As it turned out there was no need for begging. Ivy had her dad’s credit card, and because her father had not yet canceled it, the girls went out and charged plates of fries at Charlie’s Kitchen, then they each bought new shoes. After that, they went downtown, and Ivy used her father’s card to withdraw enough cash for two bus tickets before tossing the American Express card in a trash bin at the Greyhound Bus Station. There in the station, Ivy froze for a minute. She knew everything was about to change.

  “Don’t be scared,” Kayla said.

  Ivy was shivering. The life she’d had seemed very far away, and she already regretted not calling Helen. “I’m not scared,” she insisted.

  “We’ll find the place that will welcome us,” Kayla assured her.

  Ivy was exhausted and she was grateful to fall asleep on the bus, where it was warm and cozy and dark. When she woke up three hours later in Blackwell, Massachusetts, she looked out the window and saw the night sky swirling with stars and she thought it might be possible that she had stumbled into paradise.

  * * *

  KENNETH JACOB CAME DOWN the staircase at a little past six in the morning, and he knew something was amiss. He got the message his daughter had sent when she left the door unlocked. It had blown wide open, and there were two pigeons doddering about on the black-and-white marble tiled floor. Ivy had disappeared so completely it was as if she had been swallowed whole by the earth. The private detective Ken hired couldn’t find her until ten months later, when she was living out in rural Massachusetts, past Blackwell on some run-down farm where she’d already given birth to a baby girl. The detective brought the photographs he’d snapped to Ivy’s father’s office on Beacon Street. Kenneth Jacob sifted through them as the detective explained that Ivy had fallen in with a cultish community run by a crackpot whose rules included a code that compelled members to sever all ties with their families of origin, completely cutting off contact. As it turned out, the Jacob family had long ago lived in the Berkshires and their direct relatives had made their fortune in the apple orchards outside Blackwell before turning to real estate and banking in Boston. One of their ancestors was said to have had a child with John Chapman, the man known as Johnny Appleseed, so Ken Jacob liked to say that apples ran in their blood.

  In the grainy photos the detective had taken, Ivy’s hair was braided and covered with a scarf, and her beautiful face was serene as she picked what appeared to be blackberries. She wore a threadbare man’s jacket and carried a wicker basket. There was a baby on a blanket, left to its own devices as Ivy concentrated on the low-growing fruit. The sunshine was bright, and, in the distance, there was a forest of dark pine trees. Nearby was an orchard, and if Ken had known anything about apples, he would have seen they were a variety called Look-No-Furthers, descendants of the ones Johnny Appleseed had planted.

  “Is she with the high school boyfriend?” Ken Jacob asked. He’d been tormented ever since Ivy disappeared; he’d always assumed he could right whatever went wrong and he had assured his wife he would do so again, but he’d begun to have doubts.

  “Noah Brinley? Nope. No way. He’s at Harvard. She’s with this Joel Davis character. The one that runs the Community. He says he studied at Harvard, but the only records I found for him were over at the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. He did time at Bay State Correctional Center, there on assault charges.”

  “Well, she won’t be with him for long.” Ken Jacob had had just about enough. This was no longer teenage high jinks; it was the total ruination of a life.

  “Ken,” the detective said. He was an affable guy who had seen terrible things in his line of work. He only used a client’s first name when delivering bad news. “She married him.”

  Ken Jacob nodded. “Okay,” he said. He sounded calm, but the truth was, he was in a panic. He’d been trained to always think of a backup plan in his investment career and as a boy had learned not to allow his feelings to show by his mother and his nanny. Ivy had turned eighteen, but there were ways around things. “Can we get the child?” He had been so convinced the baby should be placed for adoption when he first learned Ivy was pregnant, but now he believed they could undo some of the damage. They’d have a granddaughter. One perfect child. They’d protect her and take care of her. He didn’t dare think, the way they hadn’t protected Ivy.

  “Unlikely,” the detective said bluntly. “Davis is listed on the birth certificate as the father. So, we’d have a fight, and it wouldn’t be pretty. From what I’ve heard, he’s a son of a bitch.”

  A fight meant articles in the Boston Globe. It meant lawyers and courthouses. Ken wasn’t certain his wife could take going through that sort of battle.

  “We could snatch the child,” Ken said. A gang of men could swoop down in the middle of the night; they could leave a truck idling outside the Community’s gates.

  “If you want to acquire the child, I have the guys for it. It would cost thirty grand. But there’s always the risk that something could go wrong,” the detective informed Ken. “You’re spending money, but you have no guarantees.”

