Beauty and the Reaper (Reapers of Sorrow MC), page 25
“In this family, we eat breakfast at seven sharp. You know this, son.”
“Oh...right. I’m coming, Mr. Christiansen.” His heart lifted, in spite of itself. Surely if Elder Johannes knew anything about the events of last night, he’d already have kicked Ry out into the Utah spring with a mandate that he never come back.
“Got something I want to talk to you about in any case,” his host finished, the deep voice sounding a little serious. Ryder’s heart clenched again. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he was totally going down.
Getting dressed in solemn silence, he turned the facts over and over in his mind. The other night at the bowling alley, he’d discovered Johnny’s own deep, dark secret. Perhaps this gave him leverage. Furthermore, Chloe was John’s favorite sister, not to mention his oldest friend. Even if he wanted to sell Ryder up the river, he surely wouldn’t out of respect for his sister’s place in the community.
“It’ll be fine,” Ryder told his reflection, tracing the black, coiled rattlesnake tattoo on his chest. It was a small ink, but just the other night Chloe had peeled away from their coitus to kiss it. “I like this one best,” she’d said, alluding to the vague tribal tattoos braiding his shoulders. “It feels the most like you.”
“Why? Because I’m sneaky and evil?” She’d laughed her pretty laugh, the one that made him thrill down to his toes. “Because you’re smart. And you take care of yourself. You know when to be on your guard. And I like your rattle.” They’d fallen into a small heap of giggles and kisses after this remark, but her words had stuck with him. He liked that she could like his snaky qualities. The aspects of his personality that so often made him seem suspicious to others.
“It’ll be fine,” Ryder repeated, before securing his most respectable button-down. He slicked back his hair, which was currently the longest it had ever been, and pulled his most winning smile. Who could out this face?
As per usual, the whole Christiansen clan was gathered around the kitchen table, describing to one another their plans for the day. The twins and Martin were still somewhat bleary in the early mornings, following a lengthy spring break. They sat meditating over their school books with circles under their eyes. Chloe had been tense at breakfast lately, too. Ryder suspected that she felt antsy and useless when her father and siblings were headed to work or school, and she was left to her own puttering devices, cooped up in the house for hours with her mother and him, doing chores. On the other hand, Ryder and John were home during the days, too. They’d lately had a lot more closer-to-alone time, during daylight hours.
“Ryder!” Mrs. Christiansen beamed. She’d been getting warmer and warmer, ever since he’d made a habit of cutting the grass without being asked to. (Which was just about the easiest thing he could have done for the family.) “I made your favorite, honey! Blueberry pancakes and bacon. Pop a squat.”
She indicated a seat between Marie and Chloe. The latter didn’t even look up as he sat down, and he made sure to keep up the ruse. He even waited to eat until after Chloe had used the salt and pepper, so he wouldn’t have to risk grazing her wrist as he passed her the spices.
“So how is everyone’s week shaping up?” chortled the matriarch. Young Martin immediately launched into a long monologue about his struggles in Algebra class. Everyone listened patiently, without interruption. Ryder thought he had noticed a temperature change in the way the family referred to their second-youngest son. His older sisters and even his mother had become more deferential in even the past few weeks, as if Martin’s being a man would eventually give him power and sway over the female members of the family. He was already in training, Ryder realized, to be a domineering head of household. His own Elder Johannes.
When the little boy had finished, a small lull fell over the table as people alternately wolfed or picked at their food. But Elder Johannes set down his knife.
“Ryder,” he said calmly, staring across the table at his host. “Young man, I think it’s time we have a frank discussion about your future plans here.”
Everyone else set their utensils down, too. Ryder felt his muscles tense and recoil. Oh God, was this how it was going to go? A public shaming? A family-style crucifixion?
“Of course, sir,” Ryder muttered, in the direction of his still-full plate. He prepared himself for the shit-storm. He reminded himself that he’d certainly seen worse than whatever a Mormon dad could dish out.
