Allison Brennan - Silenced

“Call him. I’ll fill Noah in.”

The attic room above the rectory was cool when Ivy climbed in through the window Father Paul had left unlatched for her. The heat wave might not have broken, but it had cracked enough that the evening was pleasant.

Sara was sleeping in the twin bed, curled into a ball, the blankets pulled around her neck. Ivy watched her sister, her heart overflowing with unconditional love.

She’d been ill-equipped to protect Sara from their father, but Ivy hoped she’d been spared the worst. Sara hadn’t talked about what happened in any detail. She didn’t have to.

Ivy had lived it.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be free.

Marti had come through. Their IDs would be ready in the morning. It would take everything Ivy had stolen from Mrs. Neel, but Marti was even giving her a car to get to the border.

She retrieved a sleeping bag from the corner and unrolled it on the hardwood floor.

“Ivy?” Sara whispered.

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t. Sit with me.”

Ivy climbed onto the twin bed and sat up, her back against the wall. Sara turned on the small lamp next to the bed and leaned against her. Ivy played with the ends of her hair like she used to do when Sara was little. “I like Father Paul.”

“Me, too.”

“Why can’t we live here?”

“You know why. Other than the rules Father Paul is breaking just letting us stay here, eventually our father will find us. We need to disappear. I have some money, not a lot, but enough to get us into Canada.”

Sara didn’t say anything for so long, Ivy thought she’d fallen asleep. Ivy was drifting off herself when Sara whispered, “He started calling me Hannah.”

Ivy was instantly awake, her eyes open, glancing around the room almost expecting to find him here.

But her father wasn’t here. Not yet, anyway. He was in his fortress near the Pennsylvania border.

He would come, though. The FBI agent had talked to him, because that was the only way he could have known that Ivy had been diagnosed mentally ill.

Diagnosed by a quack doctor who lived on the mountain with her father and his followers. The same doctor who had given her drugs to make her compliant. So she couldn’t fight her father when she turned fourteen and took her rightful place in his bed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out sooner,” Ivy said, her voice cracking.

“I knew you would come. You promised you would be back, and you came.” She took Ivy’s hand. “I didn’t believe you until it happened. I’m sorry, Ivy. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Sara. You thought I was dead. I know what you were feeling, thinking. How could such a kind, wonderful man who picked wildflowers with me hurt me?” Ivy stopped before she made herself physically ill. Their father was a master at selling the act to the world both inside and outside the fortress. When she was a little girl, before their mother died, he made her believe they were special. That dreams could come true. That they lived in a fairy tale, in a castle, where God loved them best, where their daddy worked for God, saving people, helping them get to heaven. A dream where hope lived, all was good, and all good came from their daddy because he was specially blessed. And even after the car crash that killed her mother, she let herself believe him, because she desperately needed to.

She let him convince her that her mother tried to kill her and Sara when she crashed the truck. She didn’t want to believe the truth, because she didn’t understand it.

But maybe because of the seed her mother had planted in her mind that night, Ivy had doubts.

She had doubts because their older sister Naomi changed.

She had doubts when she found Naomi in his bed.

And she knew it was wrong when she read Naomi’s hidden diary and found out what their father was underneath his pretty face. What disturbed her, even before she knew it was wrong, was that Naomi had convinced herself that she was anointed and special, that their mother died because she was ignorant of the truth and normal course of human nature. Through Naomi’s diary, Ivy had learned what happened in their father’s bed. She learned that Naomi was grooming Ivy to assist with this “important responsibility.” All those sisterly words of wisdom about hair and clothing and perfumes and shaving were all because that’s what their father wanted.

And she learned that once Ivy gave in to the will of their father, she would be responsible for grooming Sara.

So when she turned fourteen and he brought her to his bed, she knew it wasn’t for a bedtime story.

But it wasn’t until she gathered the courage to escape did she learn the truth about who betrayed her mother the night she died.

The night Marie Edmonds tried to save her daughters, she didn’t know that her oldest daughter had gone straight to the devil himself. Naomi had told their father of her mother’s plans to escape from the mountain, and that she expected Naomi to make sure the gate was open.

Ivy didn’t know it either. Not until Naomi caught her trying to leave with then-eight-year-old Sara and told her the truth. Their mother didn’t commit suicide, though Naomi was in denial.

“I put her medicine in her tea,” Naomi told Ivy six years ago. “I couldn’t let her leave. I thought she’d pass out long enough to get Daddy. I didn’t know she was going to get in the truck! I played along with her, told her I’d open the gate, but I went to the church instead.”

Naomi’s eyes had been glazed, just like they always were. But even though she was on her happy pills, she was anxious. “She took you and Sara. Put you in the truck. She wanted to kill all of us, because she was so sick. I saved your life, Hannah. Daddy and I saved you.”

Naomi believed it. Maybe she had to believe the lie in order to survive.

Marie Edmonds had been murdered when she found out she was married to a monster. And Ivy would never forget the promise she made to take care of Sara, forever.

Sean didn’t talk to Paxton unless he had a specific question. He detested being in the same room with him. While poring over the schedules and lists he’d created, one part of his brain was working on how to take down the senator-as soon as the statute of limitations ran out in Massachusetts, which was months away.

Sean reviewed all the background checks he’d started on Paxton’s employees, current and former, and nothing stood out. There were no spouses or boyfriends or girlfriends or exes or relatives that stood out as having a reason to take the locket and threaten Paxton.

“Why did Chris Taylor leave your office?”

“Because he deserved a chief of staff slot, and Dale Hartline is from my home state. I recommended him for the position.”

“You wanted someone loyal to you in Hartline’s office.”

“Dale is a novice, and a good man. Too trusting. Chris wouldn’t betray him.”

“Or you.”

Paxton slapped his palm on his desk. “I rearranged my night to meet you here. The locket went missing three weeks ago, the week after I gave the media the photos of Alan Crowley and the prostitute. I already reviewed the security tapes. No one came into my office outside of those meetings.”

“Which reminds me-why did you keep it in your Senate office when your house is more secure?”

“More secure? You easily broke in.”

“Not everyone is me.”

“The locket has always stayed in the drawer in my Senate office, except when I travel home for break. I bring it with me.”

Sean didn’t think Paxton was being honest, but what did he expect? “Let’s assume that whoever came into your office had a reason to be there,” Sean said. “They had to have suspected you had something incriminating in your office.”