In the darkest, coldest part of the night, four hours before dawn, Mary Durham escaped from the only home she had ever known.
For five hours she had lain awake in bed beside her husband, counting the seconds off on her fingers until they were sore and cramping. Slipping noiselessly from beneath the blankets, she crept through the pitch-black room. Unwilling to risk even the slightest light, for fear of waking her captors, she made her way around the silent house from memory. Over the years, she had completely memorized the layout of the building. Now the knowledge served her well, as she had to merely count her steps to know exactly where she was.
She dressed in the dark, pulling one of her baggy, shapeless dresses over her head and the swelling curve of her pregnant belly, still five months away from term. Next, a trip to the spare room, where the luggage she had carried in her own hands when she moved into Brother Ezekiel's house was kept. Padding on silent feet, she took a suitcase and a large duffel bag back to her room, where she filled them with dresses, socks, and underwear. She made no attempt to sort or fold. There would be time enough for that once she and Rebecca were out of the ungentle reach of the Church of the Holy Death and Fiery Resurrection.
When her suitcase was filled, she locked it, whimpering behind her teeth at the small click that resounded through the house, seemingly as loud as a shotgun. In the bed, her husband snorted, his huge belly and gray beard making him seem like an evil, malevolent Santa Claus. When, after an agonizing moment, no sound of discovery came, she ghosted down the hall to the dormitory where the younger children slept. In the dim glow of the nightlight, left on to aid the mother on duty, she filled the duffel with her baby's clothes and dressed Rebecca slowly, taking care not to wake her. In her mind she blessed her ability to sleep through anything less than a howling tornado.
One step left. Do I dare? Oh, Lord, please help me.
In the darkness, her jaw firmed. Trembling, she crept silently through the house to Brother Ezekiel's study. She opened the desk drawer where the monthly tithes were kept. Her fingers recognized the thick envelopes and the not-quite-paperlike feel of cash. Triumphantly, she slipped the envelopes into her pocket.
Too late to stop now, she thought deliriously. She felt an insane urge to laugh aloud. If they had caught me before, all I would have risked was a beating. Maybe a whipping. But stealing God's money? For that, they will stone me. And Becca will never see her mother again.
Fighting the desire to run, lest haste prove her downfall, she went back into the dormitory. Rebecca still slept. Slinging the duffel across her back, she picked up a suitcase with one hand and her child with the other. Stopping only to grab her heavy denim jacket, worn on cold days in the Utah mountains, and a set of car keys, she slipped out the front door.
In five minutes she had left the compound and her old life behind, heading east, Rebecca asleep on the passenger seat beside her.
*****
Two years later
"Mr. Hayes?"
The balding, overweight man at the desk looked up and smiled. "Come on in, Mary."
She did, although the presence of two people filled the tiny, cramped office to bursting. "I'm leaving for the day. I was hoping...I was hoping you might have some extra shifts for me later on this week. Or over the weekend?" she asked hopefully.
Dennis Hayes, owner of the somewhat inappropriately named 'Maggie's Diner,' shook his head. "I'm sorry, kid. Not right now. But if someone calls in sick, you'll be the first one I reach out to. I know things are tough for you right now. How are the girls? You haven't brought them by lately."
The young woman smiled, transforming her tired face into something approaching the angelic. "They're fine. Becca's pouting cause I won't let her eat all her Halloween candy at once. Deborah was too young to really understand what was going on, but she liked dressing up."
"What did they go as?"
She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her waitress' uniform. "Debbie was a ladybug. And Becca was a bumblebee." She fumbled with the controls, then showed him the pictures of her two smiling children, dressed in their outfits and holding hollow plastic pumpkins, ready for candy.
"Cute," Dennis said. "Where did you get the costumes? They're really well done."
"I made them myself."
"You did? Wow." He looked closer at the tiny screen. "That's some really good work, Mary. I wish the garbage I bought my kids when they were younger was half as good."
She looked down at her hands. "My mother taught me to sew when I was a little girl. It's not that hard." She swallowed and looked up. "I've got to go and pick the girls up. You will let me know if there are any open shifts, right? I have rent due at the end of the month, and the girls' sitter, too."
He nodded. "I will. Go on, now. And bring the girls by some night for dinner. I'll pay. No reason why you shouldn't have someone wait on you for a change, rather than the other way around."
"I will," she promised, and left the office, thinking how lucky she was to have found this job so soon after quitting her first. The manager at that restaurant had reminded her far too much of her former husband, with his leering mouth and pawing hands. She had walked out three days after she had started, and never regretted the decision.
But Dennis was cut from a different bolt of cloth. He and his wife had started the diner thirty years ago, and it was a Des Moines institution. Mary had caught hints from the other waitresses that after his wife died a lot of the heart had gone out of him. He was content now to simply mind the store and let the cooks and waitresses run things. As long as they pulled a profit every month he didn't care. And with the diner close to both the Iowa state capitol and to some of the ongoing construction work downtown, they did a steady if unspectacular business. He could usually be found in the office in the back, a benign, fatherly presence.
Shrugging into her heavy denim jacket, she walked out into the dim November evening, shivering as the chill north wind struck her face. The weather had shifted for good, it seemed. It would be cold and miserable all the way through April.
She drove to the sitter's house, mentally counting the tips she had made during the day. The other waitresses had told her that the money was better during the evening shift. But her schedule revolved around the girls, and it had proven impossible to find someone who would watch them in the evenings.
In fact, she considered Diana Polk a gift from God. A widow whose husband had passed away several months earlier from complications from diabetes, she supplemented her social security check by babysitting young children. Since she had raised five kids of her own, Mary had no worries when she left the girls at her house early each weekday morning and went to work at Maggie's. And the cost of paying her was a lot less than it would be in a traditional daycare.
She pulled into the gravel driveway and got out of the car. As she did, a cold rain began to fall and she hurried up the front steps, where Diana opened the front door for her.
"Looks like it's getting nasty out there," she observed. She shut the door firmly behind them, cutting off the wind. Inside, the house was warm and comfortable.
