"It was weird," Caden said, using a sturdy branch to knock loose a buried rock. After at least an hour of cajoling, Jackson, George, and I had got Caden talking about his afternoon with Zoe Cole. "But also… kinda nice."
"Yeah, but what did she have you do?" Jackson pressed. "Did she need somebody to do her laundry or something?"
"No," Caden answered, and fidgetted uncertainly with his tree branch. "It wasn't… work, it was… I mean. Zoe called it a date."
Both Jackson and George shouted in good-natured surprise and congratulations. I gave my boy an indulgent smile. I might not be happy about the turn of events, but they were hardly Caden's fault.
"So what did you do with all that alone time, Caden?" George smirked.
"Oh, no, it was more than just me and her," my son hastened to explain. "I hung out with the whole—" Here he stumbled to a stop and looked warily at me. "With everybody in her suite."
"Wait, what was that?" Jackson grinned from his place, hip-deep in a new loop shaft. His brother feigned ignorance, but Jackson pressed on, undeterred. "You were about to say one thing and then you wimped out."
"I know what you were going to say," George put in devilishly. "And trust me, your mother's going to hear what they call their suite sooner or later, so she might as well hear it from you."
My youngest son went red to his ears and focused his attention on the ground.
I reached over to squeeze his arm. "Honey, don't worry about it. I'm sure it's just some silly adolescent humor."
But he steeled himself and blurted out, "Zoe calls it her man-harem."
George watched me for a reaction as Jackson actually guffawed. I tried to catch my breath. When Caden finally looked me in the eye, I stammered, "Is that so?"
He gestured limply. "Well I mean, it's Zoe and CeeCee—she's the daughter of Ms. Clark, the Beaver Host? They room together, and have since the beginning, I guess. And so they—" and here he managed a slight smile with a tinge of pride. "As Zoe says, they collect pretty boys."
I stilled my shovel. "Collect them for what?" I asked warningly.
"Exactly what you think, Susan," George answered airily. "Zoe and CeeCee are quite the junior lotharios."
I skewered Caden with an arch look, and he quickly waved his hands. "Nothing happened. It wasn't like that at all. Mostly we just played video games."
Jackson's ears perked up at that. "What do they got?"
Caden shrugged. "Playstation, XBox, a really old Game Cube. Bunch of games."
"Okay, so, before I wasn't jealous, little bro, but…" Jackson shouldered his shovel and mimed holding a controller in his hands. "It's been a while."
"Air conditioning, too," Caden added, to his brother's flabbergasted admiration.
"Sounds nice," I agreed as mildly as I could manage. "What else did you do?"
"Well first she wanted to take me to lunch—there's a sweeties lunch at the Mess, for everybody who's not out with a work crew," he answered, and glanced over his shoulder. Teddy was orbiting closer to our corner of the work site, so Caden started worrying his buried stone as he talked. "But before we went there, she let me use their shower."
As Jackson redoubled his protestations of envy, I settled my motherly suspicions. I had not failed to notice that Caden had come back freshly showered, but apparently that had happened at the top of the afternoon, to make him presentable. Not at the end, to clean up after a sweaty assignation.
Caden was describing Sweeties Lunch: "It's all the same food that they bring out to the work crews. Nothing special. Although I'm pretty sure one of the other tables had some… homemade wine or something."
"It would astound me if there wasn't someone somewhere in the refuge making hooch," George chuckled.
"But it was, um, real quiet," Caden went on. "Like not even half the tables were full, and some of the sweeties were just sitting by themselves reading books, you know? It was real… sedate."
The boy's description paused as he and Jackson traded shovel for tree branch, as Caden's rock was nearly dislodged and his brother had just found one. Caden shoveled and talked at a steady pace. "And Zoe and I, we just talked, you know? For like an hour. Where we grew up, schools, movies we liked—"
"That sounds really nice," I said, trying desperately to find some benefit of the doubt to apply to the situation.
