them up here. Usually Alice drives a cult member down to Key West when she gets them out. It helps to have a place they can relax for a while with no pressure. It’s an enormous change in their lives, especially for us who were born into the cult. It’s all we’ve known.”
Ilka noticed that her father had closed the front door.
“Then when we decide they’re ready to go on, Alice drives them up here to Racine, to me. But they only stay for a night, two at the most, before I take them to their final destination.”
“Where’s that?” Ilka caught herself whispering, though there was no one else around.
“Usually they go to other women who have escaped from some religious group, not necessarily God’s Will. It could be Mormons, Scientology, the Family. The feeling that you’re in prison, it’s the same. And no matter what group you’ve escaped from, you want to help others in the same situation.”
Ilka nodded. Yes, she could see that.
Lydia turned to Ilka’s father. “I’m worried about Fernanda. Is there anyone in Key West you know well enough that you could ask them to check the house? To make sure everything’s okay?”
He ran his hand over the top of his head and thought a moment. “Nick. I can ask him to run over there.”
He turned to Ilka. “He’s the one you met, the guy behind the bar. Could you look his number up for me? The name of the bar is Mudville.”
Ilka fished her phone out of her pocket and googled the bar.
“When did your sister and nieces get here?” She thought about her own desperate search for Lydia.
“Yesterday evening. I talked to Alice the day before yesterday, which is when she told me she couldn’t get hold of Fernanda. I couldn’t put them up in the funeral home this time, obviously, so I asked Dorothy if they could stay here.”
Ilka nodded. Of course Lydia knew Dorothy well enough to feel comfortable asking her.
“Our sister in Canada is so happy they’ll be together again. After she picks them up, it’s another five hours to the house she’s rented, so it’s going to be a long trip for the girls.”
Ilka found the number of the bar and handed her phone to her father. She pulled Lydia aside. “There’s something I need you to do for me.”
Without mincing words, she described Artie’s situation and what had happened with his insurance. “I know you’ve already put a lot into his hospital account, but it’s not enough. I don’t understand at all how it can be so expensive, and I’ve racked my brains, but now I’m at the point where I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t worry about it, Artie is my responsibility. I’m the reason he’s in this terrible mess, it never should’ve happened. I’ll make sure he doesn’t lack for anything. And if the Rodriguez brothers get their hands on me before we can put them behind bars—well, they’ll just have to get by with a lot less money, won’t they!”
Ilka had never heard this sense of humor from Lydia before, even in her disguise as Sister Eileen. It must be an enormous relief for her, she thought, knowing that all the years of living underground in constant fear of being found were coming to an end. Finally, she wasn’t alone.
“Thank you,” Ilka said. She was about to turn back to her father when Lydia reached out and held her arm. Ilka stared at the edge of a round burn mark that was now exposed, just visible above the petite woman’s collar.
Lydia let go and let her arm fall to her side. “We all have one.”
She tugged her blouse up to cover the scar. “It’s part of the baptism ceremony, the day you turn twelve. That’s the day your childhood ends and your adult life begins. And everything that comes with it. Jane-Maya’s oldest daughter just turned twelve, so her brand hasn’t healed yet. It was part of the reason my sister worked up the courage to run away, before her younger daughter had to go through the same ritual, and before they both were married off.”
Lydia pursed her lips. “I think I’ve always hoped that someone someday would step forward and let the world know how much evil Isiah Burnes has done. Look at my little nieces. I can’t say for sure they’ve already been abused, but it wouldn’t surprise me. That’s what we’re up against. We’re fighting the pain, all the damage done to the women and children in the cult, every single day. And I’m well aware how it’s so unreal to all of you on the outside, that such things can even take place, that more people don’t get out. But when you’re inside the cult, it’s hard to imagine life being any different.”
“But they rape small children—surely every parent can see how wrong that is.”
