Emily Vance Brown

From the highest point on the hill, Charlotte could see something glinting gold in the sunlight—about 50 feet away, at the foot of a large rock. She inched down the gravelly slope. The object was a ring, gold, with a single empty facet on the front, which Charlotte knew from her books and the occasional movie was where a stone would have gone. Maybe a diamond, she thought. On the inside of the ring was inscribed: To Shyanne, my love 10/15/2025. 

Charlotte’s stomach rumbled, and she pocketed the ring and went inside. 

The dinner bell rang at 7:03. Miss Suzie, who was in charge of all the bells and alarms at the Home, was only three minutes late. Not too bad for a Sunday. Suzie’s timeliness, the girls had learned, always lined up with her success on the daily crossword puzzle—Fridays and Saturdays, the hardest puzzles, were her latest, Mondays and Tuesdays tended to be on time more often than not, and the rest were hit-or-miss. Today’s must’ve not been too hard for her. 

“Our Father, thank you for bringing us here together for yet another night,” Miss Suzie began once they were all seated. “Thank you for this nourishment, and for tending to our bodies.” She sighed heavily. “Thank you for your many blessings, for bringing us all together, for saving these young girls. Amen.”

“We got a short one!” Olivia, Charlotte’s roommate, whispered into her ear. Charlotte kicked her ankle under the table.  

Charlotte fiddled with the ring in the pocket of her skirt while she ate. Shyanne, Shyanne, Shyanne, she repeated to herself. Miss Shyanne? Mrs. Shyanne? She imagined a dark-haired woman, tall, broad-shouldered. Would this Shyanne have curly hair or pin-straight? Light skin or dark? Crooked teeth? Freckles? 

She came back to Earth and pulled her hand out of her pocket only when she noticed Mother Nancy eyeing her from across the table. 

After dinner was Sunday reflection, then, as a reward for their week of hard work, ice cream. It was the only dessert they ever had. Blue Bell vanilla with chocolate sprinkles and a bright red cherry, one each. 

Charlotte was next up in line to receive her sundae from Miss Suzie when Mother Nancy approached and whispered something across the bar to Suzie. 

“None for you tonight, I’m afraid, honey.” Miss Suzie said to Charlotte with a sad smile.

“What? Why?”

“Mother Nancy’s orders. She’ll come talk to you about it later.” 

Charlotte winced. If no ice cream was a punishment from Mother Nancy, it wouldn’t be the only one. Mother Nancy’s punishments were always multi-faceted.

Miss Suzie patted Charlotte’s wrist, then glanced over to Mother Nancy. When she saw her back was turned, she twisted Charlotte’s hand over and plopped a trio of shiny maraschinos into her hand. 

Shhh, she gestured. 

The urgent rap on their door came too soon. Olivia was reading Chronicles of Narnia in bed, the fourth in the series, and when Mother Nancy knocked she sunk down so far under the covers her eyes were barely visible under her hair.

“We’re decent,” Charlotte said, sitting up straight in her bed. 

“We’re decent” was the only acceptable response at the Home, along with “We’ll be decent in one moment,” after which one had about thirty seconds to throw on a different blouse or hide whatever illicit material they’d been reading. “Come in” implied the possibility of refusing entry, the possibility of asserting “Don’t come in!” 

Refusal was not a right permitted to girls at the Rockwell Home. 

“Charlotte,” Mother Nancy said solemnly. 

“Yes, ma’am?” 

“You know why I’m here.” This was not a question. 

“No, ma’am,” Charlotte said. 

Mother Nancy glared. “Well, I suppose you’d better think about it then,” she said. 

Charlotte tried not to think about the ring she’d hidden under her pillow. She’d wished she’d opted for a more secret place, but she’d wanted to keep it close. 

“I don’t know,” Charlotte said after a moment. 

Mother Nancy held out her hand. “Give it to me,” she said. 

“Give what?” Charlotte played dumb. 

“Up,” she said. 

Charlotte got up from the bed and stood in front of her. 

“Give it to me,” she said again. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Where’s your belt?” Mother Nancy asked. 

