41

The house stood taller than she remembered, throwing an evening shadow across the yard. Finding it had eaten four hours, three-quarters of a tank of gas, and most of Violet’s trepidation over driving. Anybody who could drive for four hours straight without wrecking her car must not be too bad at it, after all.

If a con-cop had tracked her to the highway, they lost her for sure the third time she turned around and drove the other direction. Maybe they thought she was some brilliant, two-faced spy with training in how to ditch a tail. Nope, just a girl with a pathetic memory for directions. She’d found it, though—not only the correct exit, not only the correct road, a stretch of dirt that needed grading—the house itself. Here she was. Drawn curtains hid any inside movement. The porch steps loomed steep as mountains. Violet’s hand shook, and a chill snaked down her back as she pressed the doorbell.

A long minute. Another one. Someone must have peeked through a curtain. No admittance to the spy.

Violet bit her lip, twirled a charm on her bracelet, and hit the doorbell again. Please, I need to talk to you. She should have prowled around the house and knocked on the sliding glass door. Chuck and Belinda would’ve thought it was Marcus.

Maybe God didn’t want her here in the first place. Three steps toward her car, she froze. Where did she think she was going? Depending on what Mom told the con-cops, her face might be a news item by now.

She sat on the porch step and faced the road. Chuck and Belinda’s front yard unfurled down a gentle hill, with more space between it and the road than every backyard in Violet’s neighborhood put together.

“Um, Jesus, if this is the wrong place, then I don’t know where You want me, because I …” Her throat tightened. No more crying. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Behind her, the dead bolt clicked, and the door opened. Someone stepped outside.

“Violet,” Chuck said.

She stood and turned to face him, pulled in a deep breath that tasted like the approach of rain.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

If he ordered her off his porch … She rubbed her arms and stood straight. She would be alone, but solitude was fair punishment. “I am with you always.” Red letters cloaked her against the chill. Thanks, Jesus.

“You’d better answer me.” Chuck hooked his thumbs on his belt loops and stood with feet apart, but nothing in his tone threatened her. Of course not. She had to learn to stop looking for danger from these people.

“I’m here to …” He would laugh at her. The word was so lame. “To apologize.”

Chuck rocked on his feet and frowned. “What for?”

“For everything I did. And would’ve done.”

“Uh-huh. You even know what you’re apologizing for?”

Heat rushed into her face. “For getting people arrested. For planning to get you arrested, and Belinda, and Marcus, and Lee, and Wren. I really would’ve turned you in.”

“But?”

“But I know now. What re-education is. And what you’re trying to do. Fighting. For freedom.”

Chuck motioned her to the porch swing swaying gently in a breeze that had blown away the humidity. She sat on the red-and-orange-swirled cushion and traced its design. No. She lifted her head to meet his eyes, specked with gold and green and brown. She didn’t look away again. The minute of scrutiny felt like a year.

“Belinda wants me to invite you in for apple pie.”

Oh, Belinda. Violet shut her eyes before he could see the tears. “No, it’s okay, I shouldn’t, I just wanted you to know—”

“For crying out loud. You have to run home all of a sudden?”

Words wouldn’t squeeze past the rock in her throat. She shook her head.

“If you’re here on some new mission, you’d better tell me. Right now.”

“N-no. I’ll never work for them again. Never.”

“Well, then.” Chuck opened the door and gestured her inside.

She’d taken three steps over the threshold when Khloe galumphed down the stairs with more noise than her body mass should make. She planted herself in front of Chuck and mimicked the resolute spread of his feet.

“You seriously let her in the house?”

Chuck’s eyes flashed. “My home, my decision.”

“I’m not going to talk to her. Or look at her.”

“Fair enough.”

Khloe bounded halfway back up the stairs before she stopped, turned, and headed back down. “Wait a second, Violet.”

They faced each other like strangers. No, like enemies. Soldiers from opposite armies, unarmed for now but not forever. Khloe laced her hands behind her back.

“Go ahead,” Violet said.

Khloe grabbed Violet’s wrist and yanked at her bracelet. “My charm. It was a pledge. I want it back.”

The knife wound Khloe was trying to inflict barely stung. Violet removed the whole bracelet for the second time this week, and her wrist felt less naked this time, more free. She held it up.

“Here, take it.”

“And wear it? To remind me of the best friend that wrecked my life?”

“Khloe, I’m—”

“Marcus made us leave in case you brought con-cops here. He only let us come back this morning. I slept in a car last night.”

So did I.

