Last Writes (3 page)

It was a period in their lives that Claudia remembered well. Kelly, inconsolable when her second brief marriage ended, had gone on a bender that lasted months; a month more in rehab. Surprising that any of the details of Erin’s split from the family had stuck.

“Don’t worry about it, Kelly,” Erin said. “You and the older boys were all gone by then, so it was pretty much just Sean and me. Mom kept taking off for days at a time, but nobody knew, we never told anyone. At school they said I was a delinquent, so I decided to become one.” Her laugh sounded hollow. “Unfortunately for me, living on the streets of Banning was even worse than being home, so I ended up hitchhiking to Hollywood.”

Kelly turned away from them and started layering slices of turkey and provolone on the French rolls, assembling sandwiches as if her life depended on it. But not before Claudia noticed the tears of regret that brightened her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Erin,” Kelly said in a trembly voice. “I abandoned you, too. But after I got out of that house I didn’t want to ever look back. I wanted to believe you were going to be treated better than I was. I made myself think that way. I’m just so freaking sorry I failed you.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to feel bad. It all worked out for the best.” Erin gave a weak smile. “It was actually exciting and fun for a while, but I got tired of that life really fast. There are hundreds of runaways in Hollywood. They have this amazing network, sharing what they’ve got with each other and helping each other survive. Their methods may not be exactly conventional, but they sure are effective.”

Kelly was busy getting plates out of the cabinet, so Claudia asked, “Dare I ask what happened next?”

“God sent me to the TBL shelter, Teens for the Lord.” Suddenly, Erin’s face was shining and her prettiness became more apparent. “It was so awesome. It was a day that Brother Harold ‘just happened’ to be preaching there. But I know that was no coincidence; it had the hand of God written all over it. They do so much good at the shelter.”

“Tell us about this Brother Harold. You mentioned him earlier.”

“He’s our spiritual leader at TBL. He and Sister Grace—she was in charge at the shelter—they talked to me about the end of time, which was pretty terrifying until they showed me how I could be saved. They invited me to go back to the Ark with them,”

“You mean like Noah’s ark?” Kelly interrupted. “You live on a boat?”

Erin gave her head an impatient shake. “No, it doesn’t
look
like the Bible ark. It’s the best! Sort of our own little world that keeps TBL separate from the outsiders. In Bible times, God told Noah to build an ark to save his family from the flood.
Our
Ark is to keep the TBL family safe until the end-of-time days, which is coming soon.”

“Back up a minute,” Claudia said. “This Brother Harold took you there to live when you were fifteen?” She did her best to look neutral, but she knew her skepticism must show on her face.

“Brother Harold and Sister Grace—she was his wife, but she had cancer and the Lord took her to be with him about five years ago.” Then Erin’s mouth dropped open as she got the implication. “Hey, wait a minute, there was nothing inappropriate going on. It’s just, I wasn’t going to go back home, no way, no how. So when they invited me to the Ark, I said I’d go with them and try it out. Right away, I knew I was in the right place. I finally had a
real
family.” She shot an uneasy glance at her older sister. “I mean, at the Ark we eat all our meals together—real food, not Chicken McNuggets or a box of macaroni-and-cheese every other night.”

“It’s okay, hon.” Kelly looked unusually chastened. “I understand. Our family wasn’t exactly
Leave It to Beaver.
”

For the first time, Erin seemed to relax a little as she extolled the virtues of her substitute family. “The brothers and sisters at the Ark couldn’t have been more kind and loving. They were willing to work with me and help me clean up my act, get off drugs. I started going to school again—we have our own private classes at the Ark. There are regular school lessons, plus I trained to become a missionary. They taught me how to talk to other people about what we believe in, to help them be saved, too. It was really hard at first, talking to strangers who didn’t want to listen. But now I can talk to just about anyone.”

“A minute ago, you said something about the end-of-time days,” Claudia said. “What’s that about?”

Behind her sister’s back, Claudia could see Kelly shaking her head, discouraging her, but Erin’s face lit up as she jumped at the chance to explain the beliefs that she had adopted. “We’re living in the End of Time days right now!”

