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.