All Fall Down Read online

  That’s what the television said. All dead. Suicide. They made it sound so nasty, something terrible and shameful. They didn’t know anything about the family, she thought as the buildings outside the car window became empty fields, then trees. This was the road she’d stumbled down so early in the morning. Or maybe it was another one, so many places in this world, so many things to see, and she was still alive to see them all.

  Josiah had been on the TV screen. A woman had been shoving a microphone toward him. His familiar face had been more than serious, grim even, but he’d looked out from the TV as though he could see Sunny right through it.

  “Sunny, are you… We’ll be home soon. We’ll get you home.”

  Liesel wasn’t taking Sunny home. Home was Sanctuary. Liesel was taking Sunny and Bliss back to the big yellow house at the top of the steep driveway, where she would feed Sunny’s children junk and sedate them with television. Where Sunny would sleep in a bed so soft it had to be made of sin.

  Sunny curled her fingers against her palms, feeling the sting of her nails in her skin. Pressed harder. Small pain, getting deeper. She pressed so hard her fists shook, and she tucked them between her knees to keep them still.

  Sunny thought again of Bethany, the things she’d shouted about the world. Sunny had made her own lists over the years of wordly things she wanted to taste or touch or smell or try. She’d drifted to sleep at night imagining the tug of denim between her legs instead of her own flesh pressing together beneath a long skirt. She’d lifted her hair from her neck, thinking how it would feel to cut it all off. Pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to take the place of cosmetics.

  That was why she’d been left behind.

  “We’re here,” Liesel said as she pulled into the garage. She twisted in her seat to look at Sunny with wide eyes. Her mouth had thinned with a grief Sunny didn’t understand. Liesel hadn’t known any of the family. “We’re home.”

  Liesel was waiting for something, though Sunny didn’t know what it was. More tears, probably. Shame, prickling, heated her face at the memory of how she’d lost control in that store. Mama would’ve been ashamed.

  From the backseat, Bliss let out a cry, so Sunny had the excuse of focusing on that. She got out of the car to unbuckle her daughter from the complicated straps of the seat they’d forced her to use. She pressed her face to Bliss’s sweet baby head, nuzzling the fine hairs before cradling her. Liesel was still staring as Sunny lifted Bliss out of the car.

  “I’ll be okay.” Faced with Liesel’s obvious anxiety it seemed the thing to say, and the words tripped easily enough from Sunny’s lips. “We’ll all be okay.”

  Liesel nodded. “Yes. You will.”

  They were both lying. Her mother had sent her out into the world, and that had been bad enough. Sunny’d been found unfit, left behind, abandoned. That was worse. But the worst part of all was not that she’d failed to make her vessel pure enough to leave with the others. The worst part was knowing she’d been given what she’d always secretly hoped for, she was out here in the world, and nobody was coming to take her home.

  Nobody ever would.

  Chapter 9

  At the sight of his mother, Happy jumped down from the stool and ran to her with a cry. She got on one knee to greet him, holding him at arm’s length and studying his face. She looked up at Christopher with a faint smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Peanut butter?”

  “Yeah…is that okay? They’re not allergic or anything, are they?” Christopher looked back and forth from her to Liesel, who’d gone to the fridge with a glass to get herself some crushed ice and chilled water.

  Sunny shook her head and stood, holding on to Happy’s hand. “No. They like peanut butter.”

  “He wouldn’t eat it. Said it wasn’t dinnertime,” Christopher said with a self-conscious laugh that didn’t sound like his. “I guess you have pretty strict rules where you…live.”

  The ice crashed into the glass. Sunny looked at Liesel. “I need to feed Bliss, and Peace probably needs a nap. Maybe Happy, too.”

  Liesel nodded. Her smile felt like a grimace. “Sure, you go on. I need to talk to Christopher.”

  When Sunny had taken the kids from the room, Christopher looked at Liesel. “What the hell is going on? Did you guys have a fight or something? She’s definitely a little weird, I know that—”

  “They’re all dead.”

  Christopher blinked. “What?”

  Liesel swallowed frigid water, thinking it might somehow make the words easier if they fell from a numb tongue. “All of them, in that compound. They’re all dead. They killed themselves yesterday in some sort of mass suicide. Some cult thing.”

  A broken, strangled cry tore from her throat. She clapped her hand over her mouth and went to the sink to dump the water down it. The clink of the glass against the stainless steel was very loud when she put it down. She turned to him.

  “It was all over the news. We saw it on TV at Kmart, for God’s sake. And yesterday, when I was running, when I slipped on the ice? I saw the ambulances and the police cars heading in that direction. I saw all those cars, but I didn’t think… I didn’t know—”

  “Hey. Shh, hey.” Careful not to press her bruises, Christopher took her in his arms again. “Slow down. How do you know they’re all dead?”

  “The reporter on the news said so. The paper, too. A hundred people, all dead. They didn’t release how it happened, just that they found them all together. Dead. Don’t you get it? That’s why Trish sent them to us. She must’ve known.” Liesel swallowed convulsively, nausea rising. “Oh, God. We have to call the police, don’t we?”

  All those people. Dead at their own hands, dead like those poor jerks in Jonestown who drank the Kool-Aid. Was that how they’d done it? Or had they put themselves to sleep with plastic bags over their faces and matching sneakers like those Heaven’s Gate fools?

  “Did the news say what happened?”

  “Just that the police found only bodies. No survivors.”

  Above them, the ceiling creaked with footsteps. Both of them looked up, then at each other, connected by something more than twelve years of marriage and familiarity. Christopher pulled her close.

  “There were at least four,” he said.

  “I think we have to call the police, Christopher.”

  “Yeah. I guess we have to.”

  Liesel swiped at her eyes. “Sunny didn’t seem surprised. Do you think she knew? I mean, ahead of time. Do you think she left that place knowing?”

  “If she did, then she’s smart, don’t you think?”

  Liesel pressed herself against him with a soggy sigh. “All those people. There were children in there, Christopher. The news didn’t say how many, but there had to be kids.”

  His hands rubbed her back in slow circles. She waited for him to say something comforting, but he stayed silent. She looked up at him, thinking how he would kiss her and tell her everything was going to be all right, and then he’d do something to make that true.

  “Christopher?”

  “I’ll call the police.” He kissed her forehead. Then he let her go.

  Chapter 10

  Mama shakes her awake and says, “Come on, Sunshine, wake up, it’s time.”

  Mama means it’s time to leave. Papa’s voice is talking over the speakers. Mama pulls a sweatshirt on over Sunny’s nightgown and takes her by the hand, out into the hall.

  The lights are too bright, the sounds too loud. Sunny hangs back and Mama tugs her by the hand. No time for dawdling. You never, never run, but you don’t dawdle, either.

  In the chapel, they take their places on the hard wooden floor. It hurts Sunny’s knees, hurts her bum. There’s a splinter in her finger, but she doesn’t dare cry. She puts it in h