He bobbed his head. "It was. And after that, we went back to the suite and met everybody else, and then video games happened, and a movie afterwards. By then it was time for dinner."
"Which you joined us for," I said with no small surprise. "Why not with them?"
"Well they eat at First Mess," Caden answered with a shrug, "and I wasn’t really hungry yet, and… I dunno. As nice as it was, it was also weird. Like I said. Too many eyes on me. Like… going to a new school, I guess? Where everybody else already has their friends and stuff and they're trying to figure out where you'll fit in."
"That does make sense," I told him. "Do you think you'll… see her again?" I asked, trying hard to make the question seem as normal and insignificant as it would have been if we were at home, digging in our own back yard.
He shrugged. "I dunno. I think it's up to her way more than me, you know?"
"Certain," Jackson answered from his hole. Further conversation quieted as Teddy halted his patrol just a few feet away. His back was turned to us and the rest of the work site, though, and it was a few moments before the cause appeared.
The priest from Sunday service came huffing up the hill, dressed in jeans and a hunter green jacket. His dog collar peeked out at the top of his zipper. Close up, he was younger than I had thought he was: forties instead of fifties. He had a florid face, made blotchy by the exertion of hiking up the hill, and sweat beaded on his brow. Light touches of not-quite-grey threaded through the dark hair his temples.
Teddy watched his approach with his shoulders set in tention. What interruption, he must be wondering, was about to befall his work site? And yet as the priest came to a stop before him, the big man was all solicitousness. "Can I help you, father?"
"Yes, excuse me," the priest began after he had caught his breath. "I need to speak with Susan Soza."
My head snapped up on hearing my name, but one thunderous look from Teddy and I bent back to work. My shoveling might have been a little quieter, though, to eavesdrop.
"We're pretty busy, Father," Teddy told him.
The priest drew in a deep breath. "It's church business."
The big man was quiet for a moment. "All right. Susan. You're needed. Make it quick."
I climbed out of the hole and handed my shovel to Teddy. We were short tools, and I was sure he could find someone to use it. The priest dipped his head to me and gestured away from the work site. "Walk with me?"
The small, tight smile I gave him might have been interpreted as compliance, but all I could think about was how I was once again being pulled away from my family. I wondered what trouble they had attached to me. Had I left his church service with too much haste? Had I not sung their terrible, lopsided hymns loud enough? Whatever it was, it was bound to be immaterial nonsense. I could be making progress building a place for my family to sleep, but first I'd have to deal with whatever insecurities they'd scapegoated on me.
Once we were out of earshot I glanced back at Teddy, who had dropped down into the ground and put the shovel to use himself. "Claim 'church business' and you can steal poolies away from work, huh? I didn't know you could do that."
"Neither did I," he admitted with a pale smile, although this disappeared quickly. "Customs and manners are still plastic here, despite how it may seem at times."
We walked on through the trees, away from the ranks of walipinis. "Still," I persisted. "Not a bad gig. No digging for you, just chatting with whoever you like all day."
His features grew grim. "Not for lack of trying. I put myself in the work rotation, but Jameson took me back off. Told me that physical labor undermined my role in the community."
I snorted. "Except I'd have a lot more respect for you if you worked alongside us. I doubt I'm alone in that."
"You're not," he responded easily. "I'd have a lot more respect for me, too."
We reached a promontory that allowed us to look down on the compound and across the valley behind it. Ridge upon ridge of evergreen extended to the horizon. The empty blue sky yawned above it all. The tableau brought a smile to my lips. I closed my eyes to listen to the wind comb through the trees.
"I've been led to believe that you've been telling people that you and your family are Unitarian Universalists," he said solemnly.
My stomach dropped out of me. When I looked to him, he had folded his hands before himself and his face was unreadable. "Church business," I observed, and he inclined his head minutely. "Delores."
At this his lips twisted in distaste—not for the woman, but for the position he was in. "Gossip is not going to help anyone right now, Mrs Soza."