  It wasn’t the money that bothered Ken Jacob, it was the idea of leaving his wife on her own if he were to be caught and sentenced. And so, tormented by all he could not do, he wedged the photographs he’d been given into the top drawer of his desk. He paid for the detective’s services, and he never mentioned his daughter’s whereabouts to his wife, even though he heard Catherine crying late at night. He thought the truth of what had happened to their girl was worse than most of the things Catherine could imagine. He couldn’t bear for his wife to see the photographs of their brilliant little girl dressed in austere gray clothing, as if she were a Puritan. Ken used to go skiing and snowshoeing in that vicinity when he was a young man, stopping at the rustic Jack Straw Tavern; he’d gone to see what local people call the Tree of Life, planted by Johnny Appleseed himself on his way out west. One winter he discovered that the folklore about the tree was true, it really did bloom in winter. It was a wonder and a marvel, one that could make a person believe in magic, at least for a time.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if Ivy had even thought about them. He wondered if she’d known that after she left, he sat by the front door most nights, waiting for her to come home. Well, now he knew, she wouldn’t be returning. She was married and she wasn’t their girl anymore. There was no need for Catherine to be told anything. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Some things that had been done could not be undone, and Ken Jacob was convinced that their daughter was a lost soul. If he had gotten into his car and driven three hours, Ivy might have run to him with the baby in her arms, grateful beyond measure. She might have cried and told him she’d made a mistake. She might have forgiven him for slapping her and refusing to help her when it mattered most. They could have forgiven each other, and the future could have been something they shared, but instead Ken Jacob went into his study, and he locked the door, and he never said her name aloud again.

  * * *

  WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS HAD ONCE been wilderness, and there were times when it still appeared to be a wild land, especially in January, when the snow was so high it was impossible to walk down the road, or in October, when the mountains were ablaze, as if the whole world had caught fire. The Community owned two hundred acres of land just outside the town of Blackwell, which had been founded in 1750. Residents of Blackwell had been unhappy when a trickle of strangers began to appear ten years earlier. The first group pitched their tents not far from the edge of Band’s Meadow, they bathed in the Last Look River, and ate fiddlehead ferns and corn meant for livestock. They were a ragtag bunch, and all newcomers were greeted with love and kindness, even though many owned nothing more than a backpack slung over one shoulder and had arrived in town straight off the Greyhound bus. Others had left established lives to become searchers for beauty or truth, often arriving in BMWs or Audis, which were soon enough sold off at the Car Mart near the highway to Lenox, since possessions were not valued among the group and personal wealth was shared.

  The Community’s first bleak winter was spent in a pure sort of poverty with months of backbreaking work that left dark circles under the recruits’ eyes. Before long, fifteen small houses had been built, and then the Community Center and the dining hall went up, and finally the dormitories for the children, with their white iron beds and neat cubbies for shoes and clothes. The barns were all raised in a single day by forty men, most of whom knew nothing about farming and so little about building that several accidents occurred that afternoon, including a broken leg and a nail rammed through the palm of a young man’s hand.

  After ten years, the locals had to admit the Community people worked hard, and when the mayor had sent the entire police force of Blackwell, three men and a lone woman, out to the farm to search for evidence of criminal activity, they found none. The town had no choice but to accept the likelihood that the Community was there to stay, whether or not they agreed with Joel Davis’s philosophy. Davis was thought to be cunning and shrewd, but even those who were dead set against the Community found themselves being won over, at least a little, when they came face-to-face with Davis at the hardware store, or at town meetings, which he attended to make certain his land was not encroached upon. He was handsome, with dark hair and even darker eyes, but it was more than his good looks that were so appealing; it was when he spoke to you it seemed as if you were the only person in the room. He was focused and intense. Can I be honest with you? he often said in that deep voice of his, which made you stop and listen and give him a chance, even if you were opposed to the whole concept of what he was doing out there on the farm. He had those impenetrable, watchful eyes and many of the local women looked at him in a way that made their husbands uncomfortable when he spoke up against pesticides or new road construction at town meetings.

  Joel proclaimed that every individual had to free himself from the sins of his ancestors, and that the only cure for the damage birth families caused to the psyche was to escape traditional relationships and form a new sort of family. Children did not live with their parents or attend public school. The women were obliged to appear plain, no matter how good-looking they might be, with their hair in braids, outfitted with work boots and jackets that didn’t seem quite warm enough in winter. You should be judged by what is inside you, not on how you look, Joel always proclaimed. You are starting anew. You are leaving one world for the goodness of another.

  The men in the Community were earnest and somewhat glum, bursting with brittle new muscles arising from their labor, their heads often shaved as penance for one misdeed or another. As for the children, they were raised to respect their elders and were reticent to speak unless spoken to. They were schooled at the farm, helping to raise the sheep and tending the vast vegetable garden. What we take from the earth, we must return, Joel told those solemn little beings, who gathered around him as he taught them not only how to weed and to hoe but how to be responsible people. Although he was evasive about his own past, his lessons were the only ones that mattered. Love is at the heart of everything, he told them. Own nothing, covet nothing, and forget no wrongs.

  The acreage had been owned by Carrie Oldenfield Starr, deceased for more than ten years, a beautiful young woman from a local family who had used her inheritance to support the dream of her husband. Joel Davis had vowed to build a realm that would welcome all who were in need and were willing to work to create a better world. Carrie’s family had never forgiven her for giving the land away to a stranger, and although many of the Starrs still resided in the Berkshires, not one had ever come to visit the small fenced-in cemetery that faced the mountain where Carrie had been buried. Some of the women at the Community believed that she was an angel who watched over them, but there were others who said they could hear her spirit crying when the wind came up, and they covered their ears and turned away and hoped they were wrong to have doubts. To stay here a person had to accept Joel’s philosophy wholeheartedly. He might have ambition, he might be ruthless when it came to getting what he wanted, but everyone else must resist the impulse to desire more. Life on the farm was austere and laden with rules that covered nearly every action and every hour of the day. Anyone who disobeyed was punished and all doubters were cast out. The rules were memorized and recited by the children twice a day, at dawn and at dusk.