“End of Time
daze,”
Kelly muttered.

Erin ignored the jibe and continued. “The earth is about to be destroyed—”

“What does that
mean?”
Claudia asked. “Destroyed how?”

“We’re gonna see a whole series of natural disasters. Everyone who doesn’t know how to be saved will be destroyed with the earth, and it’s gonna happen really soon. This time we’re living in, it’s like, well, it’s like just before your alarm clock goes off in the morning—you know how you wake up just before the alarm? That’s where we are now, the alarm is about to go off. If you want to be saved, you have to pay attention
right now
, and wake up
.
” She nodded in earnest as she spoke, as if encouraging her listeners to think hard about what she was saying.

Kelly brushed aside the sermon. “Look, Erin, I want to know what happened with Rodney that would make him do something so drastic and so rash as to take Kylie.”

Erin’s beatific look faded fast. Her lower lip quivered and her eyes filled. “I told you, we’d been fighting.”

“Yes, you did. So, what was the fight about?”

The tears dried as fast as they’d started and Erin’s tone sharpened. “What does it matter what we fought about? It’s personal. The important thing is, he took my Kylie away, and I want her back.”

“Erin,” Claudia said. ”If you want our help, we need to know what happened. Why don’t you want to tell us what you were fighting about?”

“Because you won’t understand if I tell you, I know you won’t. Why isn’t it good enough just to know we had an argument?” Erin said it like a petulant child, peeved about not getting away with avoiding something unpleasant.

“We can’t help you if we don’t have all the facts,” Claudia pressed.

“Just tell us the truth,” Kelly added. “We’re not going to judge you. You don’t have to hide anything, just tell us what happened. And don’t bother to bullshit a bullshitter, Erin. Believe me, there’s nothing you can say that I haven’t said or done a thousand times over. Maybe if we know what we’re dealing with, we can come up with a plan to get my niece back.”

Erin looked from one to the other of them with the distrust of a wounded animal in the forest. When she realized that neither was going to back down, she shrugged, giving up on the debate. “Okay, fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I know how you outsiders are; your minds are totally made up and closed.”

Kelly and Claudia exchanged a surprised glance, their eyes telegraphing the same message—
What’s going on here?

“Like I told you, we were in the mountains,” Erin said. “We were there because we enrolled Kylie in a super-special TBL program. It’s called Jephthah’s Daughters. It’s one of those things that comes up only once in a lifetime. It was getting to be time for her to go into the program and we were there in the mountains, getting her ready for it.”

“Let’s go back to the patio,” Kelly suggested, picking up her sandwich. “This is getting interesting.”

When they were settled around the table once again, Kelly said. “Okay,
whose
daughters?”

Claudia said, “Jephthah’s. I remember the story from Sunday school because at the time, it scared the hell out of me. Jephthah was a judge in ancient Israel. He asked God to help him win a big battle, and in return, he offered to sacrifice the first person who came out of his house to greet him when he got home.”

“Oh, hell no,” Kelly said. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Erin nodded, looking gratified that Claudia was familiar with the name. She took up the story. “The Lord gave Jephthah the victory. When he got home, the first person to come out of the house was his only daughter, who he loved with his whole soul.”

“Holy shit.”

Throwing her sister a glare of disapproval for her use of profanity, Erin continued. “Jephthah was devastated. He told his daughter about the promise he’d made, but she was, like,
You have to keep the promise; you gave your word to the Lord God.
So she asked if she could have two months off to mourn her virginity, because, of course, she would never get to be married and have sex or anything. At the end of the two months, she was ready to let herself be sacrificed.” Then Erin hastened to add, “Of course, the way we do it is more like a
symbolic
sacrifice. Like going to a convent.”

Both Claudia and Kelly stared at her. “You’re sending your three-year-old
baby
to a convent?”

