it was bad enough that she’d cheated on him, but was she trying to replace their whole family?
“I’ll talk to her,” Damian said. And, stupidly, she’d let him be the one to go into Claire’s bedroom. Maybe because he was the only one who could take it back, being the one who’d said it. She should have gone in herself. Why hadn’t she?
Fiona didn’t relay this all to Arnaud, but she told him about her trip to Boulder in 2011. It was winter, long enough after Claire hadn’t returned to school that, in retrospect, her own delay was inexcusable. At the time it had seemed right, though—giving Claire her space. Damian was living in Portland by then, and she only spoke to him when they were in crisis mode over Claire. They finally talked in early January about how neither of them ever heard a word, how Claire had cashed the check Damian and his new wife had sent for Christmas, but never wrote to thank him. Worrying alone, Fiona had been able to tell herself this was just how Claire was, that she needed time, needed to realize on her own that she missed school. But listening to Damian, who never panicked, say that he didn’t like this, that something felt wrong, it suddenly became clear it was wrong. Fiona flew out the next week. She rented a car in Denver and drove past Boulder, following her GPS.
It clearly wasn’t the right address. This wasn’t a ranch. A narrow, uneven road wound through woods to some sort of discount campground—trailers and cottages around a rundown yellow house, no lake or other natural attraction to explain their convergence.
Fiona wanted to leave, look things up on a proper map, figure out where the ranch really was, but she couldn’t take off without knocking, without checking that her daughter wasn’t being held captive inside. She called Damian just so there would be a witness if something horrible happened, and—with him on the line, the phone clutched to her chest—she approached the door.
“The man who answered,” she told Arnaud now, “he was dressed like they do. I didn’t understand at the time. Beard, long hair, clogs. They look a lot like hippies, especially the men.” The men came off better than the poor women, who wore long sleeves, long dresses, no makeup.
“So even when it turned out Claire was there, when they called her to the door, that’s what I thought it was—a hippie commune. I guess they don’t really have those anymore.”
She told him how Claire first backed up when she saw her, then hugged her like you might hug an ex you’d run into when you were both on dates with other people. Damian was still on the line, but Fiona couldn’t stop to tell him everything that was happening. Claire grabbed a coat and came out to talk on the driveway, and soon Kurt joined, stood beside her like a bodyguard.
“He seemed so possessive,” she said, “his hand on her back.” How had Fiona forgotten his height? She’d been struck by it the first time she’d seen him grown, towering above his own mother. He must have been six foot five, and now he was paunchy too. His face was leathery from the sun and wind, and his blond hair brushed his shoulders.
“They didn’t lie about what the place was, exactly. They said it was a planned community, and they gave me the name Hosanna Collective, which—well, you can tell right away it’s not just an organic farm, right?”
Fiona didn’t remember the details of the conversation. It was confusing and she was upset, and although she asked them about these people they were living with, she was more concerned with Claire’s demeanor, her dull eyes and twitching foot, than with the answers. She remembered saying, lamely, “There are churches you can explore in Chicago too,” and Kurt shaking his head at her. “The modern Christian church is the Whore of Babylon,” he said.
Claire wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t even get in the car with her to have dinner in town, wouldn’t take the phone to speak to her father, wouldn’t step away from Kurt Pearce.
Kurt said, “This really is an intrusion.” Calmly, as if he were the voice of reason here.
And Claire said, “Mom, we’re fine. You didn’t worry about me at college, and I was miserable at college. I’m much happier here.”
“I did worry about you at college. But at least I knew what was going on there.”