I don't know what month it was when I finally received a letter from him. It may have been December. Here is what I read:
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My Dearest Rebekah,

I just decided to write you a note to tell you some things. Lassie is doing good. My chickens are good laying hens.

I'm sorry I haven't told you what's been happening here. I thought it best not to last summer because I knew you'd be hurt.

Anyway, last July I married my wife. I didn't think it would be right to marry someone as young and pretty as you. Keep your creativity and your gentleness, and someday a kind young man worthy of you will be your husband. I'm sorry I'm not that man. But Yahweh knows you want to be a farmers wife. Rebekah, although I can't be your husband, Linda and I would like to have you as a friend. Our baby is due this March. Keep your sweetness, and stay devoted to Yahweh.
Your Friend, Daniel

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I remember feeling disembodied for a moment as I read the letter, laying on my bed. Sarah sat on hers, and she looked over at me when I collapsed and make awful choking, sobbing gasps into my pillow. I remember Lori, shocked that this had happened to me. She couldn't believe it.

Gray. Black. Numb. Nothingness. Sleep. Crying. My scalp itched and my hand went to it. Gray, gray, gray. Wanting to die. Reading the letter over and over again. I don't know if I ate much. If I did, it didn't taste like anything at all. Life was a big blank. All I knew was that I couldn't go on. I wanted to die with ever fiber of my being. I knew exactly where my hunting knife was, with its 6" blade. My chest ached with a physical pain greater than anything that knife could possibly inflict. My eyes were swollen. The pillow was never dry in the morning, having been turned from one side to the other all night long until the whole thing was damp. Fog swallowed me. I didn't work. I didn't get up. I didn't brush my hair. I must have gone to the bathroom, but I don't remember doing anything. Maybe I wandered around like some kind of zombie. I know that when I went outside, Laddie was there for me. I could bury my face in the thick, long haired ruff of his neck and sob broken heartedly. Even he got tired of it after awhile. My head itched. There were itchy scabs. I took them off. Grayness. Bed. The knife. It was waiting for me, only an arm's length away. I laid very still, willing myself not to move, not to reach for it. I laid that way for hours and hours, because if I moved, I might grab that knife. I thought about Daniel, writing me that letter in August when he was already married to someone else. How could he betray me that way? I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense. What was there for me in life nwo? The only thing I had lived for was gone, in the arms of a woman named Linda. Oh, those scabs again.... Sleep. Blackness. Numbness. Lots of fog. Day after day I cycled back and forth between sobbing until I was exhausted, and fading into a timeless feelingless state where nothing mattered, where I saw nothing, cared for nothing, paid attention to nothing, did nothing. I wished I could die. Sometimes the knife was within my reach, in my hands even, and I meant to walk to the bathroom and drain my wrists into the bathtub, so I wouldn't make a mess, but was too tired to get up and walk there. Days? Weeks? Time meant nothing. I slept, cried, lived in a state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Nothing else could hurt me now. Life, death, held no terrors for me anymore. Those scabs....my hand wandered to my scalp again. Fog. So much numbness and fog.When the fuzz cleared enough for me to be able to think, my thoughts went round and round with the same questions. July? March? I counted. Was she pregnant when they got married? Why.....how? How could he do that to me? How could he? I didn't even notice other men. Just the thought of anyone else...ugh....How could he continue writing to me when he was already married to another woman? I took out the letter he'd written in August, reread it over and over and over again, looking for some kind of clue, some sense of foreboding that would have warned me. Why didn't he tell me sooner? How could you just go and do this and not even tell me? Daniel....Daniel.....my mind cried, screamed, whispered his name.....Despite the pain, I loved him as much as I ever had. I would never be whole again.....would never take another man. How could he think I was so shallow that I could even fathom the idea of taking another man to replace him, another farmer? I didn't want a young man, I wanted my man, Daniel. Oh Daniel....how could you do that to me....why? What did I do? What was wrong with me? Why couldn't anyone ever love me? Why? Why? If there was some flaw in me that I needed to fix, something that made me unlovable, why wouldn't anyone tell me so I could get rid of it? I would have done anything for him, would have died for him gladly.....Why....Daniel, why.....

The fuzzy grayness drifted over me again.

Life held no meaning anymore. I tried to imagine living without him, and I just couldn't. He had become everything good, the embodiment of hope, in my life. Without him.....it was too horrible, but more than that, I didn't even know where to start. There was nothing. I would never bear children. Would never marry or be anyone's wife. Would never love again, ever, ever, ever. I never wanted to love anyone again. This was more pain than I had thought anyone could endure. I felt as though my life had been shattered into the tiniest shards imaginable and there was no putting it back together.

In a surreal, dissociated and strangely lucid moment, I suddenly realized that Humpty Dumpty had never fallen. He'd been pushed. And like him, I could never be put back together. I saw him in my mind, falling off of that wall, over and over again. My heart, fracturing into particle fine as dust. There was no fixing him, or me. Broken, and I didn't care. I didn't care what happened to me anymore. The only thing I had ever wanted was gone, gone without even the courtesy of an explanation, of coming to tell me himself. Gone, happy and carefree and not even missing me, living as though I'd never existed, while here I was, mangled, bleeding like an animal hit by a semi alongside the road but not quite dead yet. I wanted to scream, and scream, and scream with all my might, to go out into the woods and scream like an animal, but my mouth was silent while I screamed inside in the static that had engulfed me.

Life went on as usual around me, but I didn't notice, and when I did, it hurt, so I closed myself away from it, turned inwards. Didn't look at people, didn't talk to them. Everything I looked at reminded me of him anyway. Even the sky was the same color as his beautiful eyes. The trees we'd sung songs about...everything echoed Daniel back at me. It was unbearable. I didn't care if I cried or not, in fron of people or not. I made an appearance on Sabbath for our worship time, but I was far away. We were supposed to sing, but I just sat or stood as the tears ran down my face silently. I couldn't sing. Couldn't talk about anything much, just the bare minimum. My head was scabby. Picking the scabs off, sliding them down and off the strands of hair they surrounded.

There was no solace anywhere, but when I was alone, curled up in my bed, at least there wasn't extra pain. When Mom saw me crying, she grew impatient and sharp, told me I was sinful, because crying for a man who was married to someone else was adultery. I was commiting adultery. I didn't care. Didn't believe it anyway, but more than that, I didn't need salt rubbed into my wounds. Country music played sometimes in our room. Sarah played it. I ached along with it, with Randy Travis, George Strait, Reba.....but especially Randy Travis.

