“What the hell did you just do?”

“Hope came here asking for a job, Parker, and I gave her one. Okay?” Lydia raised her brows. “We owe her that much, don’t you think?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We might owe her,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure we can’t afford to give her anything.”

“You’re overreacting, Parker. She’s only going to work here. That doesn’t mean anything. We don’t even know how long she’s going to stay.”

“It means I’ll have to see her every day.”

“So will I.”

“She could destroy The Birth Place—destroy you.”

“I know.”

“She could take Dalton away from me,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion.

“She’s not going to take Dalton away. She doesn’t suspect anything. She just needs a break.”

“You’re a fool,” he said angrily, and walked out.

Lydia stared after him. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Dear Reader,

The comment I received repeatedly from people who read this book when it was only in manuscript form was that it’s “compelling.” I hope that’s true, because as I wrote it, the characters seemed to come to life, and the choices they made truly moved me. They prompted me to take a closer look at issues that have always intrigued me—what makes some of us do the things we do, believe what we do, accept or reject what others tell us is “right”? I don’t pretend to have the answers to those questions. But I certainly enjoyed watching Hope draw her own conclusions.

The research for this story took me to Hillsdale and Colorado City, a small community straddling the Utah/Colorado border and inhabited by polygamists. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, they still exist. Many of them live there, in rambling houses that are purposely left unfinished. The only grocery store is a co-op, to discourage trade with outsiders. There is one gas station and a sprinkling of businesses. The people are unique, and I think visiting there added color to my story.

It was a pleasure to be able to work with such talented authors as the five who have written the rest of the books in THE BIRTH PLACE series—Darlene Graham, Roxanne Rustand, C.J. Carmichael, Kathleen O’Brien and Marisa Carroll. I hope you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy their books, too.

I’d love to hear what you think of Sanctuary or any of my other work. Please feel free to contact me at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611. Or simply log on to my Web site at www.brendanovak.com to leave me an e-mail, check out my news and appearances page, win some great prizes or learn about my upcoming releases.

Best wishes,

Brenda Novak

Brenda Novak
Sanctuary

To Thad, the youngest in the family

and a little boy who’s larger than life. Thad, you might be

only six, but you already possess the heart of a lion.

The way you deal with the difficulties you face each day

leaves me shaking my head in wonder and admiration. You

go, sweetheart—nothing can ever stop a man with courage

like yours. If you forget everything I’ve ever taught you,

remember this: my love is everlasting.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PROLOGUE

The Birth Place

Enchantment, New Mexico

June, 1993

LYDIA KANE had keen, shrewd eyes. Hope Tanner stared into them, drawing strength from the older woman as another pain racked her. The contractions were coming close together now—and hard, much harder than before. Her legs shook in reaction, whether from pain or fear, she didn’t know. She didn’t feel as though she knew much about anything. She was barely seventeen.

“That’s it,” Lydia said from the foot of the bed. “You’re getting there now. Just relax, honey, and breathe.”

“I want to push,” Hope panted. Though the baby wasn’t overdue, Hope was more than anxious to be finished with the pregnancy. Lydia had put some sort of hormonal cream inside her—on what she called a cervix. The older woman said it would send her into labor. But the baby was proving stubborn. The pains had started, on and off, at sundown, and only now, when it was nearly four o’clock in the morning, were they getting serious.

More of God’s punishment, Hope decided. She’d run away from the Brethren, refused to do what her father said was God’s will, and this was the price she had to pay.

“Don’t push yet,” Lydia said firmly. “You’re not fully dilated, and we don’t want you to tear. Try to rest while I see what that last contraction did.”

Hope stared at the ceiling as Lydia checked the baby’s progress. She was tired of all the poking and prodding, but she would never say so. Lydia might think her ungrateful. After being alone for most of her pregnancy, wandering aimlessly from town to town, Hope wasn’t about to do anything to anger the one person who’d taken her in. Lydia was so decisive, so strong. As much as Hope loved and admired her, she feared her a little, too. Lydia owned the birth center and had to be sixty years old. But she wasn’t a soft, sweet grandmotherly type, certainly nothing like Hope’s own patient mother. Tall and angular, with steel-gray eyes and hair, Lydia often spoke sharply, seemed to know everything in the world and had the ability to make other people—and apparently even events—bend to her will. She took command like Hope’s father, which was an amazing concept. Hope hadn’t known women could possess so much power.

“Is everything okay?” Hope asked, weak, shaky, exhausted.

“Everything’s fine.” As Lydia helped her to a few more ice chips, the pendant she always wore—a mother cradling an infant—swayed with her movements and caught Hope’s attention. Hope had long coveted that pendant. She craved the nurturing and love it symbolized. But she knew she’d never experience holding her own child so close. Not this child, anyway.