“Have you given any more serious thought to committing yourself to our faith?”
Ryder’s mind short-circuited for a moment. The whole table seemed to draw breath simultaneously.
“Uhh,” he began, uncertainly. Just then, he felt a sharp pain in his instep, and had to bury a yelp. Beside him, Chloe continued to keep her eyes fixed on her breakfast, but he knew she’d stepped on his foot.
“Sure,” Ryder concluded, off this not-so-subtle hint. “I think the Latter Day Saints are”—he hunted for the right word—“very generous, warm people. I just love em.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Oh, totally.”
“I’m pleased to hear this.” Elder Johannes’ face cracked into that most unexpected of things: a big, goofy grin. Ryder couldn’t help but echo his face.
“If you’re serious, we’d love to have you attend a few informational meetings. Very informal affairs, just fellowship, food and faith. We can provide you with some literature and testimony to set you on the path to righteousness. At last.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question, but his host arched an eyebrow in challenge. So this was an ultimatum, after a fashion. It made sense. The church had a missionary aspect for chrissakes—naturally, they wanted his soul. It was truly amazing that he’d managed to hedge for eight weeks.
“I would love that,” Ryder said. Everyone resumed their meals, and relief fell over the table. Both of the twins shot him shy, proud smiles. Martin even clapped, if a little sarcastically.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Mrs. Christiansen clucked. Even Chloe seemed pleased. A possible life flashed in Ryder’s mind’s eye: he could convert to Mormonism, couldn’t he? It couldn’t be that hard. He’d go through the motions, continue impressing the family, and one day soon, he could ask Mr. Christiansen for his daughter’s hand. Once they’d made a commitment to each other, they could leave Provo, flee North to Denver or West to California, and be free together somewhere new...
No sooner had the image fleshed itself out than Ryder knew there were holes in his logic. He might have been snake-like, but he still wasn’t the type of man to disingenuously convert to a religion he didn’t believe in for a girl—any girl. No one he could love would ever ask him to, he was sure. Chloe hadn’t.
“We’ll get the ball rolling then, shall we?” continued Elder Johannes. He launched into a speech about the benefits of religion, and the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the path of the righteous. Ryder just nodded, grateful that he’d survived this meal.
“Wait. Wait.” All heads turned to Johnny, at the end of the table by his mother. “I can’t just sit here and listen to this anymore. Mother? Father? I’ve brought a great evil into our home.”
Ryder thought he could sense the blood draining out of Chloe’s face, even without looking at her. His own heart started pounding like a jackrabbit.
“What are you talking about, boy?” Elder Johannes asked. His voice had become slow and full of malice. I could run, Ryder realized. I could just get out of this chair and run until I find a highway.
“Johnny,” Chloe pleaded. She was shaking. He could feel it.
“What’s going on?” Celeste cried, suddenly interested in the conversation. Her Geometry book closed with a dull thud.
“Nothing. You’re going to be late for school.”
“Chloe, please. Don’t interrupt your superior,” Elder Johannes said. He motioned to Johnny. “Son? Do enlighten us.”
John suddenly looked torn. Ryder recognized the fear and pain in his friend’s eyes. Still, with a trembling finger, he pointed across the table at Ry.
“He is not sufficiently pure to enter the faith.”
“God will be the judge of that, John. Not you.”
“No, I know what I’m talking about. He has brought...drugs, into this house. Controlled substances, which he uses for recreational use!” John’s face seemed unsure in the lie, but his finger stayed fixed on his friend. Ryder dared hope that this was to be the extent of John’s confession. Drugs, he could defend.
Elder Johannes stood then. His face had turned an odd, reddish color, but his voice was as unperturbed as it always sounded.
“You’ve been away a long time, my son,” he spoke, to John. “So you forget that our doctrine acknowledges freedom of choice. Perhaps your friend has sinned in the past, perhaps he has things to atone for. But he can make his heart clean. He can repent. Only the Holy Spirit can know his true and eternal form. The more disciplined one is in the faith, the more righteous his choices will be. Your brother can learn, if you can forgive.”
