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So no, I didn’t know what they would have done if they discovered the truth about the interview, but I had experience enough to know it wouldn’t have been pleasant.
I watched as realization clouded Myra’s usually sunny features. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said quietly. “That’s what I sawon your face when I first ran into you, wasn’t it? You were worried.”
I knew my smile had to look as sad I felt in that moment, because I didn’t feel the dimples pressing into my cheeks. “I got the job, which is wonderful. It means I get to start a new life, oneIwant. But starting new means I have to cut ties with the old one. I don’t want to go back there, but they did take me in, after all. At the very least, I owe them an explanation.”
“Giving you a place to sleep and food in your belly doesn’t earn you unwavering loyalty if it came with nasty conditions, child. The meaning behind the good deed is no longer sound when the reason for doing it in the first place is to hold it over someone’s head.”
I sniffled, the image of Myra growing blurry as I battled with the mistiness forming in my eyes. Everything she just said had unlocked something inside me. I hadn’t realized until that moment, I’d been holding on to so much guilt at the thought of leaving the Oakes family. I couldn’t claim I cared about them, and I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual, at least on Sherman and Agnes’s part, but I felt like I owed them for all the years they’d taken care of me—if that was what you could call it.
But Myra’s words validated my desire to get away and released me from the binds of feeling like I owed that horrible woman anything.
“Thank you,” I said in a hushed voice. “I can’t tell you how nice that is to hear. I wish that was the only reason I had to go back, but I wasn’t sure I’d get this job, and because of that, I couldn’t bring any of my things with me. I don’t have much, but what little that is at the Oakes’s is all I have.” I didn’t bother mentioning the tiny fact that this all left me with no place to stay tonight, considering I didn’t start working for Laeth until tomorrow morning. I would figure it out. I didn’t know how, only that I would.
She looked as though she wanted to argue but understood it wouldn’t do her any good.
“Fine,” she finally relented. “But you aren’t riding your bike back there.” She jabbed her index finger in my direction. “And you certainly aren’t going by yourself. I’m calling Bennett.”
“Oh, Myra, please. You’ve already done so much for me. You really don’t have to do that.”
She pinned me in place with a painfully hard look. “I absolutely do, and I won’t hear another word about it,” she decreed as she pulled her cellphone out of her purse. “We’re taking you to get the rest of your things, then you’ll stay with us tonight.”
Relief washed over me as I lifted my cup to my lips, only to discover it was empty. I wondered if she’d let me get a refill before Bennett arrived.
Chapter
Six
DEVA
The higher Bennett’struck traveled up the mountain, the tighter my muscles twisted until I felt like all that needed to be done to send me spinning out of control was to pull a string.
A million different thoughts and concerns raced through my head, each having to do with the safety and wellbeing of this kind, loving couple who had already done so much for me. I could handle whatever the Oakes’s threw at me—I’d been doing it for nearly two decades now—but the Fellowship of the Enlightened wasn’t exactly known for being friendly to outsiders, especially when those outsiders came onto their land without permission.
“Maybe you should pull off here,” I suggested when we were just a few miles away from the community. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Myra admonished. “We’re taking you all the way.” She turned around and offered me that affectionate, motherly smile as she gave my knee a pat. “Don’t you worry, darlin’. We’ll keep you safe.”
“It’s not me I’m worried for,” I confessed. “Please, Bennett. Just let me go up alone and deal with them. I don’t what to risk causing anyone to feel threatened.”
Bennett’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, the creases in the corners of his eyes deepening as he smiled reassuringly. “You don’t need to worry about us, sweetheart. I may not be as young as I once was, but I’m more than capable of handling myself in tough situations.”
Myra turned around and nodded solemnly. “He really is.” Then she gave him a look that hadmeblushing from the back seat.
“And besides,” Bennett continued. “I brought reinforcements.”
He jerked his chin at the mirror, and I quickly whipped around in my seat to peer out the back window. Sure enough, there was another truck following closely behind ours. I’d just been too anxious to worry until now.
“That’s my son, Jase, and my son-in-law, Cannon, back there.”
I jerked back around, my wide eyes on Myra. “I didn’t know you had kids?”
“Oh, we don’t. At least not in the traditional way,” she said with a shrug. “They’re Bennett’s kids by circumstance more than blood. But sometimes those circumstances create better, stronger families than what a person’s been born into.”
That certainly hadn’t been my experience. I barely remembered the family I’d been born into. My mother had died before I was old enough to form any clear memory of her, and my father had dumped me off on the Oakes’s doorstep after deciding that being a single parent wasn’t for him. And the family I came to by circumstance was even worse.
“We’re here,” Bennett said.
My stomach sank to my feet like a rock and my skin grew clammy as the Oakes residence came into view. It wasn’t much to look at, really, barely big enough to house the four people who had lived in it all these years. Most of the houses in the community weren’t. Unless you were an Elder, of course. The men that led the Fellowship of the Enlightened lived in much better conditions than their followers.