After mopping Hope’s forehead, Lydia went back to massaging one of her feet. Lydia claimed that pressing on certain points in the foot could ease pain—she called it reflexology—but if reflexology was helping, Hope certainly couldn’t tell. To her, its only value seemed to be in providing a slight distraction.

“It shouldn’t be long now,” Lydia assured her, but she kept glancing at the clock as though she was late for something and as eager for the baby to be born as Hope. “I’d transfer you to the hospital if I was the least bit worried,” she continued in the same authoritative voice. “This is dragging on, I know. But the baby’s heartbeat is strong and steady and you’re progressing. First babies often take a while.”

Lydia had once mentioned that she’d been a midwife for more than thirty years. Certainly after all that time she knew what she was talking about. But Hope was inclined to trust her regardless of her professional experience. It was men who always failed her—

Another contraction gripped her body. Biting back a tormented moan, she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. She didn’t know how much more she could take. It felt as if someone had a knife and was stabbing her repeatedly in the abdomen.

Except for the music playing quietly in the background, the place was quiet. Parker Reynolds, the administrator, and the other midwives and clerical people who worked at the center were long gone. They’d left before Lydia had even induced her. She and Lydia were the only ones at The Birth Place. With its scented candles, soft lighting and soothing music, the room was meant to be comfortable and welcoming, like home. But this room, with its turquoise-and-peach wallpaper, Spanish-tile floor and wooden shutters at the window, was nothing like the home Hope had known. She’d grown up sharing a bedroom with at least three siblings, oftentimes four. If there were candles it was because the electricity had been turned off for nonpayment. And the only music she’d been allowed to listen to was classical or hymns.

“Good girl,” Lydia said as Hope fought the impulse to bear down.

At this point Hope didn’t care if she caused herself physical damage. She felt as though the baby was ripping its way out of her, anyway. She just didn’t want to displease Lydia. The ultrasound she’d had several weeks earlier indicated she was having a girl, and Lydia had promised that her daughter would go to a good home. Hope didn’t want to give her any reason to break that promise. Mostly because Lydia had painted such an idyllic picture of her baby’s future. Her baby would have a crib, and a matching comforter and bumper pads, and a mobile hanging above her head. She’d have doting parents who would give her dance lessons, help her with her homework and send her to college. When the time was right, they’d pay for a lovely wedding. Her daughter would marry someone kind and strong, have a normal family and eventually become a grandmother. She’d wear store-bought clothes and listen to all kinds of music. She’d feel good about being a woman. Better than anything, she’d never know what she’d so narrowly escaped.

Hope wanted sanctuary for her child. She wanted it more than anything. After her daughter arrived and started her princesslike life, it wouldn’t matter what happened to Hope.

She would already have given the only gift she could.

She would have saved her daughter from the Brethren.

“THE DEAL’S OFF,” Lydia stated flatly, entering her office cradling Hope’s new baby.

Fear nearly choked Parker Reynolds at this announcement. He glanced briefly at his father-in-law, U.S. Congressman John Barlow, who’d been waiting with him, before letting his gaze fall on the baby they’d come to collect. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Is Hope okay?”

“Mother and baby are both fine, but—” she split her gaze between them “—it’s a boy.”

A boy…Parker’s heart pounded in his chest like a bass drum. A boy could change everything. “Does Hope know?”

“I haven’t told her yet, but—”

“Perfect!” his father-in-law interrupted. “You were worried how it would look to have Parker and Vanessa receive a newborn baby so soon after Hope gave birth. Now they won’t have to relocate, and you won’t have to hire a new administrator. There’s no chance of anyone putting two and two together.”

Torn, Parker shoved his hands in his pockets and turned toward the window. After two miscarriages, his wife had never been able to get pregnant again. Now her health was too bad to continue trying. She was ill and miserable and so depressed she couldn’t get out of bed even on good days. She claimed that having a baby would make all the difference, that it would give her the will to survive.

He believed it would. He believed it was his responsibility as her husband to save her somehow. But because of Vanessa’s health, there wasn’t an adoption agency anywhere that would work with them. This was his only chance….

“The baby’s sex played a big part in her decision to give up the baby,” Lydia explained.

“I don’t give a damn if it did,” John replied. “She can’t provide for a boy any easier than she can a girl. She’s a seventeen-year-old runaway, for crying out loud. What can she offer this child?”

Parker felt his commitment to what they were doing waver even more. Two weeks ago, when he’d approached his father-in-law with this idea, it had all seemed so simple. Vanessa needed a baby. Hope’s baby needed a family. Lydia needed money to keep the center afloat. But it didn’t seem so simple anymore. It seemed almost surreal.

“Hope deserves the right to make an informed decision,” he said.