But mostly I cried and ached quietly and wondered how on earth I could go living, why Yahweh had punished me like this, what I had ever done to make myself so detestable, what the point was in anything anymore. Even Job got to keep his wife. Why had I been created to be so strange, so different, that no one could love me, and then, just as I'd found someone who did, that brief window of happiness, to have him snatched away from me, the one person who'd like me for what I was.....why had I been tormented in ever meeting him to begin with. Why would Yahweh torture me like this? Why, when I tried so hard to do what was right? Why had He made me at all, if He knew I could never be loved or accepted? What kind of a cruel joke was this?

More than anything, I needed to know why this had happened, what I had done. These were questions that would never be answered, and so they just rolled around in my head like clothes in a dryer at the laundromat, endlessly turning, different aspects and shades, but always the same questions. Despite all that had happened, I knew that if he were to show up at any given moment, I would fly into his arms. So I couldn't understand why it was so easy for him to shut me out of his heart so easily, so quickly, and marry someone else without even telling me first. I tried to picture what his wife Linda might look like. The whole thing was just incomprehensible to me, and as hard as I tried, I just couldn't sort it out. Nothing made sense, and nothing anyone said to me helped it make sense. I wished he could have explained it to me, so I could move on, or try to, but now, married, expecting a baby....of course, he couldn't. I was the spurned fiancee, covered in shame and shadows, while he walked happily in the sunlight with her, under skies the color of his eyes.

My family said that what I had experienced wasn't love. I'd only had an infatuation, a crush. This just hurt me more. Their attempts to minimize and downgrade my feeling did nothing to diminish the amount of pain I was in. I knew what crushes were, but I loved Daniel with my whole heart, and I hurt with my whole heart, too. I had always been ashamed to cry in public, to show my feelings at all, but I was so devastated that I didn't even care anymore. Bloody scabs covered my head, puffy eyes, hair that hadn't been brushed for days or more, dried tears on my face with a constant trickle running down my jawline....I never looked in the mirror anymore, but I just didn't care. Nothing interested me. There was only pain and numbness, deadness, that white/gray haze that enveloped me when I thought I would go mad from the intensity of the hurt. Time held no meaning, routines went ignored and neglected. There was no solace, no comfort, no friendship. Nothing. Just pain.

People came and went in our household like actors on a stage. Mom's opinionated, know it all friend, Dona, who acted like she was an expert on Judaism and everything else. Dona's friend, Jaylene, who was actually Jewish and Buddhist and smelled like goats. Actually, she stank like goats. Her husband looked a lot like my uncle Space, with long black wavy hair and a thick, out of control beard to match. Hippies with goats and two kids that came over. The kids were nice. Would have been nice if I could have had kids. Something about these hippies possibly trading us goats. Goats.....Snow, Della, Penny. Goats were a pain in the neck. Why would we want more goats, especially if they smelled bad? Whatever.

I tried to pick up some thread in my life that I could cling to, from which to build some sort of direction, but there was nothing. Everything was tied to Daniel, and he was gone now. It was like trying to build a house of cards and taking out the primary structure. In making him the center of my existence, I has lost nearly all of my self identity, too, because everything I wanted to be had revolved around what I would be to him. I could see now what a fatal mistake this had been.

The goat people, Chris and Jaylene, came over more often, still talking about goats. They wanted a garden fence and to make a garden. They had goats to give. A trade. We didn't do anything with the goats we had already. But, I went along anyway when we measured off the fencepost distances by pacing around the perimeter of the garden to be. We dug postholes, set the posts, helped stretch and staple the woven wire up. Of course wire was needed...against the goats. I already knew how ravenous goats were; Penny had ravaged my sole cauliflower plant just as it was making a tiny, nickel sized head. The thought angered me every time I remembered it.

They loaned us some goat books so we would know what we were getting into. These hippes were talkative and opinionated and cultured, and most of all, they treated me almost as an adult rather than some sort of a serf in my stepdad's kingdom. I began going back through the old Mother Earth News magazines, reading goat articles, and then I read the goat books, cover to cover, more than once. It was a diversion from the pain that was smothering me. When Chris and Jaylene came back, they were surprised that I had read the books already. I said that although I had read them both thoroughly, i was still absorbing the content somewhat. They looked at me strangely, and Jayelene muttered something about "absorbtion of a book" as she turned away and readied to leave. We were to receive at least two young milkers, each with a single kid. Everyone clamored about which goat they would get. I rolled my eyes and went back to my room. So much fuss over a few goats!

There were to be two does (doe is the proper term for a female dairy goat), one with a buck kid and one with a doeling. The family had already decided that the buckling, which was destined to be meat, would be mine. Nice, I thought sarcastically, but I didn't complain. It would have been pointless anyway and I really didn't much care.

The big day arrived and Chris showed up in the old red International scout they drove, got out and carried one of the milkers in his arms towards the goat pen. I was surprised that they were small enough to carry that way- these were does in milk, after all- but that was most of the reason we were getting them. They had been accidentally bred by their own sire at a much younger age than would have been ideal. I easily picked up the other doe and carried her to the pen. She only weighed about 60 lbs. The kids were tiny, only a week old, and easily carried by the other children. One doe had a splotch of blue on her back, and so did one of the kids. The other doe and kid had pink splotches. Jaylene had marked them with food coloring so we could tell which kid belonged to which doe, because all four of the goats were pure white in color. They were Saanen-Alpine crosses.

Although I'd been slated to receive the buckling, it was decided that one of the milkers would be mine, because Raphah and Sarah already owned full grown does, and we were going to get more goats, too. The other would be Rachel's. Sarah got the buckling; I don't remember who got the doeling. I named my doe Lily, because she was pure white and Rachel's doe became Sylvia.

All the things I thought I'd hated about goats flew right out the window when I met Lily. I looked into her calm eyes as she mm-mmm-mmmed quietly to me, and fell in love. She didn't smell bad at all. She actually smelled kind of nice, as a clean dairy doe should smell. Her coat was very soft and she stood calmly as I petted her, seemingly enjoying the attention. Lily was so different from Della and Penny that it was hard to believe that they were all the same species!

Learning to milk was far harder than learning how to split wood or spin wool. It was an exercise in frustration, and by the time I was done my hands and arms ached and I was in tears. I was so afraid that if I left even a drop of excess milk in her udder, she might get mastitis. Lily stood patiently while I struggled with her teats and udder, so unlike Snow, who'd tried to snatch a mouthful of of my hair in exchange for my clumsy efforts. She and I formed a bond. I gave her all the love my aching heart held, and she would stand hugging me with her head and neck as I wept upon her shoulder, even if I was like that for half an hour. So sweet, so gentle and patient and kind, Lily gave me something to wake up for, to get out of bed for in the morning instead of rolling over and crying some more, hating to face the day. I still struggled a lot, but she was always so happy to see me, and her presence was so soothing, that I got out bed every day for her and kept her milking routine, every 12 hours, checked on her many times during the day where I'd tethered her out, so she wouldn't get tangled up. She was the healing balm my soul needed, in the most unlikely package I could have expected.

