Page 15

He put a hand on my arm, then leaned in close, presumably to kiss my cheek or temple the way he often did.

Except that this time, I shied away from him.

He froze for a split second, sucking in a breath.

I’d hurt him. I knew I had, but before I managed to figure out how to explain myself, he’d squeezed my arm and left the room. A few minutes later, I heard the front screen door slam back into place as he left the house.

I was in the kitchen, and I let myself sink to the old wooden floor, my butt on the rag rug my mother had tied, my back against the cupboard doors.

I covered my face with my hands and let the tears come, swallowing back the violence of the sobs that would have been loud enough for Elliot to hear, but letting them shudder their stifled way out.

This house was poison. Everything about it was toxic, and the last thing I wanted was to associate anything at all about this house with Elliot.

I was glad he’d come with me—his presence was giving me the strength to keep going, or it had been, anyway—but I didn’t want even the slightest part of us to be touched by the years of abuse I’d faced within these walls for wanting to love someone the same gender as Elliot.

I could only imagine what my father would think of Elliot himself. Gay, a shifter, Indigenous, openly activist… My father would hate him.

Those same things were some of the reasons I loved him.

And yet, when the man I loved had tried to touch me, I’d moved away from him.

I’d let my father get between us when he wasn’t even here, and I hated everything he represented and believed, anyway.

I hated the fact that the fear was so deeply ingrained that I’d let it separate, however slightly, Elliot and me.

I wiped my face with the heels of my palms, then hauled myself to my feet using the counter, ignoring the pain in my knees. I had to go after Elliot. To apologize. To figure out some way to make it up to him.

But when I stepped outside, he wasn’t alone.

He was talking to a tall woman—shorter than Elliot, but only by a few inches—with fairly broad shoulders that were decently well-muscled and steel-grey hair pulled back in a knot on the back of her head.

Her skin had once been fair, but was sun-darkened, her features showing wrinkles that suggested she both frowned and smiled in fairly equal proportions.

From where I stood, I couldn’t see her eyes, but once I realized who she was, I remembered they were a light grey-green.

It had taken me a moment to recognize Helen Hill—the woman who lived on the neighboring farm with her husband, Ray.

They were the only people in the area who weren’t members of the Community.

The farm had belonged to Helen’s family for at least four generations, and they’d moved here when her aunt had died and left it to her.

The Community was only three generations old, and they and the Hills—and the Maynards before them—had a live-and-let-live arrangement.

Helen had always been kind to Noah and I, sometimes giving us cookies or biscuits when we passed the farm on our way to the Meeting House for services or Bible study or other events, or when we went to trade eggs or goat’s milk for something from one of the other households.

Once, she’d given Noah and me a pair of tiny felted mice made from alpaca wool. My father had called them foolish acquisitiveness and threw them in the fire. I still remembered the smell of burnt alpaca wool.

Noah and I very deliberately didn’t tell either of our parents about the cookies and biscuits.

The sin of gluttony was a common one in our household—when you’re a kid growing toward six-three, you eat a lot, so I spent a lot of time begging for forgiveness for that one.

That, and Noah, who was much smaller, often smuggled me food.

Helen was carrying a basket—the kind I expected she might be using to collect eggs. I certainly didn’t mind. She’d clearly been the one taking care of the goats and chickens, so if she wanted to take the eggs, that was more than fine with me.

There was a smile on her face as she talked to Elliot, which helped to calm some of my nerves—if she was smiling at Elliot, it likely meant that she wasn’t going to hold my being gay against me, since I assumed that Elliot had probably introduced himself as my boyfriend.

Whatever she said made Elliot laugh, which was also a good thing.

And then she saw me, and I watched the smile waver a little, although she didn’t exactly look unhappy to see me, either.

I forced myself to keep walking up to them.

“My word, you got big,” was what she said to me, holding out her hand, palm down. I took it, and she squeezed. “And handsome,” she said, then winked at Elliot.

He had definitely told her he was my boyfriend.

I was pleased that this not only didn’t seem to bother her, but that she actually appeared to accept it without judgment.

It was a pleasant change from what I’d expected of anyone living within thirty miles of the Community.

I also felt my neck flushing at the complement, misplaced though it was.