“Like hell,” John countered. “She doesn’t deserve a damn thing. From what you told me, Ms. Kane has housed her and cared for her during the last two months.”

“I had no ulterior motives when I took her in,” Lydia said.

“I’m not here to argue about the purity of your motives,” John replied. “Just keep the bargain. I’ve already paid you the money.”

Lydia tightened her hold on the baby. “I’ll pay you back.”

“When?”

Parker knew that wasn’t an easy question to answer. For the past six months the center had been inches away from closing its doors. The money had been spent on payroll and utilities and supplies.

“As soon as I can,” she snapped.

“Considering that you pump every dime you have into this place, I don’t think you’re a very good credit risk,” John said. “And I don’t want the money back. I want the baby you promised us.”

Lydia looked beaten as she gazed around the office. “This center has been my life,” she said. “It’s what I’ve fought for and loved for more than thirty years. But this time I’ve gone too far. What we’re doing goes against everything I believe in.”

“What we’re doing?” John said. “You’ve already done it, Ms. Kane. You did it when you took my money.” He motioned impatiently with one hand. “But you’re making a bigger deal of this than it has to be. You’re not doing anything that’s going to hurt this baby’s mother. So you’ve told her you’re putting her baby up for adoption. In a way, you are. It might not be through a legitimate agency, but that doesn’t matter? You—”

“Doesn’t matter? How can you say that?” Lydia interrupted. “What we’re doing is illegal, Congressman. You, of all people, should know that.”

Parker’s father-in-law assumed his “political” face. “The legality of the issue isn’t the point here. The point is that this child isn’t in any danger. He’s going to a good home, and you and I both know it.”

Lydia stared down at the baby for a long moment before lifting her gaze to meet John’s. “Your daughter is ill. As much as I hate to say it, and as much as you two might not want to face it—” here she gave Parker an apologetic glance “—there’s a chance she won’t make it. That’s why she couldn’t get a baby through the regular channels.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Parker’s father-in-law thundered, forgetting his “let’s smooth this over” act. “I know my daughter isn’t well. That’s why I’m not about to tell her she won’t be getting this baby!”

Parker was watching their reflection in the glass, sometimes trying to see beyond the pane to the wooded landscape outside. He’d been tempted to jump in at several points and voice an opinion. But he wasn’t completely sure if he agreed with John or with Lydia. He knew how badly his wife longed for a baby. He wanted to give her one. But now that the tiny infant he was supposed to take home had arrived, he was more bothered than he’d expected to be by the fact that he had no legal or blood right to claim him—more bothered than he’d expected about lying to young Hope. There was something so fragile, so innocent about the girl. Her pretty face lit up whenever she received the smallest kindness. Though part of him trusted that a baby would somehow help his wife improve, the rest of him felt lower than dirt for taking advantage of a vulnerable girl’s desperation and trust—and letting his father-in-law buy something he had no right to buy. Especially because he’d grown up living just down the street from Lydia. He’d known her most of his life; she’d recruited him just after he’d graduated from college. He hated that he’d also taken advantage of her desperation to save the clinic.

“What difference does it make where the baby goes so long as he’s well cared for?” John asked Lydia. “If you put the baby up for adoption, there’s no guarantee he’ll go anywhere better. At least you know Parker and Vanessa will love the child and care for him as their own.”

“It’s still selling a baby,” Lydia said, her shoulders drooping.

“Then pay me back someday if it’ll make you feel better, but let Vanessa have her baby.”

Pivoting away from the window, Parker finally broke his silence. He understood Lydia’s pain, felt responsible for it. But they’d come too far to turn back. “Lydia, you know I’ll give this child everything I have. And he might make all the difference to Vanessa.”

She stared at him for several seconds before slowly crossing the room. “Then you’d better take him home,” she said. “And I don’t ever want to talk about this incident again. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened.” With that she swept from the room, leaving Parker holding his son for the very first time.

CHAPTER ONE

Ten years later

GRIPPING THE STEERING wheel until the knuckles of both hands turned white, Hope Tanner drove into the very last place she wanted to be: Superior, Utah, population 1,517. Part of the town immediately brought back fond memories—the family-owned grocery where, when she was little, Brother Petersen had often given her a licorice rope; the elementary school she’d been permitted to attend for two years, the place she’d discovered art and that she enjoyed creating it; the town hall, with its tower and four-sided clock, which had always infused her childish heart with a sense of pride.

But there was also the meeting house with the hard pews where she and her twenty-nine siblings had sat for hours each Sunday to hear the Holy Brethren extol the virtues of polygamy and communal living, or the “principle” as they called it; Aunt Thelma’s bakery, where they ordered the wedding cakes for each of her father’s weddings; the old barn where—

Briefly, Hope squeezed her eyes shut. Not that memory, she told herself. Not for anything.