I still hurt, but with Lily to dote on and work with, life was easier to bear. When we first got the goats, they didn't know how to walk on a lead or by being led on by their collar, which was why Chris had picked them up and carried them. I braided long, sturdy ropes, collars, and head halters out of baling twine for the goats, because we couldn't afford to buy regular ropes. I worked patiently with her every day, and it wasn't long before I didn't even need a lead rope or a collar to head her, although she always wore the collar. I only had to rest my hand gently on her shoulder and she would come with me wherever I wanted to go.

As I came out of my room and back into my daily routine of feeding animals, etc, I began to strengthen inside. I still felt shattered by what had happened, I still cried. I still sang mournful country songs while Lily and I browsed the woods together or as I split, stacked or hauled firewood, but I was functional again. My heart was as hollow as it could be, but I had something to give purpose to my life; the goats.

I say goats, plural, because it wasn't long before Chris and Jaylene had more work for us to do. Raphah and I went over to their little homestead and cleaned several feet of packed goat manure out of the barn and hauled it to the new garden site. Working for Jaylene was both strange and pleasant, because she insisted that we take a breather every time we came back from the garden with the empty garden cart. We weren't used to taking breaks, except for a quick 5 minutes to gulp down a cold biscuit or two...if we were lucky. Jaylene actually fed us, and although I was worried about whether it was safe to eat there, the food was good and she urged us to eat more, to eat until we were full. This was a new experience!

In exchange for this work, we got more goats; Raphah got Belle, a French Alpine milker with a large udder, Sarah got Belle's flashy French Alpien kid, Cinderella, and I got Susannah, who I called Sannah. Sannah was 3/4 Alpine but looked like a Saanen, mostly white with tan hairs scattered throughout her coat. She had an extremely lean, long, feminine build, very graceful and she was always sort of worried and called a lot. Her udder was a lot bigger than Lily's but her teats were smaller and it took longer to milk her. Her buck kid, Willy, went to Rachel. So now I had two good milkers.

I liked the Saanen personality better than the Alpines. Belle, for example, was intelligent and witty, but she sort of had an attitude. When she saw Max, Raphah's orange cat, approach Cinderella, her doeling, she suddenly picked Max up by the hair on his back and threw him through the air! It was funny, but it was also pretty typical of what you could expect an Alpine to do. Lily and Sylvia were very quiet, calm, laid back animals. So when I had the opportunity to go back to Chris and Jaylene's and do more work, I did, and I declined the money they offered (I knew my stepdad would take it anyway) and asked if I could have another goat. I looked them all over carefully, but the one I liked best was a full sister to Lily and Sylvia. Also pure white in color, I called her Snowdrop, after the flower.

Although still bereft of any sort of hope, I smiled now and then as I worked with the goats. They were breathing new life into me, and that life was rapidly centering around my caprine friends. I still wasn't sure what to do without Daniel, but I thought that whatever it was, I wanted there to be goats in my life. One thing was clear: goats were a whole lot more trustworthy and dependable than people.

Spring came and I planted my garden as usual. I was thinking about how to leave home. I was tired of being reminded of Daniel at every turn. The pain was still too deep. Eliyah was still trying to get into my pants after I sat rubbing his feet, even when I'd been crying silently in the dark. His behavior had stepped up a notch now that I was 18. He pinched my breasts at every possible opportunity, or tried to feel me up. My shirt had filled out embarrassingly. I wished privately that it hadn't, that they were a lot smaller. Every time I tried to run, these tender, sensitive grapefruit sized blobs of flesh slammed against my ribcage. It was uncomfortable, but more than that, they invited so much unwanted attention. I was never going to get married, so what were they good for? He was constantly commenting on my body. A favorite was to say that I had heavy thighs. It was true that my thighs were large in proportion to my body, but there was no excess fat at all there. They were pure muscle, trained for hard work. Most of my body's power was there, although between the wood splitting and the milking, I was getting a powerful set of forearms to match.

I never thought about whether I was attractive or not. This was superfluous. The only thing that mattered was whether my body was able to do the work I wanted it to do. My days of trying to be attractive were pretty much over as quickly as they'd begun. I never looked at myself in a mirror. I knew that my sister's waist was smaller, that she was growing taller than me. But I didn't care about her looks...although the height bothered me. I hated being short. What I enjoyed was that I was strong, strong enough to lift and carry 80 lb sacks of feed although I was only 120 lbs myself at the most...never weighed myself either...so I don't know. I liked working alongside grown men and being able to keep up with them. Splitting wood by hand while they slacked off at the wood splitting cone mounted on a truck's hub. What a cop-out! I could split faster than that! My shirts didn't fit right anymore. They were too tight at the wrist, and my favorite red/blue plaid flannel shirt split across the shoulders and back.

Eventually, I came to a decision. If I couldn't be a farmer's wife (and Daniel was the only farmer I wanted), then I would be the farmer.

And so the stage was set when Chris and Jaylene asked me if I would like to live at their homestead as a farmhand. They would give me room, board, and a small salary in exchange for helping out with the children, goats, garden, and other chores. I could bring my own goats along with me, as well as Laddie. I had been visiting quite a bit with them when I went over to do work at their place. I liked the way they treated me, that the work schedule was reasonable, that I got to eat lunch, and to drink water when I was thirsty while working.

Jaylene was a Buddhist and Chris seemed to be either Atheist or Agnostic, but they were alright with the fact that I was heavily into a mix of Orthodox Judaism and the beliefs Mom and my stepfather had taught us. I would be allowed to have Sabbath off. I could plant my own stuff there. Eventually, I wanted a farm of my own, but it seemed like an ideal opportunity to get experience, to get away from my parents, who were talking about making me live there until I married, and to save money to get a place of my own. Land was still fairly cheap, only about $200 an acre. If I saved for a year or two, sold extra goats and stuff that I grew, maybe I could have a place of my own someday.

I accepted this offer, and we agreed that I would not tell my parents. After all, I had been an adult for six months already. I didn't want to have to get married just to get away from there.

I waited until they went to town one day, and then I told Sarah of my plan. Oddly enough, she didn't seem to blame me for wanting to leave. I took my backpack, which was already packed, and had her cover for me so that Raphah and Rachel wouldn't notice I was leaving. It was three miles from our driveway to the road that led to Chris and Jaylene's house. From the highway, it was another two and a half miles, and since the road was very muddy, they typically walked in and out. I walked quickly, but with every car that passed, I was afraid Mom and Eliyah would see me, stop, and make me go with them. After two miles, just after milemarker 5, I saw the faded red International Scout; Chris and Jaylene had stopped by our house, gathered from Sarah that I was gone, and were hurrying to pick me up for the final mile to the muddy road.

