I couldn’t count the number of times I’d started the conversation, but he’d always stopped me. “We don’t need to talk about it. I get it,” he’d say. “You still love James, and I still love Kate, so it feels like we’re doing something wrong. I know someone will always have part of your heart, just like someone will always have part of mine.” The conversation always ended there.

He remembered. I saw it in his eyes. He rose slowly and walked over to the bed. He plopped down next to me. “Can we just go to bed tonight and pretend these last five minutes never happened?”

“Sure.” I forced a smile for his benefit, but not because I would ever forget.

KATE

THEN

Willow was right—leaving California was what I’d needed to let go of my life there, even though I’d fought against it with everything in me right up until the day we left. Being physically near my family made me feel close to them even if they wanted nothing to do with me. The new physical space created new emotional space within me. It was exciting to live somewhere besides California, since I’d been there since I was three. But my guilt wouldn’t allow me to enjoy it. Happiness felt too disrespectful to my family’s memory.

Twenty-three of us had piled into vans and headed to Oregon after Ray received a prophecy that we were to separate ourselves from the rest of the world to prepare for the next part of our journey. A sense of camaraderie had grown up among us as we had created our new home. I’d never worked with my hands before, but all we had done was work in the forest clearing trees and digging in the dirt, and it had been some of the most satisfying work I’d done. Things would have been almost perfect if we hadn’t been starving. Our meals had dwindled down to beans and rice while we waited for our crops to grow. All we’d had for dinner tonight was bread and water. We’d been nervously waiting around the campfire for Ray to return ever since.

He’d disappeared by himself after lunch, promising to have food when he returned, without any mention of how he planned to get it, and he’d refused to let anyone join him. It wasn’t unusual for him to go off by himself, but it was getting dark, and he still wasn’t back yet. We were almost ready to go to bed when someone spotted him coming through the clearing behind the spice garden. Something dangled in his left hand, but it was too hard to see what it was in the dark. As he got closer to the fire, he raised his arm up, dangling two rabbits upside down, eyes bulging out of their sockets.