One of Many (18 page)

Everything is in disarray inside the house, messes, footprints, fingerprint dust and all the things that made the house a home are displaced—out of order. During our time away, the police searched it for evidence, coming up empty handed. Father Weston had skeletons in the closet, and Kiev and I are determined to find them.

Or at least one: Kiev’s mother.

Kiev

My leg hurts like a bitch. Supposedly, that's normal. Since I've never been shot before, it's a new pain to deal with.

Seems small compared to all the hurts of the past that are now over.

Weston is finally dead.

Audrey's hand is damp in my grip. She's nervous. Because this is the house of horrors.

This is the house where she was ultimately kept against her will. Raped. Beaten.

Where we found love. A first for me.

But not without a journey of pain. Finding that promise at the end of the torture doled out by Weston has been the biggest challenge of my life.

Audrey's brave. But she doesn't realize all the details. I sheltered her from a lot of it.

Weston was loaded. Made it off the backs of the hundreds within The Community.

It's all mine now. Blood inheritance. At least, that's how I think of it. I’d be lying if I said having the financial security wasn’t wanted. It is. It’s not as though Audrey can just go out and get a job after all she’s been through. And I don’t want to clock in eight or more hours a day and leave her alone. Not yet. She needs me.

And I need her.

But no amount of money can erase the past. Nothing can take away the scarred memories. But something can ease the pain. It took a lifetime and one Little Bride for me to figure it out. And hell if I’m letting Audrey go.

Ginny is in jail after she spilled her guts. She held out as long as she could, wanting to keep the image of Father Weston pure, as fucked up as that is. I don’t think a lifetime of therapy is enough to undo the damage dear old dad did on that woman’s mind. Though I’m fairly certain Ginny was batshit crazy from the start.

As Audrey and I stand there by the house, I hear the distant sound of bloodhounds. Searching.

Many years ago, the houses in South Dakota had cisterns, shallow wells that served the family within the home with running water.

I can't go with the roaming dogs as they search for my mother's watery grave.

Langley disallowed me accompanying them anyway. No son needs to remember his mom that way.

With Weston's death, Ginny had finally buckled under pressure. And the simple fact that her fingerprints had been on the gun.

My mom had disappeared all right.

Ginny and she had been having an argument all those years ago. Ginny wasn't top bride, as she'd seen it. Swollen with her third child, she'd been overcome with rage and jealousy at my mother. She'd shoved her.

The hidden cistern cover was originally covered with wood, but succumbed to the elements long ago.

Mom didn't have a chance.

Madeline DeVere, first and only lawful wife of Father Truman Weston, had fallen to her ultimate death.

The cistern had been deep enough to make climbing impossible. Stone construction caused the walls to be a slick cylindrical tomb.

It's too fucked up to speculate about Mom being down there in whatever cold fetid water remained in the unused well, slowly treading water.

Finally succumbing to hypothermia. Then drowning.

Every time I think about the last minutes of her life, it's almost as if I can feel the sensations she did. Did she think about me? Her only child—still alive—never knowing what would become of her?

But I do know. It's a terrible knowledge. But I've reconciled it. Better to know what happened to Mom than to wonder forever.

Ginny admitted she came to Father Weston. Told him her sin of coveting Mom—the incident at the well.

By the time Weston got to the cistern, there was only a floating body. Proof of their sins.

Weston covered for Ginny. The small problem of that pesky first wife tidied up nicely.

Problem was, no one knows where the cistern is. Ginny conveniently “forgot” all details. All she gave police to go on was that it was located on the property. No shit.

A howl rolls over the prairie.

I close my eyes, and Audrey leans her face against my shoulder.

Maybe they've found her after all.

*

Audrey and I stand under the sleeting rain. A tent has been erected over the grave, but many of the bystanders are getting drenched.

The public wouldn't miss the graveside service of the infamous first wife of what many are calling a cult leader.

There's no
calling
involved. Father Weston
was
a cult leader. A sadist. A rapist. A liar.

A polygamist.

So
many
things.

Primarily, he was evil. And that's the one thing I have that's totally solid. Real evil does exist in this world.

Audrey tucks into my side, and I shift my weight, easing it off my leg that aches like a rotting tooth.

Langley's hounds had found the cistern. A DNA sample from me had proved the connection we all knew would be there.

Mom was finally laid to rest.

Ginny's in jail.

Father Weston can't corrupt anymore. Hurt anymore.

I gave the house to the wives. My brothers and sisters can live there. I can't. Rachel, who desperately wanted children of her own, has become the caregiver to Ginny’s children. Anna is still there, for now. She’s been talking about moving in with her sister in Texas and starting over.

Audrey and I want far away from Tea, South Dakota.

We've made our future home in Rapid. The foothills of the Black Hills is what we want.

What our future child will want.

I put my hand over her still-flat belly and smile.

Subconscious urgings are sometimes listened to. I wanted Audrey, and I made sure she would be mine. First time I ever had unprotected sex was with her.

My feelings got in the way of taking down The Community. But they were never more certain after I laid eyes on Little Bride.

Now she
will
be a bride, my bride. She will be a wife.

The one she wants to be.

After purchasing our little house nestled in the mountains, we'd sequestered ourselves. The rest of my inheritance went to a support group for abused women.

A small portion, I set aside for our child.

The press won't leave us alone. They keep asking for interviews. They want to know the gory details.