I was euphoric, and so was my new family. The children liked me and were happy I was coming to live with them. They chattered and asked questions. I had always wanted children and it hurt me to know that now I wouldn't ever have any, because I would never marry or take a mate. Being able to relate to these children eased that loss a little bit. We were giddy with victory and enthusiasm the entire 2.5 muddy miles home. I learned from Jaylene that my mom had told them that I was dropped on my head as an infant, and that I was retarded! That was why they were so shocked that I had read the goat books several times over before they came back a few days later. Meanwhile, she'd been telling me that she didn't want me to go to town with her because people assumed I was retarded due to my behavior. It was true that I was extremely shy and timid, but hearing Mom say that I acted retarded did nothing at all for my self confidence. Apparently it had all been an elaborate head trip designed to either keep me under control, or to cover for the lapses in homeschooling. I wasn't sure which it was, possibly both, but it was pretty insulting!

There was something healing and soothing about the atmosphere of Chris and Jaylene's place. It was like the air was sweeter even though it was only on the other side of the mountain from my parent's place. I could feel myself healing when I was there. I hadn't told them much about how badly things had ended with Daniel. I kept that as brief as I could. They knew things weren't ideal with my parents, but they didn't say much about that either. I thought for a moment of mentioning what Dad did to me at night...but family loyalty had been pounded into me so thoroughly that I let the thought slip right back into the morass of my thoughts again. Besides, how many times had he told me? If I told anyone, he'd tell them I was crazy. Retarded. Crazy. I might end up in a funny farm. I knew that I was different from other people. Maybe I was crazy...but I knew that I hadn't imagined what he did to me almost every night now. So I didn't voice that thought, talked instead about happier things as we passed the gate to their farm and approached their house.

Jaylene had bought an eggplant while she was in town, and she was making eggplant parmesan, one of my favorite meals. I held their small, scruffy cat in my arms while I watched her cut the eggplant up and bread and fry the slices. Chris came inside and I asked them what we would do if my parents tracked me down here. They discussed a little cabin where they could hide me away. That sounded good to me. Then they said that if they found me there, we would just deal with it. Eliyah couldn't come into the house, and Chris and Jaylene were armed to the teeth in the event of a violent confrontation. Dad usually had the .45 pistol with him, but Chris and Jaylene each had a prominent hand gun holstered to their bodies at all times. After all, just a few months ago, when the goats were kidding, a cougar had snuck into the goat barn as Nutmeg, their most productive doe, was birthing and grabbed the kid and took off with it...even though there were people in the barn. Jaylene had been thrown from her mare when they were confronted on a road by a black bear. Having a gun on hand seemed like an intelligent precaution given how far out they lived in the woods.

So we weren't entirely surprised when Eliyah drove up in the blue Chevy Blazer. What did surprise us was that he didn't come to the door and try to pound it down. He just stood next to the blazer and looked at us. Chris went outside; Dad called out that he just wanted to talk to me. They told me I didn't have to talk to him. But talking to him didn't seem so bad, so I went outside with Chris and stood a ways away. Dad said that my Mom wanted to talk to me. I replied that this was fine. I would be happy to talk to her. She was welcome to come here and talk to me. I turned to walk back into the house. But then he said that she was really upset; there was something she wanted to tell me. If I would just come talk to her..... I told him he would have to bring me back before supper, because I really wanted to be back in time for the eggplant parmesan. He promised that he would have me back for supper. Chris turned and walked back to the house and I got into the blazer. I didn't have much to say to Eliyah.

When I got back to Mom's house, I went in to talk to her. She wanted to know why I went to Chris and Jaylene's. They were afraid that Chris had designs on seducing me. Now that was a rich joke! I told them that Chris and Jaylene had offered me a job, I was 18, and I intended to take the job and live and work there. I was fine, and no, Chris hadn't tried to seduce me (of all the ridiculous things)! Didn't they get that my heart was for Daniel and now that he was out of the question, no one else was going to substitute for him?? The conversation over, I stood and declared that I was ready to go back now; I didn't want to miss supper. And that's when Eliyah said I wasn't going anywhere.

They not only wouldn't take me back to Chris and Jaylene's they wouldn't let me leave. Dad blocked my way out the door. They assigned chaperones to me, the first time this had been done to me inside the house. Several accompanied me when it was time to milk Lily and Sannah. They wouldn't talk to me. Even Sarah, who had helped me escape, watched my every move, as though I could bolt and run through the woods before Dad could track me down with his car. When I was indoors, I couldn't even go to the bathroom without a sister present. They were inattentive while I was in my bedroom for a minute, and I had just managed to get the window open when Rachel remembered to watch me. She called out the alarm and everyone rushed to prevent my leaving.

Eliyah screwed all the doors and windows shut. He took away every single left shoe that I owned, so that all of my shoes were only for the right foot. This was infuriating. He could have just taken all the shoes, but no...only the left ones. Moreover, I wasn't allowed to sleep, either. Mom and Dad took turns, tag teaming as the other one slept. They lectured and scolded and tried to talk me out of leaving for hours on end. I was determined to go. I told Dad that I walk crawl on bloody stumps if I had to, but I was going. Mom kept talking about Daniel. I didn't want salt poured into my old wounds. It hurt me just to hear his name, just to think of him, happily married and oblivious to what he'd put me through...not even caring, but she couldn't quit asking me. If he wasn't married, wouldn't I still want to be with him? Didn't I still love him. I just said that these questions were stupid. He was married and I could never, ever have him. Of course I loved him, but that was an inconvenience that hardly mattered. My feelings were irrelevant, so quit asking me about him! I didn't get to sleep at all that night.

In the morning, chaperones (I thought of them as spies) clustered around me, watching every single move I made as I milked and tended the goats. I didn't get to tether them out. Someone else would do that for me, because they couldn't trust me that far away from the house. It was too far from Dad, and everyone knew that I was fast on my feet...even barefoot.

Back in the house (my time outside was painfully short), they were calling my Father's house. They had Marie on the phone and were tellling her some crap about my running away, and that some dirty old hippe wanted to have sex with me. I could hear Marie gasping, "Oh my!" on the other end of the phone. Lies....so many lies. My father should know that I was over 18 now, that I could leave. But on the other hand, who knows what they were being told? I went to my room, and the chaperones scuttled along warily behind me, guarding the door and windows as I collapsed tiredly on my bed.