“I assume we have you to thank for taking care of the animals, ma’am?” I said.

“Helen, please, darlin’.”

I nodded once. “Helen.”

She nodded. “I couldn’t let the poor things starve up here,” she replied. “And the ’pacas can spare some extra food.”

“I’ll pay you back for it,” I offered.

She waved a hand. “Don’t you worry your head about it,” she replied. “The ’pacas don’t mind none.”

“Then let us bring you a nice lunch,” Elliot suggested. “Or dinner. If you’re fond of Chinese or Thai, Staunton has some decent places that do takeout.”

Helen smiled, deepening the creases at the corners of her eyes. “That’s sweet of you, darlin’, but we have what we need.”

Elliot matched her smile. “It’s not about need,” he replied cheerfully. “It’s about enjoying sharing a meal and good company.”

She laughed. “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you darlin’?”

“Nope,” he replied.

She smiled. “How about you pick up a bunch of coffee beans from Staunton Coffee Roasters for me, and I’ll make us breakfast. Say… day after tomorrow?”

Elliot grinned. “Deal.”

“El… I’m sorry. About… before.” I could barely get the words out, my throat stopped by guilt. I hated that I’d moved away from him. And I hated even more that it had hurt him.

“It’s okay,” he replied, but in the way you do when it isn’t okay and you either don’t want to talk about it or you don’t really mean it. Or both. He also didn’t take his eyes off the road or his hands off the wheel.

We were heading back to Staunton as the sun sank below the mountains.

Helen had strongly suggested that we didn’t want to be caught in the mountains after dark.

It was sweet of her to be concerned, although I wasn’t particularly worried about driving in the mountains in darkness in dry weather, but I also wasn’t going to turn down an excuse to leave.

“I mean it,” I said, pushing past the emotion. “I shouldn’t have… pulled away.”

Elliot sighed. “It wasn’t a conscious choice,” he said, his voice flat.

“I know, but?—”

“Seth,” he interrupted me, his tone slightly annoyed. “You reacted—you didn’t choose. Do I like that you were afraid of me? No, of course I fucking don’t. But given the circumstances, I understand that it was instinctive. And that you didn’t do it to hurt me.”

I stared out the passenger window, not wanting him to see the tears on my face, embarrassed and disgusted with myself.

I’d been an emotional mess for the last week, and I hated it.

It felt childish and weak, and it made me feel like I’d somehow regressed back into the terrified little boy that I’d been when I’d lived here.

I didn’t want to feel the thick, nauseating knot of fear in my stomach that I’d had every day of my childhood—or, at least, every day that I could remember. Fear of my father’s displeasure, of his anger, of his disappointment.

He wasn’t violent with us as kids, not in the way that you might expect.

He wasn’t one of those rural farmers who drank too much and lost their tempers, leaving bruises across the faces of their wives and children.

He wasn’t the kind of abusive man who inflicted torture by leaving cigarette burns or contusions where they wouldn’t be visible under clothes, either.

No. Bartholomew Mays was the sort of man who inflicted punishment through deprivation.

Fasting and prayers on your knees on the cold, hard flags that formed the basement floor.

He demanded days without food and self-inflicted pain—bruised knees, aching palms, scraped elbows.

That isn’t to say that corporeal punishment was lacking in our house—but it was the belt across your back and thighs that was allowed by law.

Not to the point of bleeding, rarely to the point when bruises would discolor the skin.

Even more rarely, he would wash his hands of us—literally, in fact, ritually taking water and a cloth and washing his hands as he stood, lecturing us about our sins and the depravities of our flesh—leaving us to the darkness or to the more capable hands of another member of the Community who had the stomach, or perhaps the desire, to cross the line between corporeal punishment and physical abuse.

I hated that he could still affect me, even though I’d spent more years away from his house than I had in it. Even though I’d built a career. Even though I had Elliot.

For now.

Elliot might not want to stay with me after this. And I couldn’t blame him. My father was a murderer. Maybe whatever made him violent was in me, too. And maybe Elliot wouldn’t want to be around that…

Of course he wouldn’t want to be around that. His father had been a murder victim. Why the hell would he want to stay with me ?