Reluctantly, I nodded.
“Remember what I said about being careful. You shouldn’t drive around Alber alone at night. Get in the car and drive directly to Hannah’s. Wait there for me to call.”
“Max, that’s silly. No one would bother me.”
Max frowned. “As I said, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed around here, and you’re not an insider anymore. Once you get your car, head over to Hannah’s. Stay there. I’ll call as soon as I’m able to talk with the sheriff.”
Everything Max said made sense, but I couldn’t stomach the idea that we would do nothing. “I hate to let this go until then,” I said. “What if—”
“Clara, I explained. I need to talk to the sheriff,” he said, his voice worn as thin as his patience. “This is my job. I need to follow protocol.”
“I know,” I said. “But—”
“As soon as I know anything, you’ll be my first call.”
I’d never been inside the gates of the Barstow compound, never set foot in the sprawling three-story mansion. When the front entry opened into an expansive hallway and Hannah Jessop, the woman who’d once saved me, waited arms outstretched, I fell into them, and for the first time that day, I felt as if I’d come home.
“Welcome, Clara,” she whispered.
When I had to leave everything and everyone I loved behind, Hannah showed me a way.
I hugged her, not wanting to let go.
“What’s it like being back here?” she asked.
“It feels… I feel foreign. I thought I’d come to terms with this place. I thought I’d worked it all through. But now, I don’t know that I have.”
Hannah released me, but wrapped an arm around my waist. “You’re asking too much of yourself. You can’t figure all this out. There’s enough here to wrestle with for a lifetime.”
I pulled back to look at her.
Hannah was in her late forties, thirteen years older than me, a slender woman with faded denim-blue eyes feathered with a pale brown. Wearing jeans and a pale pink T-shirt, she was sockless in moccasins, letting her ankles show, a provocative choice in these parts.
Hair is a big deal in fundamentalist Mormon teachings. My mother and I, all the women and girls I knew, grew our hair to our waists or longer. We tied it into poufy buns, looped it into braids, and shaped it in pompadour-type crowns around our faces. This wasn’t a style choice but a mandate. Our leaders called a woman’s hair her crowning glory and taught that we must keep it long in preparation for the hereafter. In heaven, we were told, we would use our hair to wash Christ’s feet.
Hannah visited my home often when I was a child, our fathers close friends. As a teenager, she wore long, rope-like dark blond braids. At sixteen, the prophet married her off to a church elder with a harem of wives. For a while, I didn’t see Hannah. Then one day I walked to school with Mother Constance and my brothers and sisters. Hannah marched past in her prairie dress leading a flock of children. She’d chopped her hair off just below her earlobes. I waved to her. Mother Constance pulled my hand down and hustled us away.
From that point on, Hannah became an outcast in Alber, a troublemaker who refused to comply with the teachings. Since the upheaval in town, in what I assumed was an even bolder act of defiance, Hannah had cropped her light hair close to her head.
“This shelter, how wonderful,” I said. “When you told me a decade ago that one day you would have a place like this for women and children in need, I didn’t believe you. And here you are, and it’s in the Barstow mansion. You’re a real stalwart of the community.”
“Ironic, isn’t it? I can’t say that I’m totally accepted, but I think they’ve come to tolerate me,” she chuckled and whispered as if we shared a secret. “Who would have thought that I’d ever live in the biggest house in town?”
All around us children played, running room to room. A group of women sat in a circle near the main room’s fireplace, sewing and talking. I heard high-pitched laughs, the sounds of happiness. Upstairs, on the second floor, a baby cried.
A woman slipped past us, chasing a tow-headed boy. “Zachary!” she shouted. “When I catch you…”
The house smelled of simmering soup, and the dining room chandelier cast a soft glow.
We walked toward the kitchen, teeming with Hannah’s residents, their ages spanning from infancy to elderly, all in clean but often tattered clothes, and I lowered my voice. “Everything here is so different, I can’t process it all. But Hannah, did Max talk to you about Delilah?”
“He did,” she said.
“Do you think she’s missing?”
Hannah took a deep breath, then hushed her voice to suggest, “Let’s go to the restaurant in town and have dinner. It’s never busy on Sunday evenings. We can talk there. I don’t want to discuss this where anyone can hear.”
Eight
Delilah grew weary. Her head throbbed, and she had a constant ball of fear in her chest. Her body ached. She rested her back against the wall for support, but that pinned her arms and hands behind her, hurting her shoulders. The filthy blindfold made her eyes itch.
When she drifted off, she dreamed she heard her mother call her. When she finally slumped to the side and slid down, she jerked awake with a start.
Trying to calm her fears, Delilah imagined her home, her family. She wondered what they were doing, if they were looking for her. She knew they’d be worried. She wondered if her brothers and sisters were frightened. The way the man came for Delilah reminded her of the stories their mothers told, the ones about the boogiemen who took bad children away.
Her mother would cry, of that Delilah felt certain. Mother and daughter had always been so close.
The day before the man took her, Delilah had helped Sariah comb through