In a combined statement, we said they aren't ready for it.

When we're ready, we'll talk.

The priest says the final words, and dirt hits the top of Mom's coffin with a hollow ring of finality. She'd been Catholic once upon a time.

Audrey fingers the slim sterling cross we'd found in a lockbox. I can remember Mom wearing the glittering symbol when I was small.

Silent tears roll down Audrey's cheeks. “Don't be sad, baby,” I murmur for her ears alone.

She tilts her face to look up at me. The sound of rain batters the temporary tent like an insistent drumbeat. Audrey's blue eyes appear to float in all the pale skin of her face. “I'm sad for
you
, Kiev.” Her lips tremble, and a sudden surge of lust strikes me.

The timing's all wrong, but that's the thing, timing is always wrong. Audrey belongs to me, and seeing her grieving for something that was stolen from me is powerful, my love swelling for her in a tight mass inside my chest.

Instead of telling her how I'd love to lay her out right here, I cover her belly again. “Be happy for the chance, Little Bride.” The nickname I used to call her to play with her emotions, keep her off balance, I now say with tenderness.

This girl has stolen who I was and reinvented me into something new.

Something worth having.

We don't watch the coffin being lowered.

I carefully take Audrey and turn her toward where the SUV is parked. The tinted windows are black holes, sleet stinging the glass and sheeting off in a torrent of water.

The sky's open, pouring the grief of The Community on top of our heads.

Audrey and I huddle, an umbrella taking the onslaught of the deluge of rain.

Reporters converge like lions after a gazelle, and I hold up a hand, careful with my footing on the slick grass. My leg isn't 100 percent yet, but I've gotten after the physical therapy in my normal, obsessive way.

I've got something worth protecting. I'm not having my parts all fucked up so I can't handle something coming down the pike at my new family.

“Kiev,” Audrey says quietly.

I follow her gaze.

The members who chose to remain in The Community have gathered behind a plastic ribbon the police erected.

Hostile stares travel over us.

Audrey shivers.

“They can't hurt us,” I reassure her.

She nods, but Audrey flicks her eyes away from the silent crowd of onlookers. “At least my parents got out of there.”

I don't want to think about what would have happened to the parents of the Chosen who killed Father Weston.

Her parents will be in Rapid too. Rapid City has eighty thousand people. Maybe enough to blend into anonymity. Langley has a witness protection program in place for our future. We actually won't be Weston-anything anymore.

The threat to our safety is large enough that we can't afford to be known.

Audrey will have blond hair.

Mine will be cut short—be a different color.

The reporters, held back by cops, shout their questions instead. “What was it like to sleep with the same woman as your dad, Kiev?”

The urge to flip them off is strong. I fist the hand that doesn't hold Audrey's.

“How many wives did you have sex with, Kiev?”

The nasty details of my childhood had been leaked. Of course Ginny had told the police
everything
.

Every. Thing.

Some of the details had been too juicy to keep quiet.

“Is Audrey pregnant with your baby or daddy's?”

“Stop!” Audrey shouts at them, shaking and covering her face with hands that quake.

I roll Audrey against my body, half dragging her to the waiting car.

Langley is there, opening the door. His eyes are the same as they always were. Compassionate.

I'd just never recognized it.

When he'd talked to me afterward, he remembered coming to a call placed by a disgruntled parishioner.

“I knew there were illegal things happening, but your father was clever, like all cowardly abusers. Healing you up before I could see you. Hiding his abuse with clothing. And—the other stuff.”

He'd leveled a steady gaze on me, and I couldn't hold the stare.

“Don't be ashamed that your own father put you in the role of abuser, son. It's a built-in instinct to please our parents.”

“I don't think your dad was forcing you to have sex with his wives as a teenager.”

Langley had ruefully shaken his head. “No. But in a mixed-up, dysfunctional mess like The Community, kids are the first to fall through the cracks and the last to get—or seek—help.”

He was right. I'd never thought there was anyone to help me.

“You did better than most, Kiev. You got out of here, made something of yourself, got an education. But one thing that doesn't make sense? Why'd you come back? You could have never returned. Instead, you came back to your abuser.”

I'd looked at Audrey. She squeezed my hand. Giving me courage to express my feelings. Something that still felt klutzy as hell.

“Vengeance. But in the end, I came back for Audrey.”

She smiled. My love ended up being more important than my hate.

A first.

An always.

*

Six months later

“I don't know if I can,” Audrey admits, rubbing her hands on her jeans.

I'm still not used to the hair. Her eyes and skin are light enough that the new, honey-colored blond works. I remember all that dark hair with her eyes. Miss it sometimes.

Don't miss the problem of people knowing us. Our history. Simply from a glance.

My lighter hair color makes us look a little twin-ish, but that's okay too. We're together.

Audrey straightens her hair now. It's cut shoulder length.

“You don’t have to,” I remind her and take her hand. The palm is sweaty, a testament to her nerves.

“I know,” she says. “But I should.”

“Audrey,” I say slowly, patiently. “You don’t have to do what you think should be done anymore.”

“I know,” she repeats and rests a hand on her belly. “I mean I should do it so people know our story.” She shakes her head. “They need to know how easy it is to believe in something when you so desperately need it. My parents aren’t stupid. They never were. And yet they fell for the lies. I fell for the lies…” She trails off, shaking her head.