This appeared to have little effect on the believers’ faith in her. In their minds, she had come to them and made of herself a vessel for Mother Ann’s word. Even if the miracle never happened again, she had been anointed a Visionist and would never be known as anything other. But why had her angels not come to her of late? Polly wondered. She did not miss the terror that preceded their visitations, but she wished she could feel the comfort of their presence. If only they could take away her doubts and fears. If only they could erase the evils of her past. She worried, too, that Elder Sister Agnes continued to expect her to prove herself. The eldress’s suspicions weighed on her almost as heavily as the history she sought to hide. It was a battle of wills—the eldress’s scrutiny pitted against Polly’s determination to follow Mama’s warning and say nothing about the fire, to hide her father’s rapaciousness, to air neither the fear that she had killed him nor the terror that he was still alive and would come for her.
