Pocketful of Pearls (17 page)

That closed that subject. Matthew didn’t press her. It was nothing to him whether or not this odd group got its elder or not.
From what he’d seen, the sooner it atrophied and died out, the better, starting with its leadership.

No, what concerned him was Dinah’s attitude toward men and children. What did that mean for her little niece? For relationships
in general? For Dinah’s future?

And what made it his business, anyway? She was his employer, nothing more.

Buried under what looked like miscellaneous car parts and several lines of toasters and mixers—all in pieces—Matthew finally
found a high chair. It was chrome and the seat was padded with yellow vinyl, so odds were good that it had belonged to an
earlier generation of Traynells than Dinah. It would do just fine for the newest generation.

“I’ve found the high chair,” he called over to where she knelt on the plank floor, filling a box with pastel plunder.

“And I’ve got sleepers, clothes, and bibs. That leaves diapers and formula from the store, right? Anything else we’ve forgotten?”

“How can I forget when I don’t know what the requirements are in the first place?” He was only half joking. “In the absence
of a Babies 101 textbook, what we need to do is to get on the Internet and do some research.”

She looked up at him and began to pack the unwanted things back in their box. “The closest terminal is at the library, downtown
by the post office and the police station. You get half an hour on it before the librarian kicks you off.”

“Don’t you have a computer?” He couldn’t imagine any household in America not having one. He himself had two, back in California
in the boxes in Paolo Martinez’s garage. He’d considered bringing his laptop along, then discarded the idea as silly. What
sane person went on a walking tour with a laptop? It would just have been stolen along with his wallet, and he’d be in exactly
the same position.

“No,” she replied. “The Elect believe computers are tools of the devil.”

He stared at her. “Why?”

“Because the monitor is like a window, letting the world into your home, the same as television. Radio is a no-no, too.”

It had been a long time since complete irrationality had flummoxed him. He tried to think of something reasonable to say.
“Do you believe that?”

“Of course not.” She hefted the box of baby clothes onto one hip. “But my mother does.”

“So that’s why you know where the nearest terminal is. But Dinah, it’s going to be very inconvenient, driving into town every
time we need to know something.”

She shrugged. “Convenience is for lazy people.”

“No one could ever imagine you being lazy. But I’m thinking of Tamsen. What if she catches a virus or something and we need
to know how much aspirin to give her?”

“We call Dr. Archer.”

“Is he a pediatrician?”

“Well, no, but everyone goes to him for everything.”

“What if she wakes in the middle of the night in pain from teething? She’s going to be doing that soon, isn’t she? You can’t
just ring him up and ask him what to do.”

“I could,” she said stubbornly. “Besides, she won’t be here by the time she starts getting teeth in. Tamara will have come
back by then.”

“Let’s deal with what is rather than what we wish were the case,” he said with a little more shortness than he intended. “There
are loads of things we can learn if we have a laptop here. We won’t have to drive to town or call someone every time we need
to find out some little fact.”

“I can’t have a computer here. My mother would never get over the shame that such a thing came into the Elder’s house. And
Phinehas would probably destroy it. He’s snapped the radio antennas off people’s cars before.”

Was that reluctance in her tone? He pulled the high chair closer to the stairs to give himself a moment to think.

“We’ll say it’s mine,” he said finally. “We simply must have one, and if that’s the only way, then we can keep it in the barn
with me. No one need know it’s here.”

Across the debris of who knew how many lives, they exchanged a long look. In her eyes he saw indecision and longing and a
frustrated practicality.

“All right,” she said.

It was the voice of a woman who realized she was on the long, slippery slope to moral compromise. As far as he was concerned,
it was about time.

A
FTER CONFERRING WITH
Matthew on the features and functions a person would need on her laptop, Dinah went to the library with her credit card and
ordered one off the Internet, complete with modem cable and carrying case. Every moment she sat at the library’s terminal,
she kept one eye on the screen and the other on her fellow patrons. In all the years she’d been using the computer, she’d
never been caught, but there was always a first time. And to be caught ordering a laptop would just add insult to disaster.
It seemed crazy to spend so much money for something she was going to have to sell in a matter of weeks anyway, but she couldn’t
argue with the logic of it.

After the order was placed and she’d agreed to an exorbitant amount of money to have it rushed, she checked her stock portfolio
and noted that she’d made enough this quarter to pay for the computer.

A comforting thought.

Then she checked her father’s portfolio and let the brokerage know he’d passed away and the accounts should be transferred
fully into her name. No doubt she’d have to do a bunch of paperwork, but the accounts were joint, so they weren’t in probate.
He may have been of the opinion that all she was good for was making dinner and cleaning house, but after the cancer diagnosis
at least he’d had the sense to listen to Elsie and transfer partial control of the money to her. Of course, he did all his
transactions by phone with his broker. What he didn’t know was that she had had all the accounts set up online as well and
could tell him as much about them as the broker could.

There were advantages to being underestimated.

