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came out of the main house and greeted Flynn by name. “You’re later than usual for picking up our crates,” she said.

“I’m not here for that,” he said. “This is my... this is Mairin. She needs a place to stay. Mairin, this is Saffron.”

The woman called Saffron had waist-length hair streaked with gray, and a face webbed by sunshine. She looked nothing like

a nun, and that was all that mattered to Mairin.

“Welcome, little sister,” she said, giving her a sandalwood-scented hug. “We’re glad you’re here.”

“Um... thank you?” Mairin felt bashful. Maybe a tiny bit suspicious. She was not this woman’s sister.

“We’re all a family here,” Saffron told her. “You’ll live and learn together with all of us. Remember, everything that happens

is there to teach you—if you pay attention.”

“Yes, um... ma’am.” She almost said “sister” by mistake. Then she was seized by an urge to run again. How was this different

from where she was before? The nuns had made her wary of being “taught” anything. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she was

flinging herself into another situation where she’d be a captive.

Mairin tried to still the hammering of her heart. No. She looked around. She didn’t see walls or barbed wire. No robed figures

gliding around, giving orders. She saw only the orchard among the rolling hills under a sunset-painted sky.

A singular wave of feeling came over her, a sense of gratitude and relief so powerful it nearly knocked her over. She went

to stand in a field of soft, waving grass and wildflowers, and she threw back her head and spread her arms and breathed deeper

than she’d ever breathed in her life.

“You all right?” Flynn was behind her now.

She turned and felt a jolt of yearning when she looked at him—solid, confident, a place of safety. But she couldn’t ask more

of him. She had to figure out how to stand on her own. “Yes,” she said. “And thank you, Flynn.”

“Listen, I know you must be glad to be away from the nuns, but this”—he encompassed the fields and orchards with a gesture—“is

different. Like, radically different. People come and go around here. You never know who you’re going to meet. Things could

get kind of rough.”

She read the meaning of his words. “I appreciate that. But I survived the Good Shepherd. There’s nothing here I can’t handle. Really. Really and truly.”

He dug in his pocket and found another dime. “Guess the last one was well-spent. Here’s another, to remind you. Call me, Mairin.

Swear you’ll call me if you need anything.”

She smiled, feeling wobbly with relief. “Of course I will, Flynn. And... can you tell Fiona to come see me? I really want

to see her.”

“Sure. If this place doesn’t work out, you let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You be safe. Never forget who you are.”

“I won’t.”

On her first night at the commune, and many times after that, Mairin stood in front of the rust-edged bathroom mirror and

stared at her image. There had been no mirrors at the Good Shepherd. More than a year had passed since she’d had a good look

at herself.

The girl in the mirror looked impossibly young, yet somehow, a hundred years older. She recognized the freckles and the green

eyes. But her face was longer, leaner. Her hair shorter, a mass of curls that just brushed the tops of her shoulders and needed

four barrettes to keep it out of her face.

There was a new hardness in that face. She was no longer a girl who picked apples and sang along with the radio and daydreamed

about going on her first date. Now she was a fugitive, hardened by punishment, determined to do whatever it took to survive.

She thought about Flynn’s words. Never forget who you are . Had she even known in the first place?

The past year had messed her up so bad, she didn’t know who she was anymore. Her mother called her a sinner. At the Good Shepherd,

she was called a wayward girl. Here, they called her “hey, babe” or “hey, man.” She looked around at the people coming and

going from the compound and realized there were all kinds of ways to be wayward. And all kinds of ways to be lost.

At first, Mairin had worried constantly about being found and sent back. She worried about what had become of the other girls. Did Angela get help from Tanya or her librarian friend? Did Denise make it to New York City? Had Helen’s parents returned from China? And what had become of Janice and Kay?

As time went on, she relaxed her vigilance, bit by bit. Her confidence grew along with a sense of independence. Even if someone

found her, she vowed that nothing would compel her to go back to that place—not her mother, not the Church, and certainly

not Colm Davis. Before long she would be eighteen, and then no one could tell her what to do.