Lydia nodded. “You’d think so, but that’s not how it looks on the inside. Burnes convinces us the lives we lead are full of love, that we are being broad-minded. However perverted it sounds, the cult looks on open sexual relationships as universal love given to all the members. He brainwashes everyone into thinking that evil exists only outside the cult. And people believe him. It’s going to take a man like Calvin Jennings to stop Burnes. Otherwise there’s no hope.”
“You are so brave! And you’re doing the right thing by going with him. I’ll make sure your family gets to Canada.”
Lydia nodded and glanced over at Ilka’s father, who was still speaking on the phone. “Just give me a minute, I’ll get the money for you.”
She headed for the door as he handed the phone back to Ilka. He looked worried.
“He’s going over there to check on them,” he said.
Ilka squeezed his shoulder. When she was down in Key West, she’d seen how close he’d become to Fernanda and Ethan. And it had been equally obvious how the boy felt about her father.
She told him Lydia was upstairs getting the money. “Do you want to go along to the hospital, to pay them? Or would you rather stay here?” She could pick him up on the way back; that would give her time alone with Artie, so she could explain things to him.
He shook his head. “No, I’ll go with you. Her nieces have been through enough, and a strange man around the house might upset them even more. They need all the rest they can get. They’ve got a long trip ahead of them tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’re upsetting them, I think it’s the whole situation. I just can’t understand how something like this can take place. Especially when the authorities know about it.”
Deep down, she almost had trouble believing the cult was as bad as Jennings and Lydia described it; on the other hand, she’d seen the look in the eyes of Jane-Maya and the two young girls. And now she saw the same darkness in her father’s expression.
“Several years ago, another cult leader was arrested,” he said. “He got life plus twenty years. They called him one of the worst sex monsters in history. But even from prison he managed to control his followers. That says something about the strength of people’s belief. He had over fifteen thousand followers.”
“But what about people on the outside, why don’t they do something about it?”
Her father shook his head. “They called him the Prophet of Evil; he owned an enormous amount of land close to the border between Utah and Arizona, worth something like a hundred million dollars. Some of the local police were members of his cult, while he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”
He shook his head again. “It’s hard to understand, I know, but I’m sure everything Lydia says is true. It’s all happened before.”
Lydia came back with the money in a plastic sack. “This will cover everything he wants or needs. Whatever’s left when he gets out of the hospital, put it in his bank account.”
She looked at Ilka. “I’m very sorry, I didn’t know Artie had these problems.”
Ilka knew it was the closest she’d come to apologizing for how all the problems had been dumped on Ilka.
At the hospital, Ilka asked her father to wait in the hallway while she went into the office on Artie’s ward. The woman she’d spoken to last time was behind the counter, and she didn’t look particularly happy to see Ilka. But she nodded and waved her on in.
“The hospital administration has entered into an agreement with Sorvino and his bank.” The woman obviously wanted Ilka to keep her nose out of it. “His house has been put up as collateral, and we won’t demand payment on what we are owed until the house is sold.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Ilka began unpacking the money. “What’s the status of his patient account?”
It seemed to take a superhuman effort for the woman to lean over and check his account. “He owes four thousand nine hundred dollars, as of today. But now that his house has been put up as security, he can continue with his rehabilitation. We’ve also planned a follow-up scan for next week.”
Ilka brought out the bundle of hundred-dollar bills and counted out forty-nine of them.
The woman behind the counter stared at the money.
“I want to close his account,” Ilka said. Her father appeared in the doorway. “We would like to move Artie over to the private section of the hospital. Would you mind checking if there’s a vacancy? Preferably with a balcony, so he can get some fresh air.”
The stack of bills filled her hand. Artie wasn’t going to lie one second longer in that eight-bed room with the threat of being thrown out of the hospital hanging over his head. He was going to have a private room, a balcony for smoking, and the same special treatment as Amber.
The Rodriguez brothers had chosen the wrong people to go up against, Ilka thought, feeling enormously satisfied.
