The Father
Juliette sat bolt upright in the bed as he walked into the infirmary empty-handed. Her dark hair was still matted with sweat from childbirth. “Where is she? Where’s my baby?”
The Father looked from the young woman to her parents. Juliette’s dad was an average-sized man with plastic-framed eyeglasses and a bald spot on the back of his head where his brown hair was slowly retreating toward his ears and forehead. Her mother had the same petite build and dark, silky hair as Juliette, though a few strands of gray had recently crept in. Both were the human equivalent of church mice. Timid. Quiet. Undemanding of attention. Much like the others in the compound, they’d taken the Father’s sermons on humility to heart.
The Father spoke softly and used his most solemn voice as he ducked his head in mock sorrow. “Your baby is with the Lord.”
Juliette gasped loud enough to be heard in the heavens, her eyes going so wide it was a wonder they didn’t fall out of her skull.
Her mother’s face clouded, while her dad reflexively rose from his chair next to the bed, his face pained. “What are you saying, Father?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” he replied softly. “The baby had a bad reaction to the immunizations. The doctors did all they could, but…” He raised his palms and looked upward.
Juliette’s eyes welled with tears and she put her hands to her face as if she could shut out the news. She spoke through her fingers. “She’s … gone?”
“She is. I’m so sorry.”
The young woman dropped her hands and her mouth opened again, but she made only a choking sound, as if she couldn’t force any more words past the grief strangling her. Her entire body began to tremble as she broke down in sobs. A moment later, she shrieked, “Nooo!” She threw back the covers, getting tangled in them and falling to her knees on the wood floor as she attempted to stand on legs too weak from childbirth and grief to support her.
It gave the Father no small sense of pleasure to see her so feeble and desperate.
“No! Please, God! No!” She gulped air as she looked up at him through eyes blurred with tears. “Why didn’t you let me go with you to the hospital? Why?”
How dare she question his decisions!
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said. “You couldn’t have saved her.”
Brushing back her own tears, Juliette’s mother attempted to both console her daughter and help her up from the floor. “You’d just given birth. You needed to rest.”
“This was God’s will,” the Father added, his voice still low but firmer now. “We may not always understand His plan, but we must accept it.”
If not for her father taking his daughter’s arm, the Father had no doubt she’d have found the strength to hurl herself at him, rip him apart. Her parents offered her useless platitudes. They told her that the Father was right, that as unfair as things seemed she must accept God’s will. That her baby was in heaven, a perfect place. That she’d see her precious child again someday, that they’d be reunited and her grief would be forgotten.
Juliette sobbed inconsolably as her mother helped her back up onto the bed and stroked her hair. Her mother made another attempt to offer her daughter some solace. “You’ll have a chance to have another child one day after you’re properly married, a child who will have a willing father and won’t know the shame of having been conceived in sin.”
That last comment from her mother sent the young woman right over the edge. She glared up at the Father with such hate and rage that for a brief instant terror gripped him. Would she tell them the truth about who had fathered her child? Would she reveal their secrets?
She didn’t, though. Instead, she pushed her mother away and screamed, “Get out! All of you! Get out now!”
Her parents attempted to placate her with apologies and more talk about the beauty and wonders of heaven, but she only grew more adamant.
She pointed at the door. “Get out! I want to be alone!”
The Father backed out of the door and motioned for Juliette’s parents to join him in the hallway. They emerged, looking grief-stricken and helpless.
He closed the door behind them. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll come around. Right now, though, she needs some time to come to terms with what’s happened. You two head over to the church. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes to pray.”
The ever-obedient couple nodded and walked out. They’d always appreciated his leadership, trusted his guidance. When he’d found them homeless and penniless on the steps of that locked church in Fort Worth over a decade ago, they’d been relieved and more than happy to put control of their lives in his capable hands. If only their daughter could be so humble and compliant.
Once they’d gone, he summoned his men from the adjoining room. Jeb and Zeke followed him as he opened the door to Juliette’s room.
On seeing the Father in the doorway, she grabbed fistfuls of her white cotton nightgown in her hands and screeched, “This is all your fault! You’re not a man of God! You’re the devil!”
Snatching the glass lamp from her bedside table, she hurled it at him. Luckily for him, her aim was poor. The lamp struck the door frame and shattered, glass tinkling down onto the wood floor.
She’d pushed him right over his edge, too. He turned his back to the girl, stepped into the hall, and addressed his men, forcing his voice to stay calm even though his blood boiled. “Take her away. She needs solitude to heal.”
And isolation to be punished.
“Yes, Father,” the two said in unison.
“No!” She fought the men in vain as they grabbed her. “No!”
Her cries intensified as the men dragged her kicking and screaming out of her room. Zeke held her from behind and slapped a hand over her mouth to silence her as he forced her out the back door. Jeb closed the door behind them.
A grin slithered past the Father’s lips. In eleven years, he hadn’t managed to break that stubborn girl.
But this ought to do it.