Page 87 of Time Out

You can’t come home…

The only way I’d return home, ever, was if I was dragged, kicking and screaming, and I’d make the world know I was there against my will.

“I hadn’t even thought that would happen. I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m sorry they’re mad, but you know this will blow over, right? I’ll take care of it and everything.”

“Blow over? Are you kidding? You have no idea how mean Daddy’s gotten since you’ve left. It’s bad, Magdalene. And every time he gets mad at you he says because I look so much like you, I must have you in me—”

“What the fuck?” Davis bit out, and my sister choked over her sobs.

“Who’s that?” she rasped, panicked, and now, I could tell she was crying.

I was going to get her hurt. She’d take it because she had no other choice, and she’d hate me more for it and all I wanted to do was help her.

“Ruth. What do you mean?”

“Who’s with you?” Damn. Her voice. It shook with terror.

“It’s my friend, well, my boyfriend. He’s next to me, but he’s a good guy. The best and he’s mad because Daddy’s a jerk.” I hated calling him Daddy. To me, he was my father. A man I barely knew because once you disobeyed, you saw his truly evil side.

“The boy Daddy says took you to that game?” She spit out “game” like he’d taken me straight to a trip to hell.

I should have thought this would happen.

“I went to a football game, Ruth. That’s not wrong. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Well, according to what I heard Zachariah saying to Daddy before they left, you’re on Instagram. Cameras saw you and people are wondering how you know some hero guy or something…”

“Cole,” Davis whispered in my ear. “It’s because you were sitting by Cole’s family.”

“Ruthie.”

“Don’t call me that.” She sniffed, and I flinched. She’d always been Ruthie to me. Every time we were spanked or beaten or forced to go without supper because we hadn’t done our chores perfectly. It was Maggie and Ruthie. Together.

“Ruth. You need to get out of there. Before Daddy’s done with Zachariah. What will they…”

“All of them. All the older boys. Daddy makes them all do it.”

“Do what?” Davis growled, and his tightly banked tension and anger almost made his skin ripple with fury.

Ruth cried, cried into the phone and said something about how she shouldn’t have called. This wouldn’t help, but I needed to fix it.

“Ruth. Come here. Just come here. Get to the Clancey’s house, and they’ll help get you to me. I swear it, but you don’t have to stay and let me help you since it’s all my fault—”

“The fuck it is,” Davis rumbled, and I hoped like hell my sister couldn’t hear, but it was.

She wouldn’t be at risk of being beaten by multiple men if I had stayed. If I had taken it.

No one knew.

No one knew why I left and ran and was so desperate to get away, but it was this. Because the first time, I was fifteen years old, and I hadn’t done something my brother, Adam, a year younger, had told me to do and stood up to him and said he wasn’t my husband, so I didn’t have to submit to him, he’d gone straight to Dad.

Dad took me out to the shed and already had Adam, Jed, and Zach lined up. Handed them each a discipline tool, strapped me down… and taught me the very painful lesson that as a female, and under his leadership, I needed to submit and obey all men in my life until he handed me off to my husband.

The Clanceys left right after that. They had six kids, a daughter the same age as me, and apparently, when my father had shared what happened in the men’s study group, using it as a lesson on how to raise willful girls, Mark Clancey had gone home and thrown up. Three girls. They had three girls out of six, and he left our church, saying he would never run the risk of his girls being abused and beaten by any boy or man in that church who agreed with my father.

“I can’t. I can’t leave, Magdalene. There’s Martha and Joy and Leah.”

“They’re too young.” Martha was only twelve. She was safe for a few more years. “Come here. Let us save you from what’s coming. Please, Ruth. Let me help you since this is all my fault. And then we’ll figure something out so none of our sisters get hurt like this again.”

---