The next thing I knew, they were telling me to get up and pack. I was going to go to my father's house. I said I didn't want to. They told me I had no choice. What about my goats??? What about Laddie? Too bad, they said. Maybe I could get them later. I had only a very short time to get my things together, like 15-30 minutes, and they loaded me up and drove me towards Twin Falls. I was furious, just seething with anger. They had no right! And then, when we were travelling through some large city, probably Coeur d'Alene, and travelling towards Moscow, then Mom told me something that turned my fury to a white rage.

Daniel wasn't married. He had never written me that letter. Sarah and Raphah had, consulting his older, real letters carefully, picking out the kinds of things he would say, repeating fragments of his language and writing style. Daniel was still alone over in his cabin on Wrenco Loop, probably wondering why I had lost interest in him, and with every second that passed, we were speeding away from him. Well, I hit the roof. I screamed and shrieked and yelled and went bat shit crazy, but still the car continued on its way to Moscow. I demanded that they let me out right now. I would walk or hitchhike back, but damn it, I was going to go find Daniel and talk to him myself. They ignored me and continued driving, farther and farther away from him. My fury turned from rage into a rare cold, frozen sort of anger, the sort where I could have killed someone (such as Eliyah) without even a fraction of regret or emotion. I pulled out a notebook and began writing Daniel a letter. My entire family had betrayed me. I didn't trust anything they said to me anymore, would never trust any of them again. The whole family had been in on this fraud. I wondered if they'd written a letter to him that was ostensibly from me. If they said anything at all to him, he shouldn't believe it, because it would probably be nothing but lies. We were driving through the golden, rolling hills of the Palouse now. Mom was saying that he had been writing me, but she'd started confiscating all his letters, because she didn't feel he was good for me. I said I wanted his letters back, every last one of them. I silently wondered how many of the letters I'd written he had actually received, because I never, ever got to deliver them myself. They always travelled to the post office by the hand of my sister or parents. I was shaking, I was so angry. My pen pressed indentations into the paper and my handwriting looked hostile as I wrote to Daniel that I had always loved him, that I hoped we could still be married.

Then they posed a question to me: If they turned back and brought me hom eso I could talk to Daniel again and sort this mess out, would I promise not to run away? I did not even think twice. Yes. I would promise that.

For the next several days I called Daniel's neighbor (Daniel had no phone or other utilities) obsessively, leaving messages to have Daniel call me. I knew that if I allowed it, Mom and Eliyah would be happy to let their promise to resolve thing with Daniel fall by the wayside. I had to contact him and get this straightened out. He didn't call back, and I thought I would go crazy with anxiety and worry. I pestered Mom and Dad even more insistently until they finally drove over to his place. I wanted to go with, but they said that they needed to straighten things out with him themselves. I paced the house restlessly, unable to think of anything else.

They returned. They said Daniel wasn't angry at them. I couldn't understand this and wondered what on earth they had told him. He was well, he was doing fine. He'd tried to remember what he'd written to me in the letters that Mom had conveniently "lost", but hadn't really been able to. The date was set, and he'd be coming over in a few days. A few days. Good grief...how on earth was I supposed to wait any longer? I knew now how much could change in just a few days.

I don't remember what I wore for the afternoon when Daniel came back. I know that I was self conscious about my scalp; it was still picked to bloody bits that could be seen even under my long, thick head of hair. Chris and Jaylene had never asked me about it. I waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally, a big old yellow Chevrolet pickup truck, the really old fashioned kind, an antique really, drove up with a round bale of hay. I was surprised to see him driving, but I ran over from the field where I'd been waiting. The goats, running loose that day, flocked after me, and soon he was surrounded by dogs, goats, and my siblings and I. It was strange to see him after waiting so long. Had he always been so short? Not that I cared, I didn't...but it's funny how people can look slightly different when you haven't seen them for a year or more. I'd dreamed countless times of running into his open arms, but now that he was actually here, there was a strange reserve between us. I was terrified inside and afraid to show it. I didn't know if he would still want me. He hadn't said anything to Mom and Eliyah one way or the other, only that he would come and talk to me. Maybe he'd changed his mind. I couldn't be sure, and I didn't know what I'd do if I was rejected by him all over again, this time in person.

He followed along as I did my chores, met my goats, which I proudly showed off to him. He didn't seem very impressed with Lily's production, which was only a pint and a half a day compared to Sannah's three quarts a day. It was decent production considering their small size, that they were yearlings, and also that they were still each nursing a kid which took some of the milk. I tried to tell him that Lily made up for it with her personality, but he just frowned. How could I tell him that she had virtually saved my life and certainly my sanity? Would he even care?

He asked me why I'd run away. I hadn't expected this question. How could I put into a few simple words the amount of pain I'd been in? How could I convey what they'd done to me? Wasn't it obvious? Things were still awkward between us. It wasn't a good time to broach the subject of what Dad was doing to me every night. I thought. Finally I told him that I had decided that if I couldn't be a farmer's wife, then I would be a farm hand instead, which was pretty much the truth, but left out all the gory details. Daniel had never really relished gory details anyway; he was sort of an idealist who liked to look on the bright side, even if the silver lining was sliver thin.

Right about then, Fox had gotten loose and Rachel or Raphah hollered for help. Daniel took off to help them. I considered following, but that might seem desperate. Besides, I still had Sannah to milk, and she was craning her neck eagerly over the side of the goat pen, licking her lips in anticipation of the grain she would get.

When he came into the house, I showed him the letter, the fake letter. He read it and laughed, actually laughed! He said it was nicer than anything he would have been able to write. I had no idea how to take that. And how could he find that letter funny? It had very nearly destroyed me!

After dinner, Dad went to bed and we gathered in the living room. Daniel didn't sit next to me as he always had, seating himself in a kitchen chair across from me several feet away instead. My senses were on hypervigilant mode, sensitive to even the tiniest signs of rejection, and although I still harbored a flame of hope, it didn't look very promising. After an hour or two of chatting he mentioned the bible passage where if a daughter makes a vow and her father finds out about it before sundown, he can negate it. He said that since Eliyah had disagreed with my promise to marry him, I was not under that vow any longer. I could have pointed out that Dad found out about it long after sundown, and I felt like saying that Eliyah wasn't my real father, so that verse didn't even apply, but i had very little input in the conversation. Mostly I just sat there and had to accept whatever he decided, regardless of my own feelings. Then he said that thought it would be best if we started out as friends again and we could see where that went. I knew what that meant, but I tried hard to look cheerful and optimistic. I mean, compared to him being married to some woman named Linda who was expecting his child, it was still an improvement. He also asked me to promise not to run away again. I would have promised him just about anything, so I readily agreed. Then he left, without even giving me a hug. In fact, he hadn't so much as held my hand all day. The whole time, he'd behaved as though he was stepping very carefully around me, like this was an extremely delicate situation. Something was wrong. I could feel it in the air. I watched him leave, not reluctantly as he always had, but as though he were relieved to be going. The old yellow truck pulled out of the drive.

