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Back Surrender Your Sons Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Author’s Note with Content Warnings
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  41. CHAPTER FORTY
  42. EPILOGUE
  43. Acknowledgments

“Any of this gets back to me, I’ll deny it,” Darcy says. Archie and another gray-shirt stalk past us on their way out, but Darcy gives them a Gulch-friendly smile. “Church is up next,” she says once the men are gone. “Then a class called Home Life Behavior. We’ll talk again, but not until class. Do not approach me before I approach you.”

Darcy vanishes our plates through the saloon doors into the kitchen, and pleasurable anxiety whirls through my skull. She knows something about Ricky.

“Well, what’s it say?” Molly asks, back to whispering. Underneath the table, I unfurl Darcy’s note and hide it in the middle of the Playbill’s pages like I’m shuffling a deck of cards. If anyone catches me with the Playbill, who gives a shit? It was in my backpack, so they’ve already seen it and determined it’s nothing. Briggs walks past, and my arm trembles with the memory of his taser shock. When my kidnapper finally departs, I open the Playbill—deep-breathing until my hands stop shaking—and find Darcy’s secret message:

WHEN THEY ASK YOU TO BE MY HUSBAND, SAY YES.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

LEPERS

After breakfast, the Costa Rican sun rises over the jungle canopy and cooks us on our walk to church. The sweltering, dusty march of campers and counselors comes to an end at the familiar torchlights of Ambrose Chapel flickering through the daylight. Darcy leads the head of the pack, with Molly and me tutting along at the rear with whatever is the opposite of a spring in our steps. We’re both indescribably bummed: Darcy’s note had nothing to do with Ricky Hannigan, and if anything, its mysteriousness has only freaked us out more.

“What does she mean, ‘be my husband’?” I hiss. “I don’t want to marry anybody…”

“Obviously, I don’t know and don’t care,” Molly says with an agitated huff. “I’m not trying to solve a puzzle. Everyone here is a secret-keeping snake!”

“Agreed.”

Hellfire-winged butterflies swarm my stomach at the mere possibility—they can’t just force me to marry somebody. But something in Darcy’s catlike intensity won’t let me shrug this off; she doesn’t seem the type to invent something ridiculous. She meant something by this. While Darcy’s note has unsettled me, Molly has only further steeled herself to commandeer an escape boat. “As soon as I see my chance, I’m taking it,” she says. “And I’m not waiting around for you to think it over.”

After a morning of bed-making, sing-alongs, and secret letters, Molly reminds me Nightlight is a place not to be settled into but to be done with as soon as possible. I want to know what happened to Ricky, but the FBI is involved and the Reverend could be hiding something legit serious. I can’t snoop around and appear to be a solid, flag-saluting citizen of Nightlight.