Page 12 of The Truth

Their mother had already gone to bed. She’d be up around four to get started on the chores for the day. Dinah would help her a few hours later. Before going into the diner.

It was just the way itwashere in Value. Work, work, work.

She didn’t want to work her life away forever. But… she liked it at the diner. The people she worked with were nice and funny and treated her like she was one ofthem,too. It wasn’t the kind of job a proper unmarried young woman should have, at least not in her father’s eyes. But she wasn’t married yet, and she wasn’t going to sit at home waiting for him to decide her future. Dinah had wanted her own money. And since her brothers had stopped doing errands for Father Rei, they just didn’t have the money for her to sit at home doing nothing with her time now. Or just cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. If she was home, she was expected to becleaning.

Besides, her mama left her alone when she was giving her money for the bills and all. Dinah did what she had to do.

The front door swung open, and their father stepped inside.

He dropped his thermos onto the counter and let out a long, heavy sigh, shaking his head.

“I hate this town,” he said. Hate. That always meant… he had had a bad day again. “The filth running through it is worse than ever.”

Dinah didn’t speak. She waited. She knew… she wasn’t to speak. She was to listen. Period.

“That preacher’s sister got it tonight. Nearly died. That nurse. Payment for her sins. The Lord sees it all. And he punishes.”

Preacher.

There were only three preachers in Value. And her father only ever referencedone.

“What happened?” Hezekiah asked, leaning back in his chair, expression unreadable. He had had a crush on Genny Hiller since the first time they’d met her. When Dinah, and Genny,had been around sixteen. The first time they had moved here. Gunn hadn’t been their preacher quite yet. But everyone knew he would be, when he finished his studies. Hezekiah had always just watched Genny, and drooled. Hezekiah was rather pathetic at times.

Judah just sat there, listening.

Their father let out a slow breath, shaking his head again. “Got herself stabbed, that’s what happened. Right there in the middle of the hospital. Some doctor, gone mad over her. They are saying she tempted him into madness. Stabbed her with scissors, and near killed her. Went after that blonde whore who runs the ER, too. Both of them, paid for their sins tonight.”

Dinah’s stomach tightened. As she imagined it.

Judah, still flipping through his Bible, finally spoke. “The Lord sees all.”

Their father pointed at him. “That’s right, boy. And He sees what that other woman’s been doing, too.”

Dinah frowned. “What woman?”

“Dr. Fisher.” Their father spit in the sink after he said it. He was always talking about how much he despised Dr. Fisher, for what she did with themenat the hospital. For how she kept getting inhisway all the time, too. “She is a harlot. She does not follow the church. She does not live by the Word. She is no woman of God, and she will be judged for it. I showed her how she would already.”

Hezekiah smirked, but he didn’t argue. He never did. He just worked his shift cleaning toilets at the same hospital where their father was a security guard, and said mean things about all the people who worked there. Really mean things.

Dinah just sat there, thinking about what her father had said. She listened as he told her brothers every detail, almost like heenjoyedthose women’s pain. She thought she remembered Dr. Fisher, from the diner. She hadn’t seemed so evil to Dinah then.

9

The older manclapped him on the back, then stood. “We’ll figure this out. And it will be what is best for the church, son. I have full faith in that. I know it hurts us all, but all things work together for a reason. Romans 8:28 is one of my favorite verses, after all.”

Gunn just nodded. But this was going to hurt some people very deeply. Including one he cared about. “It’s already been set up with Emerson?”

“I purchased his ticket myself this morning.” Reverend Adrian Barratt gathered his files and notebooks and slipped them neatly into his bag. “I think once we have all the answers, that is when he’ll begin to heal. I know this stabs him in the gut. I suspect he’s still blaming himself. He needs to forgive himself. None of this was his doing.”

Gunn had had the same thought. “I think he feels guilty for not seeing them for what they were. He just thought he was helping people down on their luck. He didn’t realize they were using him as a cover.”

“I think they used far too many of us as a cover. I’ve been reading on cults, since… then. It infuriates me that the word ofGod is so often corrupted for these monsters’ sick evil.” Adrian paused for a moment, a look of memories and pain on his own face. “Cults… no different than criminals. They trade on power and adulation, whereas criminal gangs are motivated by profit, in my opinion. Two different sides of an evil coin. And what they do, leaves lasting harm. I’ve seen the remnants of evil too often lately.”

“How is your brother’s family doing?” Adrian’s older brother’s family had been held hostage by an organized crime ring using the Finley Creek: TSP as a front. Adrian’s niece, a woman who had been in law school with Giavonna and was a good friend of hers, had been abducted by those same criminals just a week before. Powell Barratt’s fiancé had almost not survived the hostage situation. Another woman, a member of the TSP and an aunt of Ronnie’s brother’s wife, was still in the hospital, clinging to life.

Gunn had seen the updates in the local news just that morning.

“Good people keep getting hurt. Powell’s fiancé was released from the hospital recently. He’s going to make a full recovery. They are holding off on picking a date until the young woman who saved their lives recovers. Powell is insisting she be able to be in the wedding first.”

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