Chapter 1
April
You’re just like your mother.
Those words have echoed in my head for the last eighteen hours.
If I were still a little girl, the words wouldn’t have as much of an impact as they have now. Ten years ago, I had a normal life. We struggled, of course. My mom was a single parent with two daughters. My dad was just… gone. Mom never spoke ill of him, and looking back, I think that had more to do with her broken heart than anything else.
There was never any obvious vehemence, no anger nor animosity. When she spoke of his parents, she said they were kind and loving.
After the argument I had with my paternal grandparents yesterday, I have to wonder if she was lying. They spewed hate, and there wasn’t an ounce of civility wasted on me.
I could lie to myself and say it was completely out of the blue, but it really wasn’t. When I arrived several months ago, they were hesitant, but I thought any aging couple would be with allowing an escaped former cult member to live in their home. We didn’t know each other. There were no phone calls growing up, nor birthday cards. They never planned a trip and visited. There was no relationship to speak of before that day, but they opened their home, their rules nearly as strict and suffocating as the ones that were demanded of me at Knight Salvation—the religious organization my mother joined when I was barely ten years old. She married the leader. She didn’t bat an eye nor open her mouth to argue when she discovered that all females at the compound were to marry Charles Knight, the of-age women immediately upon entering and the younger girls on their eighteenth birthday.
I shake my head, my eyes burning with the events leading up to me being in the cab of this truck. I don’t want to explain to a stranger why I don’t have a handle on my emotions. I know I’m taking a huge risk with my own safety, but I honestly saw no other way. Hitchhiking from the bus station is dangerous, I’m well aware. I watch the news, now that I’m no longer in California with a cult anyway. I’ve been warned for as long as I can remember that men outside of the compound are evil and only want one thing from women. What Charles didn’t mention during his sermons is that he wanted that very same thing as well, only he hides it under the guise that marrying him, bearing his children, is how we atone for our sins, enabling us a righteous path to Heaven.
Fuck Heaven.
Fuck a god that says you have to sleep with a middle-aged man to live in a kingdom free of pain and suffering.
I’d rather roll around in a pile of ants.
I know now that Charles Knight is a psycho, a manipulative pervert, but it’s difficult to get years of indoctrination out of my head, years of towing the line and acting like a prim-and-proper angel waiting to take my place by Charles’s side.
My stomach rolls, a violent wave of nausea hitting me. I roll down the passenger side window, angling my head in the warm New Mexico breeze, praying I don’t puke in this guy’s vehicle. He hasn’t given me any creepy looks as his fingers tap out the rhythm to the old country song coming through with more static than music from the old radio in the dash.
You’re just like your mother.
My move from the Californian cult to my paternal grandparents’ several months ago wasn’t as much of a change as I thought it would be. There was no freedom, no ability to make my own choices. Southern etiquette is just as antiquated as the Draconian guidelines Knight had at his compound.
But since I was going to be required to marry a creep if I stayed in California, I followed their rules. I finished high school, keeping my head down even when other students laughed and jabbed and made fun of me.
See, the Holmans made themselves out to be martyrs. They were in God’s good graces for welcoming their granddaughter with open arms, but just telling their church friends and the women my grandmother lunched with wasn’t enough. Leaving the details out in a community where the local currency has always been gossip, wouldn’t do.
Therefore, my entire story came to light. Whispered over sweet tea, heaping plates of fried chicken, and lima beans, a woman I’d just met told a group of friends the details of why I came to live with her. What she didn’t know, she filled in with minutiae derived from her own head, or more likely details she pulled from antiquated documentaries on PBS.
Those whispers became a roar in my ears as I walked the halls for class, but honestly, they didn’t bother me as much as they probably should have.