When You Were Young

After Wendell carried Prudence away, Joseph looked around him. "Molly?" he called out. He didn't see her anywhere. She must have gone to find Samantha and Veronica. That's where he needed to go to save Samantha before Veronica killed her.

A hand reached out to grab his ankle. The boy who'd nearly burned Prudence alive looked up at Joseph, his face covered in sweat. "What happened to me?" the boy asked.

"I don't really know," Joseph said. He helped the boy into a sitting position. "What do you remember?"

"Everything." The boy started to cry. "My God. Three hundred years like this. How could we let this happen?"

"It's all right. Everything will be fine now." Around him, Joseph saw the other children similarly reviving, looking at each other as if for the first time. Many of them, like the boy, cried from the shock. The only one who didn't seem fazed at all was a girl with honey-colored hair in a light blue dress. She stared at Joseph, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. He went over to her and asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Everything is as it should be," she said. "Veronica has Samantha in the cabin. She's in the crib right now."

"How do you know?"

"It's not important. You know what you must do now."

Joseph took a step forward and then stopped. "I can't do this by myself. Not against Veronica. I need help."

"We'll help you," the boy Joseph had comforted said. Around him, the other children nodded. They picked up their makeshift weapons. "This ends now."

"We have to be careful, though," Joseph said. "She has Samantha. We can't let Veronica hurt her."

"We won't," one of the girls said. "She's the closest we've had to a mother." The other children agreed with this assessment. It occurred to Joseph as they marched towards the cabin that this was why Samantha kept leaving him to come back here. These children loved her like a parent and she like her own sons and daughters. All this time he'd thought she did it out of misplaced loyalty or as an excuse to keep from seeing him. Only now did he see how wrong he was about everything.

He supposed his plan to move to California had been born out of something other than wanting a quality education. Perhaps he'd done it as a way for Samantha to prove her love to him. He'd wanted her to decide between him and these kids. No wonder she had gotten so angry with him. If they got out of this, he would find a way to make things right. Although at this point he didn't have to worry about college for another fourteen years.