"Miss Soza," I corrected without thinking.
"You see? Gossip told me you were married," the priest sighed. "In any case, who exactly is talking is immaterial." He looked about to say something else, and then sealed his lips into a frustrated scowl.
I waited for a long moment, but when no further comment seemed forthcoming, I sighed. "Yes. My sons and I attended a UU church."
He nodded slowly. "It pains me to suggest it, Miss Soza," he said, and by the way he dragged each word out of his mouth, it was plain that they came with difficulty. "But you might want to keep that information to yourself."
I considered the priest, fire rising up into my gut. "Excuse me?" I spat. "Keep it to myself? Am I interfering with your Christian paradise, here? Are you concerned that we'll—how did you put it—defile God's little time capsule?"
The priest put up his hands, expression suddenly panicked. "No, Miss Soza, no. You misunderstand." When I lifted my eyebrows for clarification, he continued. "I'm not asking for me, or even for the church. My concern is entirely for your own safety."
Suddenly the mountain wind, which had seemed so pleasant a moment ago, cut through me like a knife. The fire in my gut sputtered against the chill. "My safety."
The priest nodded gravely. "Right now, Miss Soza, this gossip is contained. I have… counseled those who spoke with me, and convinced them that it's not worth circulating."
Curiosity got the better of me. "How did you do that?"
He looked up at the sky and heaved a sky. "I may have told them that Unitarian Universalism is just another denomination of Christianity. Which is, technically speaking, true."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"We're the combination of two heresies that together dismantle most of your orthodox beliefs, but sure, a hundred years ago, we called ourselves Christians," I smirked, but my amusement was short-lived. "And you did this for our safety?"
The priest turned to look out over the tableau. "Please understand, Miss Soza, under Jameson' dictates, I am the Associate Minister of the church here. Pastor Walter Park is the Senior Minister, and it's he who controls the message. I just lead the singing and counsel our more… high church congregants. I am an Episcopal priest, so the traditionalists are more comfortable with me."
I let him ramble until he came to a stop. "And you think Park's message could be dangerous to us?"
Father Donovan frowned out at the mountains. "There is little I can say explicitly. But I fear that some congregants may… they may be primed to find a target to assuage their discontent." He looked at me with pleading eyes.
I nodded once. "I think I take your message. You're working for a dangerous ideogogue who's whipping up his followers to tear apart anyone he identifies as an outsider. Don't feel obliged to nod, Father."
The priest did his best to hide a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. Instead, he tipped his head side to side. "Minister Park's theology is a little more… confrontational than mine."
"And apocalyptic?” I suggested.
"Oh that count, I can't really blame him," Donovan sighed, and gestured at our surroundings. "It does seem to be the end of the world, after all."
"Seems that way," I murmured in agreement. "Which makes it a poor time for abandoning our principles. I don't think I can lie about being UU, father."
He slowly shook his head. "I wouldn't ask you to. Just… advise you not to advertise."
I crossed my arms. If nothing else, I had to appreciate the priest's motive, and I could sympathize with his difficult position. Suddenly it occurred to me that he might be putting himself in danger speaking to me like this. "I'll take it under consideration, father. Discretion is not beyond my abilities."
"I won't ask you to return to Sunday service," he said, turning his steps back towards the work site. "I'm sure that would be a bridge too far."
I shook my head ruefully. "That service is not for me, which was made abundantly clear the last time I attended." I fell into step beside him.
"It's a pity," he sighed. "I have a feeling I would like to have you in my congregation."
I gave him a short smile. "You seem like my kind of minister, too," I told him. "Struggling under stifling constraints and all." We shared a companionable chuckle. "If I may ask, though, I wouldn't imagine Episcopalian priests made the kind of salary required for a refuge subscription."
He shook his head. "Family money. Actually a family subscription, too. My uncle passed and bequeathed it to me, and the automatic payments were already set up, so why change anything?" A few steps later, he confessed, "I could have cancelled it, but things were already looking dire."