Charlotte took her belt off the hook on the wall where she kept it, along with her Rockwell-branded baseball cap and her single silver cross necklace. 

“Turn around,” Mother Nancy said.

Charlotte turned around. From the corner of her eye, she saw Olivia roll over and face the wall. 

“Pull down your pajamas.”

Charlotte did. Mother Nancy gave her ten whips with the belt, fast and heavy-handed. 

“Pull up your pants,” Mother Nancy said when she was done. Charlotte did, but stayed facing away. She was crying against her will, her ass and back burning. 

“Turn around.” 

Charlotte did. 

“Now,” Mother Nancy said, “Are you still going to pretend to be a fool or are you going to ask for forgiveness?”

“I’m sorry, Mother Nancy.”

“For what?”

“For lying to you.”

“Where is it?” Mother Nancy asked. 

Charlotte reached under her pillow and pulled out the ring. She placed it in Mother Nancy’s open palm. Mother Nancy eyed it for a moment, inspecting the empty facet and the inscription. 

“It didn’t have a stone in it when you found it, did it?”

“No ma’am,” Charlotte said.

“Where’d you find it?”

“By the hill,” Charlotte said. “Is it a wedding ring?”

Mother Nancy ignored her and sighed. “You know the rules. No unpermitted property.”

After turning to leave, Mother Nancy looked back over her shoulder at the last moment. 

“Olivia?” She said.

“Yes, ma’am?” Olivia asked, peeking her head out from under the covers. 

“Sit up straight. You’ll strain your neck like that. And you look ridiculous.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Olivia said. She scooted herself upright. 

Until curfew, the room was silent but for the sound of Charlotte’s crying and Olivia’s turning pages. 

“If I’d found a gold ring, I wouldn’t have gotten caught. I would never have let anyone find it, not even you,” Olivia said quietly after the day’s last bell had rung and they’d turned out the light. 

This was probably true, Charlotte thought, but she couldn’t admit it. “Yes, you would’ve,” she argued instead. “You would’ve come to me right away.” 

Olivia’s only response was a soft snore. 

The first morning bell rang at dawn. Like usual, there was breakfast, then reading and writing with Miss Angelica, then math with Miss Elena, then lunch, then social studies with Miss Jessica, then nature with Miss Suzie. Nature was Charlotte’s favorite. It was outside, usually, as weather permitted—and sometimes still when the weather shouldn’t have permitted. Really, it was just wherever and whatever Miss Suzie wanted. Suzie had never seemed particularly committed to the whole teaching thing, but she sure did like to be outside. 

“Now, isn’t that just fascinating,” Miss Suzie said, inspecting a cocoon on the side of a tree. “Everyone, come look!” 

“Not the stupid butterflies again,” another student mumbled. “It’s like she thinks we’re still in the third grade.”

“And in a few weeks it’ll be a whole butterfly,” Miss Suzie said, shaking her head with awe. “Isn’t God just amazing?”

Olivia snorted. “Not amazing enough to let us eat something other than meatloaf Monday.” 

Charlotte laughed. “Oh, you’ll live,” she said. 

Charlotte lingered after class that day. Nature was the last class of the day, followed by free time; she wasn’t worried about being tardy. She waited in the doorway for Miss Suzie to look up from her desk, where she was stuffing folders and loose papers into her tote. Charlotte cleared her throat.

“Miss Suzie,” Charlotte started. “You know how I got in trouble last night?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did you hear what I was in trouble for?”

Miss Suzie shook her head.

“I found something outside, and I kept it when I wasn’t supposed to.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Miss Suzie asked.

Charlotte nodded. Miss Suzie gestured for her to sit down on the stool by her desk. 

“It was a ring. I think it was a wedding ring, but I’m not sure.”

“What’d it look like?” Miss Suzie asked.

“Gold, very thin, and there was a big spot thing where I think a diamond or something probably went, but it was empty.”

“Hmm. Could’ve been a wedding ring then, sure,” Miss Suzie said.

“And it said something on the inside.”

Miss Suzie waited.

