Perhaps it had all been a mistake—inviting Deacon and his group to stay with her, befriending them at all. Deacon had convinced her that she was strong enough to surrender to change, but the longer she stood at that kitchen counter, the less she believed it to be true. She wanted to change, but she was weak. She wanted to be part of something bigger, but she was nonessential; she had nothing to offer. Her mother had been right. She was irrelevant. Inconsequential. Hardly worth mentioning at all.
The earth seemed to tip beneath her feet. With her fingers wrapped around the edge of the sink, Avis—no, she was still Audra—crouched to stop the world from spinning only to feel a hand press against her back. When she looked up, Jeffrey stood above her, his face a mask of concern.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get you some air.”
And before she knew it, it was just the two of them standing out in the twilight, his arms around her, her pulse thudding inside her head.
Maybe it was the tender way his arm had looped around her shoulders, or that worn leather smell that clung to him even when he wasn’t wearing his jacket. Regardless of what compelled her, she tucked her arms against herself and turned toward him as if to block out the world. Lifting her hand, she dared to repeat the gesture he had done the first time they had met. She caught a strand of his hair between her fingers and held it in a wordless hello.
“I need you to understand,” he said, “we don’t take adopting people into our circle lightly. We only allow those who truly want to be part of our group, those who we believe we can trust with our lives into our family. It’s what keeps us honest, what keeps us faithful, what makes us unwavering in our beliefs.”
“Your beliefs,” she echoed back to him. “Like love and friendship . . .”
“Like whatever we deem worthy to believe in,” he said. “It’s everyone’s job to have faith in whatever belief we adopt, because every belief is for the good of the group and the good of our hearts.”
Blind faith, she thought. They don’t know what Jeff is going to ask them to believe in; they only know that they’re going to believe. It was a dangerous proposition, like signing a contract without reading a word. A red flag waved wildly in the back of her mind, assuring her that only the insane would agree to such allegiance. No free-thinking human being could offer the type of undiluted loyalty Jeffrey was describing. Every aspect of such devotion went against what she knew about free will.
And yet she remained in his arms, unflinching, because the idea of him telling her what to believe in was better than battling inner demons and figuring it out on her own. She’d spent her entire life feeling hollow, not knowing where to place her convictions. Jeffrey could relieve her of that indecision. He was offering to erase her uncertainty, promising to quell her meekness. Believing in the group was, in essence, believing in herself. If she believed, maybe she could be Avis after all.
“To be with us, you have to forget about your own individual needs. Everything we do, we do for each other. Do you understand?”
He pulled her closer, and it was then and there that she decided Deacon was right. Jeffrey would make things better. She had sloughed off her individual need for solitude when she had invited them all to live in her home; the group had given her a new name and constant companionship in return.
Jeffrey was real, what he was saying was true. If she made her old self disappear, she’d become something more than she was. Something better.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I understand.”
She would believe, because it was easy when the alternative was believing in nothing at all.
12
* * *
SHE’S HAVING AN affair,” Lucas confessed.
Mark readjusted the cardboard box held fast in his arms and stared up at his friend. Lucas loomed in the shadowed interior of the moving truck. “Are you . . .” He paused, as if trying to find the precise words to convey his surprise. “I mean, you’re sure, right? You’re sure?”
Lucas frowned, looked down at the box next to his feet. He felt claustrophobic. The walls of the truck seemed to inch inward as rain pelted the roof with fat, lazy drops. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, he thought. Maybe confessing that my worst nightmare is taking place will somehow solidify Caroline’s intent. Perhaps Caroline was right that Lucas had developed some weird inferiority complex. His insecurities were manifesting themselves into the ugly illusion that the woman he loved was a villain, a heartless bitch that was reveling in his misery. But how do you know that she isn’t?
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Lucas crouched, slid his fingers beneath the bottom edges of a particularly heavy box, and lifted with his knees.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course you should have brought it up. Suddenly we’ve got secrets between us?”
Lucas stepped around Mark and hopped out of the truck. Wet splotches of rain bloomed against brown cardboard. He didn’t wait for Mark to follow him inside. If anything, he’d use the rain as an excuse to gain some momentary distance. It would give him a minute to breathe past the emotion welling up inside his throat.
Mark followed him inside the foyer a few seconds later, but neither of them spoke. They walked to their designated areas—Lucas to his new study just off the living room, Mark to the kitchen with a clattering box of pots and pans. When they met back at the truck a minute later, their conversation continued uninterrupted.
“I wasn’t going to keep it from you, I just don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.” Lucas climbed back into the truck, slid his fingers through his hair. “Because if she can cheat on me now, she’s always been capable of doing it, right? Hell, maybe she’s done it before and I was too stupid to notice I married—”