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“Thank you.” I force a smile onto my face for her.
“Hopefully, all of us will be thanking you,” she responds right before the door swings open. My mother appears.
What the hell am I going to do with her when we get to the other side of this? Is she evil or merely brainwashed? Either way, she’s never been a great mother.
“I see you’re coming around.” Excitement lights up her face as she tries to play with my hair. I step back from her. This isn’t some happy mother-daughter moment. I can’t fake that. I’ve always been a terrible liar. “Charlie, don’t ruin this. It’s your wedding day. A mother and daughter should be celebrating together.”
“They shouldn’t be marrying the same man.” That knocks the smile right off her face. The coldness returns. Both are eerily creepy.
“Put the veil on her. Let’s get this done.” My mom can really flip her personality in a split second. I expect to feel sadness as I stare into her angry, jealous eyes. So many things are starting to piece together in my mind. Everything about her is calculated. Doing whatever she has to for her own needs or wants.
My father only stayed as long as he could because of me. I’m guessing him taking off on her wasn’t in her plans. I wouldn’t be shocked if she got pregnant on purpose with me. Then once he up and left, I was useless and in the way. It was easier to ship me off to boarding school until she found use for me again. I don’t think something turned my mother crazy. She’s just always been that way.
The silver lining is while my mother and her weirdo friends might have come up with some crazy plan to steal my grandmother's money, they have unknowingly plotted what will be their demise.
I don’t think it’s whatever craziness they believe in that has predicted what is to come here today but fate. Maybe it was a bit of magic from above that I don’t understand. Whatever it is, I want to believe it is good. And that it brought Rowan and me here to this moment to save these children and women from these men.
It’s their day of reckoning.
25
ROWAN
I keep my head up as I stride down the hallway, joining a small stream of people heading to what can only be the wedding. We enter a church, the simple pews mostly full. Along the wall are various paintings of the Prophet as Jesus or a shepherd. Makes me fucking sick.
Though the pews are full, I move along the side aisle toward the front. A little girl scoots over for me, and I sit at the end of the aisle behind a pew full of women in white. They must be the wives of the Prophet, if I were to guess.
“Where’s your wife?” the little girl asks, and I notice she has a bruise on her jaw.
“She’s not here yet.” I give her a smile. “But don’t worry. She’ll be here soon. What happened?” I point at her cheek.
“Oh, Daddy said I didn’t do the dishes right.”
“He hit you?”
She shrugs and goes back to playing with her doll. It looks kind of like her, the hair made of yellow yarn. A totally normal scene except that next to her are about six more children and four women that I can only assume are wives to one of the men here. Some of them are sporting more bruises like hers. My blood was already boiling, but now it’s hotter than the fucking sun.
A door at the front opens, daylight beaming inside, then the Prophet and Jacob stride in. The little shit has a self-satisfied grin as he stares around at everyone assembled for his wedding. He looks right past me, his gaze finally setting on the doors at the back as he takes his place.
“We’re here to wed my son to his first promised wife.” Standing in the center, the Prophet opens his arms wide. “To begin his heavenly collection of souls. She will serve him, love him, produce children for him, and obey him in all things.” His gaze falls to the women seated in front of me, his eyes narrowing. “For we all know the price that must be paid if any female seeks to put herself over a male, seeks to disobey, or seeks to be heard when she should only be seen.”
“Amen,” the men in the crowd grunt.
The Prophet picks up a Bible, then gestures toward the pianist.
She starts up some old-timey hymn as the congregation stands.
The doors at the back open, and Charlie walks in, her mother holding her elbow. They take slow steps, and Jacob grins big, his bird chest puffing out.
I hate every second of it, every single moment when that prick Jacob thinks he has even the slightest chance of taking my Charlie against her will.
