I failed them, too.
But he would not fail again. He would not fail his Abigail.
‘Are you all right, Papa?’ she asked, leaning in to peer at his bleeding finger.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he assured her. ‘What brings you skipping into my workshop, Abi-girl?’
She giggled. ‘Abigail, Papa. How many times must I tell you?’
It’s Mercy, Papa. Not Mercy-girl. How many times must I tell you?
He swallowed hard, shaking off the memory of his daughter, dead for thirteen years. He tapped the end of Abigail’s adorable nose, so like her mother’s. ‘Until I get it right, obviously.’
Abigail sighed dramatically, then stared again at his finger. ‘That’s bleeding a lot, Papa. You should go to the healer.’
He glanced at his finger, grimacing at the sight of the rag, already heavy with blood. ‘You’re right. Why don’t you go to Deborah’s house and play? Tell her mother that I’ll be by to get you as soon as I get my finger taken care of.’
He tossed a tarp over the almost-finished hope chest, hiding it from view. He didn’t want anyone to see it. He didn’t want anyone getting close enough to realize that its interior wasn’t nearly as deep as it should be. He didn’t want anyone spying the false bottom that hid a crawl space just large enough for a seven-year-old girl.
For Abigail.
The chest clearly hadn’t worked for Miriam. If it had, she’d be free instead of dead, so Amos was saving it as a last resort to get Abigail out. He first had to convince Pastor and Brother DJ to allow him to go into town when DJ took items to be traded, because there was no way Amos would leave his little girl hidden in the back of the man’s truck all alone. Move carefully. Take your time. He didn’t want Brother Ephraim to become suspicious of him or he might end up in an unmarked grave like Sister Dorcas and her family. And then who would take care of his Abigail?
Abigail grabbed his uninjured hand. ‘I came to tell you that I have supper.’
He looked down at her, unable and unwilling to hide his affection. ‘You do? Butter sandwiches again?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘No, Papa. It’s roast chicken with pumpkin. Deborah’s mother made extra by mistake. She said we should eat it or it would go bad.’ She cocked her head, her pigtails swaying to one side. ‘I think she makes extra by mistake on purpose.’
Amos smothered a chuckle. ‘You do?’
Of course Deborah’s mother did. She was a good woman who hated to think of anyone going hungry. Her husband was a good man, always available to help.
Amos would miss them when he and Abigail were gone from this place.
‘Yes,’ Abigail said with a sharp nod. ‘She does it all the time, Papa. If it was truly an accident, I think she should have learned better by now. I think she likes to feed us.’
This time his chuckle escaped. ‘Well, we shouldn’t let on that we know her secret. We will accept her delicious gift and be thankful, yes?’ He closed the door, not bothering to lock it.
The door had no lock. None of the homes in Eden did. Except the Founding Elders’ homes. And the clinic.
Which was where he needed to go. He bent over and kissed Abigail’s soft hair. ‘Go play. I’ll be by to pick you up very soon.’
He watched her bolt across the compound’s open courtyard, narrowly avoiding Sister Joan, who only chuckled and shook her head.
There were good people here.
And bad people.
Amos wondered which of the membership were evil like Brother Ephraim, hiding behind a nice smile and a friendly hello. He wondered which of the people he’d lived among for thirty years were aware that Brother Ephraim knew how to kill with his bare hands, or which, like himself, had simply been oblivious.
Amos had been so blind. So willingly blind, because there had been signs. Signs he’d been too happy to ignore.
No more.
Drawing a breath, he descended the steps into the clinic. It was housed in an earth home, partially underground, like all the dwellings in Eden. He glanced around, finding the room empty. He didn’t bother searching – there really wasn’t anywhere the healer could be hiding. The patient treatment area was one big room, with a curtain that could be pulled for patient privacy.
He avoided looking at the bed in the corner, pristinely made. That was where Abigail’s mother had died in childbirth. Afterward it had been especially hard to remember why he was here, living separate from the world. In a proper hospital, women didn’t usually die in childbirth.
Not like here, in Eden.
There was only one other place the healer could be. He approached the door to the healer’s office, where she kept supplies and medicines, intending to knock, but his fist froze midair. The door was slightly ajar, a faint whirring sound catching his ear. He frowned, having not heard anything like that before.
He approached carefully, afraid of what he’d see. The last time he’d investigated an odd noise, he’d witnessed Ephraim murdering three good people.
He stared, his mouth falling open. He could only see a portion of the healer’s desk, but what he did see jarred a distant memory. A thirty-year-old memory. An upright box. A keyboard. A . . .
He wasn’t sure what the last thing was. A screen of some kind, but thinner than anything Amos knew existed. Sister Coleen, the healer, was staring at it.
It was a . . . Was that a computer? Here? In Eden? It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be. He’d used computers in high school, but the screens had been large and nearly square.
She leaned to one side, briefly disappearing from view. When she straightened, she held a sheaf of papers, which she paged through, then stood.
Oh no. Amos stepped back, nearly tripping over his own feet as he crossed the room to the door, where he stood, still holding the rag around his bleeding finger. Think fast. ‘Sister Coleen?’ he called.
She appeared at the door, looking slightly alarmed. ‘Brother Amos. When did you get here?’
‘Just now,’ he lied. He held up his finger. ‘Need some help with this.’
She pulled the door shut, locking it with a key she wore on a string around her neck along with her locket, the same style that every woman in Eden wore. Even the healer wasn’t exempt from the marriage laws, having been given to a new husband after her first husband died from old age.
Amos had thought her like every woman in Eden, but clearly she was not. She had a . . . computer. It was too hard to believe. Where was she even getting the power to run it?
The compound had a generator, but it was used for things like Amos’s power tools. Not for computers. He was stunned.