John had clearly not expected this reaction. He fumed and huffed, even as Ryder felt Chloe relax beside him. He wanted nothing more in that moment then to hold her. To tell her that she wasn’t wrong, she wasn’t evil, she wasn’t unclean. He chose her, he realized. If he truly had the freedom to choose...he’d choose Chloe over all of it.
“I admit I’ve made some mistakes,” Ryder continued. “I’ve certainly done some things your Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit—wouldn’t approve of. But I am willing to accept these new...teachings.” He glanced at his lover. For the first time, it occurred to him, the religious words didn’t sound so silly. Perhaps there was something beautiful in the language of the faith, Ryder allowed. In the massive commitments these simple, proud people made, to God and to one another.
“He’s ruined your daughter,” John spat. The words seemed to fall and sit in the middle of the table, like something gross, untouchable. Now, Elder Johannes turned to look Ryder in the eye. He couldn’t keep the truth from the patriarch. He hung his head.
“I saw them. Last night. You don’t understand, Dad. He’s the Devil. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s fooled us all, with his fancy books and his helping out around the house. He only wanted to soil your daughter and bring shame to your house. He sneers openly at everything we believe in.”
“Ryder? Is this true?”
“I saw them. Naked. I saw them fornicating. Last night, while you were asleep. In the basement. On Uncle David’s old pillows.”
“STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!” Now it was Chloe’s turn to stand. She wheeled on her older brother with tears in her eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you’re a filthy little heathen slut,” he said, in a voice more cruel and terrible than anything Ryder’s nightmares might have dredged up. “And you deserve to be punished.”
What happened next passed in a blur. Chloe left the table, trailing hurt. Mrs. Christiansen moved to comfort her daughter. It seemed for a moment that Elder Johannes would turn his column of steely, contained anger back to his son, for speaking out of turn, but instead he looked to Ryder. He didn’t even need the words that came next, as his host’s expression made them quite plain.
“You will leave my house,” the older man said. “You will leave this community. And you will never see any member of my family again.”
PART II
Chapter Fifteen
“Wonderful work today, Sister Chloe.”
“Yes—just a beautiful speech. Shame you won’t be able to speak at the next sacrament meeting.”
“Sister Greta!”
“I’m just teasing, she knows I’m teasing. Anyways. Lovely words.”
Chloe watched Sister Greta and Sister Denise cluck and skip their way across the parking lot, back towards their cars. Long before they were out of sight, she saw their heads bend together in gossipy consensus. You didn’t need a strong imagination to guess what they were so giddy about.
She walked reluctantly toward the van that was waiting to carry her home. Her father was already looking agitated, behind the wheel. Any moment now, he would honk the horn, indicating she shouldn’t dilly-dally. Not that it really mattered either way. Whether she went fast or slow, she was still bound for the same destination.
It was approaching fall in Provo, and the leaves were changing, and when one ventured toward the mountains you could see their snowy caps looking denser than usual. Chloe whistled a little as she walked. Her home was still beautiful, she reminded herself, as part of the ongoing cheer-up campaign. She still had all of her limbs. Things could be a lot worse.
She hadn’t even put on her seatbelt when her father spoke to her through gritted teeth. “I don’t appreciate the delay,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror but not into her eyes. “Relief Society meetings end at 2 p.m. Everyone knows that.”
“I was just speaking to Sister Denise and Sister—”
“No backtalk,” he growled, before peeling out into traffic. Chloe obeyed.
It had been three months since The Event. Three months since she’d last seen Ryder Strong. That morning that she’d thought would be the worst in her entire life had, unfortunately, only served as a prelude to the new regime. Though she was well into her twenties, after Johnny’s proclamation Elder Johannes had saw fit to discipline his oldest daughter like a child. “It’s me or the disciplinary council,” he’d told her that very night—the first night in her life when he hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye. “I think you’ll prefer this.”
