All Fall Down Read online

  He knew she’d stopped taking her birth control pills, and they never used condoms. Liesel knew her husband understood the risks of sex without protection, but they never discussed the consequences of it. It was unspoken, the knowledge that she wanted a baby and he did not, but that whatever happened would happen, and they’d deal with it then. Not that it mattered, since every month passed with another week of blood and cramps and silent tears she couldn’t share.

  The doorbell rang.

  Liesel swiped at her face, listening. They lived too far out in the woods to ever get random guests, not even by proselytizing religious groups. She wasn’t expecting a package delivery.

  The doorbell rang again, then again. Liesel quickly got a tampon and took care of herself, wiping her nose with tissue this time. She washed her hands quickly and threw on a robe, belting it as she hobbled down the stairs. She thought for sure whoever was interrupting her self-indulgent weepfest would’ve left by the time she got there, so when she opened the door and saw the young woman standing there holding a baby, two small children beside her, Liesel blinked several times. The vision didn’t waver or disappear, which meant it was real.

  “Hello?” Liesel said. “Can I help you?”

  The girl, who couldn’t have been any older than sixteen or seventeen, opened her mouth but no words came out. She wore a nightgown and a hooded sweatshirt with a broken zipper. Work boots that were too big for her, Liesel noted with growing concern. The baby in her arms had no coat, just a ragged blanket tucked around it. The kids, a towheaded boy and a matching little sister, weren’t dressed any better.

  Liesel clutched the throat of her robe closer to her neck. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Can I help you?” she repeated.

  “I hope so,” the girl said finally in a hoarse voice that sounded as if she’d spent her share of recent time crying, too. “I’m here to see Christopher Albright.”

  Chapter 2

  Sunny is thirteen when the new girl arrives with her mother in Sanctuary. New people do show up sometimes, but it’s usually single women or men, not families. The women are almost always already pregnant from one of the Family Superior men. That was how Sunny’s mom had joined the family. It wasn’t a secret or anything. John Second had brought her to the light, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, that’s what Sunny’s mom says. Always with a smile.

  The new girl doesn’t smile very much. She’s tall, with supershort hair like a boy’s that she wears spiked up for the first few weeks, until she runs out of the hair gel she hides under her bed and discovers wet soap doesn’t work the same. She has freckles and dark eyes she smudges with lots of black liner until John Second calls her up to the front of the chapel and makes her wash her face in front of everyone. Women in the Family of Superior Bliss don’t cover what the Maker gave them with makeup that hides their light. The girl definitely doesn’t smile then. She cries, loud and long and hard, and they make her go to the silent room for it. When she comes out, she talks even less than she did before.

  There are lots of kids in the family, but all of them, like Sunny, were born into it. This new girl’s name is Bethany, and she doesn’t change it. Her mother changed her own name from Joyce to Joy. Nobody made her, she just did because she said she wanted to fit in. Her daughter doesn’t seem to care about fitting in.

  This fascinates Sunny, who’s never had a choice about fitting in or not. She does what she’s told. She lets her hair grow long and braids it, she dresses modestly, she keeps her face clean and scrubbed. But secretly, down deep inside the place she would never let anyone see, she wants to be more like Bethany and less like Sunshine.

  Bethany won’t talk to Sunny. Not even to say “leave me alone,” though it’s obvious that’s what she means when she turns her back and walks away without even looking at what Sunny’s holding in her hand. It’s a cookie Sunny pinched from the kitchen, not a homemade kind but one from the stash way back in the pantry, behind the bulk bags of flour and rice. Sunny doesn’t actually like them. The cream in the middle is too sweet, the outer chocolate cookies almost bitter compared to the ones Neveah makes from oats and peanut butter, honey and raisins. Sunny stole the cookie for Bethany, who eats hardly anything and complains all the time about how much she misses McDonald’s. Sunny’s never eaten there, though she’s passed the golden arches and knows what it is. It’s junk food. Bad for the vessel, bad for the soul.

  Sunny thought Bethany would like the junk-food cookie that’s hidden away from everyone. Nobody’s supposed to know it’s for John Second to nibble at along with his equally secret coffee in the morning. When Bethany walks away, her shoulders hunched, her once-spiked hair flat down on the back of her skull, Sunny follows her.

  “Wait,” Sunny says.

  Bethany pauses.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I hate it here.” It’s not the answer to Sunny’s question. Bethany still doesn’t turn, but her voice gets harder. Rougher. Her shoulders shake and her fists clench. “I hate it. I want to go home. Living with my dad would be better than living here!”

  “So…why don’t you?” The cookie is half crumbled in Sunny’s palm. “Go home, I mean.”

  Bethany turns then. “Are you kidding me? You’re kidding, right? I mean, even you can’t be that stupid.”

  Sunny blinks rapidly. Takes a step back. Her mouth opens and shuts without letting out a single word.

  Incredibly, Bethany laughs, though it sounds awful. Like hinges squealing. “First of all, my dad doesn’t want me to live with him. He got remarried to a complete bitch, and they have some kids now. Together. There’s no room in his house for me. Second, don’t you get it? Walk away from this place? How’m I supposed to do that?”

  “The front gate,” Sunny says.

  Bethany shakes her head. Laughs again. It sounds worse this time. “You think I could just walk out the front gate?”

  “Well…” Sunny looks down at her hand. Crumbled cookie. Smears of dark, white bits mixed in it. “Why not? It’s how you came in, right?”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Sunny blinks again, feeling the sting of tears and forcing them away. “You shouldn’t call names.”

  “Right. You’ll…what? Make a report on me?”

  Sunny shakes her head. “I won’t.”

  “It won’t matter if you do. Go ahead.”

  “I don’t want to,” Sunny says. “Really, I don’t.”

  “Why are you so sweet?” Bethany shouts, sending Sunny back another step. Then another. And another. “You wacko? You believe in all this stuff? You like it here, you love it! You love this place!”

  “Of course I do!” Sunny’s not sure she’s ever shouted, not in thirteen years, though probably as a baby she screamed, at least a little. Babies do that before they learn to hush and shush. It hurts her throat to shout, but not as bad as the pain inside her from what Bethany is saying. “Of course I love it here. It’s my home!”

  “You like going to bed with old men? You want to be what…the one true wife or whatever it’s called?” Bethany’s mouth twists, making her ugly. “You like getting knocked up with their babies, right? You like spending every day in this place scrubbing floors, starving or eating spoiled food? Well, I don’t! I hate it! I hate it!”

  “So leave!” Sunny cries and claps a hand over her mouth. Words squeak out between her fingers anyway. “If you hate it so much, then leave.”

  Bethany walks away.

  Two days later, she’s gone. John Second calls a meeting in the chapel while Papa looks out over all of them with bleary eyes. Papa stares at them a long, long time without saying anything, though his mouth is open. Papa coughs so hard he drools. Finally, he crooks a finger; John Second leans close and listens.

  When he straightens up, he says, “If