I tried to keep hoping, but in all honesty, the things he'd said and the way he acted didn't offer much of a foothold for hope. I had felt defensive about running away to Chris and Jaylene's even though I wasn't a minor anymore, had had to explain it to him. I kept remembering him walking out the door without turning back once, as his slight figure walked to the truck and hopped in, not even giving the old truck time to warm up before he drove away. I thought back on all the animals I'd lost, on my mother walking away when I was little, and other things. It seemed that whenever I really loved anything, I lost it, as though there was some kind of a curse on me. I still loved Daniel, and I would give him a chance, but I wasn't going to make the same mistake and put all my eggs in that basket again.

But what could I do? I couldn't go back to Chris and Jaylene's. I'd promised Daniel I wouldn't, and even though he didn't seem to keep the promises he'd made toward me, a promise is a promise, so I would do it. What would I do....that was the question. I planted my garden and did all the stuff I usually did.

I told my mother that if things didn't work out with Daniel, I wanted to farm and have a place of my own. She said that she would give me a portion of our land, since my money had helped to buy it, and also, the money I was raising by doing firewood was helping to pay off whatever was left of the land payment after the logging had been done. It was my inheritance, and I could have a few acres. I should look around and let her know which part I wanted. I walked all of the land, sometimes taking Lily with me, often singing sad country songs....

"And I feel like a stone you have picked up and thrown to the hard rock bottom of your heart"......"how could you do what you've gone and done to me, I wouldn't treat a dog the way you've treated me"......"where have you been, I looked for you forever and a day, where have you been, I'm just not myself when you're away"......."what in the world am I going to do about you, your memory keeps coming back right out of the blue, oh I've tried, and I've tried, but I still can't believe that we're through, tell me what in the world am I gonna do about you"......

Raphah sang too, some of the same sad songs, and others: "Work your fanny to the bone, whaddaya get? Bony fanny, bony fanny......" Sometimes tears ran down his face as he sang mournfully in his thin voice. I could relate. Sometimes we sang together, and the more I sang, the better my voice sounded. Even though the songs were so depressing, there was no way any of them could be worse than what we were feeling, and it helped to feel that some country artist felt pain too, and to sing with him or her.

I've mentioned my sister's young doeling, Cinderella, already. She was beautiful, a coloration known in the dairy goat world as "broken chamoisee". In plain english, she was brown with a black dorsal stripe and black stripes down her legs, with splashes of white overlaying this brown and black pattern. She was bigger than the other kids (with the exception of Snowdrop), long and leggy with a lot of spunk and spirit. When you looked at her, you just knew she was high quality. Sarah loved Cindy; she was athletic and bounced through the field and over obstacles with the sort of high spiritedness that makes you understand what people are really saying when they say that they "feel like a kid again". The other goat kids were fun and terribly playful too, but none of them were of the same caliber as Cinderella.

When I was walking the land one day and saw her laying on the ground next to some small saplings, I ran over to her right away. It was so uncharacteristic of her that I knew something was wrong, and it was. She'd gotten tangled up really badly, and her braided baling twine colar had twisted tightly around her neck, cutting off her air supply. I untangled her and untwisted the collar as fast as I could, hollered for help, but she seemed lifeless. Dad and his friend and other gathered around; we pressed on her ribcage, hoping to force air back into her lungs. I thought I saw her move, but it must have been just a reflex: Cindy had strangled to death. Billy, Lily's inbred buck kid, slated for meat, stood ten feet away, looking on. He was tangled up too, but alive. It figured that he would be the one to live while the beautiful, purebred doeling, th eonly one who could have been registered, died.

Sarah was devastated. We hauled her pet's body out of the woods and to the house. And then my parents did something awful: they decided that we would eat Cinderella. The laws and rules we followed regarding clean and unclean foods were quite specific in prohibiting eating meat that had been strangled, or which had died of itself, and Cindy fell into both these categories. Dad pooh-poohed this and hung her up on the silver poplar right outside the house and butchered her in front of us. I couldn't watch; this was just wrong! I went inside and found Sarah, who was sobbing uncontrollably. I told her exactly what I thought of what they were doing, but my anger did very little to assuage the pain of her loss, exacerbated by this callous act of greed. We had plenty of food. We weren't going hungry anymore. In firewood alone, and with mostly child labor, we were bringing in about $100 per day, and that wasn't counting the money Dad made on his timber sales. The whole thing seemed really unjustifiable to me.

Before long, the young doe had been reduced to chunks of red meat in the kitchen sink being wrapped up with white freezer paper. I'd been tending towards Craig and Lori's diet anyway, but that day clinched it for me. I was not eating Cinderella. Her meat was not kosher, she had been our pet, and feeding her to us was the height of insensitivity. Think of how I would have felt if it had been Lily who had died and was being served up to us as dinner! There was a big battle over it that night, but as always, I was emphatically stubborn. I would not eat her. Period.

They wouldn't tell me whether the meat in our meals was from Cindy or not, so I quit eating any and all meat. I didn't trust them not to try to sneak it to me somehow. Then Mom made sure that each and every meal we ate had meat in it, usually ground hamburger cooked until it was teeny, tiny crumbles that were almost impossible to avoid ingesting. I grew tired of this game, and started cooking vegetarian food for myself.

They pitched a fit. They told me that without meat, I would waste away and become weak. I might die! My breasts would wither away, Dad said warningly. Now that was an appealing thought. My breasts were what he liked the best. If they withered away.....maybe he would let me be. He had started creeping into our bedroom early in the morning, stealthily. If he found me still in bed, I awoke to find his hands caressing my body. Sometimes he would be trying to lay down next to me. I often saw him laying down next to Sarah in the morning. It had gotten to the point where my senses were so finely honed that when I heard even the slightest footstep, I awoke and leapt out of bed and stood next to it. Soemtimes I found myself standing next to the bed, virtually sleeping where I stood still, with no idea of how I had gotten there. He would be there, leering at me, but I was standing, awake, with no need for him to "wake me up". Not having the curse of full, luscious breasts defintely had its appeal. Despite their complaints and warnings, I abstained from meat completely after that.

