Because right now I don’t have anywhere to go.
I climb into the back of his car. From the outside it looks like a regular car, except maybe a little more shiny. A little more smooth. From the inside, it’s completely different. Nothing like the gray bus I came here on, with its plastic bucket seats and cracked window. It’s nothing like the car the woman with kind eyes drove either, where she buckled me into the back and gave me a juice box.
This car doesn’t even have seat belts, just incredibly soft seats. It’s like running my hands over a cloud, and I do it again and again until Ivan sits beside me and I force my hands to still. There are buttons built into the sides of the car and a little panel in front of us with a screen. And a dark glass wall separating the front and the back.
Luca climbs in behind the wheel, and then the car glides forward.
I’m quiet the rest of the trip. So is Ivan.
Maybe he’s thinking about work. But I know he’s thinking about me. I can feel his attention on me even though he faces the front. His profile looks stark and forbidding, shadows stretching over his face, not quite covering him. I try to shrink myself, to become invisible. I hold my body very still. It’s something I have a lot of practice with, in prayer.
Forgive me, for I have sinned…
Chapter Five
We reach Ivan’s house too quickly. I’m not ready to face what will happen to me here. Not ready to face that I’ve ended up in this position, at another man’s mercy. Wasn’t I supposed to get free? Isn’t that why Mama risked everything?
Except a hundred dollars in cash and a brochure from the bus company didn’t get me very far.
Deep inside, where I don’t usually let myself feel, something sharp and hot burns. Frustration. Anger? Mama would know how to survive in the city. She lived in one before she went to Harmony Hills. Why didn’t she teach me what I would need to know?
Why didn’t she tell me about men like Ivan?
It doesn’t matter now, because Luca opens the car door. I have no choice but to step outside and look up, up at the never-ending glass and concrete. It doesn’t look like a house. It looks like a sculpture.
It almost looks like a church.
“No calls tonight,” Ivan says, and Luca nods, wordless.
Luca holds the car door open for Ivan and then myself. Lights are set in the wall, high up, so the whole room is bathed in a pale light when we first arrive. Ivan touches a switch, and they grow brighter.
“This way,” he says, leaving me behind.
I almost run to catch up, afraid to be left in this cold land of silver and white. It’s winter, but not made by nature. Made by man. I don’t know why anyone would make something so cold, but maybe Ivan wanted to see his reflection. Maybe he wanted to freeze.
He stops before I can, and I bump into him, the front of my body flush against his hard, unyielding back. I gasp and jump away. “Sorry.”
Beyond a raised eyebrow, he ignores that. “There are clothes in the dresser,” he says, gesturing to an open door. “And toiletries in the bathroom. Don’t—”
I stand there, waiting to hear what I can’t do. Don’t think sinful thoughts. Don’t talk back.
Don’t run away and take a bus to a strange city.
I’m used to being told what not to do, and for most of my life, I obeyed.
“Don’t wander,” he says finally. “It might not be safe.”
Might not be safe from what?
“I won’t,” I say softly. I’m too tired to wander. Too lost to even try. There’s nowhere else to go.
“Get ready for bed,” he says.
His words ring in my head while I go into the room and shut the door. They ring while I find the clothes in the dresser, a random assortment of feminine things, soft T-shirts and dresses, different sizes and colors. Who do they belong to? They ring while I shower under the hot spray, water burning away the smell of the city.
Get ready for bed.
Almost as if I’m to wait for him. As if he’ll be joining me.