Khloe popped the amethyst pansy off the bracelet and dropped it. The rug softened the jingle of the bracelet’s impact. “Stay away from me.”

This time she stormed all the way upstairs, down the hall, out of sight. A door slammed.

A year ago, a month ago, Violet would have scurried up the stairs after her. Mollify. Make amends. She scooped up her bracelet and shoved it into the pocket of her shorts.

“Apple pie?” Chuck said.

“You guys had to sleep in a car? Because of me?” Chuck or Belinda might have a back problem or something. Old people shouldn’t be sleeping in cars.

Chuck’s thumb hooked in his belt loop. “Softer than the fishing lodge bunks, I can tell you.”

“All of you in one car? And—and Wren just had a baby. She should’ve been in bed.”

“Oh, Marcus took them with him. I don’t know where they are now, but he told us they’re okay, the whole family. Now, you sticking around for pie or not?”

She didn’t deserve pie. She should leave. But they wanted her to stay. “Please and thank you.”

He actually smiled, motioned her ahead of him into the kitchen. The smell of apples and cinnamon watered her mouth. Her stomach growled. She’d eaten nothing since yesterday, holed up in her car afraid to show her face even to a drive-through.

Belinda stood at the counter and poured a glass of milk. On the plate in front of her sat a ridiculously enormous piece of pie. She carried both to the kitchen bar and waved at Violet to sit.

“Here, now, eat up. I know you already told my husband. Now tell me. What brings you back here?”

More of the story poured out to Belinda. You could set a clock by the interval of her clucks and croons and mmms. When Violet told her about Mom’s phone call to the Constabulary, Belinda patted her hand. Still, she couldn’t talk about Austin.

Out the window, sunlight faded and rainclouds rolled in. Drops pattered the window by the time Violet’s words dried up.

“You know you can stay here, don’t you?” Belinda said.

She shook her head. “That wouldn’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t come to … and anyway, Khloe—”

“Aw, Khloe.” Belinda carried Violet’s plate and glass to the dishwasher. “She’s young, that’s all.”

“We’re the same age.”

“Only by the calendar, and you know it.”

No matter how final their severing was, Violet wouldn’t let Belinda misunderstand. “Khloe went through a lot when she was little. Hospitals and stuff. And she … until I betrayed her, she was a good friend to me.”

Belinda shut the dishwasher and returned to the table. “Good for you, holding onto the good stuff. Now, you going to spend the night here at least? Has to be comfier than your car. Oh, and go park around back of the house, just to be on the safe side.”

With no other options, Violet stopped arguing. An edge of injustice still grated, yet her lungs seemed to fill with forgiveness, as fresh as the raindrops she ran through to grab her duffel bag and pillow from her car. She locked it and tossed her keys into the duffel.

Headlights.

She crouched behind a tree. A car pulled up the driveway. Crunching gravel stopped. The car must have parked. The engine and headlights shut off. Rain started to dampen her hair. Her heart thudded. She’d been here almost three hours. If she’d led con-cops here, they wouldn’t have waited so long.

Violet peered around the trunk. They shouldn’t be able to see her.

The car was small and silver. The porch light at Violet’s back didn’t reach far enough to illuminate the driver. He must be studying her car right now. Recognizing it, maybe. Calling in her location. But that didn’t look like a Constabulary vehicle, even an unmarked one. The driver’s door opened.

Lee.

Violet could have jumped up and hugged the woman, icy glares and all. Instead, she ducked. No way Lee would offer apple pie and sympathetic clucks.

Lee approached the house, then stared up at it. The rain fell harder, slicking her black hair and spattering her olive green T-shirt. Her feet dragged the next step, and the next, as if shackled. One more step. Then she doubled over and retched into the grass. She gripped her knees, dry-heaved twice more, then straightened. And saw Violet.

Standing up, stepping toward her, had simply happened. Violet didn’t even remember doing it. Lee blinked through the rain as if Violet could be a ghost.

“You,” she said.

“Lee—”

“He was wrong. All this time, it was you.”

She grabbed Violet’s arm and shoved her up the driveway, up the porch steps, through the door.

Belinda’s voice drifted down the hall, coming closer. “You must be wet through by now, what took you so long?”

Lee wrenched Violet’s bag from her hand. She threw it onto the rug, knelt, and unzipped it.

“Lee? What in heaven’s name—?”

“Clearly, you offered her bed and breakfast.” Her words held the inflection of a digital voice. She pulled the clothes from Violet’s bag, one article at a time. Shirts, jeans, panties. “You didn’t think to question her, simply opened your arms despite her stated intention to—”

“The girl’s had a change of heart.”