"I totally understand. Coming here can feel like turning your back on the world. But let me assure you, Father, the world is beset by problems so large that individuals can do nothing about it. If you were out there, you'd just be another hungry mouth."
He grumbled without agreeing or disagreeing. "Instead I'm playing second fiddle to a minister whose net worth totalled more than my diocese's budget. Prosperity gospel my eye," he scoffed, then looked sidelong to me. "Ahem. Pardon me."
"I'll be discreet, Father," I grinned. We walked on, and I realized I had a rare opportunity to gain insight into another lodge. "What about Jameson?" I asked, with a sly enough smile to signal that I knew I was asking more than a mere poolie ought. "What's it like working for him? I got the impression the church services were his idea."
"He plucked Walter and I out of the labor pool and put us in the lodge so that we could perform the services," Donovan said uncomfortably. "I tried to suggest we could share a suite, since they have two bedrooms, but Walter wouldn't hear of it."
"Are you sure it was Jameson who didn't want you working?" I mused. "Maybe Park didn't like the precedent set."
He exhaled through his nose. "The thought had occured to me. But it could have been Jameson just as easily."
"What's he like?"
Donovan scowled ahead, where the build site was coming into view. "I'll say this much. His wife didn't make it up the mountain. Too much exposure, caught something, ate something gone bad, I'm not sure. She died in quarantine, before I arrived. A month later, though, he told Walter and I that he was ready to marry again. And he'd picked out three lucky girls from labor pool to be his new wives. Because, as he pointed out, Solomon had many wives, so why shouldn't he?"
I stumbled to a stop. "The three girls he sat with during service? I thought they were his daughters."
"His daughters refuse to have anything to do with him or his church," the priest shrugged. "Can't say I blame them."
"Were the girls… forced?" I asked dreadfully, and put my feet into motion.
"Forced, no; coerced, yes," Donovan sighed. "It was their ticket out of labor pool. For themselves and their families. Their parents were put into suites. Although Jameson decided that splitting a suite into two bedrooms was reasonable for his in-laws."
We were within earshot of the build site. Teddy was already climbing out, my shovel still in his broad hand. I stopped a few yards away and extended my hand to the priest. "It was surprisingly nice to speak with you, Father."
He shook my hand with a smile. "Likewise, Miss Soza. But now I think you'd best get back to work."
Once the priest was gone, Teddy slapped the shovel into my hand. "You've got work to make up, Susan. Let's not make this incident worth reporting."
—
In her prior life before the refuge, Meliena Jones had been a trophy wife, and proud of it. Born the sixth child to struggling immigrants, Meliena knew the score from an early age: it didn't matter how hard you worked, it didn't matter how smart you were. If you had money, you got more money. And money bought everything else. No one worked harder than her father, who never had fewer than two jobs. Her mother was brilliant–too brilliant for the corrupt kleptocracy that was her home country, from which she was a political refugee. She'd been so brilliant–and outspoken–that they would kill her if she returned.
Her parents implored her to apply herself to her studies, to get into a good college, to find a good career. Meliena had other plans. She knew she did not have her mother's genius. As much as she admired her father's endless work ethic, it intimidated and disgusted her, too. But she was pretty, she knew that much, and pretty girls had their own avenues to success. She got to work.
Meliena took three buses after school to get to the modeling agency and later the studios where their photo shoots took place. She shared part of her modeling income with her parents to help make ends meet, but she never told them how much she really made, either. She sequestered the rest away. When she graduated high school (barely) she did go to college – but only because the on-campus dorms were cheaper than anything else downtown.
She vacillated for a few years between two plans: find a well-connected frat boy with a silver spoon in his mouth and ride him into a life of leisure, or seek out an older gentleman, already established and stable, who was in the market for a new, young wife. She played both angles while she treaded water at school and slowly made a name for herself as a model.
