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(Jehovah’s Valley, 11:30 a.m. Thursday, October 2, 2013)
Stephen intercepted Janet as she came out of the barn. “Do you want to see Dad before you leave?”
Janet hesitated. She fingered the two letters that had been sitting on the bedside table waiting to be opened and read. She’d almost left them there, but in the end, she’d put the letters in her pocket.
“No,” she said. “I said my goodbyes to mom's grave. Dad and I have nothing to say to each other.”
She started walking toward the main road. Then she stopped, turned around. “Stephen, Eli’s staying. He’s going to tell Timothy he’s his son, you might help him with that. It won’t be an easy conversation. Eli's had a rough time of it.”
Shorty caught the last of that as he and Mac came out, carrying a box of food for the trip back.
“Eli is Timothy’s father?” Shorty exclaimed, then shut up when Mac looked at him sideways.
Stephen nodded. “Yes, I can help with that. The Valley can be a place of healing. It wasn't for you, but it might be for him. And we need him too. I’m glad Eli’s staying. I can’t believe he’s been alive all these years.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure you can’t stay? We’d love to have you.”
Janet just waved at him over her shoulder and continued walking toward the road. Stephen looked at the two men standing beside him. “Thank you,” he said simply.
Mac nodded. “We’re heading out, apparently. She’s probably already thinking about follow-up stories.”
Janet looked back. “I hope you got some good quotes from the Army of God commander,” she called out.
Mac grinned. Stephen laughed, then headed up the hill toward the graveyard.
Mac looked up at Eli still standing on the hillside, then shivered.
“What?” Shorty asked.
“I just realized. Rev. Brandt kept insisting God had promised him Janet’s husband would be the next leader of the Valley.”
“So? He was wrong. John Welch isn’t going to be leading anything,” Shorty said, falling in beside his friend. “That’s crazy talk. God doesn’t speak to people like that.”
Mac gestured with his chin toward Eli.
“But Janet’s husband was never John Welch. She’s married to Eli Andrews.”
Shorty looked at him. Looked at the weird, but compelling man on the hillside. “OK, that’s just creepy,” he said.
Janet turned around, called back to them. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Mac took one last look at the veteran who had finally made it home and hustled after his boss.
“Janet,” he said firmly. She stopped but didn’t turn back toward him or the Valley. “Are you sure you don’t want to say goodbye to your father?”
She shook her head. “We’ve nothing to say to each other,” she said tiredly. “Or rather, we screamed it at each other 20 years ago, and there’s nothing left, Mac.”
She turned then, looked back. “You know what the practice of submission is? They make the victim complicit in her victimization. Dad used my mother as a hostage to compel me to be a dutiful and submissive daughter. And, I guess, probably used me to make my mother submit as well.”
She hesitated, fingering something in the pocket of her skirt. Mac wasn’t sure what. “There’s a Zora Neale Thurston quote I’ve always found haunting: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
She took a few more paces toward the road, stopping again at the gate. She pulled it open wide, dragging the gate off into the desert dirt where it wouldn’t close easily. Mac helped her.
“Submission means being silent,” she said, finally. “I won’t be silenced again. And they have no desire to hear what I have to say.”
Mac looked at her and nodded. “OK,” he said. “But you won’t get another chance. He’ll be dead before the week is out.”
She smiled. “If I said what I really want to say, he’d drop dead before I got the second sentence out. It’s better this way.”
She looked up the gravel road. “We’d better get a move on, or we’re going to be sitting in the car waiting for the noon train to pass by before we can leave.”
“You have the train schedule memorized?” Shorty asked, as they picked up speed.
She snorted. “Doubt it’s changed in 20 years. Nothing else has.”
Shorty glanced back at Jehovah’s Valley. It might now, he thought. Or not.
“We’re taking my car back by the way,” he said. “Stan Warren will drive yours home when he’s ready—I already cleared it with him.”
“What?” Mac exclaimed.
“I was willing to come to bumfuck Egypt with you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll leave my car here,” Shorty said indignantly. “Stan did want to know if all those weapons you brought are legal. Oh, and you should call Kate. I told John Welch’s daughter to call her about staying at the boarding house. Gave her Kate’s number.”
“Whatever,” Mac said, and he lengthened his stride to catch up with Janet.