Chapter 3

Elias picks me up and carries me toward town.

Margaret hurries after him in her heels.

"Wait! Don't put her inside your house."

Elias stops.

Margaret covers her nose and points at a half-collapsed shed beside the road.

The inside is pitch black.

It's where people in town keep loose pigs.

"Just put her in there. No need to dirty your house."

"We'll need to draw more blood from her later anyway. Keeping her in the pigpen will make things easier."

Elias looks at her.

He doesn't say anything.

He carries me into the shed.

The ground is covered in wet mud and pig shit.

Two black pigs grunt in the corner.

Elias sets me down on a stone slab near the entrance.

Then he turns and leaves.

Margaret looks satisfied.

"That's better."

"That's where she belongs."

The door is bolted shut from the outside.

Richard stands outside the pigpen and makes a call.

"Claire, sweetheart. Daddy found you more blood. We'll send it back tomorrow."

Claire's spoiled voice comes through the phone.

"What about that psycho?"

"Dad, did you get revenge for me?"

"Did you make her cry?"

Richard laughs.

"Yeah, yeah. She cried."

"She was on her knees begging."

He hangs up with a smile and nudges Margaret with his elbow.

Then he tips his chin toward the entrance to town.

"See that old woman?"

A hunched old woman is sitting on an overturned paint bucket by the road, patching a cracked work boot by hand.

Miss Ruth.

Margaret lowers her voice and whispers something to Richard.

Then she crouches beside the fence and leans close to my face.

"See that old woman?"

"She sells children."

"Any kid around here who ends up in her hands gets sold off."

"Boys get sent to illegal mines."

"Girls get sold to old men living out in the mountains."

She pats my cheek and smiles gently.

"Someone your age, and looking like this?"

"You'd probably only be worth a few thousand dollars to some fifty- or sixty-year-old man looking for a wife."

"So you'd better behave."

"At least we still treat you like a person."

"If you fall into her hands, you'll be worth less than one of those pigs."

I keep my eyes down.

I don't look at her.

Miss Ruth really has taken in a lot of children.

Just not to sell them.

They were all abandoned by their biological parents.

Some were left by the side of the road.

Some outside hospitals.

Some beside dumpsters.

Miss Ruth found them one by one.

She cleaned them up.

Fed them.

Kept them for a few days.

Then she worked with local families and social services to find homes for them.

I was one of those kids.

They told me she found me in the middle of winter.

I was wrapped in an old coat and left in a snowbank near the entrance to town.

Miss Ruth tucked me inside her own coat and held me against her chest all night.

I didn't cry until the next morning.

After that, the whole town raised me.

Richard checks his watch.

"Come on."

"Let's go talk to Carter about tomorrow."

Margaret stands and brushes the dirt off her skirt.

"We're really leaving her here alone?"

Richard glances at me.

"Her hands are useless. Her mouth is stuffed."

"Even if she manages to crawl out, what can she do?"

He pauses.

"And if she runs around this town and meets anyone else..."

"She'll probably end up even worse."

Their footsteps slowly fade away.

The pigpen goes quiet again.

I press my back against the wall.

I try to rub the rope around my wrists against the sharp edge of a stone.

I barely get started before I hear slippers dragging across the ground outside.

Miss Ruth has wandered over without me noticing.

She leans against the fence and peers inside.

"Well, what the hell is a person doing in the pigpen?"

She squints at me.

"Why's this girl got a rag stuffed in her mouth?"

She reaches in to pull it out.

The second her rough fingers touch the corner of my mouth, I almost start crying.

Miss Ruth.

It's me.

It's Tessa.

Her fingers have just caught the edge of the rag when a sharp voice explodes behind her.

"Stop!"