The island is small, a gray smudge against the gray sea. Fog has rolled in, and gusts of wind send rolling slabs of it across the water. We have been traveling for hours. I don’t wear a watch, and the fog obscures the sun, so I can’t be sure, but it has to be at least three hours since we left Seattle.
“Come on up on deck!” Jonah yells down to me. “It’s a beautiful sight!”
I climb up to the deck. Small droplets of mist hit my cheeks along with spray. A small boathouse looms ahead. I’m cold. It had been sunny in Seattle. I feel as though we are as far away as we can get, that we’ve passed beyond the boundary of the map and are in a gray wasteland of water that has yet to be discovered.
Jonah steers the boat into the boathouse and cuts the engine. He ties the lines and jumps up on deck, holding out a hand for me. I ignore him and jump onto the deck myself.
Nothing can dampen his enthusiasm. “Wait until you meet the others, Lizbet.”
“What?”
“Come on.” Jonah swipes a card through the lock and opens the boathouse door for me to step through.
I walk out onto a beach. His eagerness seems eerie. Up beyond the beach is a high wall that crosses the beach and disappears into the trees. The door in the wall looks like steel. My footsteps crunch as I walk, and I realize I’m walking on oyster shells.
Sorry, Zed. I’ll get out and clear you. I will.
He walks up to the wall and flips open a panel. He swipes a card, and the steel door opens.
Ahead, a long, low house hugs the ground. It’s built of stone and wood, gray and brown, merging with the colors of the beach. It takes a moment for me to realize what is strange about it. The windows are sealed with metal shutters, like hurricane shutters.
My footsteps falter, and I am afraid.
I picture dead people inside the house, propped up like dolls.
The perspiration is gathering on my neck, under my arms, and I’m starting to shake uncontrollably.
He swipes the door frame with a card. A disembodied voice says, Welcome home, Jonah. The door swings open. He steps forward expectantly, happily.
The hallway floor is made of slabs of gray stone. There’s a small bonsai tree on a graceful wood table to our right.
“Frances is our green thumb,” he says.
He looks around. “It’s activity time. Everyone’s in the playroom. They’ll all be dying to meet you.”
Dying. I wish he hadn’t used that word.
He swipes another keypad and pushes open the door directly in front of us. We step into the living area. It is a large open space scattered with three overstuffed sofas and at least a half-dozen big cushioned armchairs. The colors are the same as the island, bone, gray, black, dark green. Skylights let in a bit of light, and I can see the fog blowing overhead. The interior looks like a mountain cabin that’s been blown up to three times its size. There is a large blank screen on one wall. DVDs and books line the shelves.
Emily is here. I can feel her now. She’s close.
I get a flash of her, taking a book down from the shelves in this room.
She puts it back.
The repetition of the movement soothes her.
She does it again, sliding the book into the empty space.
“You see, Lizbet? Anything you want. You have it.” He gestures toward the shelves. “All the latest movies. And TV, too! I select the programs, and you just have to scroll through the menu. This is where we have family time after supper.”
“My name isn’t Lizbet,” I say.
“I know that,” he says gently. “I’m not crazy.”
He looks surprised. “What?”
“I’m Gracie.”
He regards me for a moment, weighing something. “You belong,” he says finally. “You still belong. I have an instinct about this stuff. Anyway, you’ll want a new name to go with your new life soon. Names have associations.”
“I don’t want a new name.”
He looks hurt. “Well, you don’t have to.”
He took away our names! Emily’s voice screams in my head.
The house is so quiet. I don’t even hear our footsteps.
“This is the site of the house I grew up in,” Jonah says. “The same footprint, anyway. I loved that house and I tried to build a replica, but it was hard, you know. You can’t build something exactly. Materials are harder to get, and, well, I had different needs. You can’t blame me for modifying the design just a little bit. But it’s essentially the same. I need to do it over again, okay? Nothing wrong with that. Anybody would say that, right?”
I blink. His words had started to echo. Suddenly, I see a different house. It’s only a flash. The ceiling is low. There is a mattress on the floor with a baby on it. The baby is crying. A young boy sits nearby, reading, ignoring the baby.
Somewhere, another kid is screaming.
“And, of course, I had to wire it for digital controls. It’s a smart house, do you know what that is?”
I shake my head, still reeling over my flash. Had I seen what is in Jonah’s mind? Had I seen the reality of what it used to be? It was as though time was leaking inside me, forming a pool that contained present and past and future, and I had no control when I dipped into it what I would find.
“I can operate everything from one central panel,” Jonah says. “Oven, generator, security, music, you name it. I control it, but you can ask me to do things. I mean, turn up the heat, whatever. The thing is, we have to accept the reality of the hierarchy. The hierarchy is good. The oldest takes care of the next oldest. And so on. And so that leaves me as the head of the house. So I make sure everyone is warm and fed and safe. I can do that. But we all take care of each other, too.” He peers at me. “You understand? We all protect each other. That’s the most important thing. That’s what I learned about family. Here’s where we eat. All together, of course, for the evening meal. That’s fun, right?”
He pushes open double doors to a dining area. The table is long and can easily fit fourteen or more. There are benches instead of chairs, except at one of the ends, where a straight-backed wooden chair sits.
The room flashes again, and I see a smaller table, crowded with children. They sit on long benches on either side of the table. A man at the head, a thin man with a long beard. A woman at the other end, her eyes downcast. The children eating, silently, staring down at their plates.
I see the man’s mouth move. A tall boy, thin as a pencil, looks up. He appears transfixed by his father’s gaze. It is Jonah as a boy, I realize. I see the same blue eyes, but they are glassy with fear. I see that he is holding himself so still that his shoulders ache.
