“When did you know you wanted to leave?” My voice shakes.
“The first time he burned me, that’s when I really saw him. And I know abusers. I know their true face. And he couldn’t hide it in that moment. In that moment, I saw him … and even though I knew who he really was … I still stayed.”
“I don’t—” I press my hands against my face. “He wouldn’t do that—Lev wouldn’t do that, not after what his mother did to him—”
“Did she?” Rob asks and I lower my hands, horrified. “You know his mother died by fire? He just so happened to be in Indiana at the time.”
I look to Father Michael, then back to Rob. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Once one thing is in doubt,” Father Michael says, “the whole thing is in doubt.”
I turn back to Rob. “You know who I am. You heard of me.”
“We all heard about you, Lo.”
“Then you know he saved my life—”
“You don’t think the doctors might’ve had something to do with that?” Rob asks. “You were in a hospital, that’s what hospitals are supposed to do—”
“They said I was going to die and Lev came—”
“You were young, you fought your way back—”
“I was chosen!”
They both stare at me with pity, like I’m some tragic thing. I don’t want their pity and I’m not tragic.
Only one person has ever looked at me like I’m not.
“I’m so sorry, Lo,” Rob says. “I know how much it means to feel that way.”
My head pounds. I want to ask a million questions and I’m afraid of them all, so my mouth stays shut. I sit down in Father Michael’s empty chair.
“You can’t go up against The Project. After I left, they kept tabs on me. They did everything they could to try to make my life miserable enough to get me to come back. I reached out to Father Michael. He gave me sanctuary and they lost track of me long enough I could get my feet back under me and I did … slowly, but surely, I rebuilt my life and then…” He looks at me. “Then one day, last year, Bea shows up.”
2017
Her family doesn’t question the way she is with Emmy. Lev tells them she was too fragile for the gift God put in her arms, that nearly losing Emmy, after the loss of her parents, left her undone. She does not know how to overcome her fear and be a mother. They must accept it of her. Her family doesn’t see her yearning, her need, her anguish born of his denial. They don’t see it because Lev told them not to.
But the priest sees it.
He finds her on her knees at her parents’ grave with a picture of Emmy in her hands, whispering this is my daughter, over and over again because she needs someone to know. He shows her compassion. He shows her concern. She forgot what it felt like to receive such things and this reintroduction overwhelms her. She confesses to him.
He knows someone who might be able to help.
* * *
Rob meets her at Father Michael’s rectory days later. She somehow manages to steal away; it’s not always easy for Lev to find her in the house. She’ll find out if she was successfully gone when she gets back.
When Rob opens the door, the breaking point finds her. She sees herself small and frail in his eyes. And he is so much better than when she saw him last, healthier, solid, sure. She falls into his arms. She’s dying, she tells him. She will die in The Unity Project if he doesn’t get her out.
When he pulls away, she lifts her shirt and shows him. It’s the first time she sees the devastation of what she’s gone through on someone else’s face. He knows this all too well, has scars of his own. She lies on the couch in the living room, and Rob tends to her abdomen, his hands navigating the spiderweb stretchmarks and the sag of her stomach that never quite rebounded from the birth, to the territory of skin that Lev claimed for himself.
He looks like he wants to cry.
This is infected, Rob says.
She breathes in and out through her teeth.
Tell me everything, he says, and she does. She tells him of Foster, and the necklace, the bond they formed. The aftermath of Rob’s leaving, Lev’s tightening control. She tells him of her daughter. How Emmy came into this world, stained with her sin, barely holding onto life and how Lev saved her in spite of Bea’s betrayal. When she gets to that part, she wonders if she’s wrong. If what has happened since is no less than she deserves, if removing Emmy from The Project will put her in harm’s way. If Lev’s gift of life lasts only so long as she is near him. A cold panic seizes her and she says, I shouldn’t be doing this, and tries to get up from the couch, but Rob eases her back and he holds her hand so, so tight.
It doesn’t work like that, he says. It has never worked like that.
Her daughter doesn’t know her name.
Mom, mama …
It’s not love, she says, but it comes out a question.
It’s not, he promises.
By the end of their visit, they have a plan.
Tonight.
Leave with Emmy tonight.
When Bea leaves Rob’s, she tries not to see the doubt in Rob’s eyes.
Lev seems to sense she’s been somewhere she shouldn’t be. He asks her questions in a low, dangerous voice. She’s failing to explain herself when Jeremy Lewis stands at her side and offers himself up.
She was with me, he says and paints an afternoon of Project work that kept her with him and she can tell by the way Lev looks at Jeremy that Jeremy will answer for this later. When it’s over, Jeremy looks at her for a moment, hesitates—but goes. As she watches him retreat, it feels like she’s seeing him for the very first time. He used to love it here but it’s not in his eyes anymore. She didn’t see it in his eyes. How long has he wanted out? And how many more of them are in these walls, screaming on the inside, desperate for escape?
She goes to his room later and slips a Bible Tract under his door.
MARCH 2018
“She never showed,” Rob says.
I lean over in the chair, my head buried in my hands, my fingers knotted in my hair, pulling, trying to reject everything he’s told me, trying to make it untrue. But I can feel it in my blood, my guts, my bones—something here is real that can’t be denied.
“I thought she’d changed her mind. She was so torn up about leaving, that … I just assumed she went back, stayed there with Emmy. But then Father Michael tells me he meets you and you’re saying Emmy’s still there, but Bea’s not…”
“So?” I ask.
“So if Emmy is still in The Project and Bea isn’t—” Rob doesn’t finish the sentence. My stomach aches. “Something bad happened to her, Lo. Because I’m telling you … she would have never, ever left her kid behind.”
“She did,” I say, looking up at him. “She called me—she kept calling me—I talked to her! I talked to her, she said—she said good-bye. I heard her voice—she said good-bye.”
Rob frowns and looks to Father Michael, whose brow crinkles.
“What else did she say?” Rob asks.
I swallow. “That was it.”