Kurt said, “This really is an intrusion.” Calmly, as if he were the voice of reason here.
And Claire said, “Mom, we’re fine. You didn’t worry about me at college, and I was miserable at college. I’m much happier here.”
“I did worry about you at college. But at least I knew what was going on there.”
“No, you didn’t.” Fiona wasn’t sure which fact Claire was refuting. Three adults and a child looked down at them from the porch of the big house, waiting.
Fiona knew better than to force the issue, to elbow her way in the door. She said, “I’ll come back in the morning. I’ll bring doughnuts.”
“Please don’t.”
When Claire returned the next day, a wooden barricade blocked the end of the long driveway. A man with a waist-length ponytail leaned against it, and as Fiona drove up, he made a “turn around” sign with one finger in the air. And she did, because Damian was already on a plane, and it was better to come back here with him, anyway.
Over the next insomniac week, asking around Boulder and scouring the Internet, the two of them discovered the things Fiona was now telling Arnaud: The Hosanna Collective was the small and restrictive offshoot of an already restrictive parent cult from Denver. It was ostensibly Judeo-Christian, but also astrological, vegetarian, antitechnology, male-dominated. They believed that the church needed to return to a pure state described in certain chapters of the book of Acts, that everything since Paul had been corruption. They called Jesus “Yeshua” and celebrated no holidays but Easter. No money of their own, the communal life made possible by the near-constant labor of the women and children. The men sold honey and salad dressing at farmers’ markets, and did occasional construction work in town, contributing all their wages to the group.
Fiona and Damian went to the police, but there was nothing illegal going on. Damian reminded her of what she already knew: The more they chased Claire, the more she would shut them out. They tried once more in person, this time approaching the compound in the squad car of a sympathetic police officer—Fiona was so sure that Damian, too, was remembering their desperate ride around Chicago nine years back that she didn’t need to mention it—but the same man who’d been at the barricade came out and unleashed an impressive string of legal language at the cop. And no, there was no warrant.
Fiona and Damian sat at a bar in the Denver airport with bags under their eyes, both of them crying, then stopping, then crying. They must have looked, to other travelers, like lovers parting for the last time. He with a wedding ring, she without. Fiona said, “We should stay.” But there were more productive ways to spend their time and money. Damian would talk to lawyers. Fiona would contact Claire’s high school and college friends, even offer to fly them out. She’d track down Cecily Pearce and see if she might talk some sense into her son.
Arnaud nodded along to all this but didn’t write it down. Fiona worried he was going to ask why she hadn’t refused to leave Boulder, why she hadn’t battered down the door. It was because she didn’t believe Claire could really stay long with those people. And because on some level, she wanted her daughter to learn something the hard way, and from someone other than her. For once, she wanted Claire to crawl home hurt, not run away from Fiona claiming she’d been gravely wounded. At least, this was what Fiona had worked out since then with her therapist. But maybe it was more complicated. Something about being done with unwinnable battles. After the bloodbath of her twenties, after everyone she loved had died or left her. After her love itself became poison.
Fiona wrote letters almost every day, saying Claire could always come home, that there would be no judgment. After a few weeks, the letters started returning, unopened.
And then when nearly a year had passed—a year of talking to cops and lawyers and some people from postcult support groups—they went back together, Damian and Fiona. They brought along a bodyguard they’d hired in Boulder. No squad car, no police. They weren’t planning to kidnap her, just insist on a conversation. But Claire and Kurt, they were informed by the eczema-covered woman who answered the door, had left a month ago. No, she had no clue where; no one did.
Damian went to the Boulder Farmers Market, where some of the Hosanna men had a stand, and told them, casually, that he’d worked out a trade last time with a guy named Kurt. Was Kurt here today, by any chance? “Brother Kurt’s not around anymore,” one of them said. Another rolled his eyes.
And Fiona thought, Well, at least they got out. Even if she’s still with him. She thought maybe she’d hear from Claire soon. She didn’t. They hired a PI in Chicago, and he gladly took their money but turned up nothing. They looked into a missing persons report, but an adult who simply didn’t want to be in touch with you was not missing.
Instead of asking why Fiona hadn’t done more, Arnaud asked, “Was this typical of your daughter? To latch onto different religions?”
“No,” Fiona said. “That was the oddest part. She was always a rebel. She quit Girl Scouts, she quit orchestra, she wouldn’t date anyone longer than a month or two. Until Kurt.”
“Does she have a reason to avoid you?”
Fiona stuck her fork into her omelet and pulled it out, watched the cheese ooze from the four holes. “We’ve had our issues, but there was no big fight.” She could have gone into more detail about their head-butting, about how Claire was always closer to her father but then, after the divorce, was close to no one, about the guilt and second-guessing Fiona lived with every day—but it would only distract from the main point. She said, “Some people are just born difficult. That’s a hard thing to say.”
She didn’t feel great. She was thirsty, but the water they’d given her was sparkling, which she hated. She took a tiny sip and it was worse than the thirst.
“Does the boyfriend hit?” This was from Serge, and although it was a legitimate question, Fiona resented the intrusion into Arnaud’s line of reasoning.
“I don’t think so. Some of the stories we found online, about the Hosanna—it sounded like they hit their children. For discipline. And I’m sure it went beyond that. But I’ve known Kurt a long time. Since he was a kid. He’s good with animals, you know? I don’t think you can hit women and be good with animals. Animals would sense it.”
Arnaud nodded slowly. “Let’s assume she left the cult when she discovered she was pregnant.”
Fiona was impressed. She and Damian had come to a similar conclusion, but only days after she’d found the video, after they’d stayed up past midnight drinking wine in two different cities, planning and theorizing over the phone. The best they’d gotten along in fifteen years, but who cared about that now? Occasionally she’d hear Damian’s wife in the background, and then he’d say, Karen thinks we should do X, but it was never anything helpful.