“It said: for Shyanne, my love. Ten, fifteen, twenty-twenty-five.”

Miss Suzie looked past Charlotte, then up at the ceiling. She tapped her fingers on the desk. 

“Oh, Charlotte,” she said. 

“Do you know what it means?” Charlotte asked. 

“I think it probably was a wedding ring, yes.”

“Should we try to get it back to her?”

Miss Suzie bit her lip. “I don’t think that’ll be possible,” she said after a moment.

“Why not?”

Miss Suzie shrugged. Charlotte thought she was acting funny, closed off in a way she never was with students.

“Did you know her?” Charlotte asked. 

“No,” Miss Suzie said. “But, I just think—” she trailed off. 

“If she lived here before, and she doesn’t anymore, it’s probably not possible to get it back to her now,” she continued. 

“Why? What does that mean?” Charlotte asked. 

“I just don’t think we can get it back to her, Charlotte. I’m sorry. Nancy will do whatever she thinks is appropriate with it.”

Charlotte noted Mother Nancy’s dropped title, a mistake she’d never heard another teacher make, but she decided not to mention it. 

“You’re not telling me something,” she said instead. 

Miss Suzie nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said. “There are things I can’t tell you. And won’t.”

“Why not?” Charlotte asked.

“I just can’t. It doesn’t make a difference.”

“Why?”

“Charlotte, please stop pushing it. There’s nothing else to say about it.”

“I don’t understand,” Charlotte pushed. 

“You will when you’re older. We’re not going to talk about this anymore until then.” 

Charlotte opened her mouth to argue more, but Miss Suzie cut her off. “Please shut the door on your way out,” she said firmly. 

———

The arrival of summer brought the arrival of a new baby. They hadn’t had a new child at the Home in nearly 5 years—thanks to the new laws, some of the older teachers liked to say. Not that they ever explained what that meant, though Olivia had theories:

“They’re not allowing people to get married anymore, so nobody can have kids.”

“They’re drafting women now, too, so there’s no one around to get pregnant, and the teachers don’t want us to know because they’ll think we’ll be scared to grow up.”

“Or maybe the rest of the kids have all been sent overseas. They were all chosen by wealthy families in Switzerland or Sweden, and we’re the ones nobody wanted.”

The girls were told that the baby’s name was Rebecca. They would all be taking turns babysitting her. 

“It’ll be a wonderful opportunity for you all to prepare for motherhood,” Mother Nancy said at dinner the night before Rebecca arrived. 

Charlotte hated the child immediately. Her tiny little nose was always wet with snot, her hands grabbed at whatever was in reach–Charlotte’s hair, her necklace, the cuff of her sleeve–and her piercing shrill cry made Charlotte want to claw her ears off. 

She seemed to be the only one who felt that way. Olivia was in love with the thing. She began to talk about what she would name her kids one day, about what kind of clothes she would dress them in, what her husband might look like. Charlotte developed the habit of tuning her out when she started on one of her new tangents.

The night before Olivia’s fourth babysitting shift, she started throwing up at midnight and didn’t stop for the next four hours. Charlotte stayed up with her, going to the bathroom and holding back her hair. Charlotte wanted to find one of the overnight teachers, or maybe even Mother Nancy herself, but Olivia refused. 

“It’ll pass on its own. I want to see Rebecca tomorrow,” she said when Charlotte pressed. 

By the time the first morning bell rang, Olivia had finally passed out. Charlotte pushed her hair out of her face, checked her pulse just in case (it was normal, of course), and set off down the corridor for Mother Nancy’s office, resigned to the idea that she herself would now be spending her morning babysitting the creature. 

Nearly to Mother Nancy’s room, Charlotte heard two voices whispering in the hallway ahead. She peeked around the corner and saw Miss Angelica talking urgently to someone Charlotte couldn’t see from her angle. She waited, listening. 

“From the border, right?” Miss Angelica said. 

“They’re saying she almost made it across. She was in the water, trying to swim with the baby above her head.” That voice sounded like Miss Jessica, Charlotte was almost certain. 

“You know how far she made it?”