According to the commune elders, like Saffron and the owner, Jax, Heyday Farm was supposed to be a joyous center of peace

and love and expanded consciousness. Mairin discovered that on any given day, it was a place of shared work, constant togetherness,

free love, and lots and lots of drugs. People came and went, some toting little more than a guitar and a sleeping bag. There

was a small cadre of hard workers—Mairin made sure she was one of them—but there was also a lot of sitting around, staring

at the sky, and playing records by the Doors and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. People stayed up late, reading and talking

about books— Siddhartha, On the Road, a poem called Howl . Half-clad couples would take a blanket out to the woods or by the pond and make out. Mairin was embarrassed about her limited

knowledge of sex, so she avoided the guys who asked her if she wanted to get it on.

Someone suggested she might want to pick a new name, like Paisley or Nirvana, but she recoiled. They’d forced “Ruth” on her

at the Good Shepherd. “I have a name,” she said, thinking of Flynn’s words again. “Call me Mairin. Mairin Patricia O’Hara.”

Day by day, Mairin settled in. She wore tie-dye and sandals and beads in her hair. She ate vegetarian meals and slept in a

leaky Quonset hut and took outdoor showers and listened to hard rock on a transistor radio. She encountered Haley Moore, who

didn’t seem to remember her, but was vaguely welcoming. Haley was as exotic as ever, her eyelids heavy behind the round lenses

of her shades. She hung out with a guy who had wispy facial hair and bleary eyes, who liked to eat brown rice goulash out

of a hubcap.

Mairin tried smoking pot, but it hurt her throat and made her dizzy. She turned down offers of acid. She wrote letter after letter to Liam, explaining to her brother where she’d been and where she was, hoping she would hear back from him.

She lost her virginity to a guy named Domino because she was curious and filled with yearning. She chose him because he was

sweet and willing to wear a condom. Domino had soft eyes that held her gently in his gaze, an easy smile, and a patient way

about him. He didn’t say “let’s get it on,” but seemed interested in her. He read her signals, and urged her to tell him what

she wanted, what she was feeling.

She didn’t think what she was feeling was love, but a compelling warmth that built to a burst of physical pleasure, then a

shower of relief. Finally, she understood what all the fuss was about. At that point, she knew for sure that the Catholic

nonsense about burning in hell for having sex was just that. Nonsense. How would celibate priests and nuns know, anyway? And

why would God make sex so much fun if he didn’t want people to enjoy it?

Eventually, Domino had to go back to college in order to avoid the draft. Mairin moved into a big room in the main house and

made friends with other guys, but mostly, she worked. She had a special knack—even a passion—for growing things. She knew,

either by instinct or plain common sense, what it took to manage the fields. And what she didn’t know, she taught herself.

At night, she read the Whole Earth Catalog and the Utne Reader , studying the new practices that avoided herbicides and pesticides. She learned the serious side of produce farming and management,

and she noticed that the workers who saw value in producing something of substance were the ones who found themselves. Others

drifted from day to day, laconically making art and music and conversation, then getting high and falling asleep. Mairin aligned

herself with the workers. There was a kind of grace in making something or growing something, and collapsing exhausted into

bed after a long, productive day. Working hard helped her avoid dwelling on the dark memories of the laundry.

The cops showed up on a dope raid, sending the residents scurrying for cover. Mairin was horrified when one of them cornered

her in the room she shared with a woman named Narnia. As she pressed herself against the wall, Mairin held her breath, certain

they were about to drag her away.

“What’s your name?” the cop asked. He was short and broad-shouldered, with a big gut.

“It’s... Ruth, sir. Ruth Shepherd, sir.” Finally, her fake name was useful.

The cop searched her room, checking out the neatly made bed, the planting charts and calendar on the wall, the books stacked

on a milk crate next to a gooseneck reading lamp. In contrast to the rest of the clutter, her corner was meticulously tidy.

“Hey, Whitney,” the cop’s partner called from another part of the house. “Come check this out.”

The cop gave her one last look, eyes flicking over her head to toe, then left the room to join his partner. They found some

woman’s stash of weed, took one guy in for an outstanding warrant and another for a parole violation.

And then they left. Mairin had to remind herself to breathe.

One day that first fall, Fiona came to visit, driving a pockmarked Dodge Dart, which she parked by the painted bus. The girls

flew into each other’s arms, gasping and sobbing and laughing all at once. The year apart had seemed longer because so much

had happened.