Hold Fast - Olivia Rigal Page 0,2

drive over that stupid bridge ten thousand times already without killing us. Could you please let it go?” I’ll pay for that later, I know, but she’s not going to risk slapping me while we’re driving.

“Actually, it’s not even two thousand,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. Or perhaps not. Is this going to be one of her good days?

“How did you come up with this number,” Nathan asks and I can’t help but smile at his genuine curiosity.

“Well, Courtney’s twenty-three now, and she got her permit on her fifteenth birthday. She’s been taking me to the market twice a week so…” My mother pauses on purpose to give Nathan a chance to do the math.

Wedged in the front seat of the minivan between us, he frowns and solves the problem out loud. “Twenty-three minus fifteen, that’s eight. And then there are fifty-two weeks a year. So that would be four times across the bridge a week by eight years times fifty-two weeks.” The boy frowns, going back over his work in his head while ticking results off on his fingers. “But no, that’s not right either, Sister Heather. You and Sister Courtney hadn’t come to The Lord yet when she was fifteen. She was… I don’t know how old she was.”

“You’re right, Brother Nathan! That’s so clever of you to remember that. She was sixteen. So go ahead and figure it out now.”

My mother nods and winks at me. For all her faults, I have to hand it to her, she’s a fabulous teacher. She’s just tricked the kid into doing what he claims to hate. I keep my eyes on the road ahead while Nathan counts on his fingers, wondering if she’ll eventually remind him that we don’t drive to the market during the winter months.

He mumbles to himself, “Four times fifty-two is two hundred and eight… times eight, makes 1,664, but minus... it’s 1,456, and it’s a round trip so- 2,912!” Eyes narrowed, Nathan bares his teeth at me in a predatory grin. “Courtney,” he hisses. “You lied.”

I bite my tongue and keep my eyes on the potholed logging road. It’s a waste of time trying to explain concepts like exaggeration and nuance to Nathan. All nine-year-olds, even ones raised in a normal life, have a tendency to see the world in black and white. This one, though? Father Emmanuel’s youngest son was brought up to watch everything, to sniff out the slightest, smallest sin in our closed community. In a life where the wages of sin literally are death, that makes him a very dangerous child.

As always, I’m torn between sadness for the little boy and fear of him. What would he have been like if he’d been raised outside of the world according to Father Emmanuel? His quick intelligence, the clever and inquisitive nature, could have taken him anywhere, let him be anything he wanted.

The world according to Father Emmanuel is my private hell, a tiny box with no exit and only a pinprick window where I can see the world on market day, and Nathan is his father’s spy.

I can’t hate him for it, though. Nathan’s just as trapped as I am, and he doesn’t even know it.

I can’t forget it, though.

Even if Nathan didn’t work out the math for the winter months, the fact remains: I drove past the graves of my stillborn sisters this morning for at least the thousandth time. Deep in almost virgin forest, the graves lie unmarked and unremembered but for the small white chunk of granite and perennial wildflowers that a younger, envious version of myself placed there. Every time I drive past the path leading to that small clearing, I want to scream to the world that this man is Satan, not the holy man he pretends to be.

But there is no one to scream to.

The Church of the New Revelation, everyone on the compound would swear that Father Emmanuel is nothing less than The Lord’s gift to our fallen and sinful world, a witness and a prophet, with a mission to bring America and the world back to righteousness. My mother? Forget walking on water, she probably thinks he could breakdance on it if he wanted. The few people in the outside world whose path I cross, they think we’re just a quaint relic, a leftover from an earlier time. Like the Amish or the Mennonites, perhaps, but with a little more hellfire and brimstone. They have no idea, and they never will. They won’t