THREE DAYS LATER,
right on schedule, the UPS truck delivered the laptop. While Dinah hid the packaging in the barn so she could use it to mail
the unit to its new owner later, Matthew set it up on the table in his little suite, talking Tamsen through each step as she
watched him from her carrier installing software and inserting CDs. Dinah came in as he plugged in the modem cable and set
up an ISP account.

“Now, then,” he said with satisfaction as the Internet came up, “let’s do some research.”

As Dinah hung over his shoulder, she saw that his research skills were much better than hers. More, he had passwords to university
libraries she’d never heard of. “All kinds of child psychology here,” he said, bookmarking site after site. By early evening
they’d learned that Tamsen was roughly on track for development in her age group and what kinds of things they could expect
to begin feeding her in the next couple of weeks if they didn’t hear from Tamara. And speaking of that . . .

Dinah finished giving Tamsen her supper bottle and nudged Matthew off the chair. “It may be useless, but I’m going to send
Tamara an e-mail.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to communicate with her? Shunning, and all that.”

“We call it being Silenced. And it’s a bit beside the point now, isn’t it? If I can buy a computer I can e-mail my sister.”

She thought she saw the corners of his mouth twitch. The corners of her own were doing the same. She brought up her e-mail
account and scanned it hopefully, but there was nothing but her usual financial digests and a lot of spam. She sent a note
to Tammy’s mailbox telling her that she had received her manila envelope, that Tamsen was fine, and that she hoped she’d changed
her mind and was on her way back.

Tamsen needs her mom. You know as well as I do that this isn’t a good house to bring up a child in. I’m sure you can do better
once you get settled and let me know where you are.

That was getting close to blasphemy, and as close as she dared come to the subject of both of them being abused. She couldn’t
bear the thought of Phinehas having unlimited access to yet another generation of Traynell girls. At the same time, opening
up that subject over e-mail just wasn’t right. She could do that when Tamara came home.

She hit “Send” and watched the screen close itself. It felt a little like throwing a ball when there was no one there to catch
it, but she had to try. Someone had to make Tamara see sense.

MATTHEW PUT HIS
secondhand kettle on to boil while Dinah went out into the barn to tuck her birds in for the night. He leaned one hip against
the gray Formica counter and shook his head at himself. If someone had told him a month ago that he would feel such a sense
of accomplishment at causing someone to sin against her church’s doctrines, he would have recommended they see a doctor.

And not the medical kind, either.

But the point was he was convinced God had led him here for a reason, and he needed to talk with Dinah about that reason.
She simply couldn’t be expected to live like this.

The computer monitor some kind of cosmic window to the underworld, allowing wrong into one’s home . . .

The Shepherds as the voices of God . . .

Women dressed in perpetual mourning . . .

What did God have to do with all that?

If the good Lord’s reason for bringing him here was to talk with Dinah and help her see how skewed her perspective had become,
then he needed to step outside his own comfort zone and do it. He was not a man who minded other people’s business, but it
was clear Dinah was willing to let him intrude now and again, as the laptop sitting on the table proved.

Not that he was any kind of saint, himself. In fact, like Moses, he was not eloquent, and he would just as soon the Lord used
someone else. But for Dinah, apparently, there was no one else. He just had to have faith that the Lord knew what He was doing.

For a moment he was tempted to share his own story with her. If she knew the losses he had suffered because of Torrie Parker’s
unfounded accusations, it might be a kind of bond between them. And maybe the knowledge he had gained and the research he
had done on the dynamics of sexual abuse could be of some use to her. But even as the thought formed, a lump of resistance
formed, too.

He couldn’t. The poor girl had enough ugliness to deal with. Why burden her with more? She already knew he wasn’t perfect.
He was broke, the next thing to homeless, and he had holes in his socks. If God needed to use a humble instrument, he fit
the bill.

No, he’d keep his story to himself. Maybe the opportunity would come where he could share his knowledge. But in Dinah’s case,
sharing himself would probably do more harm than good.

DINAH MADE SURE
the chickens were comfortable on their roosts before she closed the door to the outside pen. Schatzi made her contented bubbling
cluck, and a pang struck Dinah as she sat in the plastic chair and no Sheba hopped onto her knee looking for a cuddle.

Fighting back the futile tears of loss, she walked back through the dark passage and into Matthew’s suite. He smiled as she
came in, then took the boiling kettle off the burner and filled the teapot they’d found in one of the boxes in the attic.
It made sense for him to have them. He loved his tea and the only time she drank it was when she was with him.

“Everyone all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” Everyone who was alive was just fine.

“So tell me something,” he began. “How much do you believe in the expectations of your church?”

“What do you mean?” Dinah slid into the other chair at the cheap little table and resisted the urge to unbuckle Tamsen from
her carrier and cuddle her. She should be grateful the baby was sleeping and not roaring with hunger or discomfort.

“Well, it seems to me there are all kinds of strictures and structures in place to keep order. It’s almost as if you concentrate
more on those than on worship.”

A wrinkle formed between her brows. “I don’t understand. The structure is there to keep us safe. The way we behave is our
worship. It’s our service to God.”