But I do.

Samuel was right, as always.

I’ve been killing every person who reminded me of my past. If I want to get beyond its hold on me, I need to turn around and shut a door that was never closed.

“It’s okay,” I say, squeezing back with a faint smile that seems to do nothing to allay Eli’s concerns. “I’ll explain later.”

Eli nods and we exit the car, gathering my equipment before following Agent Langille into the hotel. I walk by Eli’s side as we cross the foyer and take the stairs to the meeting room. My adult body feels discordant with the part of my mind that vividly remembers life in the desert, this latent self that emerges like a neglected twin bent on revenge for the Ava I left behind.

Agent Langille knocks twice before we enter the room.

The coarse whispers of a grainy desert wind blast my thoughts clean as I take in the woman before me.

She sits at the table, sunglasses obscuring her missing eyes, hands curled around a glass of water, their skin weathered and speckled with marks from the sun. She’s in her mid-forties, but she looks older, her face lined by a life spent outdoors. She’s still beautiful in a harsh way. A defined yet feminine jaw, a birdlike grace that seems unsure as her head swivels in our direction.

Maybe her real name is Sara Munroe. But I knew her as Sunniva.

My mother.

“Bria?” Eli whispers as his hand wraps around my bicep. He pulls back as though he means to talk to me in the hallway but I rest my hand on his and shake my head.

Agent Langille introduces us as we enter the room. Eli sets my equipment down on the table and asks a few questions of Sara that barely register in my thoughts as I set up my monitors and laptop. He takes a seat next to Agent Langille along the wall as I describe my research to Sara in a way that feels mechanical. She doesn’t ask any questions, just consents. I have to fold her fingers around the pen and guide her hand to the paper for her to sign the consent form. A simple touch evokes so many images of destruction. My hand trembles when I slowly pull the pen from her grasp, forcing myself not to plunge it into her flesh. I think about how satisfying that would feel as I attach the leads to her skin and start my machines. But as I sit before her, I realize she’s also the keeper of the blind spots in my history.

And for the first time in a long time, I need her.

“I want you to think back to the first moment you met someone from Disciples of Xantheus,” I say, keeping my voice gentle and calm. “Try to imagine your surroundings. Try to place yourself back in that moment. Think about what you heard or felt or sensed around you.” I give Sara a pause as she takes a deep breath. “Where were you?”

“I was at a bus stop,” she says. Her voice is more like I remember as she slips into memory. A little smoother, but still just as meek. “There was a hot wind that blew the dust around. The cicadas were singing. I remember thinking how I’d like to be one of them. I’d not have to worry about where I was going or how much money I didn’t have. I’d just sing. I was sitting on the bench wishing I had a different life when these two women came from down the street and sat next to me.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Hannah and Grace.”

I swallow with the mention of Hannah’s name, Xantheus’s favorite wife and the mother of Xanus. She meted out many of my worst beatings and enjoyed each one. “What happened when they sat with you?”

“We got to chatting. I was pregnant and showing so they asked about the baby. I’d just turned eighteen, hadn’t been to the doctor, and didn’t know where I was even going. I told them I wanted to make it to California and maybe get a job in a restaurant while I took some classes. I wanted to be an actress. I knew I didn’t have enough money to make it to LA, so I’d go as far as I could and work my way there. When the bus came, they sat across the aisle from me and talked about their community. They said they had a little town around a spring. They said I could work there and help tend to the gardens and animals in exchange for a place to live and a chance to get on my feet.” Sara fidgets with her fingers, twisting her skin across her knuckles. “It didn’t take me long to agree. It sounded so perfect the way they described it. They were so nice, and I didn’t have anyone.”

I check the readings coming through my laptop, the scene she describes connecting the untethered ends of my history in loose knots. “Describe for me what you felt and experienced once you agreed.”

“I was relieved, at first. It was like I made a wish and it came true in an instant. But you know what they say about wishes…” Sara exhales a long breath and bows her head. Her fingers twist and unravel in constant motion. “It was good, at first. I met Xantheus and he welcomed me, explained the rules of the community. It didn’t take more than a few weeks before I’d settled in. I was praying in the temple like I’d been doing it all my life. I was helping with the garden even though I’d never had a green thumb. It felt good being part of a community, even if it was a little weird.”

“Weird in which ways?” I ask, curious about what she saw as strange from her vantage point as one of Xantheus’s chosen favorites.

Sara shrugs. “They hardly ever left the community. Only Hannah and Grace were allowed to go. I had to be blindfolded when they took me in. Then there were the prayers, the speaking in tongues, all that stuff. Before long, though, it didn’t seem so weird. It became normal. Even comfortable, because Xantheus liked me. I became his fifth wife before the baby was even born. I worked hard to stay in his favor.”

“Were you worried about not being in his favor?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“What made you feel that way?”

Sara bows her head again. Her shoulders fall. “He would find excuses to…punish…anyone who fell out of it.”

I resist the urge to shift in my seat. Discomfort pulls at my skin. My scars feel like living creatures on my back, squirming and scratching, desperate to be seen. “Punish how?”

“Beatings. Whippings. Burning. Isolation in a metal coffin he called the Sinner’s Box. Falling out of favor could have terrible consequences,” she says on a shaky breath, gesturing to her sunglasses. “He’s the one who took my eyes, after all. He told me it was my fault things had fallen apart over the years. He said I’d never look upon the beauty of God’s creation again.”

I glance at Agent Langille but he doesn’t look up from his notes. Eli’s presence next to him is heavy with the weight of interest and curiosity, but I don’t meet his eyes.

“Why did he think it was your fault, Sara?”

Sara’s chest shudders with uneven breaths. Her lip quivers. She sniffles and reaches out, tapping her hand across the surface of the table. I push the box of tissues into the path of her wandering fingers and she takes one. Tears streak down the left side of her face when her head tilts forward.

“Because Xantheus thought I birthed the daughter of the Devil.”

I feel the spike in curiosity from Eli and Langille like an electrical current in the room. But this isn’t news to me, of course. I’d heard it from Samuel’s encounter with Zara. They’d told me similar things in my childhood, that I had the influence of darkness, or that I allowed the Devil’s whispers to guide me astray.

I glance at Eli. He gives me a reassuring flicker of a smile, a nod to continue. There’s no way I can stop now. My brows draw together. An apology rolls across my tongue but never passes my lips.

“Why would he think that?” I ask, refocusing on Sara.

“Ava wasn’t…normal. I mean, everything seemed normal in the beginning, I guess.” Sara bows her head and wipes the tears that weep down her left cheek. “At least, that’s what the others told me when Ava was little. The children were raised communally and I wasn’t around as much as I should have been. I just…wasn’t ready.”