—
DAD WAS STILL BEDRIDDEN when Shawn and Emily announced their
engagement. It was suppertime, and the family was gathered around
the kitchen table, when Shawn said he guessed he’d marry Emily after
all. There was silence while forks scraped plates. Mother asked if he
was serious. He said he wasn’t, that he figured he’d find somebody
better before he actually had to go through with it. Emily sat next to
him, wearing a warped smile.
I didn’t sleep that night. I kept checking the bolt on the door. The
present seemed vulnerable to the past, as if it might be overwhelmed
by it, as if I might blink, and when my eyes opened I would be fifteen.
The next morning Shawn said he and Emily were planning a twenty-
mile horse ride to Bloomington Lake. I surprised both of us by saying I
wanted to go. I felt anxious when I imagined all those hours in the
wilderness with Shawn, but I pushed the anxiety aside. There was
something I had to do.
Fifty miles feels like five hundred on a horse, particularly if your
body is more accustomed to a chair than a saddle. When we arrived at
the lake, Shawn and Emily slipped nimbly off their horses and began to
make camp; it was all I could do to unhitch Apollo’s saddle and ease
myself onto a fallen tree. I watched Emily set up the tent we were to
share. She was tall and unthinkably slight, with long, straight hair so
blond it was nearly silver.
We built a fire and sang campfire songs. We played cards. Then we
went to our tents. I lay awake in the dark next to Emily, listening to the
crickets. I was trying to imagine how to begin the conversation—how to
tell her she shouldn’t marry my brother—when she spoke. “I want to
talk to you about Shawn,” she said. “I know he’s got some problems.”
“He does,” I said.
“He’s a spiritual man,” Emily said. “God has given him a special
calling. To help people. He told me how he helped Sadie. And how he
helped you.”
“He didn’t help me.” I wanted to say more, to explain to Emily what
the bishop had explained to me. But they were his words, not mine. I
had no words. I had come fifty miles to speak, and was mute.
“The devil tempts him more than other men,” Emily said. “Because