Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels) (34 page)

I had walked out to the pigpen to dump the slop bucket of kitchen scraps—a job one of the sisters had neglected for two days. Not appreciating the accumulation of flies the bucket brought into the kitchen, I had decided to rid the back porch of this nasty business myself. But as I crouched in the shadow right next to the pigpen, carefully pouring the slop into the trough to avoid splashing it on my bare feet, I overheard two brothers talking quietly, with the kind of emotion that makes your ears prick up and listen. The small metal building separated us, but their voices carried with clarity.

“Stone had it coming,” proclaimed one man. I recognized his voice as one of the brothers who’d been with Sky that night when Mountain had taken me to stand before them, that night when Skip had escaped without me.

“I’m not so sure,” said the other. “There could’ve been another way.”

“What, just let him go? What if he’d gone to the police or the FBI? What then?”

“He promised he wouldn’t.”

“But how could we trust him?”

“But it would’ve been better than—”

“Like Mountain said, we had to do what was best for the group.”

“But it feels wrong.”

“Look, you’d better just forget all about it. It’s over and done with. And what’s done is done. Now don’t keep bringing it back up.”

I squatted there on the ground as if frozen for what seemed a long time but was probably mere minutes. Flies swarmed about me, and the smell of rotten food drifted up to my nostrils. Yet I hardly noticed. As realization fully hit, I began to shake and tremble, and a fresh fear washed over me to think they might discover me eavesdropping.

I felt sickened by what I’d heard, what I now suspected had happened. Skip had not escaped after all. He had been caught. Deep down inside of me, in some hidden place in my heart, I knew with a cold certainty that Skip was dead.

Somehow I managed to stand and stumble back into the kitchen, and then, just barely grabbing the edge of the counter in time, I threw up in the sink. Crying and gasping and choking, I continued to vomit again and again before I finally collapsed onto the floor in sobs, curled into a fetal position, just hoping to die. Venus found me like that and called in one of the sisters to clean up the mess I’d created while she escorted me up into my bedroom.

There she helped me to lie down on the bed and then looked me over carefully. I didn’t know why, nor did I care. I simply lay there, helpless and limp, thoroughly beaten. I closed my eyes and tried to shut everything out. I must’ve fallen asleep because when I finally awoke it was dark all around me. Somehow, perhaps only by God’s grace, I had managed to sleep for hours, but now I needed to use the bathroom.

Tiptoeing out my door and down the hallway, I paused when I heard voices. I could tell at once that it was Sky and Venus in the middle of what sounded like a serious and heated argument.

“Listen to me, Sky. I know what I saw.”

“But she
can’t be
pregnant,” insisted Sky.

“She has all the symptoms,” said Venus in her I-know-every-thing voice. “I found her vomiting this morning, she’s been sleeping all day, she has those dark shadows beneath her eyes—”

“But Stone said that was why he was leaving,” interrupted Sky. “Because she refused to sleep with him. He said after what happened with Sunshine he just couldn’t take it all over again.”

“But you didn’t believe him, did you?” injected Venus. “Remember, Sky, you called him a filthy liar.”

“That’s not the point.”

“The point is, I think she may be expecting Stone’s baby. And if she is, that means you were all wrong.”

“I am not wrong,” he said firmly. “I know Rainbow is still a virgin.
I
know.
I could see it in her eyes that night.”

Venus laughed lightly. “Oh, Sky.”

“Do not mock me.”

“I’m sorry, Sky. But, really, just think about it.”

“I don’t need to think about it. God has already shown me that she’s
the one.
Our promise child
will
be born through Rainbow—that’s what her name means, you know, it means promise. And she
will
bear my promise child.”

At that point I knew I could stand no more. I feared I might actually explode with words and rage and accusations that would only put me into worse trouble, and so I bit into my lip and tiptoed back to my room. And despite my resolution just days ago (when I’d believed Skip had abandoned me) when I had sworn that I would never, ever pray to God again, I now fell on my knees next to my bed and prayed. It was all I knew how to do just then.

I prayed and prayed and prayed—all kinds of things. It was just like opening Pandora’s box—everything just started flying out! I asked God why he’d allowed all this to happen. I asked him if Skip was okay. Was he alive? Was he with God right now? I just prayed and prayed, like I’ve never prayed before. And when Venus walked into my room, that’s how she found me.

“Rainbow,” she said quietly. “I need to talk to you. And I need you to be totally honest with me. Okay?”

Unsure of how best to answer, I simply nodded, then stood. “What is it?” I asked as I sat down on my bed, feeling surprisingly calmed and strengthened.

She sat next to me and took my hands into hers—a strange gesture for her. But I didn’t resist her act of kindness. “When I saw you getting sick down in the kitchen I thought it might be because you’re expecting a baby. Do you think this is possible?”

Now in what was probably just a split second, I wondered what the safest answer might be. If I lied and told her I was pregnant, it would make it appear as if Skip had lied to Sky about our wedding night and that would naturally put me in greater suspicion regarding his botched escape plan. But if I told the truth that I could
not
be pregnant, Sky would most likely try to force himself upon me before too long. And so I shot up a quick and silent prayer, and to my surprise felt an answer: to simply tell the truth.

“I am not pregnant, Venus. That would be an impossibility.”

“Are you positive?”

“Well, I believe in order to become pregnant you must first have sex. And since I have not, I would have to assume that I’m not pregnant.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, I was just wondering since it seemed you had all the symptoms.”

“Oh, that,” I said dismissively. “I had just emptied the slop bucket and I think the pigpen smell got to me.” I looked down at my hands lying limply in my lap. “And I suppose this whole thing about Stone running away is still pretty upsetting to me. It makes me feel like a real failure as a new wife, you know.” I turned and looked at her, hoping for some sympathy, although I knew it was a long shot.