I kept hoping that I'd hear from Daniel, but day after day there was no word from him; not even a note. So I continued formulating plans for building a tiny little cabin on the part of the land I'd chosen. I was planning to grow everything I would need, and not to use anything I couldn't produce. The goats presented a problem, because I knew that I'd have to breed them in order to get milk, but I didn't know what to do with the buck kids, since I didn't eat meat anymore. Coming up with oil was another major issue, because goat milk is naturally homogenized; making butter from it is difficult unless you have a cream separator. But what really bothered me was that I wanted a child, and I had no idea how to get one without Daniel in the picture. I wanted a child so badly that it was almost an ache in me....but of course, I would have to have my little farm up and running and producing reliably first. Of course, I could just go and find some guy somewhere and hope I got pregnant, but the thought of being with anyone except for Daniel repulsed me. Besides, I didn't want to have to deal with a man in my life. I just wanted a baby.

Meanwhile, ironically enough, Eliyah was pestering me constantly, and his advances had taken a new turn: he wanted me to have a baby with him. He claimed that aliens had come and altered his genitals and genetics in such a way that he had something other men didn't, and that his genes would make exceptional children. I didn't care if his kids were geniuses, the thought of having sex with him or bearing his child was so far out of the question that I would rather die than to do either. The situation had gotten so far out of hand that he would grope me as I walked by and say that with his big balls and my big boobs, we'd make beautiful children. He said this kind of thing even when my mother was around, with apparent impunity.

The pressure to relinquish myself to him was constant and unrelenting. He would ask me now to rub his back lower, to massage his inner things higher, to rub his butt. And then one day, when he was going on and on about the aliens giving him something special in his family jewels, he put my hand there. I took my hand away as quickly as if I'd touched fire. I had no idea what male genitals were supposed to feel like anyway! How did he think I'd know the difference? I realized then that he wasn't going to stop until he got to me. He apparently wasn't desperate enough to force me yet, but I began to think it was only a matter of time before he did.

I'd already told my mother. At first she made a show of concern. She even came into his bedroom (they were sleeping separately now) caught him clasping me next to his body, and said, "Don't think I don't know what you're doing", shook her finger at him, and walked out of the room. I couldn't believe it. Obviously, Mom wasn't going to be much help here. I was going to have to handle this myself. If he managed to get to me, I would have to kill myself. That sounds extreme, but I had already lost just about everything I'd been living for.

I decided that there was only one way out. I would have to marry. Mom wouldn't let me leave the property unless I married, because of a prophecy she'd received. If I couldn't have Daniel, I didn't care who I got. All the rest of mankind was pretty much generic. If I could find a guy that I had a least a few things in common with, that would be nice, but really, the first man who wanted me, I would marry. Perhaps in time, I would be able to grow to love him.

It's amazing how social anxiety can vanish when you have nothing at all to lose anymore, and that is what happened to me. My heart had already been as broken as it could possibly be, and my stepfather was close to forcing himself on me as it was. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing any man could do that could hurt me. I didn't care what anyone thought of me; Daniel had been torn from me and I couldn't possibly experience any more pain than I already had.

And so it was that I threw all caution, all reserve, all fear of rejection to the wind. I flirted shamelessly with any and all men. One was the same as another, because none of them were Daniel. They might as well have been livestock for all I cared. I knew what men were about; they wanted my body, my virginity, and someone was going to get it. As long as it wasn't Dad, and since it couldn't be Daniel, it didn't much matter to me who it was, but he had to get me out of that place in exchange. Old men, young men, married men....they were all the same, and I teased them all without a fraction of shame.

Larry Bennet was one of these. If I remember correctly, he was a Vietnam veteran; he must have been at least 25 years older than me. He was balding with gray hair and a leering eye and smile. A devout Christian who had frequent conversations with Jesus, who relied on the turn of pennies to reveal God's will, and who did nothing at all without consulting those pennies to determine God's will, his sanity was a little questionable. Still, he was kind. He worked with us almost daily in the woods, and when Larry was there, we were certain to have gloves, to get more frequent breaks and better treatment. If Dad had brought no lunch for us to eat, Larry had, and he would give it to us. He appreciated how hard I worked. The only thing was, I wasn't ladylike enough. He'd received a prophecy that the woman of his dreams was to be named Sarah. I pined after a Daniel, and Larry wanted a Sarah. What an odd situation we were in! Naturally, he began to pursue my sister Sarah, who was thoroughly repulsed by the old man. She was terrified that Mom and Eliyah would marry her off to him, because Larry had quite a lot of money to pay for her. You would never have known it by how he lived simply in a log cabin of his own making, but he could have paid well for her, and he probably would have, too. I was sick and tired of being compared to my sister. I flung Larry out of the question and turned to other interests. It was amazing, really, how many men came through our household to deal with Dad and his timber cruising and buying! Loggers, old hippies, young guys delivering our bulk food orders....the world was simply busting at the seams with men I didn't much want, and I smiled at them all with total abandon and wantoness.

Dad didn't know how to react to my sudden change. At first he was sort of hostile about Larry, but my attention shifted from man to man, and he was never sure where the competition really was. I loved that. Instead of choosing one man, such as Daniel, to guard against, he was constantly on his toes, because I was about as indiscriminate as I could be. And none of it mattered to me, because behind all the gaiety and the flushed cheeks was an empty, aching heart. Nobody would take Daniel's place. I had almost died, had almost lost my mind over him, and now I was functioning, but I would never be the same again. They didn't know that I still cried for him at night, that I still talked to Lily about him, that he was the only man who ever walked with me in my dreams as I slept. Life echoed hollowly in his absence, so I filled it up with work, splitting harder and longer, stacking the woodpiles tighter and better, staying outside as much as I could. But in the quiet of the night, or on Sabbaths, I was haunted by my mind replaying our last visit and conversation over and over and over again. What could I have said differently? Should I have left Sannah for later and run along when the horse got loose? I had felt so wooden, so numb, so dissociated from myself, so afraid....had I even smiled at him? I wasn't sure. Maybe if I'd told him how I really felt....but the idea of subjecting myself to more pain had deterred me from that. Besides, he was the man! He was supposed to put a little of his own ego on the line, too. Instead, the risk, the pain, the uncertainty, had all been mine and mine alone while he occupied the lofty position of deciding whether I was still good enough for him or not.

There was still the possibility that he might come back and visit, to be friends as he'd said, even though I'd felt in my bones that this was another empty promise to placate me rather than something which would actually occur. Sometimes Dad got so frustrated with my whirlwind of flirtations with the various men that he would talk about taking me to see Daniel, but of course, he didn't. I knew that he wouldn't, just as Daniel either would not come back, or would not be allowed to come back. It was hard to say exactly what was going on, because never once had I been able to speak to him honestly about it. I received no letters from him, but who is to say that he didn't write them?

