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Selena bit back a sharp laugh. "Do not worry about me, Lucy. I am sure I shall be fine. I am simply tired. My head aches."
Another lie, she thought sadly. And it came so easily.
The brethren and sisters moved through the house in two quiet streams, entering the dining room through separate side-by-side doors. The men sat at tables on the east side of the room; women at tables on the west.
Lucy led Selena to a table. Across the room, Elliot stood at another table. Their gazes met. He glanced quickly from side to side, then mouthed Are you well?
She had no answer for him. He looked so concerned that she wanted simply to nod, but the action wouldn't come.
A bell rang, and the Believers all dropped to their knees, murmuring prayers.
Selena was just realizing that she should kneel when everyone stood up again. Lucy grabbed her around the waist and guided her to. her seat. The stark wooden plank table groaned beneath the weight of the food. Boiled potatoes, fried sausage with onions and turnips, wheat bread with freshly turned butter and raspberry
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jam, stewed applesauce that smelled of cinnamon, and pitchers of creamy milk.
The family ate in silence, the only words spoken an occasional, whispered "thank you" as food was passed from one hand to another. Selena tried not to think of the meals she'd eaten with the family at Lethe House, of the laughter and the teasing and the camaraderie. Of food that had sometimes been thrown to make a point, or the silly little prayers they'd offered to a fun-loving God. Over the gullet, past the tongue, look out stomach, here it comes.
She would have smiled at the memory if it didn't hurt
so much.
Selena had barely laden her plate with food when the bell rang again. All around her, forks clanged on the china as the plates were pushed to the center of the table. The men stood all at once, then dropped to their knees for silent prayers.
And then they were gone.
Selena took a last bite of tasteless, greasy sausage and pushed her plate away from her. She didn't bother to kneel and offer a silent prayer to a God whom she didn't understand, but no one seemed to notice. Lucy took her by the hand and led her back down the women's hallway, through the women's door and across the yard.
The ironing house was hot and humid.
Selena glanced around, saw the dozens of perfectly pressed shirts and aprons and sheets that she and Lucy had folded and piled. Then she saw the host of heaped baskets that remained to be done.
They would never be done; she understood that finally. This was not a job that ended, it was a job that went on. Day after day, month after month, year after year. It had never occurred to her before. At Lethe House her clothes seemed to magically appear, but now she realized that someone, somewhere, had washed and dried and ironed her clothes. And she and Lucy were
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expected to do all of the ironing for one hundred people. Just as the women outside did all of the washing, and the women in the kitchen did all of the cooking.
Hard, backbreaking work and it never ended.
"Is this my life?" The question slipped from her mouth, sounded pathetically weak.
Lucy looked up from the shirt she was ironing. Very slowly, she set down the iron. "Our tasks rotate. Next, you and I are baking pies-one hundred and sixty a week for supper alone. Then there's the fancywork. We sell it to people in the world."
Selena thought about how badly her hands worked, how poorly she did things like embroidery and baking and ironing. "I do not know if I can survive here, Lucy," Selena whispered. "I am afraid."
Lucy gave her a sad, tired look. "You always were, Agnes. And I was afraid for you."
Ian stood in his bedroom, sipping tepid water from a cut-crystal glass, staring through his window. Outside, a full moon hung in the velvet sky.
"Selena." He breathed her name, trying to feel her presence, trying to read her mind ac
ross the miles.
But nothing came to him.
He turned away from the window and walked from his room, down the darkened stairway, across the entry-way and into the starlit night. For a second, he imagined he saw candles around the lawn, thought he smelled smoke. He closed his eyes and remembered it all. The clank of a mallet against a wooden ball, the throaty purr of her laugh, the silky feel of her skin as she touched his face.
