The Chosen One - Carol Lynch Williams Page 0,45

Father. We could go. Run in the middle of the night.”

Mother Claire glances at Father. Maybe . . . Mother Victoria is openmouthed again. They look at one another, back and forth. Have they thought this themselves? Will they leave this place?

“Where would a family like ours live?” Father’s voice sounds heavy. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink for a long few moments. “It’s God’s will we stay,” he says at last. He rubs his face, and for a moment I see him as an old man in this place with no way out. I crumple up inside.

Will I be an old woman here? The seventh wife to my uncle? The mother of my uncle’s children?

We won’t be leaving as a family. Father won’t do it.

“They can’t make me marry him,” I say.

“They can,” Father says.

Mothers Claire and Victoria nod. They believe it, too.

And for the first time I think, I think, they are right.

_______

THERE ARE PEOPLE who have run from being a Chosen One. Some stayed in hiding for a long time. The God Squad looked for them. Sometimes they brought the people back, the women back. Sometimes a boy would get away.

Joshua and I, we were in hiding right here in front of everyone.

In the night. When it was late. When all were asleep. When the front gates were locked. That’s when our hiding began.

We hid next to the community building where the women sometimes have quilting bees. Or on the far side of the building where there’s a shadow so dark Joshua and I could stand still and not be noticed.

The back side of the Temple. In the basement stairwell.

Out behind my trailer.

Under his bedroom window.

Near the Fellowship Hall where people used to dance before and now we have barbecues each month to break two-day fasts.

Near the wild Russian Olive trees that make me sneeze every spring.

We hid every place we could.

Will Joshua be one of the boys who makes it?

And will he remember to come back and get me?

FOR FOUR DAYS I worry about Joshua. We bury Abigail. We finish my wedding dress. My mother cries about everything, visits her fourth dead baby’s grave. The bruises on my face start to change color, from blue to a greenish yellow color.

At night, when I lie next to Laura, I think of Joshua. I imagine him coming back to my window. No! He comes to my front door. He says, “I’ve come for you, Kyra. I have a place for us. I’ll bring you back to see your family all the time.” Then he drives me away.

I’m not sure when I realize what’s going to happen, but it comes to me like I’ve fallen flat on my face.

Joshua won’t come.

I don’t even know if he’s alive. Not really.

I’m on my own. And in less than a week I’ll be sharing my wedding bed with a man fifty years older than me.

IV

Only one thing makes me feel like I can make it.

It’s books. Reading. I have to go back. Just one more time. If I can go to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels one more time, smell the books, touch them, if I can do that, I think I’ll make it. And at the same time I can tell Patrick not to come back, ever. “Just drive on past here,” that’s what I’ll say. “Just drive on past here, Patrick, and don’t stop, no matter if I stand in front of the van. You just keep going.”

Knowing I’m going to say all this makes me feel better. Makes me feel all right about visiting Patrick one more time.

The facts are these: They know I wander.

And Sheriff Felix has stopped Patrick at least once.

I always walk. And maybe now, it would be strange if I didn’t keep walking.

But they are watching. They are all watching now. My brothers and sisters. My father and mothers. Only Mother Sarah, who keeps weeping, only she doesn’t seem to notice me. She is gone off in her head, I think. To a place baby Abigail would live? I don’t know.

But when Wednesday morning dawns, I am so itchy to get to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels I have to scratch at my arms. My heart seems to be working double time. Pounding extra. I’m afraid and I have hours before anything will happen.

If I go walking.

Like I always have.

Even though they are watching.

At last I choose to go.

Thank goodness, thank goodness I have this last Wednesday to see Patrick at