“Would you like him to be transferred immediately, today?” the woman asked, holding the phone to her ear while eyeing the stack of bills.
“Yes, thank you.”
“The patient transfer is effective as of today,” the woman said over the phone. She informed the private section that payment would be made in cash.
She glanced up at Ilka and nodded to confirm there was a room available. Ilka felt any lingering bad conscience fading as relief spread through her. The only thing that still bothered her—a bit—was that those Rodriguez assholes would never know the money they were after would be paying for their latest victim’s comfort, the best the hospital could provide.
The woman still held the phone to her ear. “Does he have any special preferences as to his menu? Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free?” Suddenly she could hardly be more friendly and helpful.
“Put him down for fish and meat,” Ilka ordered, adding that vegetables weren’t so important.
“If you offer any special additions to menus, we’ll take them too,” her father said. He made it sound as if they were booking a Caribbean cruise for Artie.
Ilka smiled and nodded.
“We do have a vacant room with a balcony,” the woman confirmed. “We’ll get going on his transfer, and as soon as the papers are in order, a porter will come by to take him over. Mr. Sorvino will be discharged here, and we will notify the bank we no longer need his house as security.”
Ilka thanked her. She googled Happy Homes to get their number. It was time to call the real estate agent and tell him Artie’s house wasn’t for sale.
Artie was sitting up in bed when they walked in. His black stocking cap was nowhere in sight, and his head had been freshly shaved. So, Ilka thought, he had finally relented. She felt sorry for him. He looked sullen as he stuck a plastic spoon into a small cup of yogurt.
Ilka hadn’t seen him since he’d found out she’d been lying about his insurance. She’d thought it would feel so satisfying to tell him the hospital bill was no longer a problem, and that he’d be transferred to a private room, but suddenly it didn’t seem that easy.
Her father nudged her aside and walked over to the bed. “So, what do you think? Are you ready to get going?”
Artie was about to answer when he spotted Ilka in the doorway. He looked away and laid the cup of yogurt on his night table. “I think I’ve got a handle on things.” He told them about the real estate agent. “They’ve promised to keep me here.”
Ilka approached the bed and spoke quietly, so only her father and Artie could hear. “I’m so sorry, I should have told you what was going on. But now we have everything under control. Sister Eileen says hello and to focus on recovering.”
Artie took her hand, and she felt her father’s eyes on them when he squeezed it. Maybe she was imagining it, but his cheeks seemed redder. And he looked more alert. Ilka thought they might have cut down on his meds. His face still fell off to one side when he spoke, though.
Two porters walked in the door, and before she and her father could explain what was going on, they asked Artie if he had any belongings in the locker. One of them unhooked an oxygen hose from the wall while the other laid a clothes bag on his blanket. Ilka supposed it was the clothes he was wearing the day he was attacked. She asked him if he had anything in the drawer of the night table, but Artie shook his head.
“I don’t understand, what—what’s going on?”
Her father gave him an arm and helped the porters move him onto a wheelchair. “We’re moving you.”
When Artie rolled into his new room he immediately headed for the balcony door, then asked Ilka if she had a cigarette. Flowers and a small woven basket with some fruit stood on the night table. They’d been told that a doctor and nurse would come in to say hello and give him an introduction to the ward.
He and Ilka sneaked a smoke on the balcony while her father left to check on Amber. When he returned, two of the ward’s personnel followed him in. They asked if Ilka and her father wanted to stay for their meeting with Artie, but he declined and told Ilka to come with him.
“Someone wants to say hello to you.”
Ilka glanced back at Artie. A nurse had already helped him into bed and was explaining how to call someone for help.
Artie nodded and said it was okay for them to go, that he actually would rather they didn’t hear about all the stuff wrong with him. Ilka was relieved; she wouldn’t have to feel she was sticking her nose deeper into his private life.
