All Fall Down Read online

When you got rid of the weight of your misdeeds, Papa had told them, you could learn to float. Fly. And then you’d be ready to leave and go through the gates. Was that what had happened to her? Sunny shook off the remaining dizzy feeling. Or was she just too tired, too worn-out, like Liesel had suggested?

  In the kitchen, Liesel pulled off her coat and hat, tossed them on a chair, poured Sunny some orange juice and then herself coffee. She sipped it from a mug and watched Sunny over the rim of it. Her hair stuck up in wild spikes.

  “Do you meditate every day?”

  Sunny sipped the juice. Sweet. It was like drinking…well, sunshine. She wanted to gulp it, greedy, but forced herself to take only the tiniest of tastes, one at a time. “Yes.”

  “Did you all meditate?”

  Sunny looked up, the juice like some sort of key that unlocked her tongue. “Yes. Every morning, afternoon and at night before we go to bed. In-between times we do it on our own, if we need a little extra.”

  “Extra…what?”

  Sunny turned the glass in her hands, feeling the cool glass on her palms. “Extra silence.”

  Liesel shook her head a little. “I don’t get it. I’m sorry.”

  Sunny looked around the kitchen, then at her father’s wife. “In order to leave this life and our physical vessels behind, we have to be able to put aside everything outside ourselves and go all the way inside, to the silence. We have to listen to that silence with our hearts, because that’s what tells us how far we have to go.”

  It was Liesel’s turn to blink. She sipped her coffee, then held the mug in both her hands close to her face, as though bathing in the warmth. “So…during the day if you feel you need extra silence, you meditate?”

  “People talk too much,” Sunny said. “And don’t listen enough.”

  Liesel laughed. “I believe that’s certainly true. Yes.”

  Sunny studied her. She’d gone out on the literature missions but had never been actively sent to recruit anyone. She’d never been called on to explain the family’s beliefs to anyone before, though she’d been given the same lectures as everyone else on how to recognize a potential seeker. Papa had said the best way to show someone the path was to walk it. He also said that everyone in the family had the obligation to lead as many people to the light as possible, through words and deeds.

  “Do you want to try it?”

  Liesel looked startled. “Oh, I…I don’t really think…”

  “C’mon,” Sunny said. “It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I bet you’ll be good at it.”

  Liesel looked at Sunny through one squinted eye, her mouth twisted, too. “What do I have to do?”

  “Just listen. I’ll show you.” Sunny took Liesel into the living room and sat, demonstrating.

  Liesel followed, but slowly, with a groan. “I might not be able to get back up.”

  “Meditation helps anything, even aches and pains, whatever’s wrong with you. Daily meditation keeps away illness and lifts the spirit.” Sunny paused, having spouted what she’d always been told but now hearing her words as one of the blemished might. “It doesn’t hurt, anyway.”

  Liesel laughed and ducked her head for a second. She looked self-conscious. “Okay. I’m up for it. Let’s go. What do I do?”

  “Mostly, you just listen.”

  Silence for a minute or two.

  “What am I listening for?”

  Sunny opened her eyes and smiled. “Not with your ears. Listen with your heart. Inside. Whatever’s inside.”

  “Okay.” Liesel looked skeptical and shifted on the carpet. “How long does it usually take?”

  Sunny laughed, surprised at how funny she found Liesel’s question. “Sometimes, a long time. Give it another few minutes.”

  They were both quiet, until the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor of the entryway turned both their heads. It was Chris, dressed for work, brow furrowed. He lifted a coffee mug.

  “What the… What are you doing?”

  “Hi, babe.” Liesel winced and slowly uncurled herself to stand. “Sunny was showing me how to meditate.”

  Chris recoiled, just a little, but enough that there was no doubt of his reaction. “I’m going.”

  That moved Liesel forward to tell him goodbye. She followed him out of the hall, toward the kitchen. Sunny heard the low-pitched tone of a conversation that sounded as if it was trying hard not to turn into an argument, the rise and fall of voices in conflict and the mutter of her own name.

  And try as hard as she could, she couldn’t hear anything else.

  Chapter 16

  “Liesel, what’s going on? They’re all dead, my God, we saw it on the news even down here, I had no idea that was close to you at all.” Liesel’s mother sounded briefly distant, as if she’d taken the phone from her mouth and put it back. “Down! Get down, Rascal! This damn dog, Liesel, I swear to you I’m gonna have him stuffed.”

  Her mother’s constant complaining about her admittedly ill-mannered dog was one of the main reasons Liesel had never lobbied for a replacement after Buster died. She could picture her mom now, scolding the runty mutt with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. Liesel missed her mother suddenly so hard and so fiercely she had to put a hand over her eyes to keep herself from bursting into tears.

  “How’s Christopher dealing with it?” her mom asked.

  Liesel paused, not certain what she could say and wanting to be sure she could speak without sounding as though she was holding back sobs. “Okay, I guess.”

  Her mom snorted. “No, not how well is he dealing with it. I mean, how is Christopher dealing with all this? What’s he doing about it?”

  “What can either of us do about it? They’re here, they have no place else to go.”

  Another snort. “I can’t believe he never told you before. That’s all. All those years, right in your backyard.”

  “He didn’t know.” Before her mom could comment on that, Liesel added, “And they weren’t that close. Almost in the next town.”

  “But they’d been there how long, doing God knows what? Sacrificing stuff, no doubt.” Liesel’s mother coughed loudly. “Damn it, I thought moving to Florida meant no more winter colds.”

  It was the smoking, not a cold, but Liesel didn’t say so. “They weren’t a satanic cult, Ma.”

  “They all killed themselves, didn’t they? What kind of religion makes you martyr yourself to get to heaven?” Her mother paused. “Well, Christianity favors that, I guess.”

  “They’re not Christians either, so far as I can tell.”

  “You never hear of any Jewish cults,” her mother said firmly. “Rascal, for God’s sake, get down!”

  Liesel peeked through the half-cracked laundry room door to the kitchen, where Sunny and the kids sat at the table, folding towels. Sunny had asked what she could do to help around the house, and all three of them were making a good job of it. Singing, even.

  “I’m sure there are some,” Liesel said absently. Voyeur, that’s what she was, watching them when they didn’t know she was. But how else was she supposed to see what they did when she wasn’t there?

  Her mother made a derogatory noise. “Whatever. Listen, you have them in your house now, what’s going on with that? She’s what, almost twenty, you said? With three kids? Oy. I don’t think I need to tell you those kids are gonna have some problems.”

  The children actually looked fine to Liesel. Better than fine, they were the best-behaved children Liesel had ever seen. Compared to Annabelle and her brothers, children Liesel actually loved, Sunny’s children were saints, even the baby.

  “They’re kind of…Amish,” Liesel whispered.

  At the table, Sunny showed Peace how to fold a tea towel into a neat square, t