Page 6 of Our Last Resort

3The Only Town We Knew, Hudson Valley

Twenty-five Years Ago

In the beginning, there was Émile.

Émile knew everything. His head was full of ideas, stories, music. He’d built a whole world for us using his thoughts as bricks.

In Émile’s world, birthdays were acknowledged but not celebrated. There was no cake, no song. We nodded to the passage of time, and then we moved on.

On the day I turned eight, Edwina, a tall twelve-year-old girl who had started leading our woodworking workshops, came to find me.

I was outside, drawing a figure eight in a patch of dirt with a stick. It was almost time for lunch, almost time to head to the cafeteria. But Edwina had other plans.

“Come,” she said.

I followed her. She took me across the old schoolyard, past the communal showers, the cafeteria, the dorms, the reclaimed chapel.

My stomach tightened. “Where are you—”

“Shhh.”

“But—”

Edwina whipped around. “No questions.”

Impossibly, she led me all the way to Émile’s building.

This forbidden land, the only part of the compound in pristine condition. I’d never been inside. Émile’s office, we all knew, was on the first floor; his living quarters, equally off-limits, upstairs. He lived there alone, and—for the most part—worked there alone.

Edwina’s skirt swished across a small foyer. She nudged me in front of a closed wooden door.

“Stand here.”

She knocked and, before I could ask her what she was doing, skittered away.

I braced myself. Misbehaving came at a cost, always. We had learned to be afraid of hands that grabbed, of feet that kicked.

There were rumors, too. Of starvation. Of dehydration. Of a dark and secret place where disobedient children were sent.

On the other side of the door, Émile’s voice rose.

“Come in.”

He sounded calm, as if he’d been expecting me.

I pushed the door open.

To a child’s eyes, Émile’s office was enormous. There was a desk. A bookshelf to house his writings, as tall as three kids standing on one another’s shoulders. A globe on a console.

At the center of it all, Émile. His eyes, a grayish blue, glinting behind reading glasses. He gestured to one of the two chairs in front of his desk.

“Sit.”

I sat.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

I shook my head.

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