“I’m sorry,” Kathryn whispered, shoving the plunger to its hilt.

She didn’t know what was in the syringe, only that Zeke had promised it would put Eden to sleep immediately and keep her that way for a long time.

Kathryn jerked the needle out and stepped back.

Eyes wide with fear, Eden tried to push herself up, got halfway, and faltered.

“What’s . . .” She tried to sit up again but failed. “Mommy? Mom . . .” Her voice trailed off and her eyelids drooped and her head settled on her pillow. She was out and limp within five seconds.

Kathryn swallowed hard, blinking away tears. Now, Kathryn. Finish what you’ve started now, without thinking.

She stepped up to the bed, gently took Eden’s right wrist and tied it to the metal bedframe above her head, unable to stem the flow of terrible emotions battering her. Then walked around the bed and tied her left wrist in the same fashion, then her left leg to the bottom of the bed, leaving only her right leg free.

Without daring to hesitate even a moment, Kathryn lay the towel over Eden’s leg, climbed onto the bed so that she was standing over her daughter’s feet, and lifted her right leg by the heel.

With one last look at Eden’s peaceful face, she threw one leg over her towel-draped shin, took a deep breath, and pulled hard, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut.

The leg didn’t break, so she pulled harder.

“Use a sledge hammer,” Zeke had said. “Bones are hard to break.”

Lying on her bed in the early morning hours Kathryn had decided that she wouldn’t be so cowardly. This was her correction as much as Eden’s—she would do it with her hands, flesh on flesh, feeling the pain of inflicting pain as much as her daughter.

But the bone wasn’t breaking.

She groaned and tugged, tears now streaming down her face. Her mouth parted and she moaned as if it was her own leg under such pressure.

Still, the leg didn’t break.

And then Kathryn was wailing, because it was in that moment, while her head was tilted toward the ceiling and her veins bulging on her neck, that she came into the sudden realization that she couldn’t bring herself to use the force needed to break Eden’s leg.

Which meant that they would both end up dead. And surely in hell.

But she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. She couldn’t!

Kathryn slowly sank to her knees, straddling Eden’s leg, lifted her hands to her face and wept into them, feeling utterly worthless in her failure.

“Forgive me . . . Forgive me, Father. Please . . .” Her mind swam in a dark sea of fear and desperation from which she could see no escape. At another time she might have suggested that Eden be baptized or at the very least ritualistically cleansed to appease her mother’s failure, but Eden was unconscious now, put to sleep by her wicked mother who was failing Eden, Zeke, and God through one profound act of disobedience.

She could only hold her face in both hands, and sob, begging God for mercy in this dark hour of weakness.

“Give me the strength,” she whispered. “Please give me the strength you once gave Abraham. Let me rise in righteousness and wield your sword of judgment as commanded by your servant.”

“Mommy?”

Kathryn spun her head to the door to see Bobby standing there, staring dumbly.

“Shut the door and get back to your room,” she cried, shoving her finger at him. “Now!”

He spun away, pulling the door shut.

The interruption snapped her out of her mindless slobbering. Eden rested with her eyes closed, pale face tilted to the right, oblivious to any harm. Or so it seemed at first glance.

Kathryn blinked to clear her vision and looked at the corner of her daughter’s eye. There, a single tear slid slowly toward her temple. She was unconscious, but crying? In her sleep?

Or was Eden somehow aware of her surroundings?

The sickening voices of objection that Kathryn had silenced earlier were back and this time she made no attempt to stop them. She had to listen now because she knew that she had a new problem.

She could not break her daughter’s leg. She was too weak. God wasn’t going to give her the strength he’d given Abraham and he wasn’t going to send a ram from the thicket to take Eden’s place because Eden was the ram as much as she was the lamb.

Kathryn slumped back to her haunches and turned toward the window, swallowing against the ache that tightened her throat. She simply couldn’t follow through.

But Eden still had to learn her lesson in a way that she hadn’t. She’d been too easy on her daughter—nothing else explained Eden’s seditious rebellion and betrayal. Just as importantly, Zeke had to be appeased. He had to be assured that they wouldn’t fail him again.

Even so, Kathryn could no longer bring herself to break her daughter’s leg, not while Eden lay crying in her sleep. In fact, not ever. It was too much to ask of this mother.

Which left her with only one option, a small idea that had been whispered by the darkness during the night. One that now reasserted itself as a solution, never mind if it might also be a clever temptation.

How was a horse broken? Couldn’t ‘breaking’ mean bringing under full submission? If she was unwilling to actually snap Eden’s leg, couldn’t she ‘break’ it by disabling it?

The point was to keep Eden from walking and escaping. That and teaching her just how evil her sin really was while offering correction. But both could be accomplished as easily with a bad sprain as with a break. Eden’s mobility and her rebellious spirit would both be broken.

It was the only option Kathryn could think of other than going to the toolshed for a sledgehammer. She would sprain Eden’s ankle badly enough to keep her from walking, then wrap it up to look like a break.

Kathryn turned back and studied her daughter. Saw another tear follow the trail of the first.

She had to do it now, before her nerve for even that was gone.

So she did. She quickly scooted to the end of the bed, ripped off the towel to expose Eden’s leg, grabbed her foot, and twisted hard, grunting as much with anger at God’s cruel nature as with exertion.

There. Surely that was enough.

Eden lay in peace, save those tears.

Her ankle began to swell within the first minute.

24

THE FIRST sensation I felt was a sharp pain in my knee and I think it was the acuteness of that discomfort that jerked me out of a dark, peaceful oblivion.

Immediately memories flooded me. My escape attempt with Bobby had failed miserably. Back in my room, I’d lost all hope and fallen into a deep despair, recalling all of the torment I’d suffered since I’d been kidnapped by my own mother five years earlier.

Every hour of forced prayer. All of the guilt heaped on me for not being perfect. Every day in the closet, every meal withheld from me, every turn of my mother’s psychological screws, all of the abuse.

I was a slave. I had no rights. I was being used like an animal, a lamb, an offering . . . By whatever name, it was all the same to me.

And for that I realized that I really did hate Kathryn.

The moment this realization came to me, my hatred grew into something more. I loathed her. She disgusted me. Rage boiled in my veins as I lay staring at the wall, unable to sleep.

Then Kathryn had come in and injected something into my arm and my world had quickly vanished. Only to be jerked back into my awareness when the sharp pain hit my knee.

It was strange. I was unconscious, I knew that much. But I could hear and feel my mother standing over me, breathing hard and applying terrible pressure to my leg, as if she was trying to hurt me.

At first I dismissed the thought—Kathryn had said and done many cruel things to me, but she’d never struck me or injured me. But as her straining persisted, I realized that she was.