The dread at the table gathers. The other children continue to eat, continue to chew, but I can tell they aren’t tasting their food. They are afraid to stop.
In a gesture stunning in its casualness, the man takes the boy’s plate and sweeps it to the ground. The mother begins to run around the table to get it.
The father stops her.
Slowly, Jonah leans over to pick up the food.
“Meals are bonding time,” Jonah is saying to me. I see him now, grown up, a man. I can’t see the child behind his eyes. “I know, it’s a cliché, bonding, right? But that’s exactly what we do. Share our day and our food.”
He hesitates. “There’s only one rule. You have to stay inside the compound. That’s what the wall is for. It’s for your protection, you see. When I’m not here, I have to make sure you’re safe. But that’s not so bad, when there’s so much to do inside our walls! I think traveling is overrated, don’t you? Now. Let’s meet the others.”
He swipes a card and a door swings back. He waits impatiently for me to walk in, and I take baby steps, afraid of what I’ll find.
It is a long room that ends in double doors at both ends. There are computers set up in different nooks. Sofas and chairs. More books and DVDs. Huge screens fill the walls, projecting images of nature. One whole wall is made up of a waterfall. The waterfall I’d seen in my vision. No wonder it hadn’t seemed right. It had been a projection. The room is unnaturally bright, track lights on the ceiling mimicking a sunny day. It’s so normal it’s spooky.
There are kids here, dressed in jeans and sweatpants and T-shirts. None of them is talking to one another or working together. That’s what’s so strange—the silence. They are in their separate niches. One girl is potting a plant. One is playing with a Game Boy. A boy is reading a book. The rest are at computers. My gaze roams restlessly, anxiously, searching for Emily.
I spot her in a corner, at a computer, staring at the screen, and my heart leaps. At least I have found her. At least I have done that. And she is alive, and looks okay. Relief warms me instantly.
Jonah follows my gaze, then walks over, and I follow. She glances up furtively, then hunches her shoulders. In that quick glance, I try to convey to her to not reveal that we know each other. I’m not sure if she gets it. All I can see in her gaze is blankness.
Alarm clangs inside me.
This is not the Emily I know.
This is the Emily I sensed.
The one who wants to disappear inside herself so she can escape the fear.
“That’s our Nell, always working.”
He touches her, and I can see how she shrinks against the touch of his fingers, long and supple, on her shoulder.
She hates and fears him.
He singles her out. The pressure of that is too much for her.
It is crushing her.
Jonah turns away and takes my arm to bring me to the center of the room. “Meet your brothers and sisters.” There is just the hint of an eye roll from a girl slouched on a sofa, watching TV. She had once been a blond, but now black roots extended three inches into her hair.
Jonah whistles through his teeth. “New member of the family has arrived. Do you remember the procedure?”
Suddenly, the kids move. Even the black-rooted surly girl on the sofa snaps to. They line up, ten girls and boys. Emily is four down from the top. I feel completely surreal, like I’m Maria the nun and Jonah is Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
As he calls out the names, each girl or boy raises a hand. It is amazing how much they give away by this simple gesture.
“Susannah.” Barely raises her fingers, pushing insolence as far as she dares for me.
“Edwin.” Blond boy, Susannah’s height, jerks hand up, giving me an assessing stare.
“Frances. Our songbird.” Frances nods tentatively. Inside my head, I hear a name. Kendall. This is Kendall Farmer.
“Tate.” Eyes on the ground, nervously lifts hand, bad skin, emotional disturbance he wears like a coat.
“Nell.” Emily lifts her hand quickly, then drops it, not looking at us.
“Hank and Dan, the twins.” Two boys looking nothing alike, raise their hands. They hate each other.
And then the flash comes again. Instead of Jonah, I see his father. In a dim, dark room, children are lined up on their knees. I see the bearded man mouth the names as Jonah does.
“…Ruthanna, Maudie, Eli.”
The twelve children are lined up in a row, oldest to youngest. Fear rises off their bodies like steam. None of them look at their father. As they rise, one of them—maybe it’s Edwin, one of the older children—winces in pain, as though the act of rising hurt him. I think again about the boy I heard screaming in my vision.
And I’m back in the present, in the brightly lit room.
The two youngest, Maudie and Eli, have already started to eye the computers they’ve left.
Jonah spreads his arms. “Family.”
The expressions on the faces of the kids tell me nothing except they want this over with.
I look at Eli, maybe eleven years old, but small and pale. He comes out of foster care. I see the house, crowded with kids. Foster parents who do it for the money. I see Eli sitting in a closet, making his own space there. He has a ball. He has three crayons.
Jonah continues. “Let’s see, Lizbet is between Frances and Nell, so Frances, show Lizbet her bed and help her feel at home. I think she needs a sweatshirt; it was a cold ride. I’ll see you all at supper.” Jonah heads for the door.
I stand in the middle of the room in disbelief. What now? The other kids drift away, but the girl and boy he called Susannah and Edwin come closer, close enough so that we are almost touching.
“That this group must somehow form a family,” Edwin sings in my ear. He manages to make it sound nasty, threatening.
“Forget the names. I’m Torie,” the girl says. “This is Jeff. Castle won’t hurt you if you listen to us.”
“Just do what he says,” Jeff says. “And what we say, too. Then you’ll be okay.”
I look around at the other kids, who are deliberately ignoring me. They are afraid of Torie and Jeff. They are locked in their isolation. This isn’t even close to the family ideal Jonah wants.
I know now why Emily has closed down. Nobody is leaving. Nobody is getting out of here.
There is no hope left in this room.