Pocketful of Pearls (16 page)

The bile rose in his throat at the thought of the tall, distinguished man twisting Scripture to fit his own dark desires,
convincing a sheltered, innocent girl that what he was doing to her was the will of God. The baby moved restlessly as his
arm tightened around her, and he made his muscles relax. Two traumatized females in one room would be more than he could handle.
One was making him feel badly out of his depth as it was.

“Nothing you could have done or said would have changed what he was doing,” he said at last.

“I wanted it to,” she said sadly.

“You’re not responsible for what happened to Tamara and any other girls he abused. You couldn’t have stopped it. No matter
what you sacrificed, he would still take what he wanted. He is responsible, not you. He needs to be stopped.”

“You can’t stop Phinehas.”

“Why not?”

“Matthew, he’s the senior Shepherd.”

“What about the church board? There must be some kind of governing body to hold the ministers accountable for what they do.”

“Only God.” From her tone, God was in on it with Phinehas, and couldn’t be expected to help.

“No other authority? No church elders?”

“There are Elders, but if anyone even whispered something like that out loud, they would be put Out. It’s like challenging
God. Just like refusing him is refusing to do God’s will.”

“Dinah, God doesn’t ask people to do evil.”

“He asks us to make sacrifices for others. Phinehas said that if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be able to go on as a Shepherd.
That my love gave him strength to give everything to the lost sheep. And if I stopped, the souls he couldn’t reach would go
to hell and it would be on my head for all eternity.”

“That sounds like emotional blackmail.” His voice was gentle, though his blood felt chilled. “He must be very good at it.”

She buried her head in her arms, crossed on her knees. “I’m so stupid. So ashamed.”

Somehow he managed to hold the bottle with his left hand so that Tamsen could still reach it, and slipped his right arm around
her shoulders.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, dear.”

Small sounds came from beneath her arms, and her body shook with weeping. He didn’t know if she could hear him or not, but
it had to be said.

“Phinehas is an abusive criminal who should be handed over to the police. He took advantage of you and hurt you. None of this
is your fault.”

She still did not respond; in fact, he wondered if she remembered he was there. Nonetheless, he stayed beside her until his
back began to ache, his arms around two of the victims of Phinehas. A clock downstairs struck a quarter after midnight and
he realized that, at last, the terrible day that had begun with such joy was done.

DINAH WOKE WITH
a jolt when the baby let out her fire-engine noise next to her. She stared at her for a moment, wondering how a kicking,
yelling infant had got into her bed, and then the events of the previous day flooded her memory.

She clenched her teeth against the pain in her knees, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and crawled out of bed to see if she
could find a bottle.

There was another one in Tamara’s baby bag. It was empty. A quick search produced no formula, no expressed milk, nothing resembling
food of any kind. Could babies drink regular milk? She couldn’t remember, and the noise was deafening.

A bleary glance into the fridge told her there was no milk, anyway. There was nothing for it. She was going to have to go
to town.

Tamsen didn’t want to go to town. She didn’t want to be changed. She wanted her breakfast, and when it wasn’t forthcoming,
she shrieked with rage and frustration as Dinah pulled on the first dress that came to hand, staggered down the stairs and
out to the barn, and bundled her into the truck. She screamed down the highway. She roared in the drugstore, where thankfully
the cash register was open and there was actually baby formula in stock. By the time they got into the truck and back out
on the highway, hysteria was competing with exhaustion and—Dinah was convinced—the advanced stages of starvation.

Somehow the instructions on the package registered in her brain and she got the bottle filled, to the right temperature, and
into Tamsen’s mouth.

The silence in the kitchen was like cool cream on a sunburn.

Matthew came in with an egg carton full of eggs and took them both in with a glance.

“Was that the truck I heard?” She was too drained to do anything but nod. “You had to go to town for formula? Dinah, there
are two of us here. Why on earth didn’t you ask me to go?”

She looked up at him. “I didn’t even think of it.”

He put the eggs in the fridge. “Next time, do think of it. You don’t have to do everything on your own. You don’t have to
take care of everyone. I’m your hired man, remember?”

“Hired men don’t usually look after abandoned babies.”

“Perhaps not, but I haven’t done anything hired men usually do since I got here. I’ve fished a woman from the river and fed
a baby, been a night watchman and buried a beloved companion. I haven’t pitched hay or driven a tractor even once.”

She couldn’t help the smile that trembled briefly at the corners of her mouth. “I knew there was a reason I hired you. You’re
versatile.”

“I have another useful skill. I can make very nice poached eggs, if you would like some.”

This time the smile was a bit more solid. “I would love some.”

Tamsen finished the bottle and Dinah put her on her shoulder to burp, too tired to care if the baby spit up all over what
she belatedly realized was her Sunday dress.

“Better use this.” Matthew handed her a tea towel from the drawer.

Tamsen promptly spit up on it, and when Dinah had cleaned her up, she sat the baby on her lap so they could look one another
over.

Half of her was afraid to know, to have what Danny had said confirmed in the innocent flesh of this child. Ambivalence was
a familiar emotion. She hated Phinehas, but he was the only one who paid her any attention. She’d been told that her salvation
depended on loving God, and Phinehas by extension, but how could you love someone who abused you, whom you couldn’t ask to
stop?