“Well, that was the original plan. That’s why we were in the mountains; we had the two months to get ourselves ready. But the longer we stayed there, the more I knew I couldn’t do it. When I told Rod I’d changed my mind, he wouldn’t listen to me. He loves Kylie, but he’s been working toward becoming an elder since he was a kid, and putting her into the program would seal the deal for him. It’s a really prestigious thing for a TBL member. This is a rare opportunity that only comes up once every few years.” Erin huffed a big sigh. “Look, I know it’s a great thing to give your child to God, but . . . I just wasn’t ready to do it.”

“Good choice,” Kelly mumbled, stuffing potato chips into her mouth as if to gag a comment that she knew would be left better unsaid.

Claudia said, “Why couldn’t Rod wait until she’s old enough to have a say in the matter?”

Erin’s eyes went to the bits of sodden tissue that dotted her jeans. She picked at the pieces, not looking up as she spoke. “It’s not like that. It has to be done at a certain time. She has to go into the program on her third birthday. That’s the requirement.”

An awkward silence fell over them, and Claudia knew that Kelly was thinking the same thing she was. When no one spoke, she put the question into words. “When is Kylie’s third birthday, Erin?”

Erin buried her face in her hands. Her words were muffled as she spoke through her fingers, but Claudia had no trouble understanding her.

“It’s next Saturday.”

 

 

 

Was it the sudden breeze rippling through the patio that made Claudia’s heart race, or the chill of realizing that Kylie’s birthday was only five days away? Five days to find Rodney Powers and persuade him to return little Kylie to her mother. Maybe he would relent and return on his own. Then Claudia remembered the stubbornness she had seen in Rodney’s handwriting and she knew that his relenting was not something they could count on.

“Are you sure that this Brother Harold person wouldn’t be the best place to start?” asked Claudia. “You said Rodney wants to become an elder. Maybe you could use—”

Erin shook her head. “Wives are the helpers of their husbands. It’s our job to be supportive, not contentious. Brother Harold would just tell me to follow Rod’s lead. He wouldn’t want me to be disobedient.”

“Disobedient?” Kelly repeated in a tone of disbelief. “
Disobedient?
Erin, has anyone told you we’re living in the twenty-first century? Women are not chattel anymore. That just makes me wanna barf.”

Erin’s chin went up. “I know what century it is, thank you so much for the information, Kelly. The point is, we interpret the Bible literally, and the wife is supposed to obey her husband, so don’t give me a hard time, okay? The man is the head of the family, the responsible one. It’s the wife’s role to raise her children and support her husband. Besides, Brother Harold has been really good to me; I wouldn’t want to—”

“Erin,” Kelly broke in. “Are you
afraid
of this Harold guy?”

“Of course not!” Erin shot back. “He’s our teacher, our leader. He only does what’s best for us.”

“How does he know what’s best for you? Goddamn it, that’s all about handing over responsibility to someone else. Grow up and raise your own kid! What about what’s best for Kylie?”

“For Kylie, too. Brother Harold has got, like, he’s got a direct line to God. He and the other elders feed us our spiritual food when we need it. We listen and learn from them, and we follow their direction.”

Alarm bells were clanging in Claudia’s head and she could see from Kelly’s appalled expression that she was hearing them too. “But what if you don’t agree?” Claudia protested. “What if you think differently from what they tell you?”

Erin smiled that irritating, tranquil smile again. It felt somehow inappropriate, given the circumstances. She said, “Why would I doubt the word of God when we’re getting everything we need from the elders? It’d be foolish to engage in independent thinking.”

“That sounds to me like you’re quoting someone,” Claudia said.

“I can’t believe that you or they would think it’s best to take a three-year-old away from her mother,” Kelly blurted angrily.

“In Jephthah’s Daughters she would be raised to be a priestess in service of the Lord God on the new earth. Tell me what’s so wrong with that.”

Not for the first time since Erin’s arrival, Claudia found herself puzzled by Kelly’s younger sister. “Erin, why are you here? You said you don’t want Kylie to go into this program, and now you seem to be arguing that it’s a
good
thing for her.”

Erin’s face crumpled. “I’m just so confused. I don’t know what to think, except I’ve got to get my baby back before it’s too late and Rod hands her over.”

“That’s the first credible thing you’ve said this morning,” Kelly said.