Those eerie words remained to be proven, as Chloe had been existing like a prisoner for weeks now. She’d come home from sacrament meeting that Sunday to an emptied bookcase. When she’d asked Celeste and Marie if they knew anything about the whereabouts of her dearest friends—her Shakespeare, her Austen, her Forster, her Dostoevsky—they’d cast their eyes around and started muttering. Of course they knew where the books had gone, but they weren’t in a position to pick sides. Later, her father had explained his decision. “Those hedonistic stories have polluted your mind,” he’d said, over apple tart. “From now on, I’ll approve what you read.” And that had been that.
In addition to lockdown, Chloe had been made to take on several daunting new commitments. Her father had pulled some strings with the bishopric so Chloe could teach Sunday School, and take a junior leadership role at the women-centered Relief Society meetings. She was also lending her extra hours to several church-sanctioned charity groups. She wasn’t foolish enough to ask if they’d consider allowing her to go on a mission, or return to BYU for graduate study—though she would have done even the most Mormon-y of things to leave her silent fortress. It had seemed clear for a while that this was just the way life was going to be now. Chloe would cleanse and cleanse her befouled soul until she felt holy again, and God forgave her, and—most important of all—her parents forgot John’s terrible, truthful accusations.
And as for her brother? Something had clicked in John’s personality, too. Though they no longer spoke to one another unless they were forced to (as in, unless they were under the surveillance of other church-goers, or their parents made them), John had also renewed his commitment to the faith—albeit, electively. He was attending Priesthood meetings. He’d volunteered to speak at area high schools about how his commitment to the faith had seen him through the worst of his wartime service. He now spent many an evening locked up in the study with their father, supposedly studying doctrine. He no longer grinned like a goofball, or played games with his little sisters, or cracked jokes.
But the worst part of the new austerity was the fact that Chloe had been forbidden to socialize with Gwen, whose own “tarnished values,” were thought to have contributed to Chloe’s falling from grace. Her best friend was smart enough to connect the dots about her friend’s abrupt removal from the social scene—and Lord knew Provo was gossipy enough; Denise and Greta in point—but it was still close-to-impossible to stay in contact under the current sanctions. Chloe’s cell phone had been taken away. She was only allowed to work on the living room computer, where other family members could monitor her internet activity. Short of passing one another secret messages at meetings, there wasn’t a ton they could do to encourage one another. And boy, did Chloe need encouragement.
“How was your meeting?” her father managed, after they’d driven several miles in silence. She recognized his occasional questions as little slivers of the man who raised her and loved her peeking out from beneath the terrifying dictator he’d become, but it was still hard to practice kindness toward her jailer. She answered him out of fear, not because she wanted to.
“Fine.”
“Looking after everyone’s spiritual welfare?”
“Sure, father. I mean—yes.”
They continued on, quiet again. Chloe watched her hometown flick by.
She wondered what Ryder was doing. Not that a minute, let alone a three hour meeting, ever passed without this happening. After he’d been practically tossed from the house with his duffel bag hastily packed, she’d watched his retreat from his bedroom window, where you could still smell traces of his body on the sheets. (That is, if you were super furtive.) His body had slumped with defeat. She hadn’t even been able to say goodbye. And yet, he’d clearly got himself a ticket or hitched a ride out of town, despite minimal funds and connections. For all she knew, he was back in New York, at the mysterious aunt’s house. Or worse, back in the military’s clutches, awaiting the OK from doctors to go out on some other dangerous mission.
She missed his touch, his smile, and even his pretentious little asides so much that it was physical. Her stomach ached when she thought of his kisses. The way he’d looked at her. The way he’d made her feel like a body, and a body as lovable as a mind. The day her books had vanished, that had felt like losing him all over again—and in a more final way. Tears started to sprout at the corners of her eyes, just from thinking about all that she’d lost. A life’s worth of happiness. A hero. A companion. A peer.