Some weekends she would go from a raucous basement rave on Friday night to an elegant mixer filled with politicians and lobbyists on Saturday. The first she had a standing invite to up and down fraternity row; the latter she was actually paid to attend, just to add her pretty face to someone's attempt to win the support of someone else.
It was at one of these well-heeled events where she met Jeremy Jones, and her lifelong plan came into focus. He was in manufacturing and finance, increasingly the latter over the former, and the politicians and magnates alike flocked to him in droves. He had three houses, a lemon yellow sports car, a yacht, and a small jet. He was recently divorced.
He was twice her age. She would be his third wife. None of that mattered. He was her ticket.
Meliena always imagined that she would string her quarry along for a while, drive him crazy by fanning and denying his desires, until he would confess he had to have her. Things moved faster than that, and not only because she had to outrun and outmaneuver a number of other ambitious young women with the same plan as her.
She flirted with Jeremy at two functions and finagled an invite to a third event he'd told her he'd be attending. He laughingly told her that they "had to stop meeting like this" and, to stop the streak, asked if she'd be his plus one at a wedding the next week. She laughed at his stale joke and accepted.
The wedding turned out to be in Fiji, and while he nobly reserved two hotel rooms, they only made use of one. She told him before they left for the airport that she had had an incredible time with him and hoped he wasn't about to dispose of her. She made him promise that he'd see her again when they got home. Two weeks later, he took her home after a night on the town. Two weeks after that she took up semi-permanent residence in his house.
She kept up her modeling and her classes for appearance's sake, worried that dropping them and making Jeremy her full-time occupation would scare him off. She did, however, direct her agent to aim for more chaste, classy, and refined jobs. Meliena had nailed 'fun and exciting;' now she had to shift into 'respectable marrying material.'
To keep up with Jeremy's occasional shop talk, she registered for Business Essentials and Introduction to Mandarin the next semester. When he spotted her carefully placed textbook, he asked if she would like to join him on his next trip to Beijing, just as she planned. But he went further than that–he practiced pronunciation with her over dinner. He made her flash cards. He found her other textbook–not by her design–and offered to help her prepare for her midterm.
Meliena was taken aback by his recurring thoughtfulness. She knew he was a kind man–she had made sure of that long before flirting with him–but somehow she had never considered that his kindness would be applied to her. It had only ever entered into her calculations as a decreased chance that he would become demanding or violent (which he never did). It was with some shock that she realized that he respected her, not just wanted her, and that he wanted to support her in the choices she was making.
And so when Jeremy asked her over breakfast what she intended to do with herself once she completed her degree, she froze. Her planned answer–"I thought I'd look into charity work"–which would position her as both noble and in need of lifetime financial support, suddenly felt insufficient. It felt like a lie. And now Meliena realized that she respected Jeremy in return.
"You'll laugh," she warned him, and when he promised he wouldn't, she jumped in with both feet. "I want to be the wife of a powerful man. I want to make him look good when I'm on his arm. I want to entertain his guests and charm his business partners, and every night I want to fuck him into the floor."
He proposed on the spot.
The wedding a year later could have been mistaken for a finance-and-government networking meeting (and Jeremy closed two deals at the reception and one more the day after), but Meliena would not have had it any other way. Her side of the aisle may have been a little sparser (and less well dressed) than his, but her guests were everyone she wanted to share the special day with.
She stopped modeling. She dropped out of school at the end of the semester. She settled into a life of socializing, home decor (his houses were all in desperate need), her rigorous beauty and fitness regimen, and high-profile networking events. She actually did get into charity work, as a natural extension of everything else. She and her foundation worked hard to increase access to healthcare for marginalized and vulnerable new mothers (like her mother had once been). And every night, she fucked Jeremy into the flor with practiced technique and genuine enthusiasm.
