Beneath the stars, Agnes bowed her head to pray.
God forgive me.
The Prophet was right about Outsiders. They tricked you with kindness, and nothing they said was as simple as it seemed.
If she had to meet a boy in the dark next month—a faithless, Gentile boy—she’d bring Father’s gun along with her.
In the meantime, she’d bury her secret deeper than the insulin cooler. She’d pretend she’d never met Matilda or witnessed the miracle of her medicine. When she administered Ezekiel’s shots, she’d watch the needle with only half her mind, keeping the other half pure and clean.
Every day, she’d be so faithful that God might overlook this trespass. Might even decide it was finally time to cure Ezekiel.
What a miracle it would be, Agnes thought fervently, trudging up the steep hill. If God took his sickness away.
2
AGNES
Until marriage, stay chaste. Treat the other sex like snakes.
—PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS
At dawn the next day, Agnes drew Ezekiel into the bathroom and carefully locked the door. She drew up her skirt to unstrap the glucose meter from her thigh, wincing as the tape tugged at sensitive skin.
Solemnly, Ezekiel extended the third finger of his left hand for her to prick.
The sinful screen flashed. His morning blood glucose—a safe 95.
She recorded the number in his log while he played silently with his stuffed Sheep. Then she prepared his basal insulin. With a steady hand, she plunged the syringe into his arm.
“Thumbs-up if you feel high today, okay?” she said. “Thumbs-down, if you feel—”
“Low, I know.” He chewed his lip, pouting. “But Agnes, why should I?”
She frowned. “Why signal me, you mean?”
He shook his head vigorously. “I mean, why am I sick? Why is God mad at me?”
Her chest tightened. “Oh, Ezekiel. I truly don’t know.”
His features firmed with resolve. “I’ll pray extra hard in church today. I swear.”
Tenderly, Agnes kissed his forehead—her own body burning with grief and guilt.
“Our secret, remember,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “Our secret.”
Thanks to the Outsider, he had enough insulin to survive another thirty days.
In the kitchen, Beth speared Agnes with a look so meaningful it bordered on sinful.
A look that said, You’ll regret keeping secrets from me, sister.
“Mary, go brush your teeth!” Agnes shouted, ignoring her. “Sam, help your sisters tie their shoes. I mean it.”
If they didn’t hurry, they’d be late for church.
Bells tolled and the screen door slammed. They followed Father to Red Creek’s dusty road, joining a procession of other families on their way to the white clapboard church. On the first of July, the air shimmered with unrelenting heat.
Only Agnes’s mother stayed behind. She never went to church anymore—never went anywhere. Father lied, told their neighbors she was infirm. In truth, she indulged the sin of despair, staring blankly at the bedroom ceiling, day after day.
She only came out to shower when everyone slept.
Agnes had discovered her once, her frail mother standing in the hallway, her hair lank and damp. She wished she’d never seen her mother scuttle back to her room. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on her in weeks.
Afterwards, Agnes made a point of staying in bed when she heard running water.
Father often wondered aloud when the Prophet would gift him with another, better wife. A real helpmate, this time.
“It’s a great blessing I have Agnes to keep house,” he told approving church matrons. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
The road was more alive on Sundays than on any other day. Agnes loved to see three hundred of God’s faithful in their starched collars and hear all the children’s voices rising high. And there were plenty of children. Most Red Creek families were bursting at the seams. The Prophet himself had twenty-one children and eleven exalted wives.
Father hadn’t been so lucky. Agnes and Beth wondered, beneath the bedcovers, what marked him for such misfortune.
“God must’ve told Prophet Rollins that Father isn’t ready to take another wife,” Agnes said. “Maybe there’s some stain on his soul?”
“I don’t want another mother, anyway.”
“She could help with chores,” Agnes pointed out.
“Or she could be spiteful,” Beth replied. “And cause more trouble than she’s worth.”
The words made Agnes squirm, because they sounded like rebellion. God would give them another mother or not, just as He would give them away in marriage or not. But Beth had always struggled with her woman’s role.
I made the right choice, keeping Ezekiel’s secret to myself, she thought. Perfectly right.
On the road, Agnes held Ezekiel’s hand, and Ezekiel cradled his Sheep. Sam hurried to catch up with them, cheeks ruddy under the high desert sun.
“Will the Prophet preach the Rapture today? I want to hear about fire and brimstone and what will happen to the Outsiders!”
Sam couldn’t get enough of avenging angels with flaming swords.
A smile touched Agnes’s lips. “The Prophet will preach what God wills.”
“But the Rapture is so exciting! I wish the apocalypse was happening today.”
Ezekiel tugged Agnes’s hand, her cue to bend so he could speak into her ear.
“I don’t like the Rapture sermon,” he whispered gravely. “It gives me nightmares.”
“Only Outsiders need fear the Rapture,” she whispered back.
“And the rebellious, right?” Ezekiel squinted, anxious. “Won’t they be struck down, too?”
Moonlight on the King family gravestones. A syringe in her hand. And Beth asking, Agnes, are you in rebellion?
Unsettled, Agnes entered the church.
The building had been constructed in the time of the Prophet’s grandfather, with pews to seat the three hundred people of Red Creek. No windows—the Prophet said earthly light was a needless distraction. An enormous cross hung from a wire, twisting slowly on its bearings. The bronze symbol made her anxious, looking as if it were always about to fall. She soothed herself that the wire was strong.
She glanced at Ezekiel, alive by the grace of a dozen broken Laws, and swallowed.
What if her wires were faulty? What if she was the one about to fall?
She opened her well-loved Bible with shaking hands. It fell open to a familiar passage:
I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.
“Amen,” she whispered while the cross twisted this way and that.
After the sermon, the girls filed into one annex, the boys into another.
Agnes’s eyes lingered on Ezekiel’s thin back as he disappeared behind the boys’ door. She’d stuffed his pockets, as usual, with homemade granola bars in case his blood sugar dipped low. She told herself he’d be fine, that God would watch over him. But her stomach twisted anyway.
In the girls’ room, Agnes pulled out her notebook to copy the name of the lesson scrawled on the chalkboard—Why Perfect Obedience Produces Perfect Faith.