Chapters (48)
- TITLE PAGE
- COPYRIGHT
- CONTENTS
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“At least you’re getting your house back soon,” he said. “It’s not going to be as comfortable for Kate down at the station, but it’s going to be so much less invasive for all of you.”
“Yeah, I suppose, but I have no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves the rest of the time, when everyone else is gone. It’s going to be so weird. We’ve only been alone together one time, and that was the first night she got here. I don’t know how to even talk to her,” I said, fighting back the urge to cry. I tried not to cry in front of them, since it made them so upset, and I hated upsetting them. It was about more than being alone with Kate. I could feel Scott slipping through my fingers, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I really want to meet her,” he said. He’d texted me something similar a few days ago, but I wasn’t going to let anyone treat her like she was some circus freak, not even my son. I shook my head. “Come on, Mom. It’s not like I’m not going to meet her eventually. She’s part of the family.”
“She’s not part of the family,” I snapped without thinking. Except that she was. A bigger part than I’d ever been, and my part only became smaller the more time went on. That was what hurt the most.
KATE
THEN
“Our pain is only there to tell us something. Listen to what it has to say,” Ray had instructed us before he left for another one of his thirty-day soul journeys. Last time he’d hiked the peaks of Sioux Valley, but he hadn’t told anyone where he was going this time. We had all agreed to enter into a thirty-day fast while he was gone to help him achieve greater commune with the Lord. We needed to help him find an answer, because the ground still wasn’t responding.
Even Phil ate meat now. It was either that or starve, because no matter how hard we worked in the fields, our crops refused to cooperate. None of us knew anything about planting and growing vegetables in the wild, despite how organic we might have professed to be in our former lives. The only way to learn was by doing, and so far we’d destroyed more than what we’d created. Our supplies had dwindled down to almost nothing.
We’d all been counting the days until Ray came back, and today was the day. All we’d done while he was away was pray and meditate. No one had to voice what we all knew to be true—we couldn’t live this way much longer. We had to find a way to survive or move on.