Chris and Jaylene came by from time to time after things had cooled down between them and my parents. I felt awkward and sheepish, like I'd let them down. I couldn't go back though, because despite the fact that Daniel hadn't kept his promises toward me, I had promised him that I wouldn't run away again, and because I'd made the promise to him, because I loved him, I honored it....even though it would have been far better not to.

Occasionally, other strategies for escape occurred to me. Larry had spent a lot of time regaling us with his jail stories, just as the Christson family had. We loved the jail stories. I just knew that one day, I would get the chance to go to jail, too, and to prove my mettle. I wished Daniel had told me more about what it was like.

So I seriously considered finding a way to wind up in jail. I knew that if I could do that, things would be markedly different when I got out, and jail could not possibly be worse than where I was! The problem was that I could not think of a way to wind up in jail without violating my own values, without doing something that would be indefensible in light of my belief system.

Sometimes I thought about hitchhiking to Daniel's house so I could talk to himself, to make sure that Mom and Eliyah hadn't told him stuff about me...to tell him how bad things really were....to get the straight story. But I had seen him when he was starting to get angry. He turned cold, like Nordic ice....the thought of him being angry at me froze my blood in my veins and deterred me from any such ideas. Besides, I didn't want to get him in trouble. What if my parents called the cops on him because I'd run away? Even though I was 18, Mom insisted that I wasn't really free because I wasn't like other teenagers, something was wrong with me. I had looked in the encyclopedias we had at home to try and figure out what was legal, and hadn't found much enlightenment there. I only knew that if he landed in jail because of me, I could never forgive myself.

I poured my heart into the garden, the goats, splitting the firewood. My arms grew strong and muscular and my hands developed a crushing grip that I enjoyed using when being introduced the Dad's logger friends. They were always surprised to meet a young woman with a grip that was stronger than their own! I didn't cry constantly anymore...not in the daytime anyway, but I had become grim, old before my time, when I wasn't busy flirting with prospective husbands.

Summer sped past me. Time meant nothing, because there was no Daniel to wait for any longer. Every day was only another day that he didn't follow through on his intention to be friends, the empty promise mocking me. I kept planning my little farm, because I still preferred that idea to marrying a random man, still cringed at the thought of other hands touching me, of looking into anyone else's eyes but his. The problem was that this appeared to be yet another promise (this time by Mom) that wasn't going to come through. I told her that if I was going to pour a lot of work into the site I'd selected, I wanted a deed. I didn't want to put a lot of work into it and then have them log it or sell it.

And then there was the mortgage she'd just taken out, for $20,000, with no real source of income with which to pay it off. Between the logging, the constant sales of firewood, and Dad's timber cruising, and the theft of my and Sarah's savings, the land was almost paid off when Mom got that mortgage. What was worse, she didn't seem to have a good plan for paying it off. I knew nothing at all about money, but I was steadfastly opposed to debt as a matter of principle. Not only did she not have a plan for paying it off, she was spending money like it was going out of style! There was a company called Fingerhut, from which she bought all kinds of junk we didn't really need, piles of stuff, and when we got it, it was never as nice as the pictures in the catalog; it was cheap stuff, cheaper than what we would find in Walmart today. She blew money all over, buying people extravagant gifts. The mortgage scared me. And of course, now that the land was mortgaged, she couldn't really sign off part of it to me anymore.

Although Larry frequently helped us with the firewood, I don't think he ever got any kind of monetary compensation for his help or for the use of his huge flated truck with sides. The truck could hold six cords of firewood, and we generally filled it up every week. Larry and Raphah and I did the bulk of the work, yet none of us ever got paid for it.

Occasionally, however, there were other compensations. Dad bought me an old pickup truck, a faded red Ford Chomedy. How I loved that truck, even though I couldn't drive it anywhere except for the logging roads on and around our place, to load up firewood with! He bought Sarah an old blue station wagon without a title. Then I found a Welsh pony advertised for only $50, and so we acquired Missy, who became Rachel's. Most of these things were bartered for with firewood, not paid for in cash. And then we bartered for 50 chickens, all Rhode Island Red roosters with beady eyes and sharp beaks that they weren't afraid to use....

But aside from the truck, I thought our best trade was Abraham, an Alpine buck. He was tall with a long boned body and a full set of horns, glossy black with white markings. Despite the horns, he wasn't aggressive at all. I thought he was beautiful, and hoped we would get nice kids from him.

The end of summer was approaching and I faced the coming winter with dread. I didn't want to spend another winter with these people. Not one of them had lent me any consolation when I was crying for Daniel, when I was wanting to die because of something they had all known was a complete fabrication. No, instead there had been guilt, accusations of adultery on my part for still loving him, ridicule, and an incredible amount of shame. I couldn't bear the thought of another winter in close quarters with them. I didn't trust any of them anymore.

And then, one day I was in my room when someone told me Larry had brought a man with him this time. I went to see, to assess whether or not this man might be a prospective catch, a ticket out of there. I looked out the window. The man wore a cowboy hat, and he moved around a lot in an excitable fashion. He turned a little and I noticed that he had a reddish-blond colored goatee and a large mustache. He looked like something out of a western TV show. This was definitely not an average northern Idaho man!

When I got up the nerve to go outside, the man was standing on one of my garden beds, petting the leaves of my corn plants, stroking them upwards towards the sky and talking to them. I wasn't very happy that he was standing on the beds that I had worked by hand in order to improve soil texture and aeration. Even Laddie wasn't allowed to stand on the beds. And speaking of Laddie, he was nowhere to be seen... My cat, Johnny, had either died or been given away, and my latest cat, Missy, one of Muffin's kittens, was perched upon my shoulder as I walked out to the garden. She was smallish with long hair, and had been trained (by me of course) to launch herself onto my shoulder every time I approached the porch railing and ride around there as I did chores.

The man's name was Vincent. He was Larry's friend, was living up at Larry's for a while, and it soon became clear to me that he was sort of fanatical about his beliefs, too. Like Larry, he didn't use the sacred names. One of the first things he wanted to know, aside from the garden and plant questions, was why my head was covered in bloody scabs. Even with my thick head of hair, they could be seen. I was embarrassed, didn't really know what to say, so I more or less told the truth. Strangely enough, hearing about a girl who was so broken up about some other guy that she'd picked her own scalp that badly didn't seem to phase him much.

He had blue eyes, loved plants and gardening, liked animals, and like Daniel, he was of Norwegian extraction. Actually, he was one fourth Norwegian, but he had actually been to Norway and knew quite a lot about it, which gave him immediate appeal to me. He wasn't Daniel, but I decided that I was willing to give him a shot. Oh! And he had the coolest last name- Leaf.