"How about your mom?" says Carl. Is she with us still?"
"She passed away just over a year ago", says Glen.
"I'm so sorry to hear that."
"She was ninety. Her time had come." Then Glen pauses, as though trying not to give voice to whichever words are already starting to fill his mouth along with the cheese and crackers he is devouring with gusto. Suddenly he says, his voice almost trembling, "Doug wouldn't let me attend her funeral."
"What?" says Francois.
"He ordered me. I don't suppose you or the others heard anything. One of his methods of control was by enforcing secrecy. But he said that if I left the house here for my mother's funeral, then I would be banished from the community. That I had to choose between God's work and my mother."
"That is simply outrageous!" says Carl.
"And then he forbade me to have any contact with my sister, Marlene, who is the only family I have left..."
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