When She Woke

She turned to her father, expecting him to shut off the engine, but he sat unmoving, looking straight ahead, his fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel.

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” she asked.

“I can’t. You have to enter alone, of your own free will, bringing nothing but yourself. It’s one of the rules.”

“I see.” Her voice was tight and high-pitched. She swallowed, tried to sound less afraid. “How often can you visit?”

Her father shook his head, and the hollow feeling inside of her expanded. “Visitors aren’t permitted, and neither are calls. Letters are the only communication they allow from the outside world.”

Another prison then. Six more months without seeing him, without seeing Becca, without even hearing their voices—how would she bear it?

He turned to her, his face stricken. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but for right now this is the best option we have. It’s the only way I know to keep you safe until I can figure out some sort of living situation for you. I’ll come for you as soon as I can.”

“Does Mama know about this? Does she know you’re here with me?”

“Of course. She’s the one who found this place. It was her idea to send you here.”

“To get me out of her sight,” Hannah said bitterly.

“To help you, Hannah. She’s angry right now, but she still loves you.”

Hannah remembered her mother’s face as she’d left the visiting room at the jail. How disgusted she’d looked, as if she’d smelled something foul. “Yeah, she loves me so much she’s disowned me.”

“She cried for days after they sentenced you. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t leave the house.”

Hannah was unmoved. “It must be mortifying for her, having a convicted felon for a daughter. What would the neighbors say?”

Her father grabbed hold of her wrist. “You listen to me. It wasn’t shame kept your mother at home, it was grief. Grief, Hannah.” His fingers ground against her bones, but she didn’t try to pull away. The pain was welcome; it kept the numbness at bay. “You can’t imagine how hard this has been for her. For all of us.”

Hard is loving a man you can never have, Hannah thought. Hard is asking someone to kill your child and then holding still while they do it. But she couldn’t say those things to her father; she’d wounded him enough already. Instead, she asked after Becca.

With a sigh, he let go of her wrist. “She sends her love. She misses you.” He paused, then said, “She’s pregnant. It’s twins, a boy and a girl.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” And for a moment, it was, and Hannah was flooded with pure joy, just as Becca must have been when her hopes were confirmed. Hannah could picture her hugging herself, bursting with the wonder of it. She would have wanted to call their mother but waited until Cole got home from work so she could tell him first, her face glowing with shy pride. They would have gone together to the Paynes’ house and shared the news, which would have been received with openmouthed delight by their father and a knowing smile by their mother, who would have suspected for some time. Hannah could see it all, could see her sister’s hand cupped over her swelling belly, and later, around the baby’s tender, downy head. Becca was made for motherhood. She’d dreamed of it ever since they were little girls, whispering their fantasies to each other in the dark. She wanted to have seven children, just like in The Sound of Music. And her first daughter, she’d promised, would be named Hannah.

The memory was a cudgel, wielded with cruel indifference to the present. Hannah would have no namesake now. She wouldn’t be a part of her niece’s and nephew’s lives, wouldn’t be invited to their baptism, would never read stories to them or push them on a swing. “Aunt Hannah” would be words of disgrace to Becca’s children, if they said them at all. Children who would have grown up alongside her own.

“She’s due in April,” her father said. “She and Cole are over the moon about it.”

Hannah sifted through her emotions, searching for something unsullied to offer her sister, something she could wholly mean. She could find only one thing. “Give her my love,” she said.

“I will. She sends you hers, and she said to tell you she’ll write to you. When you write back, mail the letters to me, and I’ll see that she gets them.” He reached out and touched Hannah’s cheek. “I know you’re scared, but I’ll figure out a plan, I promise. In the meantime, you’ll be safe here and cared for. And maybe they can help you find some grace. I pray that they can, Hannah. I’ll pray for you every day.”

Her love for him rose up into her throat, forming a thick ball. “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Daddy. If it weren’t for you—”

“You’re my daughter,” he said, before she could finish the thought. “That will never change.”

She leaned over, hugged him hard, told him she loved him and then got out of the car. She walked past the rosebush to the entrance. There was an engraved brass plaque to the right of the door. It read:

AND I WILL BRING THE BLIND BY A WAY THEY KNEW NOT; I WILL LEAD THEM IN PATHS THAT THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN: I WILL MAKE DARKNESS LIGHT BEFORE THEM, AND CROOKED THINGS STRAIGHT. THESE THINGS I WILL DO UNTO THEM, AND NOT FORSAKE THEM.—ISAIAH 42:16

She reread the last four words of the verse, whispering them aloud. Not a prison, she told herself, a sanctuary.

She could feel her father watching her from the idling car. She lifted a hand in farewell but didn’t turn around. She drew herself up tall and tried the door. It was locked, but then a few seconds later she heard a click. She pulled the door open and stepped across the threshold.

MARY MAGDALENE HERSELF greeted Hannah. Three times larger than life, clad only in her long, rippling red hair, Mary gazed adoringly heavenward. One pale, plump arm was laid across her breasts, which peeked out, rosy-tipped, on either side. Hannah couldn’t help but stare at them. She knew this painting—it hung in one of the chapels at Ignited Word—but in that version, she was certain, the Magdalene’s hair covered her nakedness completely. The sight of so much lush pink flesh, so tenderly and sensually revealed, and in this of all places, was confusing, unsettling.

“That’s Mary Magdalene,” said a reedy voice, the vowels dipping in a thick twang.

