Cold Betrayal

Enid waited until no one else was within earshot. “My name is Enid,” she said quietly. “Did you ever know my mother?” She asked the question with little hope of an answer. Much to her surprise, the woman nodded.

“Her name was A

Enid was astonished. If her mother had been married to Bishop Lowell, did that make Enid one of his daughters? If so, why had he never acknowledged her in any way? She realized now that the bishop had never in her memory spoken so much as a single word to her. All through her childhood, in fact long before Enid married Gordon, she had been known as Enid Tower. In other words, The Family had first driven her mother away and then they had stripped Enid of her sole co

“Aunt Edith told me once that my mother died. Is that true?”

The Brought Back girl shook her head. “Your mother and I were friends,” she said. “A

“Agnes?” Enid asked. “That’s your friend’s name?”

The other woman nodded, then she looked worriedly in the direction of the house, clearly concerned that someone might see them talking together. Enid knew what would happen to her if she was caught—she’d be punished, most likely with Aunt Edith’s willow switch. She realized then that the Brought Back girls would be punished, too, probably with something worse than a switch.

“What’s your name?” Enid asked.

“They used to call me Patricia,” the grimy woman said wistfully. “That was a long time ago.”

“You’re still Patricia to me,” Enid declared. “Thank you for telling me about my mother, and I’m glad to know your names.”

She had left the pigpen then, but that conversation marked the begi

If boys could leave The Encampment and then come back whenever they wanted, Enid wondered, why couldn’t girls?

Now that Enid knew her mother’s name, she thought about A

Lying in bed next to her snoring husband that night, Enid thought about her mother—and about what her life must have been like, living under the thumb of Bishop Lowell and Helena. Enid could understand that things might have happened that would have provoked her mother into ru

Since most of the girls in The Family married on their fifteenth birthday, they usually had their first baby before they turned sixteen. For whatever reason, that hadn’t happened to Enid. The marriage part, yes, but she didn’t become pregnant for almost a year after that. It was so long, in fact, that Aunt Edith had called Enid aside one day and asked her if she was doing something wicked to keep from having a baby. Enid wasn’t, of course. She had no idea what any of those wicked things might be. For whatever reason, she had been a month past her sixteenth birthday when she made that first prenatal doctor’s visit.

As soon as Dr. Johnson told her she was expecting a girl, it was as though someone had flipped a switch somewhere deep in Enid’s soul. Suddenly she understood not only what her mother had done but also why. A

That day in Dr. Johnson’s office, before Enid had even finished dressing to leave the examining room, she had made up her mind and reached the same conclusion A

For months afterward, she lay awake in bed next to Gordon, all the while plotting her escape. One night, when everyone was asleep, she managed to creep out of the house undetected and make her way back down the path to the dark Quonset hut that was home to Patricia and Agnes. When she tapped on the door, Patricia, carrying a lit candle, came to the door.

“I’m going to leave,” Enid said. “I wanted you to know, and I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”

Patricia nodded. “Just a minute.” She disappeared into the hut. When she returned, she thrust a tiny piece of paper into Enid’s hand. Holding it close to the light from the flickering candle, Enid saw a string of numbers and a single name—Irene.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a name and a phone number,” Patricia answered. “Memorize both and then throw the paper away. Better yet, burn it so no one can find it. When you get Outside, go to a phone and call that number. Ask for Irene. She’ll help you. She tried to help me, but they caught me before I could get to her.”

Enid memorized the string of numbers. Not quite trusting her memory, however, she also kept the slip of paper, hiding it away in a crack between the baseboard and the Sheetrock in the bedroom she shared with Gordon. It had been there for months. Today, just before she and Aunt Edith left for town, Enid had taken the tiny piece of paper out of its hiding place and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket along with the sandwich.

Enid had never used a telephone. She realized that was the first thing she would have to do once she was Outside—find a phone and figure out how to use it.

After all, it wasn’t as though she had never seen one. There was a phone in the house—a heavy black thing with buttons on it—that sat on the desk in the room that was Gordon’s office. Aunt Edith was the only woman in the household who was allowed to touch it. Enid had noticed that the men in The Family, the Elders and also Bishop Lowell, had little things that they carried around in their pockets that were evidently telephones, too. Enid knew they talked to one another on them, even when they were outside, but she couldn’t imagine how the phones worked since they didn’t seem to require wires of any kind.

She also knew that there was a phone at the gas station. She had seen it hanging on the wall just outside the restroom door. The problem was, that one had slots for money—coins—so you evidently had to pay to use that phone. Money was something Enid didn’t have.

•   •   •

During the months of pla