“What about my father?” Gabi choked out.
Her question visibly wounded Sam. “No one knew anything about him, but I have loved you like my own every day of your life. You must know that. I would do anything for you.”
“Not anything,” Gabi shot back. “You won’t accept that this medicine makes me sick or that maybe there are some things more important than maintaining the fellowship.”
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, genuine puzzlement wrinkling his brow. “Yes, I have my duties. A fellow’s relationship to God is primary, you know that.”
Gabi sighed. “I know that all you really care about is Unitas, and all I care about is the truth, so maybe we’re not so different.” She was hurting him more with every word, but doing what she had to do would be impossible if she allowed herself to pity him.
“That’s not true, Gabi,” Sam insisted. “I’ve always put you and Mathew first when I could, but it’s God’s Will that we devote ourselves to his will. The very world we live in depends upon that. I won’t apologize for being a man of God.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Gabi said, then peeled the bandages from her inner elbows and removed the needles.
“Gabi, don’t—” But she raised a hand to silence him and swung her legs over the edge of the bed so she could retrieve the letter and face him directly.
“I’m going to ask you for something, and if you want to continue serving as an executive councilman, you’ll give it to me. Sixteen years of deceiving your own daughter, not to mention your fellows, would certainly be sufficient cause for—” She broke off here, because the pain in her body was nothing compared to how vile it felt to threaten the man who had raised her with such love.
“Excommunication,” Sam finished for her, tears filling his eyes.
GABI HAD never been to the group home. Marnie avoided it herself for everything but sleeping and meals. The building was covered in cheap plastic siding, squat and featureless except for a few tiny windows and some planters filled with plastic flowers on the crumbling stoop. Gabi pressed the doorbell, gritting her teeth against the spasm the movement caused in her arm and shoulder. No one answered, so she let herself in. The house was filled with mismatched furniture and cheap curios scavenged from the reclamation shelter at the dump, and was completely, eerily silent. Today was the big send-off for Witness teams headed to the Pacific Northwest, and apparently it was an occasion that no one, including the group-home orphans, wanted to miss. It was imperative that Gabi get to the send-off in time, but she knew there was still one person left in that depressing house, and she couldn’t leave without her.
Finding Marnie wasn’t difficult. All the doors bore pastel construction-paper crosses with the names of each resident written on them in cheery letters. The curls of cigarette smoke wafting from under the door, and a powder blue cross bearing the name Marian Randolph were all Gabi needed to find her target. She pushed open the door and searched through the haze of smoke for Marnie. The girl was huddled on her bed with knees pulled up and a singed filter between her lips, her hair in an unsculpted snarl.
“Get out,” Marnie growled without looking away from the hole she was busy staring into the wall.
“But I brought cigarettes,” Gabi coaxed, walking over to the foot of Marnie’s bed. “And by the looks of it, you’re fresh out.”
“Gabi?” Marnie yelped, lowering her knees and lunging toward her friend to lock her arms around her neck. “I can’t believe they let you come see me!”
“Why not?” Gabi gasped, trying to reposition herself so Marnie’s shoulder wasn’t digging directly into her throat.
Marnie pulled back abruptly and gaped at her. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Gabi asked, checking her watch and rubbing her throat. “Tell me while you get your shoes on. We’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Where?”
“Shoes, then story,” Gabi ordered.
The tale rushed out of Marnie in a torrent as she laced up her battered sneakers. “It was the letters I traded with Beth. The analysts found something they didn’t like, and they asked Beth about them while we were in the testing hall. She told them I’d been flirting with her since camp, trying to get her to leave Alder with me so we could be together. Obviously that wasn’t in the letters, but she told them we’d been meeting secretly too.”
“But why would she do that?” Gabi sputtered.
“To save her own ass is why. You can’t have a victim without a villain. The worse Beth made me look, the better she looked. You can’t be a villain and a hero at the same time, so no Witness team for me.”
“What did they do to you? I was so worried!” Gabi searched Marnie for signs that she’d been harmed, but other than looking more wan than usual, she seemed fine.
“Oh, just your basic interrogation under a bare lightbulb, followed by a forced bullshit confession.”
“You confessed?” Gabi screeched. “But none