She nodded. “Yeah, that must’ve been hard. I don’t know what I’d do if Mountain pulled something like that.” She started to stand, then stopped. “And if you don’t mind me asking, Rainbow, when did you have your last monthly cycle?”

I paused for a moment to remember. “Actually, I think it’s been nearly a month right now.”

“So you should have it any day then.”

“Yes.”

I could see the wheels spinning in her head, as if she were mentally calculating (and I knew from reading the natural childbirth book exactly what she was adding up—it should be about two weeks before I would become a good, fertile baby factory). “Well, good night then, Rainbow. Sorry to bother you, but I was just concerned. Now you sleep well.”

I don’t think I slept a bit that night. I felt more at peril than ever, and so once again I began to pray in earnest. It seemed that prayer was all I had. And as strange as it sounds, it’s as if I could feel Skip leading me through this horrible thing, telling me that everything was going to be okay, that he was just fine now, and that I could trust God. And somehow that sustained me.

I always feel slightly hypocritical when I tell people I found God while living in some crazy cult-commune better known as the Funny Farm out in California. But I think that’s pretty much the truth of things. Oh sure, I may have given my heart to Jesus some time before that. But I believe I truly
found
God when I discovered I could
really
talk to him (and say absolutely anything—good or bad or ugly) and believe that he was still there, still really listening to me during those long, dark hours after I learned of what I felt certain must be Skip’s death. And so as I continued to keep to myself in the following days, still grieving the loss of Skip, I also clung to my new lifeline with God—a line I firmly believed Skip had tossed to me. Had he tossed it to me while still here on earth, or from heaven? I can never be fully sure. But I clung to it all the same. For it was all I had. And to this day I am thankful.

Did I fret over the strange conversation I’d overheard between Sky and Venus about me becoming the mother of their “promise child”? More than likely, but at the same time, I tried to bring these worries and fears and anxieties to God—my lifeline. And somehow I believed that God was going to provide me a way to escape.

Days passed with nothing. And by early June, I felt my spirits sagging some. But still I prayed.

Then one afternoon, just after I’d gone outside to pick leaf lettuce out in the kitchen garden, a very strange thing happened. First, and not so unusual, I noticed Sky’s van pull up on the road (he’d probably been running errands in town). But behind him was a black-and-white police car.

I stood and watched with interest as both vehicles paused at the gate, and then once it was opened, the patrol car slowly followed Sky’s van up toward the house.

I don’t quite know what came over me just then, but for some reason I just set down my produce basket and began to walk out toward the driveway, slowly at first, then faster, almost running. I had no idea why a policeman had followed Sky inside the compound (or why Sky had even allowed it—for all I knew he was going to sell the officer some pot!) but it didn’t matter. I knew I was going to be leaving in that police car. By the time the two vehicles had pulled to a stop, I was only about ten feet away from the patrol car, and that’s when I saw Joey Divers sitting in the passenger’s seat right next to the uniformed cop.

He opened the door and climbed out, and I ran straight toward him.

Twenty-five

I
felt Sky’s eyes on me
as I ran toward Joey, and I knew this could be dangerous, foolhardy even. Sky was still king of his little domain, and I was behaving in a way that was intolerable. But I simply didn’t care. I was leaving. This time, there was nothing Sky could say to pressure me into staying. Dead or alive, I was getting out of this place.

By now the officer had gotten out of the car, and I noticed his hand poised just above his revolver. “Is that her?” he asked, nodding toward me as he warily eyed Sky and Mountain. The two had just climbed from the van and looked extremely ill at ease.

“Yes,” said Joey as I fell into his arms. “This is her.” He looked at me earnestly. “Do you want to come with me now, Cass?”

“Yes,”
I said, clinging to him with both hands.
“Right now.”

“Do you want to get anything first?” he asked as he looked over my shoulder.

I would’ve liked to have retrieved my mother’s photo and my guitar and a few other things, but I glanced at the crowd that was quickly gathering and knew there was no time to lose. I looked into Joey’s face, still incredulous that he’d actually come for me. After all this time and all that had transpired—after I’d given up all hope, here he was standing right before me. I felt my fingers dig hungrily into his arms and yet he didn’t even flinch.

“Cass?” His face was close to mine now, a sense of urgency in his eyes. “Do you want to get any—”

“No,” I interrupted him. I had suddenly remembered the guns on the Funny Farm, and after what I believed had happened to Skip, I just didn’t know what Sky and his bodyguards might do if we gave them half a chance. The policeman was clearly outnumbered. “I think we should just go,
now.”

The officer nodded at me as he opened the back door. “Get in, then, both of you.”

I wasted no time as I grabbed up my full skirt and climbed into the backseat with Joey climbing in next to me. I remember how it struck me as funny—despite the threat of danger—that there were no handles on the interior of the doors and that Joey and I were locked in just like a couple of common criminals. And yet this was the first time in ages that I finally felt safe. Joey slipped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him with relief.

I didn’t even look back as the officer quickly turned around his car, then sped down the driveway, away from the Funny Farm, his tires spewing gravel as he went. I closed my eyes, welcoming Joey’s arm around me, and prayed for our safety. I didn’t care if I ever saw the place again.

Once we were safely beyond the gates, I turned to Joey.
“You came!”
I cried, throwing my arms around him. I started to shake, even though the danger was behind us. “Thank God, you came!”

He looked into my eyes, his expression full of concern. “My mom sent me your letter, and it sounded pretty desperate. I came just as quickly as I could.” He glanced at the officer, who was focused on the road. “After the ‘warm welcome’ I got the last time I came, I thought I’d better bring some help this time.”