Amos glanced down to see his daughter’s eyes wide once again. Her mouth had fallen open and the expression on her face was one of awe.
‘Papa,’ she breathed. ‘So many books.’
He squeezed her hand lightly. ‘Miss Edie asked you a question, Abigail. Do you like books?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, ma’am. But I’ve never seen so many.’
Edie looked around fondly. ‘When I was your age, the library was my favorite place.’ She leaned down to whisper, ‘You want to know a secret? It still is.’
Abigail grinned, saying nothing at all, content to simply take it all in.
Edie straightened. ‘Let’s find Miss Abigail some books. Then I can show you how to use the computer.’
She strode toward the children’s section, leaving Amos and Abigail to follow. Amos chuckled when Abigail took off after her, dragging him along. For all her energy, Abigail loved stories. They’d had only a few books in Eden, all well worn, well read. Amos still had a few books that had belonged to Mercy. One of his best memories was reading Mercy a story before tucking her into bed each night.
It had been an impulse to tuck one of Mercy’s old books into his backpack, a slim volume of fairy tales that Amos had found in the pile of her and Rhoda’s belongings that Pastor had planned to burn after their bodies had been buried. Rhoda’s body, anyway. Like Gideon, only Mercy’s remains had been found. Unlike Gideon, Mercy’s remains had not been brought back to Eden. DJ had buried her in the woods, so as not to attract wild animals while he’d searched for Rhoda.
Or so he’d said.
Amos didn’t believe anything that any of Eden’s leaders had told him. Not anymore.
He’d packed the book on the off chance that Mercy really was alive and that he’d be able to find her before DJ did. Once she was safe, Amos would give her the book.
It wasn’t anything close to reparation, but hopefully it represented a good memory. Either way, it was all he had to give her.
‘What kind of stories do you like, Abigail?’ Edie asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
‘I don’t know. Papa reads to me sometimes.’ Abigail was suddenly shy. ‘My school has a book. It has Bible stories.’
‘I’m sure we can find you one like that,’ Edie said, ‘but for now, how about this one? My daughter loved this one and my grandchildren love it, too. I bet you will, too.’ She chose a book from the shelf and put it in Abigail’s hands. ‘It’s called Ramona the Pest.’
Abigail’s eyes shone. ‘I can have it?’
‘Abigail,’ Amos warned, and her little face fell.
She dropped her gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Papa.’
Edie slowly dropped into a crouch, grimacing at the audible popping of her knees. ‘Abigail, you may read this book as long as you’re here. And once your papa gets settled, he can get you a library card of your very own. And then you can borrow whatever books you like. You can take them home, read them, then bring them back for more.’
‘Oh.’ Abigail’s smile was back and she hugged the book to her chest. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s my pleasure, sweetie.’ Edie straightened with a quiet groan. ‘Standing up used to be easier. Come with me, Amos. Let’s sign in to a computer.’
Amos watched as she went to the desk, showed her library card, and then pointed to him and Abigail, who’d already sat in one of the chairs at the computer table, Ramona the Pest open in front of her.
Edie came back and patted the empty chair beside the computer she’d been assigned. ‘So . . . this is how you start.’
Within a minute and a half Amos’s brain was already full. Edie was typing so fast that he could barely keep up and she maneuvered the mouse with terrifying ease. He remembered just enough from his high school computer lab days to not be completely overwhelmed.
‘We are now online,’ she said, with a ta-da gesture.
‘I had a friend who had a computer when I was a teenager,’ he said. ‘He had a . . .’ He searched for the word. ‘It had these cups and you put the phone in them. I guess that’s ancient history, too?’
‘Oh right.’ She laughed. ‘A modem. I remember those days.’ Lowering her voice, she mimicked the beeps and noise the device would make, bringing back a whole host of memories. ‘The modems are all internal now. They plug right into the wall.’
‘Wow,’ he murmured.
‘You’ll get used to it easily,’ she promised. ‘If I can learn this, anyone can. And if all else fails, let Abigail try. Kids are the best at this computer jazz. All right. This is called a browser window. It gets you into the Internet. There are a lot of browsers to choose from, but I use Chrome because it’s what my daughter put on my computer. Then we go to Google. See? That’s the search engine I usually use.’
Amos studied the slim screen. It looked like the one he’d seen in Sister Coleen’s office at the Eden clinic. Was that really only four days ago? He wondered if Sister Coleen could access the Internet, up on the mountain. Edie had explained that the computers on the table were linked into a massive network of buried cables, so Amos wasn’t sure how it would work. Unless the satellite dish allowed them access.
My head hurts. ‘Okay. So how do you . . . find things?’
‘Depends. What do you want to find?’
‘How about a phone book?’ he asked.
She chuckled. ‘Okay, so we’re back to that. Who or what are you looking for?’
Amos glanced at Abigail, but she didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them. ‘It’s a “who”. Her name is Mercy Callahan.’
Edie frowned. ‘Huh. That name sounds familiar.’ She typed Mercy’s name into Google and then sat back with an exhale. ‘Oh wow. That’s why her name sounded familiar. She’s been in the news. There was a CNN special interview just last week and she was mentioned. It was an intense report.’ She cast a worried glance in Abigail’s direction. ‘Um, you should probably read it to yourself. You can’t watch videos without earphones and they don’t have those here. I don’t have any with me, either. Click that link for a summary of the program.’
‘Link?’
Using the mouse, Edie moved the pointer to one of the lines of text. ‘These are links. Use the button on the mouse to click on it and it’ll open the article. Like this.’ She clicked and moved to one side, tilting the screen so that he could read it.
Amos could feel the blood draining from his face. ‘Dear God,’ he whispered. Mercy had been mentioned in a program about a serial killer?