Page 45 of Operation Annulment (Silent Phoenix MC)

“Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”

-Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

The screen door slammed shut behind me with a reverberating bang, but I kept running. I couldn’t take another second inside that house.

It had been my turn to sit and read to Mama.

Usually, she stared blankly at the wall with a thin line of drool running down her cheek.

Every now and then, her eyes would seemingly dance around the room, focusing on my face for a brief second before bouncing off to something else.

Grandmother once told me that they were just filled with the joy of God’s love, but Mama never seemed happy when her eyes were like that.

She would cry out and speak to people who weren’t there. It used to frighten me until I discovered she was sick.

I wasn’t supposed to have heard, but I was really good at hiding and just as quiet as a little church mouse. Most of the time, people didn’t even realize I was in the room.

Papa had told Mama she was sick with sin and begged her to repent, but she’d just laid there, moaning loudly. I wasn’t sure how the sin had gotten to her when she never left her bed, but if Papa saw it in her, then it must have been true.

Once he left, she’d cried until the pillowcase beneath her head was soaked with tears before calling out for me and my sisters. Her voice was soft like mine, though, so no one ever came.

The July air was thick with humidity, and without even a hint of a breeze to cool things down, it was like running straight into an oven. My gray linen dress clung to my skin, and each inhale felt like I was trying to breathe underwater.

I ran until I reached the hedges lining the perimeter of our small gated community before dropping to my knees with a wince.

Sharp leaves and twigs scraped along the exposed skin on my arms and legs, compressing the old and new bruises lining my sides.

Still, I took a deep breath and pushed forward until I was completely hidden from view.

It was the only place I knew I wouldn’t be found. At times, the house felt like a living, breathing thing peering over my shoulder. Like it was studying my every move in anticipation.

Out here, it was silent.

A sanctuary.

And right now, I wanted to stay hidden forever.

Mama hadn’t stayed quiet today.

I hadn’t even gotten through the first chapter before she reached out and grabbed my arm, knocking the book to the hardwood floor.

Her grip had been surprisingly firm as she’d yanked me off the chair and into the bed beside her.

The sheets were damp with sweat and stunk of sick.

Mama’s room always smelled different than the others in the house.

She tucked my back to her chest and wrapped her heated body around mine. While I lay stiffly in her arms, I tried to recall whether she’d ever held me before.

Perhaps when I was a baby, but if so, those memories had faded long ago. As far as I could remember, she’d always been like this .

Sick.

“Ari, my little dove,” she’d whispered, her breath warm against my ear. “I’ve been so na?ve…about all of it.”

I’d tilted my head up and watched as she licked her chapped lips, surprised to find that her eyes were bright and focused for the first time in ages. “M-m-mama?”

“Shhhh… I’ve got you now. You’re safe.” The soft cadence of her voice had a mesmerizing effect, lulling my body into a relaxed state.

I’d settled against her with a sigh, feeling her mouth curve up into what might have been a smile against my cheek. That was what had made her next words all the more shocking.

I hadn’t been prepared for them.

“He’s going to kill me,” she’d stated simply. “I’m getting in the way of his dreams. I think… I think that maybe I’ve always been in the way because I know the truth. There’s nothing beyond the wall that doesn’t exist here.”

I’d sucked in a breath but hadn’t said a word. My heart had thumped steadily while my curiosity wrestled with Papa’s teachings.

“And I love him… maybe that’s my biggest sin,” Mama had said, her voice remaining steady and calm. “I’ll always love him, Ari. He was so charismatic—I thought we were gonna change the world together.”

“Y-y-you—you s-still c-can?—”

I hadn’t meant to say the words aloud.

“Do you remember when that man came to the gate seeking help? I think you were five—maybe six? He came right in the middle of a tropical storm. The streets were starting to flood, and then, there he was, under one of the lights. You could smell the booze on him from a mile away as he hollered to see Pastor James…” Mama’s words had tapered off, and I’d rolled over, expecting to find her asleep again.

Instead, she was mashing her trembling lips together as if to keep from crying. “The man needed help—at the very least, he needed a place to dry out and sober up. Your daddy turned him away and went back inside.

“I waited until everyone disappeared before slipping out to find him. I handed him an old coat and a sack of—goodness, I don’t even remember what was in it. I just grabbed whatever I could from the fridge and pantry. Do you know what he said to me?”