That was a mystery she was too exhausted to figure out.

And now here was this baby. Her niece. Child of the girl she loved with all her heart, a child that under normal circumstances—say,
if Tamara and Danny had been married—she would have adored and spoiled and been “favoritest aunt” to.

But here she was, this child of violence and power and hatred, sitting in her lap with not one single person on the planet
who wanted her to exist.

When you looked at it that way, only Dinah and Matthew stood between her and an adoption agency, and for all Dinah knew about
such matters, it could be a grim possibility.

“She doesn’t look like him.” Tamsen’s gaze, which had been rambling around the room, returned to her. “Her eyes are brown,
like Tammy’s.”

“Brown is a dominant gene.” Matthew sounded absent as he concentrated on cracking eggs into the simmering water.

“Good.” If she had to look into the ice-blue eyes of Phinehas every day, it would be a lot harder to love this little scrap.

The baby’s nose was a turned-up dab, and she saw Tamara’s wide-lipped grin and her dimpled chin. The forehead could be Phinehas’s
or her father’s, but she preferred to think it was the latter. Bit by bit she erased any possibility of recognition from Tamsen’s
face.

She tickled the palm of her niece’s little hand, and the baby’s fingers wrapped around her forefinger. There were the hands
of Phinehas, long and aristocratic. “You’re going to be a piano player when you grow up, aren’t you?” she murmured. Phinehas
could play their old upright as though it were a concert grand. But hands weren’t like eyes. You couldn’t see disgust and
desire and the unflinching need for control in hands.

“You are such a cantankerous little thing,” she said. “How did Tamara produce you?”

Matthew buttered the toast and slid the eggs onto a plate for her. “Can you manage?”

“I don’t know.” She settled the baby in her lap and let her kick and wiggle while she ate.

Matthew dished up his own breakfast and sat beside her. Briefly, he bowed his head and she realized she hadn’t said grace
for her meal.

Grace was a habit, like washing one’s hands before dinner. The truth was she didn’t like thanking God for meals when she had
absolutely nothing else to thank Him for. She waited until Matthew picked up his fork, and went on with her eggs.

It felt strange, off balance, to eat with a baby on one arm. How would she manage to cut a steak, for instance? “I wonder
if there’s a high chair around here,” she said aloud.

“That sounds like long-term thinking.”

“No, just practical. Aunt Evelyn will find Tamara sooner or later and we can get Tamsen back where she belongs. But in the
meantime, I guess I’d better look around for baby stuff.”

“
I HOPE YOU
know something about caring for babies.” Matthew followed Dinah up the attic stairs, marveling at how quiet the house was
with Tamsen asleep. They’d grabbed the opportunity to do some detective work and see what they could find in the way of baby
clothes and equipment. “What I know could fit in the nipple on her bottle.”

“My knowledge is seventeen years old,” Dinah confessed. She opened the attic door and stood to one side as he joined her.
“A little girl’s idea of looking after her little sister is trying not to poke her with the diaper pins and sticking a bottle
in her mouth when she’s hungry. There has to be more to it than that.” She paused, surveying the room under the peaks of the
roof by the light of the bare bulb overhead. “Good grief. Look at all this stuff. It’s going to take all day to find anything
in here.”

That was just for starters. Matthew didn’t know how long the family had been on this place, but there were at least three
generations’ worth of belongings up here. A three-speed bicycle leaned against an Art Deco-era chest of drawers. Boxes were
stacked on top of boxes, all labeled
Books.
That might be interesting, but definitely not at the moment. A number of lamps missing bulbs crowded the surface of a cedar
chest, and across the back of the room, a clothesline sagged under the weight of what looked like fifty or sixty dresses.
He narrowed his eyes.

“Were those your mother’s?”

Dinah looked up from a box she’d opened labeled
Dinah Baby
. “Those are color. Women in my family haven’t worn color in three generations. Those are probably Great-Grandmother Sarah’s,
from before she met the Shepherd. We’re a favored family because of her.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, when the original Shepherd came here, only two families would give him a place to stay or listen to the gospel he brought.
So as the Elect grew, those original families were called the First Fruits of the harvest, or just favored families. We have
Gathering in our home, and the men of the family are Elders, as it was in the first days. Hey, look. Here are some sleepers
of mine. And bibs and stuff.”

Still trying to work out the tenets of this odd religion, Matthew said, “But what if there are only girls in the family? Such
as this one, for instance.”

Dinah held up a crocheted, pale-aqua blanket with an old stain in the middle. “The McNeills—the other family—had girls, too.
So when Madeleine married, her husband Owen Blanchard became Elder.”

“Rather like British primogeniture,” he commented. “Property goes to the eldest son, or the son of the eldest daughter.”

“That’s going to be a problem in my case.” She didn’t sound as if she cared much that a four-generations-old tradition was
going to end with her.

“No husband, no son? How unsporting of you.”

“No way.” Her voice was hushed, and it sounded as though the words were being forced between her teeth. “Here’s another box
with Tamara’s baby things. Have a look around and see if you can find a high chair. And a crib. She can’t sleep in the car
seat forever.”