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Lark brightened up and straightened in her seat. “Great. Then we’ll put an ad out and start spreading the word. It shouldn’t take long at all to find someone.”
Famous last words.
Chapter
Two
DEVA
I tiltedmy head back and closed my eyes, letting the sun kiss my skin and warm my face. It was the weekend of the farmers market and the great weather only added to my good mood.
This was my favorite weekend every month, because it meant getting to come into town and be around people I didn’t see every day in the small community we all lived in. It was the one weekend a month when I got to live my life as something more than the dull, meaningless existence I lived every single day.
During these trips into Redemption, I got to pretend I was just like everyone else. I watched how normal people behaved, how friends and lovers interacted with one another. I saw what happy, smiling families looked like. It made that hole deep inside me a little smaller, knowing there was something better out there, but the ache that came with the desire to have it for myself only grew worse.
I was twenty-six, for crying out loud. I wanted a life ofmy own.
“Deva, get your head out of the clouds and help me set up this booth.”
At Agnes’s cold, clipped tone, the small coal of warmth that had started building in my chest was doused out like sand being kicked onto a campfire.
“Sorry,” I muttered, the heaviness I felt on a constant basis returning to my limbs as I went back to unpacking the crates of homemade items we’d spent the better part of the month making.
This farmers market was the largest source of income for our community. All month long, the women made everything from handmade quilts to homemade preserves and everything in between to sell at market. It was also where we did most of our own stocking up. If we weren’t taking care of the home or the men, we were baking or quilting or stitching our fingers to the bone so we could sell our wares every month.
Agnes’s son, Mathias, gave me a gentle smile as he carried another crate into our booth and placed it on the ground. “Don’t mind her,” he whispered, leaning in closer. “You know how she is during these weekends.”
I sure did.
If Agnes was a thorn in my side on a regular basis—which she was—she was downright unbearable the first weekend of every month.
Unlike me, most members of our community didn’t enjoy leaving our little patch of land and going down the mountain to Redemption. A town, in their opinion, full of sinners and harlots and degenerates. They thought, because they’d lived their lives by a strict, unwavering code, they were better than everyone else. They looked down their noses at anyone who wasn’t part of our community, the Fellowship of the Enlightened.
They judged everything from the colors women wore to how long men kept their hair. There was nothing the people of Redemption could do right, and to associate with them more than absolutely necessary was out of the question.
I’d dreamed of getting away from the Fellowship as far back as I could remember, and I was determined to make that dream a reality. The only problem: I had no clue how to do that.
“Deva, take these eggs over to the Winston’s booth,” Agnes ordered, shoving a basket of eggs into my chest. “We made a deal last month. Two dozen eggs for a bolt of fabric. Don’t let those no-good swindlers trick you into thinking otherwise. You don’t come back without that fabric, you hear?”
“I’ll do it, Momma,” Mathias began to offer, thinking it was the gentlemanly thing to do, but I jumped out from behind the table before he could take so much as a step.
“That’s okay. I’ve got it. I could use the walk anyway.”
Agnes grunted under her breath as she stacked a display of handmade lavender soaps to make them look more appealing to the eye.
“The good Lord above knows that’s right,” she said, casting her gaze down my body in an unflattering way. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was stealing from our pantry when we weren’t looking, what with those hips and thighs.” She tutted and shook her head. “Downright unseemly, I tell you. I have the mind to refuse you dinner for a week so you drop that weight. Gluttony is a sin, Deva Kent, or have you forgotten?”
I ground my teeth together to keep from letting loose the words I really wanted to say. “No, ma’am. I haven’t forgotten. And I’m not a glutton. It’s just the way I’m built.”
I had no way of knowing for sure whether or not I’d gotten my petite, curvaceous figure from my mother’s side since she’d passed when I was only a baby.
I didn’t remember much of my father since he’d dropped me on the Oakes’s doorstep when I was only nine years old, but I did recall he’d been a tall, lanky man, his long, stretched body nearly devoid of any muscle. I liked to think I got my figure and my deep red hair from my mother. I might have been wrong, butit was a subtle way of keeping a part of a woman I’d never really known with me.
Agnes let out a harrumph and rolled her eyes toward the sky just like she did every time I defended my frame. She got some sick glee out of insulting my body shape and accusing me of stealing food from her pantry on a regular basis. The woman didn’t lack in insults, but those two were her favorites, followed closely by accusing me of being lazy. “And don’t dawdle,” she called after me as I started away from our booth, just as I’d expected. “We have work to do. Don’t have time for you to drag your feet like always.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding as I wound my way over the twisting, turning paths of the farmers market, taking in the different booths and tents with brightly colored jewelry or baked goods that smelled detectibly of sugar and browned butter.
This was my happy place, walking around in a daze, taking in everything around me. It was such a relief I didn’t let the stares and whispers get me down. It wasn’t as though I didn’t expect it. With how closed off my community was from the rest of civilization, it was natural for people to be curious. But I heard the rumblings here and there, whispers of the Fellowship of the Enlightened being a cult full of weirdos. I felt the sting of the looks that held more than only curiosity, and the lash of the insults people didn’t quite mask.
