“You see? You’re perfectly whole,” she assured me. “You have nothing to fear. We’re almost done.”

She led me to the table, picked up the brass bowl, and dipped her fingers into the liquid.

“With this virgin oil, I anoint you, Eden, the spotless lamb cleansed of all unrighteousness.”

She raised her hand over my head and sprinkled some of the oil in my hair. Then retrieved the golden ring from the table and lifted my left hand.

“With this ring I do wed thee to God.”

She slid the ring over my finger. Then kissed each of my cheeks.

“What was lost is now found. What was dead is now risen from the grave. What lived in transgression is now made whole, a spotless bride now loved by the God of vengeance.”

She gazed lovingly at me for a long moment, then turned and walked to the wall. There was a whip with leather straps hanging from a nail. She unhooked it and walked back, face now flat, eyes on Bobby.

“And on the goat he transferred all of his anger for the goat he found unworthy of his love.”

She was going to whip Bobby? My heart froze, and I almost cried out. Maybe the fear had robbed my voice, I don’t know, but I watched in disbelief as Kathryn instructed Bobby to take off his robe and turn around.

He was smiling as he did it, eyes on me. Proud. Surely not aware of what horror might be headed his way.

“Bend over,” she instructed.

He obediently doubled at the waist and stood ready.

Kathryn gently whipped his back with the straps once. It was a symbolic beating.

“To this unworthy flesh I transfer all of God’s wrath.”

She whipped him again, gently. But her words cut to my heart.

“I confer all of our sin to the defiled one . . .”

Another lash.

“So that righteousness might be found in the pure bride.”

Again.

“I curse thee . . .

Again.

“I curse thee . . .

She laid the whip across his back seven times. On the third ‘I curse thee’ something in me changed. I was watching my young brother who was too naïve and innocent to fully grasp the emotional burden being placed on his back, and I realized something new.

I knew that I was home.

That I was home and I wasn’t going to leave.

I wasn’t going to leave because if I did, there would be no one to save Bobby, just like Kathryn had told him. I couldn’t abandon my poor, innocent brother. Ever.

What I’d half decided the night before was now sealed in my mind.

After Kathryn had laid seven lashes across Bobby’s back she told him that he could stand straight.

He turned around, smiling wide with crooked teeth, as proud as could be. And I smiled back, holding back a well of tears that wanted to cleanse my eyes of what they’d just seen.

I love you, Bobby. I will take care of you. I promise you, I will never leave you.

“It is finished,” Kathryn said, spreading her arms wide.

Wyatt started to clap and was joined first by Bobby, and then by me.

“It is finished.”

But really, it had all just begun.

12

Five years later

KATHRYN STOOD at the kitchen sink and watched through the window as Wyatt’s truck pulled to a stop beside the house. He’d left long before sunrise and had been gone all day, hauling barrels and repairing a copper still for Zeke.

Now, dusky shadows reached deep into the surrounding bayou. Despite the approaching night, the summer air was still thick. She didn’t mind at all, though, because it reminded her of the day her precious lamb had come to her. Their first night together as a family had been a night just like this one.

Had it been five years already?

Five years . . . Amazing how quickly time slipped away. Eden had been so beautifully naive then, clueless about the ways of redemption and purity and yet so innocent.

Five years . . . She was so much more now. Not always perfect, but as close as any human was likely to be. It hadn’t been an easy path—righteousness never was. Her role as mother and teacher had required never-ending attention and wisdom. Eden’s had required trust and obedience.

But there was no price for purity in the eyes of God. No cost too high for absolution. No task too great for the sake of love. And no mother or daughter could possibly love each other the way she and Eden did.

Wyatt’s work boots clomped up the rickety porch stairs, and then the rusty screen door slammed shut behind him. His footsteps stopped a few feet behind her.

“Zeke wants to see you,” Wyatt said.

She turned. He stood in the kitchen doorway, still dressed in grimy work clothes, hair matted to his sweaty forehead.

“Right now?” She set the last dinner plate in the wire drying rack and wiped her hands with the dishtowel.

“Yes, sugar. I was just at his place, he’s waiting for you.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

“Well, how was he? Was he cross?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

“I mean I couldn’t tell if he was cross.”

“I swear, Wyatt . . . If a hornet stung you between the eyes, you wouldn’t notice it unless someone pointed it out to you. And how many times do I have to tell you to take your shoes off at the door?”

He carefully slipped his work boots off, peeled off his socks, and placed them on a mat next to the door.

She hooked the towel through the refrigerator’s handle and hurried past Wyatt, fidgeting with her fraying hair bun on the way to the bathroom. “I have to change. The children are in their rooms having quiet time. They will stay there till I return. No one goes outside. Not them, not you.”

“Of course, sugar.”

She entered the bathroom, filled the sink with scalding hot water, applied a dollop of Noxzema to her right hand, and scrubbed her face and neck. The medicinal scent of the white cream pleased her and she breathed it in deeply. There wasn’t time to be as thorough as she normally required, but this would have to do. God would cover her haste with grace.

Cleanliness is godliness, and godliness is purity. Only the pure can see God.

Kathryn dried her face and pulled on a fresh dress—the white one with Texas bluebells on it. Her crucifix necklace. Her polished black flats would do too. Hair pulled back without a stray hair to be seen.

Without another word to Wyatt, who stared out the kitchen window with his back to her, she left the house, climbed into the truck and pulled onto the long gravel road.

Why would Zeke have sent for her so late in the day? What had she done or left undone? Nothing. So then it had to be about Eden.

Eden: the spotless lamb who’d quickly come to accept her true place in the world. And her mother’s love.

Mother.

She’d wept the night Eden had first used that word with full sincerity. She’d come so far. They all had, and for that Kathryn thanked both God and Zeke every day.

Kathryn turned left into Zeke’s compound and rolled to a stop next to his spotless, black pickup—an F-350 he’d said. Next to it, hers looked like a piece of junk, but that was only proper.

She killed the engine and got out of the truck. Zeke’s dogs ran back and forth in a nearby chain-link pen and barked as she climbed the flagstone steps to the house, wiping beaded sweat from her hairline with a handkerchief.

A lone rocking chair sat on the covered porch beneath an overhead fan that labored in the heavy air. She gathered herself and knocked on the door with a slight tremor in her hand, then took a step back.

A brief moment, then the door swung open. Zeke wore a black button-down shirt, tucked in, with his sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. His dark, lingering eyes had always unnerved her—there was no hiding from them. He could see through a person’s veneers, straight to the true wickedness of the heart.