The Outlaw by Jennifer Millikin
Prologue
Jo - Eighteen Years Old
It's notas if I thought my life would ever be anything great. Cults that operate under the guise of religious sects don't exactly allow for a lot of independent thought or imagination.
But in my wildest dreams, this isn't what I would've envisioned for myself.
I should be happy. And I am. Sort of. How happy can one person be when the best day of their life coincides with their worst? You'd think maybe they would cancel each other out, but somehow, they don't. The negative is a boulder, the positive, a balloon.
She's leaving now, her car stuffed to the gills with their belongings. Her ankle-length skirts, her jars of dusty potpourri, and all the things a toddler needs.
She's walking through the apartment once more, double-checking to make certain she has everything. She's taking with her a lot more than just her personal possessions.
"Say goodbye to your brother," she says, stopping a foot from me in the open doorway. Travis, twenty-seven months old and squirmy, leans away from her and holds his hands out to me. I hold tight to his top half, letting his soft yellow curls sweep my chest.
"Best get going," she clips, clearing her throat and gently pulling Travis from me.
I stand back, pulling myself up straight and staring at her. We are eye to eye, my height reaching hers this last year. As mothers go, she was young when she had me. Twenty-four. She looks older than her forty-two years now. And she never wears makeup.
It's the cult that won't let her paint her face. Makeup is meant to tempt men, and temptation is a sin. Of course, she's been living out from under the watchful eye of the leader, Magnus Markusen, for two and a half years. Still, no makeup. Such a faithful servant.
"You can come too, Josephine."
I rear back, her words a strike. She correctly interprets my flinching and says, "Having a child out of wedlock is a sin. I'll be lucky if they take me back."
"You don't have to tell me that, unless you're practicing your lie to make sure you sound convincing when you arrive and tell them how sorry you are and how lucky you feel."
Anger pulls at the muscles in her cheeks. Travis kicks his feet and bucks his body. She grips him with a second arm. No matter how much this cult likes to remove the need for sovereignty over oneself, they worship children. Children are loved, doted on, and cared for every hour of every day. Travis will want for nothing until he is older, until he wonders why nobody leaves, why the adults look like replicas of each other. That was my downfall. I dared to question.
I follow my mom to her car and wait while she buckles Travis into his car seat. She steps back when she's finished, and I lean in, replacing her.
"I love you, little buddy." I kiss his forehead, his chubby cheeks, breathe in the scent of the dry cereal he ate earlier mixed with the smell of his skin.
"Dis," he says, pointing at me. "Dis, Dis!"
"Yes," I answer, smiling at him and touching my fingertip to his. "Sis."
"We need to go," my mom says quietly from the front seat.
I kiss my fingers and place them against Travis's chest, right over his heart. My eyes burn. I climb out of the car and back away. The passenger window is open, and she leans across the center, her head framed by the window.
"Make good choices," she says to me.
"Same goes to you," I instruct, my voice stern.
We share a final, long look, then the car begins to roll. I want to run after it, to chase it down and speak words that will make her stop, say things I should've said a long time ago, words that would've altered the course of everything.
Back then, I was too ashamed to speak up. Now, I'm too unstable.
Hot tears course down my cheeks, and I don't bother to wipe at them. I walk back into the apartment, knowing I have only two weeks left in it before the rent is due.
To pay rent, I need a job. And I can't find a job if I'm sitting here on this sagging couch, crying about the fact that my entire life just drove away.
I wipe my eyes, blow my nose, and change my shirt. Our apartment is close to town. The walk is easy; it's each step that feels so overwhelmingly hard.
Once I reach High Street, two different people wave to me from their storefronts. Maia, from the Merc, and Wade, from Marigolds. I might've only moved to Sierra Grande a little over two years ago, but the small town took me in like a cactus absorbs every drop of rainwater, until I felt like I was here from the beginning, a native.
When I see the town's biggest and nicest hotel needs a server in its restaurant, I feel like I've hit the jackpot.
I get the job. I start shadowing the woman who has just put in her two-week notice, and when she's gone, I'm on my own. I do fine; eventually I have regulars, and I make enough to support myself.
The same cannot be said of my mom. God's Redeemers does not take her back into the fold. Apparently, she is not worthy of redemption. How ironic.
She stays gone for a year, trying to get hired at a hospital somewhere near the cult. They do not have openings for nurses, so she works in the gift shop. She's overqualified, but one day she saves a person's life when they go into cardiac arrest while picking out a gift for someone they've come to visit. Eventually the friend my mom and Travis are staying with gets married and moves, and my mom cannot support them without help.
Almost exactly three hundred and sixty-five days later, she returns to our apartment. We live together for seven years until my mom finds an opportunity to be a home nurse for a woman in Monte Vista, a town nearly five hours away. When she goes for the interview, she meets the old woman's son, Henri.
In no time her bags are packed, along with Travis's. It's the same scene from seven years ago, minus the pudgy hands and baby scent of his head.
The heartbreak is nearly identical.