“I don’t know. They got her by boat, so it had to have been deep. Pretty far.”

There was a pause. 

“Is the mother still alive?” Miss Angelica asked. 

“I don’t know, but I mean, probably not, right? If it was ICE?” 

The other one, Miss Jessica, sighed. “It might be for the best if she’s not.”

After a long pause, Charlotte peeked around the corner again. Both teachers were looking intently at something on Miss Jessica’s phone. They seemed worried, or stressed. Or both. A voice raised from the phone, and Miss Jessica looked up at Miss Angelica, right in Charlotte’s direction. Charlotte pulled herself back behind the corner as fast as she could. She stumbled back, and her shoe squeaked against the baseboard. She froze, judging how fast she could make it back to her room if she ran. Not fast enough, she realized—the teachers were already turning the corner.

“Why aren’t you in your room?” Miss Angelica asked Charlotte, her eyes still fixed on the other teacher.

“Sorry, I, uh—Olivia was supposed to babysit Rebecca this morning but she’s sick,” Charlotte said quickly. “I was going to take her shift—I, um, I figured I have to tell Mother Nancy first.”

“Okay, well, that’s fine,” Miss Angelica said, looking uncomfortable. “Go on, then.”

————

 “You’re a good girl, taking her place like that. Very selfless of you,” Mother Nancy said when Charlotte had explained the situation. 

“Thank you, Mother.”

Mother Nancy waved her hand towards the door. “You can leave the door open when you go.”

Charlotte hesitated.

“Is there something else?” Mother Nancy asked. 

“Actually—”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” Charlotte said. 

“Keep it quick. I have work to do.” 

“It’s just—caring for Rebecca and thinking about motherhood has really been making me think about my own mother,” Charlotte began. She knew she had to choose the right angle if she wanted to avoid a punishment. “I know we’re here because we were left, or saved, in some way, but I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about her.”

Mother Nancy sighed and slammed her journal closed on her desk.

“Like what?” 

“Do you know her name? Or where she came from? Or why she brought me here?” Charlotte asked in a rush. 

“And why would you need to know that?”

“I’m just curious.”

Mother Nancy clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

“She was a wicked woman,” she said finally. “Pure evil.”

“Did you meet her?” Charlotte asked. 

Mother Nancy nodded. “She stayed here, actually, for a few weeks.”

“Stayed here?” Charlotte asked, incredulous. 

Mother Nancy nodded.

“She was one of us?” Charlotte continued.

“No,” Mother Nancy said, her voice rising. “Not at all. Don’t go around saying that, and don’t you ever think it again. Your mother was a monster. You’re nothing like her.”

“What did she do?”

“She abandoned you, isn’t that all you need to know?”

“I mean, why, though?” Charlotte asked. 

Mother Nancy glared at her. “Why do you need to know?”

Charlotte fumbled for her next words. Why? She thought. Why not? 

“Because she was my mother,” Charlotte said finally, with a shrug.

“Your mother!” Mother Nancy yelled. “Am I not your mother? Am I not the one who feeds you, who clothes you, who teaches you? Who takes care of you when you’re sick? Who raised you, and changed your diapers, and taught you how to read? Who do you call mother?” She slammed her hand down hard on the desk. “Not that bitch who gave birth to you!”

Charlotte gasped. None of the girls had ever heard Mother Nancy curse before.

“You want to know why you’re here? I’ll tell you. Your mother was a criminal. Before you were even born, she tried to kill you. You were just barely saved. You would have never even been born if it were up to her, do you understand?”

Charlotte felt the tears start to stream down her cheeks. “No, I don’t understand,” she said. 

Mother Nancy slapped her, hard, across the cheek. “Your mother is a murderer! I saved you. You owe everything to me, you ungrateful little brat.”

Charlotte trembled. “Is she in prison?” She asked through her tears. 

Mother Nancy smiled a twisted, dead-eyed smile. 

“No.” 

“Where is she?”

“Where she belongs—burning in hell,” Mother Nancy said. 

She caressed Charlotte’s cheek, wiping away her tears. 

“And you’re here, where you belong,” she added. “With me.”