lost too many. Please.”
“She’s not going to make it, Sarah,” Mother Claire said.
“Her name is Abigail,” Mother said.
I wept near the dresser. Laura and Margaret crowded near me. Carolina was with Emily.
Then Father came in, walked past like we weren’t there.
“Abigail,” Mother said.
“Not now, Richard,” Mother Claire said. She worked over that baby. Worked the best she could.
But Father ignored her and fell to his knees next to the bed, where the sheets were twisted and wet, where the towels were spattered with blood. The room smelled like birthing babies, and my mother looked too worn to breathe herself.
I stared at Abigail. A baby six months in the womb would survive outside of this place. I knew it to be true. I’d seen it in the newspapers Patrick brought. Hospitals that saved premature babies.
When Abigail pulled in her last breath, never making a sound, but twisting and fighting to breathe, when Mother, heartbroken, cried out, I left the room.
Now, I was a murderer, too.
IN MY DREAM, snow pelts against the window. Tapping and tapping. The wind whispers my name, Kyra.
I awake with my heart sitting on the back of my tongue.
“Kyra.” The tapping sounds again. “Wake up.”
It’s Joshua at my window.
What?
“What are you doing out here?” I whisper. I crawl to my knees, press my face to the screen.
“I’m leaving, Kyra,” he says. “I’ve got to go. They came by our house tonight.”
Joshua’s so upset that his voice shakes. In the near dark I can see the bruises.
A fat selfish part of me rears up. What will I do with him gone? “You can’t go,” I say.
“They’re making me.”
“Who?” I’m so close to the screen I smell dust. I don’t even care if Laura wakes up.
“The Prophet. The Apostles. The God Squad. They’re sending a bunch of us away. Me because I asked to Choose you.”
It feels like a stool has been pushed from under my feet. I’m sliding sideways in all this.
He presses his forehead into the screen. We are separated only by the mesh. I can feel his skin. Smell him through the dust. “The girls here are for all the older men. They told me that yesterday.” He takes a breath.
“Where will you go?”
For a moment he’s quiet. “We’ve heard there’s a safe house. We’ll try for that.”
I say, “Let me come with you.”
“I just wanted to tell you good-bye,” Joshua says. His voice cracks.
Just like that, I’m crying. “Let me come with you,” I say again.
“I’ll come back for you,” Joshua says. “If you want me to, Kyra.”
There’s a sound behind him, and for a moment I think someone from the God Squad is there. I feel sick to my stomach.
But there are two other boys with him. “We’ve got to go,” one of them says. I think it’s Randall Allred. “I told you we shouldn’t stop here. We got to go. Now. They’re only giving us so much time, then they’re following.”
“Let me come with you. I can get dressed. Wait for me.”
“No!” says another voice I don’t recognize. “She’ll slow us down. We only have so long. We gotta move now, Johnson. Now!” The voice is urgent. Scared.
“I’ve got to go,” Joshua says. He presses his hand to the screen and I put my hand on his. I can feel his warmth. And then he’s gone.
“Come back for me,” I whisper, watching him in the darkness. But I’ve no idea at all if he’s heard me.
A SPECIAL MEETING’S called.
“Hurry,” Mother says from her bed. “You have to go without me.”
Where is the baby?
“Are you still hurting?” Laura asks as we hurry to the Fellowship Hall. Her eyes are red from crying over Abigail. Little Abigail. So small.
I squint in the light, feel weak from pain, from not sleeping much, from crying.
There are murmurs all around. We divide ourselves, women on one side of the room, men on the other. The air conditioner blows in, cooling me.
“Children come forward,” Brother Mathias says. “Come to the front. Sit close to our beloved Prophet.”
They have moved a chair down for him, down from the stage so he can sit near us.
All the Apostles motion at us now, moving us forward with their fingers. Uncle Hyrum looks in my direction. He helps the children forward.
“Sit close,” they say. “Sit close.”
I’ve already settled near Mother Claire and I don’t want to go closer to where the Prophet will be.
“You too, Kyra,” Mother Victoria says. She smiles with her lips.
I’m reluctant, but I go forward, taking Mariah from Mother Claire