Page 101 of Time Out

“Mark Clancey. Nice to meet you.”

“Davis Hall. You, too. Thanks for getting them here so quickly. I imagine that wasn’t difficult.”

“Pisses me off to say it, but we should have done this years ago.” He worried his lip and frowned in Maggie and Ruth’s direction. They’d been joined by another girl, I assumed, their daughter Jenna. She was the spitting image of her mom and dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt. Simple but fashionable, and so drastically different from what Ruth was wearing.

“Tried to get her to take Jenna’s clothes,” Beth whispered. “Refused any of the pants at all, said she’s not allowed but we managed to get her to have a couple of sweatshirts and things. She’ll need to go shopping.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

Maggie would know and understand. I’d give her my credit card and take her where she wanted to go with it, no limit.

“How is she?” I asked because Ruth hadn’t yet smiled nor hugged her sister back, and Jenna was shooting Maggie a worried look while she said something to Ruth, who shrugged. Expressionless.

“She’s been pretty quiet. Embarrassed, but I think mostly she’s pretty damn terrified.”

“You heard anything yet?”

“No,” Mark said. “I’ve had men, friends of mine, on the land all day. There hasn’t been any activity we can see, so I don’t know what’s going on. There might be people still in the church we can call, but I don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Don’t.” Especially not while they weren’t there to protect their other kids still left at home.

“Maggie!” I called out. “How about we get your sister inside?”

“Come meet him, Ruth. Please?”

Ruth’s gaze slid toward me, and there was nothing there. No happiness or nerves or worry. Just blank.

I sighed.

This might be a bigger battle than Maggie had anticipated, but one thing was for sure—

I was there to help her win it.

Chapter 30

Maggie

My sister. She was here. I couldn’t stop touching her and smiling and forced myself not to badger her with a list of a million questions swarming my head all day, but I was trying to keep calm.

For her.

Because she hadn’t hugged me back, and when I asked if she was okay, she simply said, “don’t know,” and then didn’t say another word.

“Hi,” she said to Davis as he opened the door for all of us, and then “thank you” when she walked through the door to his building.

The valet had taken their van to the parking garage beneath the building, and Davis instructed them to leave the ticket at the front desk.

Once we were all in the elevator, I couldn’t stop glancing at Ruth. I was pretty sure the skirt she was wearing had been mine years ago, and her hair was in desperate need of a cut, and while surfaces looked similar, that was where the similarities ended.

She was me all those years before I tried to leave, and it felt like a lifetime ago I’d been so afraid of every single little thing. I was pretty sure the only reason I’d had any chance of adjusting to life on my own, outside the church and my family, was because I’d been desperate for it. Desperate to see the world, knew there was more than the way we lived, and I wanted to experience it, if even for a short time. Like a Mormon on their two-year mission or an Amish child on their Rumspringa.

Given the way Ruth was acting, she’d neither had any desire nor hope of ever having such experience.

It’d come with time.

Or maybe not.

And if she wanted to live the simple, clustered life she’d been raised in, I’d help her do that, in a church that was safe. With people who would protect her and not abuse her. There had to be churches similar to ours who didn’t behave the same way.

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