Mary Ann sat in her wheelchair next to Amber’s bed, her back to the door, holding her daughter’s hand. A shawl covered her shoulders, and she had on the same clothes as when she’d been arrested. She looked thin, gaunt even, and her skin had turned sallow from her time in jail.
Her father stepped aside and let Ilka into the room. She stood quietly for a moment, then walked over and knelt down to hug her father’s wife.
Mary Ann’s eyes were moist when she looked up at her husband. “She’s having a boy.” She turned back to Amber. “And you’re sure he’s okay? Nothing happened to him when the horses ran over you?”
Amber nodded warmly. “He’s fine. They even think I can go home, if I can get some help. I still have to stay in bed. And I’m not supposed to lift anything.”
“I’ll be there,” her mother blurted out, even though she wouldn’t be much help in the lifting department.
“Tom is there for me too, you know,” Amber said. “We can live together out on the ranch.”
Mary Ann looked determined. “You’re going to stay with me. Where there is good access to doctors and midwives.”
Ilka opened her mouth to back up her half sister, to say she needed to be with the baby’s father, but Mary Ann beat her to it.
“You can take over the ranch when you’re a family, after the baby comes.” She made it sound as if she’d already planned everything out.
This was obviously news to Amber. She glanced at her father, but he simply nodded in agreement: She and Tom could live out at the ranch and run the stables.
“If that’s what you want,” her mother added.
Amber nodded enthusiastically. To Ilka it looked like she was eager to seal the deal before anyone had second thoughts.
“We want to, very much.” She hesitated a moment. “Of course, I’ll have to talk to Tom about it first. He’s sort of overwhelmed, since he’s taking care of the horses by himself.”
“By himself?” Mary Ann said.
“Nobody else has been out at the ranch since what happened with Grandpa.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone just stopped coming to work.”
Mary Ann turned to Ilka’s father. “Paul, you have to help our son-in-law. Hire some stable workers who can start immediately.”
Ilka thought the best thing to do would be to call Frank Conaway and ask him to step in. He’d worked several years for Fletcher, and he was familiar with the horses and the stable.
Not that Mary Ann oozed with motherly love, but by now Ilka knew her father’s wife well enough to understand that she expressed her feelings through actions. It moved her to see how Mary Ann swept everything aside to take responsibility for her daughter and coming grandchild.
After her father walked around the bed and sat in the easy chair, Ilka asked, “When were you released?”
“An hour ago. The lawyer drove me straight here. I haven’t even been home yet.”
Mary Ann looked Ilka right in the eyes before lowering her head. “Thank you,” she murmured.
It wasn’t so much those two little words as the brief, intense look Mary Ann had given her. Ilka smiled.
Mary Ann reached for her daughter’s hand, and Amber responded by grabbing her father’s hand. Without speaking she looked back and forth between them, as if she needed to get it through her head that they were both still alive and there with her.
“What about Leslie?” Ilka asked Mary Ann. “Does she know you’ve been released?”
Mary Ann let go of Amber’s hand and shook her head. “Not yet. Paul’s going to tell her, and then I hope I can have a talk with her.”
Ilka could hear it in her voice: It was going to be a difficult conversation, and not only because of the traumatic events at the ranch. Nothing could erase all the lies Leslie had grown up with. Mary Ann was going to have to convince Leslie that she’d sacrificed being with the man she’d loved to protect her. That she’d lied to give her daughter a secure childhood.
Her father’s phone rang, breaking the silence in the hospital room. He fumbled around in his pocket and excused himself as he walked out on the balcony.
Moments later he returned with a grim look on his face. “We have to go,” he told Ilka. He glanced only briefly at Mary Ann and Amber on his way out of the room.
Ilka followed him. “What happened?” she asked when they reached the hallway. She struggled to keep up as he hurried past Artie’s room to the exit, where he stopped and turned to her.
“Fernanda is dead.” He opened the door for her. “And Ethan is missing.”