“W-w-what?” I’d whispered, far too invested to not hear every last detail. Thoughts of life outside our community made the hair on my arms and neck stand tall, yet sparked my curiosity in ways that no other topic could.

Mama’s lips had stretched into a thin smile as she’d brushed the hair back off my forehead. “Told me about how all he wanted to do was get back home to his boy and be a good man. Said he must have prayed the right way to be sent an angel. Do you see what’s wrong with that?”

I’d shaken my head, completely puzzled.

“I’m no angel, Ari. But that man mistook my kindness for something otherworldly.

And that was when I knew that your daddy didn’t want to help people…

not really. He wants to lock himself away behind the walls, turning a blind eye to their suffering.

No matter what he tells you, we’re no better than they are, little dove. We’re all the same.”

I’d scooted toward the edge of the bed when Mama closed her eyes, only to be tugged right back. She’d crushed my small body to her chest, making it hard to draw a breath. As I didn’t know the next time she’d be lucid, I let her hold me just as tightly as she wanted.

“Need you to promise me something, Ari,” Mama had whispered urgently before cupping my cheek with her palm. “Promise me that when you’re old enough, you’ll get out. You and your sisters will run and never come back here.”

Whatever hold she had on reality loosened, and she began mumbling nonsense about the house listening in on our conversation before slipping back into a state of silence. Her mouth had gone slack, and the tears she’d cried clung to her lashes as she stared unseeingly toward the wall.

It was as if she were dead. I knew better, but my mind dredged up a ghost story my sister, Ashlynn, had once told me. Behaving like the entirely rational child I was, I’d scooped up my book and bolted from the room faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind.

Perhaps it wasn’t how Mama had wanted, but I’d run… right to my hiding spot in the hedges where I was determined to stay until her desperate warning made a lick of sense.

My skin was hot and sticky, and my bladder had suddenly become uncomfortably full. Still, I wasn’t stepping one foot inside that house until Papa and my sisters got back.

As the youngest of six girls, I had a tendency to get stuck with the most tedious of tasks. Sister Sarai oversaw the community library but had fallen ill over the past year. When I wasn’t reading to Mama, I helped out, sorting through the book donations for appropriate additions.

Papa preferred that we only keep books that reinforced our faith in some way. Otherwise, it was as if we were giving our brains junk food.

Trash in, trash out.

Instead of burning the rejects, as was customary, I hid them in the folds of my dress and smuggled them back to my room.

I’d always been a voracious reader, and these books were no exception.

I kept them hidden in the wooden slats of the box spring beneath my mattress, devouring the words by the soft glow of my nightlight while the rest of the house slept.

I fell in love with Mr. Darcy alongside Elizabeth, wept with Jane over Mr. Rochester’s deceitfulness, and learned about courage and compassion through the eyes of Scout Finch. The one constant in every book was that the world was a flawed, but ultimately beautiful place in which to live.

There’s nothing beyond the wall that doesn’t exist here.

I freed a particularly worn copy from the bodice of my dress and lay back against the earth with a shake of my head. Grandmother had warned us that we weren’t to trust anything Mama said while she was sick, yet here I was, doing just that.

Mama also thinks the house is alive… just like you .

“J-j-just a c-c-coincidence,” I said under my breath. “A s-silly little c-c-coincidence.”

“Ariana!”

At the sound of Brother Bradley’s voice, my shoulders rolled forward, and I dropped my book before tucking myself into a tight ball. Beads of sweat ran down my arms, stinging the cuts left behind from the thick bushes, but I didn’t dare move.

For the most part, the church followers left me alone. Not Brother Bradley. It was as though the man had a radar that alerted him to my presence. He always needed me to hug him or sit on his lap, things I’d grown too big for years ago.

I would have preferred to sit with Mama while she stared blankly over being alone in the house with Brother Bradley. He made my skin feel prickly, but he and Papa had been friends since they were children, so I was forced to be polite.

“Come on, sweetheart. Your mama is wondering where you ran off to.”

I hurriedly tucked the book back into my dress. Keeping my body close to the wall, I crawled away from the sound of his voice. Had I stayed put, I would never have known the hole existed.