“Maybe the reason is something ordinary. Like she found out she had cancer, or her husband was abusing her.”
“I don’t think so. Whatever got her, it started in her core. The anniversary of the Medford Mystery is coming up in just a few weeks, and this year is a big one. Fifteen years. I think that’s significant. People living with trauma often have what’s called an anniversary reaction.”
David sighed. “Can we do this later? Just drive.”
“We took it slow for you,” Beth said. “Now we’re going to talk.”
He gripped his head in his hands. “What difference will it make?”
“If you don’t like us talking, then don’t listen,” Deacon said. “And if you didn’t want to talk, why did you take the front seat next to Beth?”
“Because children sit in the back,” David answered. “Plus, I didn’t want us getting in an accident because you two were making out.”
He wanted to say a lot more about what he thought of Deacon fooling around during the chapel service, but he didn’t. In fact, he regretted what he’d already said as soon as the words flew from his mouth. But his friends only laughed.
“Sorry, that was rude,” he said anyway, as if they’d scolded him.
“No, I loved it.” Deacon grinned. “It’s nice to see the old Dave again.”
Outside, it was raining ash. Beth sprayed her windshield with fluid and turned on the wipers, producing a gray smear. Then she shifted and backed into the parking lot before driving off toward the funeral. “Boys, we’re getting off track again. I assume you both got a letter, and that’s why you’re here?”
“ ‘Dear Deacon, I’m sorry. I couldn’t fight it anymore.’ ”
“Same here. David?”
“About the same,” David said.
“What was different about yours?”
He tossed his hands. “For God’s sake.”
“Beth is a psychologist,” Deacon said, adding, “which I hope is working.”
Beth shot a look at him in her rearview. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know what they say. The most messed-up people become psychologists so they can find out what’s wrong with themselves.”
Beth chuckled. “I’m the sanest person in the world, Deek.” She glanced at David. “Come on, tell us.”
“I hope you’re not charging me by the hour.” He sighed. “She said she loved me. That’s the only difference.”
Beth nodded as if she’d expected this. “She always did.”
“There wasn’t any way.” He crossed his arms and gazed out the window at the flakes of ash fluttering out of the gray sky. “What happened isn’t my fault.”
“Of course it isn’t,” she agreed. “But there might have been a way.”
David said, “I wanted to put everything behind me.”
His words hung in the air like a confession. He’d sworn to reunite with Emily after they left the foster system but had never made any real effort. Thanks to Dr. Klein’s therapy, he’d woken up a little stronger each day, a little more in control. A part of him understood that if he saw Emily again, she would bring the past with her, which might drag him back down into the dark place. The hardest thing about escaping a cult wasn’t leaving but making sure it had left you.
Whenever he thought about finding Emily or any of the other survivors, his mind put up one roadblock after another. Tomorrow became I’ll do it after I’m settled in my new job became I really should do that sometime. He was busy, always busy, with too much going on to commit to something as significant as reconnecting, and the more time passed, the more daunting it became until he’d stopped thinking about it altogether.
Then Emily died to remind him that besides Angela, Claire, and his children, these people remained the closest thing to family he had left.
Hot, dry winds blew the ash of ancient forests across the cemetery as Emily’s body descended into the ground. The sun was a yellowish disc in the gray sky.
A reception at a local restaurant had been scheduled to follow the funeral. A few more hours, and David could go home.
He already had his exit planned out. He’d tell Beth and Deacon this was a sign they should stay in each other’s lives. He’d promise to keep in touch and propose ways they could do it, perhaps an annual retreat somewhere to talk and catch up. Then he’d stop thinking about it.
Old wounds never really healed. They opened again at the slightest cut. He’d never even told Claire about his years with the Family of the Living Spirit. How could he tell her about the nightmare he’d survived? Harder still would be explaining the joys. The raw happiness he’d experienced before it all went bad. How even now, after all these years, he still missed the Family. People only knew the stories about the murders, mass suicide, mutilations, and how everyone disappeared. They didn’t know that before Red Peak, the Family was a happy, safe community of people who’d simply wanted God in their lives every day, not just on Sundays.
Shortly after David had left the foster system, he’d met Claire in a trauma counseling group. She’d shared her story about her parents’ divorce and how her stepfather sexually abused her as a child. David told them that his parents had divorced due to his father’s infidelity, and his mother had moved them to another state to join a church, where he’d suffered a different type of abuse. Not a full description of the disease, but the symptoms were the same.
Over coffee, he and Claire discovered they both felt out of control, anxious, worthless, easily startled, and plagued by depression. Both were workaholics and prone to addictive behaviors. He couldn’t believe this intelligent and stunning woman was spending time with him. They saw themselves in such a negative light that they were surprised at their mutual attraction. A relationship with another person living with post-traumatic stress disorder presented obvious risks, but at least they understood each other’s demons.
Six months later, they were married. They didn’t know it at the time, but Alyssa, their daughter, was already on the way.
At the time, he’d started work as part of a security team hired by a cult deprogrammer operating in San Francisco. The deprogrammer achieved positive results with two out of three cultists, but the methods troubled David. Civil rights issues aside, he risked arrest for kidnapping. He worried whether the ones they saved were true successes, whether they came away from the experience possessing real freedom of choice. And for every cult member they lost, their relations with their family—the only lifeline they had to return to a life over which they had control—was severely damaged.
Claire had wondered why he didn’t just talk to them. For David, the answer was the same as to why you couldn’t reason a person out of a severe mental illness. Groups that practiced mind-control techniques rewired brains. They distorted reality. If a man thought he was Jesus, a simple solution seemed to be to quiz him on the Bible and then present his wrong answers to show him he was not in fact Jesus. But the man would simply answer, You have the wrong Bible. The same way the diehards in the doomsday cults doubled down on their belief every time their leader screwed up the date of the apocalypse.