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“Maybe Martha reached out to Ethan.” Rachel had assumed that anyone who’d been stoned by the Covenanters would be too disillusioned and fearful to do that. But it was possible Martha had tried to find a quicker method of reclaiming her son than relying on the help they offered.
“It’s unlikely,” he said. “If the Covenanters know who we are, Bartholomew would’ve arrived with some reinforcements. He wouldn’t have attempted to stop us on his own.”
That made sense, but Rachel had found the man they’d met strangely unsettling. The gleam of fanaticism in his normal eye was far too familiar. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am.”
“I wonder if Bartholomew is even his real name,” she mused.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It’s not very common. Considering his religious persuasion, he could’ve taken it from the Bible.”
“There’s a Bartholomew in there?”
She rolled her eyes. He’d had it so easy growing up. He hadn’t been dragged to church several times a week, hadn’t been forced to proselytize for two hours a day, longer on weekends. For years, the Bible was all her father would permit her to read, other than textbooks. “Bartholomew was one of the disciples of Jesus.” Although it’d been ten years since she’d cracked the cover of the Holy Scriptures, she remembered that much.
Nate scowled. “Right. I knew that.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said with a laugh.
“Okay, I didn’t,” he admitted. “So what does failing to read the Bible mean? Am I going to hell?”
“In my father’s religion, they don’t embrace the concept of hell, at least the kind with fiery torments. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they believe in the ‘common grave,’ from which you’ll never escape if you’re not worthy.”
“I guess that’s hell enough.”
“It’s a lonely prospect, at any rate.”
Sobering, he drove for a few minutes before speaking again. When he did, he surprised her by trying to reassure her. “You won’t end up in the common grave, Rachel. You’re a good person. You haven’t rebelled against God.”
According to her father, she had. At seventeen, she’d been cast out of his church, ostracized by all their friends and disowned by her family for protesting when someone in their congregation had refused medical treatment for cancer and subsequently died. She’d felt that loss of life was so senseless, so…confusing. She couldn’t go back to church after that.
Although she still considered herself a Christian, she had major issues with organized religion. She didn’t have a network of support or much of a family anymore. These days, her work associates filled that role. Even Nate was closer to her than her own brother. It was three years since she’d spoken to Lance, longer since she’d heard from her father. Her mother stayed in touch but loosely. Lita had left the church before Rachel—seven years before, when she ran off with their neighbor. After the divorce, Lita married the man for whom she’d deserted her family but never moved back to California. Neither she nor her new husband wanted to deal with Fredrick, a man consumed by his beliefs and by his need to impose them on others. These days, Lita lived in Montana, where she and Mitch had built a new life for themselves. One that rarely included Rachel.
“I can’t believe you’ve never had a birthday party,” Nate said.
“Rod threw me a party in January. He brought in a cake and everything.”
“I know. I was there. I’m talking about while you were growing up.”
“My father considered birthdays a pagan celebration. He says they foster feelings of self-importance.”
They sped up as the road improved. “Yeah, well, you don’t want to know how I feel about your father and his feelings of self-importance.”
No doubt he thought Fredrick was off balance. Just like the majority of their neighbors had. Most of the time she did, too. But there were moments she felt she owed him some respect for remaining true to his faith and supporting her until she was almost of age. Maybe her mother hadn’t been harsh, the way Fredrick had been, but neither had she possessed the strength to be the mom Rachel and her brother needed.
“Missing birthdays wasn’t the hardest part.” Sure, she’d been envious of kids who were free to enjoy the usual holidays. But going without presents at Christmas was nothing compared to being so different from everyone else. She’d had to be careful never to mention the name of a friend to her father or he’d march her over to that girl’s house with religious literature. Maybe she wouldn’t have minded “witnessing,” as her father called it, if it’d been her idea, her choice, her conviction. But it never was. Her father had pounded his religion into her, sometimes literally.
Nate glanced at her. “What was?”
Lost in her own thoughts, she stared at him. “Pardon?”
“What was the most difficult part of growing up the way you did?”
She didn’t want to talk about it. She wasn’t willing to be pitied, especially by Nate. “Probably the divorce. But lots of children go through that.”
“Not while living in such a warped world. But your experience with religion should help us,” he said. “It gives you a unique understanding.”
It also gave her a strong bias and too much rage. She knew what it was like to be held captive by hope and the desire to please, to be controlled by the fear that disobedience or disbelief might lead to expulsion from the family, as well as the church. Would that translate into an advantage or a handicap?
“Maybe,” she responded. “If we can get in. Bartholomew’s order not to come back could make it awkward to attend the meeting. We might not get any farther.”
“I think it’ll be okay. It’s smarter for them to make friends with the people around here who might otherwise become enemies. I’m guessing Ethan’s capable of figuring that out. That’s got to be the reason for the Introduction Meetings.” He turned on the radio, picked up nothing but static and turned it off again. “At least they’ll have a frame of reference for our interest. They’ll know how we came into contact with them, why we’re curious.”
“Since we’ve been in the area such a short time, it might actually be better than showing up at a meeting out of nowhere,” she agreed.
