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“We need to go higher,” Sarah says.
“In this weather?”
Suddenly, a news alert pops up on her phone—a wildfire is happening south of Los Angeles.
A news alert means that at least the data part of her service is connecting. Now that she’s not on Wi-Fi, the search engine restrictions will be gone. Maybe they can find outsomething.But who to look up first?Gia.
With sweaty fingers, Lenna types in Gia’s name. The page takes forever to load. At one point, Lenna’s screen is totally white, and she wonders if she’s lost connection completely. But finally, results for Gia Civatelli pop up. Lenna stares.
“What are you looking at?” Sarah asks. “Are you getting service?”
Just as she suspected, using regular service without any sort ofrestrictions, several images appear in a line across the top of the screen. The photos are of a woman with the same obsidian hair as Gia’s. That same cheeky smile. Lenna’s gaze falls to the tabloid headlines.Gia Civatelli, Philadelphia Society Best Dressed. Gia Civatelli, chair, Barnes Foundation.
“Huh,” Lenna murmurs. “Gia is who she says.”
“So?”
The wind whips again, sending stinging rocks against their faces. Lenna shields her son from the onslaught. She can only skim through an article or two, but there’s no news about Gia having, say, a police record, or even a history of erratic behavior.
Jacob is crying so hard now, he’s made himself hoarse. “Baby,” Lenna cries, cradling him. “Just hang on a little longer.”
She types in Rhiannon’s name next. Up pop some articles fromCity Gossip.There are old social media pages, headshots, Getty images of Rhiannon at a magazine-sponsored fundraiser. All of these are things Lenna has seen before. Even when she scrolls to the third page of results, she finds nothing about Rhiannon being a suspect in kidnapping her mother’s kid. She even tries spelling Rhiannon’s name incorrectly. She searches Oregon kidnappings. Still no results.
None of this is making sense. If there’s no information about them on the Internet, how could someone from within have figured any of this out? Who would evencareto?
Then she has a thought.
The sky has turned from day to night. Lenna can taste dust on her tongue. Somewhere far, far in the distance, a siren wails. Cosmo’s ears prick at the sound. Lenna types in one more name on her phone. It doesn’t take long for results about Marjorie Clark to come up. Like Lenna’s search on the other women besides Gia, there isn’t much. Except a Reddit post catches her eye.Avoid Halcyon. Marjorie Clark is a scammer.
Lenna’s blood turns cold. She shows Sarah the post title. Sarah squints at the username. “CarinaBird07. I wonder if that’s…Carina? The girl who lived here?”
The name comes to Lenna’s mind like a dart. “The girl who was kicked out?”
“Yeah. Marjorie says she caught her stealing.”
Lenna shakes her head. “Really? I heard she was asked to leave because she was caught gossiping.”
She clicks the actual post.Last year, I joined a WWOOF program,CarinaBird07 writes.It’s where you volunteer at various farms and communities and help with labor and chores in exchange for room and board. I was excited to do it. It was a gap year for college, and my boyfriend and I were taking a little break.
More dust blows past them. Lenna covers her head and shields Jacob’s body.
When I found Halcyon Ranch, the woman I connected with, Marjorie, was lovely. Said it’s a community of women empowering women. Mothers empowering mothers. I loved that idea. I also love Arizona, so it felt like a good fit.
When I got there, I felt so seen. People were open. I felt so relaxed and free that I told them things about my family. Things I hadn’t told a lot of people before. I had no idea it was going to be used against me.
Lenna blinks hard.
About a few weeks into my stay, the leader, Marjorie, started pressuring me to become an official resident. But I wasn’t sure the lifestyle was for me. I’d become a little uncertain about the residents. One woman seemed to be faking her daughter’s illness to get whatever she wanted. There were these two sisters who hated each other but also seemed codependent. This one woman seemed like Marjorie’s soldier, like she owed Marjorie something. And there was this heiress who acted like a total snot—she claimed she didn’t wanther inheritance, but she had to be in hiding because of something. I think she might have killed someone.
I told Marjorie that I wouldn’t be committing or paying the fees. I got ready to leave. But she got really weird. Said that I was making a huge mistake. Then she said she’d call my family and tell them the things I said about them. She said she actually recorded me, at times. She even wrote me this note saying she had guns stored, and she wasn’t afraid to use them.
It got really ugly. I had to literally run away—through the desert.
Lenna lowers her phone. “Have you ever read this?”
“No…” Sarah shakes her head. “Though I’ve kind ofheardabout it. Just that Carina wrote some mean things—as far as I know, no one ever found it. And Carina was kicked out not long after I arrived.”
Lenna wonders if Marjorie blocked the data. Deleted it from their servers, somehow. “Andguns? Rhiannon told me the community is against them.”