  No acts of wickedness. No anarchy or antisocial behavior. No contact with original families. No contact with the outside world and their judgments. No reading novels or attending public school. No betrayals or disloyalty. No greed. No personal possessions. No vanity. No selfish behavior. No idle hands. No immorality. No terminating pregnancies.

  Children belong to everyone. Love is everywhere. There is only one family, and it is us.

  If a person should break the rules, their shortcoming would be written on a chalkboard, left up for weeks. They would be made to wear placards strung around their necks with the first letters of their transgressions there for all to see. S for selfishness. Q for those who asked too many questions. C for those who coveted their neighbors’ belongings. J for jealousy. A for anarchy and acts of wickedness.

  For women who went directly against the principles of the Community, if they wore colorful clothes, for instance, or were found with a book among their possessions, the punishments would also include isolation and the letters branded onto the flesh of their upper arms. You shall not be like Eve, Davis told them tenderly, and lead us to ruination. Children and teens were whipped out in the field, a stroke for every rule broken. This was done out of love, Joel explained. If you were not taught, how could you be expected to know better? If you were not a student, how could you ever hope to teach your own children? Love was everything, he said, as a transgressor was locked in the barn without food or water. Love was all they had in the world that they were building, and it would remain when the world outside fell apart.

  * * *

  JOEL NOTICED IVY ON the night she arrived. Usually he was unapproachable, and didn’t bother with new arrivals, unless they were homeless men, which he had been himself before he changed his life, but this time his attention was riveted. Ivy and Kayla were brought into his office, where he was working late after they’d made their way to the farm by walking down Route 17 in the dark. Joel had raked his fingers through his black hair. He had a natural arrogance that irritated some people and drew others to him. Joel sat at his desk while Kayla went on about how her parents didn’t understand her.

  “That sounds like the story of everyone who comes here,” he said dismissively.

  He then turned to Ivy, who hadn’t said a word. He looked at her as if she were the only person in the room and she could feel her heart jolt. At that moment Ivy felt as if he saw her, the real her, not the pretty rich girl, for he seemed to look more deeply. He saw the girl who had feelings and ideas and who was now so terribly lost. Joel didn’t ask her any questions, instead he just pushed his chair back, then stood and came to embrace her. “You won’t be hurt again,” he said. “I promise you that.”

  Ivy leaned against Joel and wept and wished that Noah and her father had said that to her, but they hadn’t.

  “I’ll take care of you,” Joel said. He spoke softly, so no one else could hear.

  Kayla was staring at Ivy, glassy-eyed and annoyed by all the attention she was receiving.

  Ivy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded her gratitude. In the times to come, she would thank him a thousand times over and sometimes she would mean it, but more often she would not. She meant it on this night.

  “If you stay here, I’ll make certain you never regret it,” Joel vowed.

  “Great,” Kayla said, even though Joel’s eyes were on Ivy. “We’re in.”

  * * *

  A WOMAN NAMED EVANGELINE led them to a house that several young women occupied. They would share a room. It was plain, but comfortable. The beds were all made with clean, fresh linens.

  “He liked you,” Evangeline said to Ivy. Evangeline had been a college classmate of Joel’s first wife, Carrie, and had given up tenure at Tufts in the psychology department to come help Joel run the farm after Carrie’s death. She was married to Tim Hardy, who Joel had thought would be a good match for her. Tim had been a pastor in the army and had come to the Community when he was drug-addicted and homeless. Joel had offered him more than charity; he’d offered him a way of belonging. Tim still wore secondhand clothes, as if to remind himself of the time when he was hopeless and avoid getting a swelled head, even though he was now the foreman of the building crew. Evangeline was in charge of the children’s house and the office and just about everything in between. There were several married couples in the Community, but some were more respected than others, and Tim and Evangeline were closest to Joel.

  “Joel’s been hurt before,” Evangeline told Ivy, for she’d seen the way Joel had looked at the girl and she knew what would likely come next. “He lost the love of his life to cancer. Don’t hurt him again.”

  Ivy knew that he was focused on her all through the autumn as slashes of red and yellow appeared in the woods. She had felt his eyes on her as she raked heaps of fallen leaves or assisted with the children in the play yard. She noticed that the children were polite and well behaved; even the youngest ones weren’t allowed to run riot. Sometimes she felt like telling them to act up, to race through the fields, to climb trees or tell jokes, but she never did. Evangeline’s vigilant eyes were always on her.

  Ivy’s favorite job was to work in the orchards, where she felt safe and hidden among the trees, preoccupied by the fairy tales she had always turned to for solace. Now, as the dark late autumn approached, she felt as if she were a character who’d been lost in the woods.