Startled, Hannah dropped her eyes from the painting to the face of a young woman standing to her left. She was tall and rawboned, clad in a faded prairie-style dress that covered her from neck to feet. Her hair was done up in a bun and capped by a pleated white bonnet with long, trailing ties. She wore a small silver cross and held a straw broom in her hands. If it hadn’t been for her lemon yellow skin, she could have walked straight out of the nineteenth century. Hannah stared at her in dismay. Clearly these people were extreme fundamentalists. Had her parents known that, when they’d decided to send her here? Had Aidan?

“She was a outcast, like us,” the girl said. “Then Jesus made the demons inside of her cut and run. He sent ’em straight back to hell, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. Her bony wrists stuck out several inches from the sleeves of her dress.

“I know who she is.” Hannah wondered what the girl’s crime was. Nothing too serious, or she wouldn’t be a Yellow. Drug possession? Petty theft?

The girl cocked her head. “Oh yeah? You’re so smart, tell me why she’s nekked.”

Hannah shrugged. “We’re all naked before God.”

“True,” the girl said. “But wrong.” She was plain-featured, with a weak chin and an unfortunate overbite. The kind of girl you’d dismiss, if it weren’t for her eyes. They were a rich amber, and there was a mutinous spark in them that animated her face and made Hannah like her in spite of her churlishness.

“Why then?” Hannah asked, wishing she could let the girl’s sleeves out for her. She was just a kid; seventeen, eighteen at the most.

“You’ll find out.” The girl gave her a sly smile and resumed her sweeping.

Hannah paced. Her eyes keep returning to the Magdalene, as they were plainly meant to; the painting and a simple wooden bench were the only objects in the otherwise austere room. The walls were white, the floors terra-cotta tile. Long horizontal windows near the ceiling let in thin shafts of light. There were three doors: the one she’d come in and two others, one near the girl and another directly beneath the painting. The latter was tall and narrow, made of dark, intricately carved wood rubbed to a high sheen. It looked old and foreign, like it belonged in some crumbling European castle. Hannah went over to it to examine it more closely.

“You can’t go in there yet,” the girl said.

“I wasn’t going to open it. I just want to look at it.” The carvings on the main panel, of a shepherd tending his flock, were very fine. Beneath were some words in Latin. Hannah ran her fingers lightly over the letters.

“It’s from Luke,” the girl said. “It says you gotta try to go in through the narrow door—”

“ ‘Because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to,’ ” Hannah finished. “I know the passage.”

The girl’s face lit with hostility. “You don’t know nothing. You think you do but you don’t. Talk to me in three months, then we’ll see what all you know.” She bent and angrily brushed the collected debris into the dustpan, then went to the side door and pulled it open.

“Is that how long you’ve been here?” Hannah said, before she could leave. “Three months?”

“That’s right,” the girl said, stiff-backed and sullen.

“I’m Hannah. What’s your name?”

“Eve.” She said it warily, like she was waiting to be mocked.

“Is that your real name, or did they give it to you here?”

“It’s mine.”

“It’s a lovely name,” said Hannah.

Something flickered in the girl’s eyes. “That’s the only thing they let you keep here.” She left, closing the door behind her.

A FEW MINUTES later, the door opened again and a couple entered the room, holding hands. The man was of medium height, trim and vigorous, with a head that was a little too large for his body. His clothes were plain: white button-down shirt, dark gray trousers, black suspenders. He was in his mid-forties, Hannah judged, handsome in an aging Ken-doll way, with a square jaw, a full head of dark blond hair and crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The woman resembled him strongly enough that they could be brother and sister, though she was considerably younger and more petite. She too was blonde and exuded robust good health and wholesomeness. A scattering of freckles across her pink cheeks added to the effect. Her attire was similar to Eve’s, but the fabric was a rich blue and of much better quality. Both she and the man wore crosses like Eve’s, only larger. Hannah felt reassured by their attractiveness and by their expressions, which were serious but not unfriendly. They came to stand before her, and the man spoke.

“I’m Reverend Ponder Henley, the director of the Straight Path Center, and this is Mrs. Henley.” His round brown eyes had a surprised, slightly vacant look to them. Hers were a twinkling blue that matched her dress.

“How do you do,” Hannah said, stifling an absurd impulse to curtsy. “I’m Hannah Payne.”

“Why are you here, Hannah?” Mrs. Henley asked. Her voice was sweet and girlish and her tone mild, but Hannah knew the question was a test. She searched their faces, trying to discern what they wanted to hear. “To repent my sins,” maybe, or, “To learn how to follow a straighter, godlier path.”

In the end, though, she shrugged and said, “I have nowhere else to go.”

Reverend and Mrs. Henley exchanged quick glances, their mouths stretching wide in approving smiles that revealed two sets of white, even teeth. Mrs. Henley’s cheeks were adorably dimpled.

“That is the right answer, Hannah,” said Reverend Henley. “Do you know why?” She shook her head, and he said, “Because it is the truthful answer. Without truth, there can be no salvation.”

“Do you want to be saved, Hannah?” asked Mrs. Henley.

“Yes.”

“And do you believe you can be saved?” asked Reverend Henley. Again, Hannah considered lying. What if faith in God’s forgiveness was required? What if they decided not to let her stay? She shook her head a second time. Their smiles broadened further. “That is both the right and the wrong answer,” said Reverend

Henley. “Right because you spoke honestly, but wrong because you can

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