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“It’s pizza day tomorrow.” Kyrie smiled, walking backward toward her door.
I grinned wide. She had no idea how delicious it was to me, after all the bad things I’d tasted in my life, but she knew it was my favorite. That’s what friendship was—knowing people, caring for them, loving them.
NINETEEN
Valerie could not help the smile that stretched her face that day when the waitress returned, saying a customer wanted to compliment the chef. She knew who it was, knew his order, knew this schedule. She’d been feeding him, watching him come and go with no word, for weeks. Ever since that night on the hill, the Deacon had been a shadow in her daylight hours, a menace in her dreams.
It wasn’t wise to have a schoolgirl crush on the Deacon, but if he didn’twantto be looked at in such a way, why was he so beautiful?
Pretty flower, full of thorns.
The words came back to her. It was how the man with the scar once described her, and now it was how she thought of the Deacon.
She walked out into the café, hands clasped, and the Deacon stood from his table, reaching for his cane. He was tall, with broad shoulders she wanted to reach for. She chastised herself for these thoughts, the lustful desires, but was never successful in banishing them.
She reminded herself that he wanted to share the lord with her in the right way. Not the way Markus had.
She smiled when she reached him, hoping he could sense it. “Good morning, Deacon Rex, how are you today?” she asked, hoping her voice sounded just right, just perfect enough to make him stay in her life.
“I’m well, Valerie. And you?” he asked, almost shy. She watched him move, shifting his weight on his feet, tilting his head. “I hope … I hope the night we had dinner didn’t scare you off. I hadn’t heard from you in a while, and … Being up on the hill, away from town, animals, they …”
Valerie’s heart stammered at his words as he trailed off.He hadn’t heard from me? From me?She’d been so embarrassed by her fear, her goodbye that night laced with shock and something else. The scream of the animal had taken her back to the last night in California. She saw the strangers who’d entered the property, the fire, her own hands dripping in blood. She’d heard a cry like that animal’s that night, in the distance. She’d fled with Nicholas, hoping to never see what could make such a sound. And then it was there, on the hill, so close. And she’d felt like her past had followed her like a black dog.
An omen.
She cleared her throat and smiled at the Deacon. “I can hardly hold you responsible for the beings of the night,” she whispered. She did not know the ways he would bend her. But she had been frightened, worried. An all too familiar unfamiliar dread had settled over her, so she did what she always did after she left his property.
Put her head down, did her work, isolated.
The Deacon’s voice was warm. “For that, I thank you. How’s Nicholas?”
Valerie stepped forward, moving to the seat opposite the one the Deacon had vacated. There were no other patrons in the café at the moment, and the lone waitress was behind the counter, working on her crossword puzzle. She was likely listening, but Valerie tried to ignore that. The Deacon always came after the rush when the café was quiet. Maybe he liked the quiet as much as her, she wondered.
“He’s fine. He forgot all about the thing in the road as soon as we left. I’m sure he has bigger concerns. He’s a normal teenage boy, I guess.” She knew it was a lie. She didn’t view Nicholas as normal and didn’t know anyone she would call such a word.
“So he’s rebellious. Raging with hormones. Petulant. A little lost?” The Deacon smiled, retaking his seat. He leaned his cane on the table, and it slid away, along the table, toward Valerie. She reached for it, halting the fall, and so did the Deacon, their hands touching briefly.
She felt a charge at his cool touch, a burst of energy straight to her center. His touch did what he desired, what he wanted. She didn’t understand it, couldn’t know the manipulation. The traps being laid. It was familial, and she buoyed the desire.
The Deacon pulled the cane toward him. “I’d hoped, as some time has gone by since, that maybe you talked to him about coming to Mass on Sunday? Or to confession tonight? I know he was vehemently opposed to the idea before, but …”
It was Wednesday, and she’d been counting the days. She always counted the days between Sunday Mass and Wednesdays, when he said he liked to be present in the small, round church for confession. She’s hoped the Deacon would reach out again after the disastrous dinner. She wanted to be chased. It didn’t matter if Nicholas wanted to go; she would go. She’d bought a new dress. Well, new to her, at the thrift store just past the four-way stop. She’d bought a Cosmopolitan at the Town and Country Supermarket and decided how she would do her hair.
She felt foolish when she tried a few styles, staring at her reflection in her bathroom mirror at the trailer, cursing herself.What the fuck am I doing?She’d wondered.
But she knew what she was doing now with him sitting in front of her in the café. She was searching for a friend, maybe more.
Something she’d never had before.
She’d always wondered if something was wrong with her, something dark in the pit of her writhing, that came from her biological parents. It manifested into her belly, her heart. Her deformity. That which kept her pure on the ranch, untouched—Virgin Valerie.Delegated to the kitchen, to the shadows. She liked it where she could observe, could watch as the sins mounted, the tower high.
She never liked Markus,theFather. But God? God, she loved. She loved his word, his life, the meaning she desperately craved. They’d twisted it on the ranch, but she never left. Couldn’t leave. She had nowhere to go after what she’d done to her sister and Gregory. And she had a purpose there on the ranch. Feed them. Nourish them. Her creations were beautiful, and she found art in food, in the bounty. But it never nourished the men she fed. A curse. But she was oblivious to it. And besides, most of the inhabitants of the ranch were women. Daughters of Markus.
For years, she was unaware, just as they were. Or pretended to be.
And when the truth came to light, the ranch burned.
It burned, and she fled. Taking Nicholas with her. Penance for living in the house of a pretender. Penance, perhaps, for the things she’d done.
