The Never List

melting off of his tongue. I was swept away. So we eloped and moved on to Tollen. There we were in a new town where I knew no one. He kept me completely isolated. It was … it was hard.” Her eyes filled with tears again as she thought back to that time. It was clear she hadn’t talked about these events since they had happened. This story had apparently been bottled up inside her, and once she started telling it, it seemed she needed to get it out. Whether she wanted to or not.
    “Mrs. Watson, did he hurt you? What made you leave?” Tracy asked softly.
    “I …” Mrs. Watson covered her face in her hands and sat there, still for a full minute. We waited. When she finally put her hands down, she had managed again to draw her face back into the firm aspect of an uptight preacher’s wife I’d seen before. “I don’t really want to talk about it.” She wiped away a stray tear.
    I stood up and walked over to the window, staring out at the picturesque square.
    “Mrs. Watson,” I began, not taking my eyes from the window, “those girls in white robes who were riding in vans around town—they were not there voluntarily. They were slaves. Some had been abducted, some had been sold by their boyfriends or families, some had been tricked. But they were all slaves. Having to do unspeakable things against their will. You see, Mrs. Watson, this wasn’t ordinary prostitution, as awful as that is. These girls were ordered up for torture. Is there a fate worse than that? Can’t you help us understand how that happened?” I turned to her, this time with tears in my eyes.
    She looked at each one of us in turn, clearly moved by my words but unsure whether she wanted to take the next step and confide in us.
    “Why did you leave?” I echoed Tracy’s question, more firmly.
    Mrs. Watson sat in silence, every kind of emotion crossing her face. She was not crying now, but I recognized a change in her breathing, faster, desperate. I knew this pattern well. She was about to break down.
    “I left because”—her voice became a whisper—“because he told me to do that.”
    “To do what?” asked Christine, whispering back.
    “He wanted me to”—she closed her eyes—“to sell myself.”
    She opened her eyes again, looking at each one of us to gaugeour reactions. When we showed no surprise, only empathy, she went on, her words rushed.
    “We had run out of money. He had tried to start a church, but we only had a few parishioners in a little run-down hall he’d rented with the last bit he’d saved up. So he—he asked me to do something for him, for us. I told him no. And when I told him no, he—he beat me, and he locked me in our bedroom.
    “That night he went out, and I found a hairpin in my jewelry box. I picked the lock. God, it took me hours. But I did it.” I could see her reliving that moment in her mind, the relief of the lock finally releasing. “And when I got out, I just ran. I was too afraid to hitchhike—people did that back then—but I didn’t want to risk being alone with any man at that point, much less a stranger. I ran. I slept in the woods. It took me four days to get back home to my parents. My mother was wonderful. She just cried. She didn’t ask me what happened. She took me to the courthouse and had the marriage annulled, and then when I …”
    She looked confused, as if she didn’t even see us in the room anymore. Her eyes were glazed over, darting around aimlessly, panicked, and she shook her head, looking out the window, up into the sky beyond the town. Finally, she broke into sobs again, her emotions reaching their crescendo at last. It was hard to make out her next words, her voice was cracking so much.
    “And then when I found out I was pregnant, she took me somewhere to take care of that as well. Of course, I deserved not to be able to have children of my own after that. I deserve that. But I just couldn’t—I couldn’t have that beast’s child.” She was crying even harder now.
    Tracy leaned over and patted her shoulder softly.
    “For years I have harbored this guilt. This unrelenting guilt. And I’ve tried to do everything I could to make up for it. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for this church and this community.And whenever I saw those vans drive by—” She broke off, unable to speak.
    That’s when I realized it. She knew. Maybe not everything, but just enough to be afraid. Afraid of Noah Philben. He had, after all, gone back to her town and started his