They sat that way for some time, letting the soft whir of machines and hum of lights fill in the place where words weren’t. When she thought she could speak evenly Clare said, “How are you feeling?”
“Sore. The doctor said only one wound was deep.” Clare nodded, not knowing what else to say. The woman shifted toward her. “I held onto you,” she said. “When it was very bad and very dark, I held onto you, held onto your memory. Sometimes I thought you’d never been there at all, that I’d dreamed you up to keep going. But I never forgot.”
Clare’s eyes slid down to the woman’s wrists, where scarred calluses roped across the joints like ghosts of what once bound her. “Rainier,” she said, motioning at the restraint marks.
The woman dropped her eyes to her wrists. “Yes.”
“He took you.”
“Yes.”
“Where? How?” Clare waited, watching the other woman for signs of deceit, an eye tic, a finger twitch, but there was nothing. She only became more still.
“You don’t remember?” the woman asked.
“Not everything, no.”
“I can’t either. That night, it was so dark. I remember getting up from bed and going outside into the woods.”
Clare stiffened. Something dragged at the depths of her mind like an anchor sliding along an ocean bottom, churning up things that nearly surfaced before submerging again into places she couldn’t reach.
“Then I was inside the hall, and there was a smell, a really bad one. There were some candles burning but not enough to see.” She paused for a second before continuing. “There were shapes in the pews. They looked like people but they were slumped and some were lying down. I couldn’t understand why they were sleeping, but they weren’t sleeping, were they?”
“No,” Clare breathed. “No, they weren’t.”
“I saw Abigail in the dark and tried to hold her hand, but then she was gone. Father was behind the pulpit with Rainier and some other people, and they were holding cups of something. Father was crying but he . . . he . . .” She struggled for a moment. “He was smiling the whole time.”
“You don’t have to,” Clare said, fighting the urge to stand up and flee the room. She didn’t want to hear any more, and needed to at the same time.
“They wanted me to drink what was in the cups and I was afraid,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard Clare. “Mother was crying and telling me to drink it and Father had his hand on the bottom of the cup, pushing it toward my mouth, and then . . . then there was fire.”
Clare blinked, the sensation of sinking into herself enveloped her, and the room wavered. One second she was looking at the woman in the bed, and the next she could feel heat blossoming across her skin, searing into her hands.
“The fire,” Clare said, breaking free of the sensation. Her hands gripped the chair’s arms so tightly white spots appeared over her knuckles. “The fire was already burning and they were trying to get everyone to drink the poison.”
The woman in the bed nodded, brow drawn tight. “All I remember after that is flames and heat. Rainier grabbed me and hauled me away and I was yelling for Mother and for you. And you . . .”
“What?” Clare asked, leaning forward.
“You ran,” she finally said, looking away as delicate tears spilled from her eyes.
“No,” Clare said, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t. I . . . I know I wouldn’t have . . .” left you, she almost said, but stopped herself. She strove for the memory, straining to lift it from her subconscious, but it was an immovable weight, slipping away like she’d never had a grip on it in the first place.
“He took me while everything burned,” the woman said quietly. “Got in his car and drove us somewhere. He said he was going back to get Father and Mother and you. He left me in a little clearing in the woods but only came back with food and blankets. We lived out of his car for a while. Then we found the house in the woods.” Her eyes gained a dull glaze. “Rainier fixed it up. We had a fireplace to keep warm and he hunted deer and hauled water from a flowage nearby. I had no idea where we were. I was getting used to life there. I guessed Mother and Father were dead. I thought you were, too, otherwise someone would have come for me.” She paused again, bringing her haunted eyes back to Clare. “He touched me for the first time when I was fifteen. I tried running away in the middle of winter and nearly froze to death. He nursed me back to health and then . . .”
Clare put a hand over her mouth, wanting to say something and not knowing the words.
“After that he kept me tied all the time. Even when we went outside I was on the end of a rope, like a pet. The first time I tried to kill myself I chewed through one wrist and passed out from the pain. When I woke up he’d bandaged me and said if I ever did it again he’d . . .” Her voice trailed off and she sat staring past Clare at the blank wall for a time.
“I’m so sorry,” Clare whispered.
“You always looked out for me. That’s why I kept you close all those years. I dreamed one day you’d come through the door, and now you have.”
A nurse strode into the room, preempted by a brief knock. She smiled at Clare before moving to the bedside to check the woman’s vitals. While they were speaking, Clare rehashed everything that had been said and studied the woman again, searching for a detail that would derail the precarious belief inside her. She found none.
When the door clicked shut and they were alone again, Clare said, “I don’t really remember any of that. It’s like there’s a burnt place in my mind.” She paused. “I always felt guilty for being alive. That I was the only one.”
The woman looked down at her hands and scarred wrists. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Clare hesitated, wondering if she should do what her instincts were shouting to do. She gave in. “The main thing I remember is how long we had to sit in the workroom handwriting all those flyers for recruitment. Folding the paper and everything.” Clare watched the woman closely.
“We didn’t write the flyers. The adults did. We carved the coins. The ones with the cross on them.”
The coins were something Clare had never told the police about. She wasn’t withholding this information from the cops, there were just so many details to tell that minor things like the wooden coins never came up. All of the coins would’ve burned in the fire, since it encompassed nearly twenty acres by the time it was brought under control. No one knew about the coins except her, and the woman in the bed.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, standing and moving toward the door before the woman could protest. Shanna, the voice in her head intoned. That’s your sister right there.
Clare brushed past the deputy and saw the sign for the bathroom in enough time to dive inside and vomit into the toilet. As her body heaved, images flashed across the movie screen of her mind.
Fire.
Shanna’s stuffed animal staring with blank eyes.
The coin laying in the parking lot by her car.
Eric sleeping peacefully.
Her father, arms out as if calling down judgement from above.
Clare slumped beside the toilet, brushing hair from her face. Alternating bouts of panic and joy flowed through her. She felt a tipping point—of letting herself truly believe, the last vestiges of caution dissolving—and embraced it.