I wrote everything out for Maddie. No code. She would need to understand everything as it was. Just like Gran did for me when I first joined the network. I hid this letter in the basket under the bathroom where I keep my menstrual supplies. Mark would never look there. It reminds him how different we are, and how powerless he is to change the way things work. There was a time when I thought I could trust Mark. When he married me, it seemed that he cared about me for who I was, not just as the woman who would give him sons. One night I ventured to tell him about my Untie Mat, a toe in the water, to see if I could reveal more. He smacked me and told me never to talk to him about Untie Mat again.

I cried to Gran that night. That’s when she told me about the letter writers.

I wrote out a second letter to Gilda. It was a tricky situation with Gilda leaving, and me knowingly doing something that would compromise me. Gilda would have to tell the woman who recruited her that she was going to Canada too. It would be the responsibility of that woman to make contact with me. But I was going to end up in the stocks, so that woman would have to make contact with Maddie instead. It was easiest to use the location that Gilda and I had used for last year to make pass the first letter. Maddie and Gilda’s recruiter could decided on a different location later.

I stuffed the letter explaining everything into the wall and replaced the loose brick. I took my shopping bags up and made my way back home to where I had left Mira and Simon to play in the yard. Maddie had offered to watch them again. It would be the last afternoon they would play there. Tomorrow they would be smuggled out of Massachusetts, and if they were lucky, they’d be in Canada shortly after. I fought the tears forming in my eyes as I walked. A woman crying was suspicious, especially to men. They only liked when we smiled.

Maddie was happily playing with the children when I arrived home, some game that involved running and freezing in place. I had purchased a few things for her at the grocery, and she helped me separate the items from my own when she saw me enter through the fence. I sent Mira and Simon inside to put the groceries away. Maddie gathered her own bag and her children and went home. I had slipped the letter into the bag as we sorted. She would find it, and after my children were gone, and I was in the stocks, hopefully she would follow its instructions to go to the loose brick in the wall. And if everything else worked according to plan, there would be a letter waiting for her from Gilda’s contact.

The plan had no room for error. If I was wrong about Maddie, I had just exposed everyone. But if I was right about her, then one day she might be able to escape too.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. Mark would be home soon. I could not afford to let him see me cry.

As I tucked the children in that night, I whispered to each one of them how much I loved them. There was a heaviness in the words that I didn’t normally feel. My voice cracked because I knew it would be the last time I performed this ritual. If they noticed they didn’t comment. I lingered a little too long over them.

Mark was suspicious of my moodiness. “Did something happen today?” he asked, as I turned back the covered and joined him in bed.

“No,” I said, sinking into the mattress, attempting to escape his prying. “I’m just tired.”

He too didn’t comment. He didn’t really care.

I didn’t sleep. I waited until the clock showed 2:15, it’s huge red numbers like monster’s eyes peering at me in the dark. I dressed, crept out of bed, down the hall to Mira’s room. I gently shook her awake. She was confused and sleepy. “Mommy…what…?”

I shushed her. “We need to go. I can’t tell you why.” I woke Simon the same way, gave the same instructions. I grabbed the small bag I had packed for them from the back of the coat closet in the hallway. I had practiced a silent exit many times to make sure that we could get away without waking Mark. The door of the house closed at 2:19.

We stayed in the shadows as best we could. My heart hammered. The children were practically running to keep up with my quickened pace. We went across yards, and public lots and down alleys and through parks and play grounds, until we were outside the limits of Fulbright, trekking across fields and farms. Finally, we made it to the ruin of the US Postal Office. I checked my watch. It was 2:59. The smuggler was supposed to arrive at 3:15.

Gilda was standing against the back wall of the old building, ushering people through broken window to hide inside while they waited for the smuggler to show up. I had no idea how many were already inside, but I watched her help 2 people through before she notice me and the kids. No one stood between us, and she left her place at the building and came towards me quickly.

“Emily,” she said, a question hanging in the air. She looked at the kids, then back at me. “The last two?” She was shaking her head.

“Gilda, please,” I said. “Please.”

“I can’t take your children from you,” she said. “I can’t do that to you.”

“You have to,” I said. The children were both now clinging to me, having figured out why were outside of Fulbright in the middle of the night. They had heard stories of people disappearing from Massachusetts all their life. Now they were about to do it themselves.

“Mommy, don’t send us away,” Simon said. He was pulling on my arm. “I want to stay with you.”

But Mira was silent. Mira, at only seven, already knew what life would be like for her if she staying. She cried silent, fat tears and remained at stoic as stone.

Gilda was about to say something more, when we heard the truck pulling up to the building. It’s lights were off, and as soon as it parked, they killed the engine. A person climbed out of the driver’s seat, and pulled something from their pocket. It was a flashlight, and the driver clicked it on and off three times quickly.

“It’s safe,” Gilda said. She took off towards the truck and I followed, the kids clinging to me as I moved after her. She called into the old post office, and then we were being handed children, and helping women climb through the window. Two men came last. I turned around to see that the driver had opened the back of the truck, and was similarly helping women and children climb into it. When everyone else had gone the driver looked at the two of us and the kids and said, “Can’t take both of you. Which one of you is going?”

Gilda and I looked at each other, and before I could say anything, she pushed me towards the truck, saying, “Go, Emily.”

“No, Gilda. Take the kids. Go to Canada. Get away from here.”

“No,” she said again, more forcefully. “Go with you children, Emily. They need their mother.”

My hands were trembling so hard that I almost dropped the bag I was packed. “But, Gilda, they’ll put you back in the stocks,” I said.

“You think they won’t do that to you?” she said.

“Ladies, we have to go,” the driver said. She came towards us, and lifted Mira from the ground, pushing her into the truck. She stifled a cry. Simon went into the truck more willingly, but I could hear them both sobbing as soon as they were inside.

Gilda shoved me towards the truck. “GO!” she said, almost angry now. “I’ll get out later!”

I looked over my shoulder at her, the guilt almost unbearable. But Gilda didn’t look disappointed or disapproving at all. She looked just as hard and as determined as every time I had passed her in the stocks. She was a fighter. She would survive.

The driver shut the door of the truck, and then my kids were huddled against me, crying into my dress in the dark.