“That is highly unlikely.” Lee yanked out each sock, one at a time, and hurled it to the floor.

Belinda approached her from the side, as if Lee might be physically dangerous. “What do you think you’ll find in there?”

Lee’s hand stilled inside the bag, then drew out the Bible. Her eyes widened, frosted. “What is this?”

“Marcus.” Violet sidled closer to Belinda but felt no safer. “I found his house and went there to—to ask for one. Chuck said he gave him one, so I knew he distributed them.”

Lee opened the Bible, flipped pages as if looking for something. Toward the end, she stopped at a page and stared at it. The book trembled. She snapped it shut and dropped it on the floor.

“Okay now.” Belinda’s voice couldn’t patch the holes ripped in the air by Lee’s every movement. “I know what she’s done, Lee, but the girl’s learned a lot of lessons. You’re too riled up.”

Lee glanced up and pushed to her feet. One of Violet’s socks drifted from her lap to the floor.

“Why don’t you tell us what brings you over here,” Belinda said. “Something’s going on?”

The silence throbbed.

“Lee? Sugar?”

Lee blinked and seemed to detach from the room. That morning after her panic attack, she’d donned a mask. This was more like a suit of full body armor, complete with the face-hiding helmet. She stepped past Belinda, toward the kitchen.

“Chuck should be present,” she said.

“I’m right here.” From the living room, the TV clicked off. Chuck lumbered into the kitchen, and then they stood there, a loose square with three corners of uncertainty and one corner of ice.

“I’m unsure how to say this.” Lee took a small step back and laced her hands. “Late this morning, my Constabulary contact found out about a planned operation later than he should have. It was apparently kept covert until the agents involved were successful.”

“Spit it out,” Chuck said.

“Someone gave them the identity of the resistance leader. Their operation succeeded in apprehending him.”

Chuck’s head bowed, and a long sigh spilled out of him.

Oh, no. “Lee, it wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me.”

“That is not a black market Bible.” Lee glanced back to the disemboweled duffel bag in the foyer.

“What?”

“That is his personal Bible. His handwriting. He would never part with it.”

Oh, gosh. No wonder Lee suspected her. “I asked him for a Bible, and he gave me that one. I haven’t seen him since yesterday, Lee. I swear I didn’t turn him in.”

Belinda gave a tiny gasp. “No … you’re saying … Marcus? They arrested Marcus?”

“Pearl.” Chuck circled his arm around her.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “He can’t live in a jail cell, Chuck. He can’t. He’s got to be free, he’s got to be outside under the sky.”

No, Jesus, not Marcus. I did the right thing finally, but what good was it if he goes to jail anyway? And he doesn’t deserve it. You know he doesn’t, Jesus. Violet’s arms and legs felt packed in ice cubes, but the river of prayer kept flowing while she stood silent.

Lee stared at Belinda and seemed to stop breathing.

Belinda hugged Chuck’s arm, and her words gained speed. “Lee, that inside man of yours, he has to do something to get him out, he has to free him somehow, someone has to—”

“My contact was unable to locate him after the arrest. Sometime later, the Constabulary’s official report was filed on the operation. Their suspect escaped.”

If he escaped, why did Lee look like she might throw up again?

Belinda rocked up on her toes and leaned into Chuck’s arm. “There it is, I knew it. He’s on his way here right now.”

Lee stepped back again, only one step, but now she stood apart from their square. “He is unreachable.”

“He’s hiding,” Belinda said. “He’ll contact us as soon as the coast is clear.”

But Chuck cocked his head at Lee. “Out with it, all of it.”

“The arrest took place nearly ten hours ago. The alleged escape was shortly after that. He would have found a way by now to contact me. We have multiple methods set up for emergencies.”

“So he didn’t escape,” Chuck said.

“I don’t believe so.”

“But if he didn’t, they should be gloating about the capture. It should be all over the news.”

“And they should have a case file on him. According to my contact, no paperwork has been filed.”

“So either way, they’re not making sense.” Chuck took one of Belinda’s hands and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. She glanced up at him, eyes wide and watery, but his focus didn’t waver from Lee.

Silence howled through the house. Lee backed up until she bumped against the table. She flinched, a ripple in the armor.

“You’re sure about this,” Chuck said.

“I am.” She laced her fingers in front of her.

Sure about … Oh. There was only one reason a Constabulary agent would report a false escape.

No no no. No, Jesus. Please.

When the rest of them stood paralyzed, Violet forced herself to say it. “He’s dead, isn’t he.”