He brought her to the Tall Pines Refuge a handful of times for various seminars and to view the property. I never crossed paths with the couple, but we must have dined at opposite ends of the Mess on more than one weekend. She never really understood the appeal or believed in the necessity of the place, but she trusted him. If he said it was a good idea, it must be.
Of course it turned out he was right, and the world started falling apart. The two of them were at an after hours mixer attached to a agribusiness and finance convention when rioters burst in from the street with baseball bats and handguns. The Joneses tried to run, tried to hide, but the mob was hunting the bankers they blamed for their lost jobs and hungry children. The police eventually regained control, but not before they had cornered Jeremy, broken his legs, and beaten him so thoroughly his liver failed.
At the hospital, the doctors explained that he needed a liver transplant to live. In all the mounting chaos, however, the federal organ donor network was in disarray. What would have been routine a year before was now an impossibility. He was going to die.
"And the worst part," Meliena told me, "is that just the week before I had realized: I had never fallen in love with Jeremy, but I had grown to love him. I told him so on his… on his death bed."
And he told her two things, in turn. First, that he had loved her and had since he asked her to that wedding on Fiji; she had made him feel alive and coming home to her had been the best part of his every day.
But secondly, he insisted that she must not wait for him to die, which was going to take days if not weeks. He made her promise to go, as soon as possible, to the refuge. It wasn't safe to stay, and the way up the mountain was growing more dangerous each day.
So she left, as promised, the next day. They had made the trip enough times that she packed (for one), drove (without trading off shifts), and hiked (alone) from memory. She never stopped, not even for gas (the car was electric), not even for police lights, which probably avoided most of the obstacles on the road. She promised Jeremy that she'd come here, and only after she passed through the front gate did she fall to the ground and cry, sob, bawl.
Meliena hardly noticed the indignities thrust upon her through quarantine, barracks housing, and work detail. Sure, it was not what they'd been promised, but without Jeremy, any lesser deprivation seemed irrelevant. Her only difficulty was Sundays, when no one woke her up in the morning, no one told her where to go, no one told her what to do. She couldn't even sit outside the rolling garage door of the barracks and stare off into the distant basin without someone trying to engage her in conversation.
By the time it was me disturbing her Sunday afternoon, Meliena had been drawn about halfway out of her shell. She supposed she had friends; at least, there were a few women she seemed to eat and work with more often than not. They would chatter around her, but she rarely contributed much to the conversation. What was there to say? She had been happy, and now she was not. The very idea that she might be happy again did not seem to occur to her.
I did not know what to do with or for the poor woman once I had her story (she had not once asked me anything about mine). In a better world, she might respond to therapy, if her loved ones could convince her to go. But in the refuge, with neither therapists nor loved ones, her future seemed bleak. Which scared me.
Meliena was an intelligent, capable, and above all very driven woman–her story made that eminently clear. She might now have no focus, but that hardly meant that she had also lost that drive. Eventually, something would bring her out of the morass of hopelessness that had claimed her. She would rise like a phoenix reborn.
But what could rouse her from that black pit? I could think of nothing good that might do the job. The woman's natural beauty–obscured but not eradicated by poolie living and neglect–might draw the attention of someone with more desire than impulse control. That would end poorly.
Or if someone heard enough of her story (which she was eager to share with me, once asked; she hated the thought that Jeremy might be forgotten), they could dangle the possibility of her husband's miraculous survival in front of her. There was little that woman wouldn't do, I thought, for a reunion with her beloved.
I usually shared brief overviews of my one-on-ones with Maggie, and pointed her at potential prospects, encouraging her to get to know them as well. But I refrained from telling Maggie anything about Meliena for more than a week.
When I finally did mention her, I gave as truncated an account as I could. Meliena was just a trophy wife, I told Maggie, kicking myself for selling the woman so short. I said she could use a friend or four, but I didn't think she'd be much use for our network.
I didn't say: this woman is a bomb waiting for just enough jostling to explode. You could twist her head around to point her at any target you liked, Maggie, and you might just care about her little enough to do just that.
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