It had been eleven years since she’d run away from Superior, eleven hard years, but she’d survived, and she had an education now, a steady nursing job and a small rental house three hours away in St. George. As much as she missed her mother, she would never have come back to this place if not for her sisters.

Steering the old Chevy Impala she’d bought from one of her neighbors through the intersection that marked the middle of town, Hope turned left at the park, the easternmost part of which served as a cemetery, and swung into the gravel lot. Because it was barely noon and most members of the Everlasting Apostolic Church were still in church, the park was empty. But soon it would be crowded with women and children and possibly a few men, those who weren’t sequestered at the meeting hall deciding who would give the sermon next week, whose daughter would become the plural wife of which elder, which family’s claim for more grocery money was based on need and which on greed. It was Mother’s Day, and on Mother’s Day, after worship, practically everyone came out for a picnic. If Hope was lucky, she might see her sisters. If she was extremely lucky, she might even have the opportunity to talk to one or more of them while her father and the rest of the Brethren were still at the church.

Hope’s hands grew clammy around her keys, and her heart seemed to rattle in her chest as she got out of the car and stepped into the shelter of some cottonwood trees, where she hoped to go unobserved until she was ready to venture forth. The smell of cut grass and warm earth permeated the air as butterflies, mostly black, fluttered from one daffodil to another. The gleaming white headstones in the neighboring cemetery seemed to watch her like a silent audience, waiting in hushed expectation for the drama of the day to unfold.

Turn around, go home, her mind screamed. What are you doing? You’ve spent eleven years recovering from what happened in this place. Eleven years, for God’s sake. Isn’t that enough?

It was more than enough, but Hope wouldn’t let herself leave. Maybe Charity, Faith, Sarah or LaRee wanted out.

Maybe, sparse though her resources were, she could help them.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before she saw what she’d been waiting for—a group of women and children walking down the street, carrying bowls and baskets and sacks of food. They entered the park near the jungle gym in the far corner, and the children immediately scattered, laughing and calling to one another as the women made their way over to the picnic tables. Dressed in plain, home-sewn dresses that fell to the ankles and wrists—somewhat reminiscent of pioneer women—they wore their hair high off their foreheads and braided down their backs, and no makeup.

The Brethren frowned on any show of vanity or immodesty, just as they opposed modern influences that might entice their women and children away from the church, influences such as education or television. Consequently, few if any of these women had a college degree. Most hadn’t graduated from high school. To outsiders, they pretended to be sisters or cousins to the men they’d married while living cloistered lives with very defined roles. Men worked and gave what they earned to the church, had the ultimate say in everything and took as many wives as they pleased. Women, on the other hand, were relegated to cooking, cleaning and bearing and raising children; they were threatened with eternal damnation if they were too “selfish” or “unfaithful” to share their husbands.

Hope was one of the rebellious. She hadn’t been able to make herself comply with her father’s dictates, hadn’t been able to live the “principle.” Not for God. Not for her beloved mother. And certainly not for her father. In the minds of her family, her soul was lost. And maybe it was. Hope wasn’t sure if she was going to hell. But she felt pretty sure she’d already been there.

She crept closer, staying among the trees as she began to recognize people. A thick-set woman in a blue floral dress looked vaguely like the first Sister Cannon, while the tall crone was probably one of Garth Huntington’s wives. Raylynn Pugh Tanner, the youngest of her own father’s wives—at least when Hope was around eleven years ago—stood in the middle of the chaos, as plain as ever with her wire-rimmed glasses and thin brown hair pulled into a tight braid. She wore a dress loose enough to make Hope believe she was either pregnant or had just delivered a baby, and was busy pointing to a willowy girl that Hope, at first, didn’t recognize. “Don’t put the desserts on that table, Melanie,” she called. “Can’t you see we don’t have it covered yet?”

Melanie? Hope’s fingers dug into the trunk of the tree she was using both for support and for cover. Melanie had been a baby when she’d left. Look at her now! How many more children had her father had? How many more women had he married?

The last Hope knew, Jedidiah Tanner had six wives. Sister Joceline—Hope had always been required to call her father’s wives “Sister” because they were all daughters of God and sisters in His kingdom—was his first wife and had given him four boys and five girls. Sister Celia had followed Joceline, even though she was a few years older. Hope had once heard that Celia had difficulty conceiving. Or it was possible that after the initial newness of the marriage wore off, her father had simply refused to visit her bed. They’d never seemed particularly compatible, which made plural wives quite a convenience for a man. Jedidiah could simply go to the other side of the dilapidated duplex Celia lived in or to the trailer across the street and bed down with another of his wives. In any case, Celia only had two children, both girls. Sister Florence, her father’s third wife, had six boys and two girls. Marianne, Hope’s mother, had born five girls and, to her father’s tacit disappointment, no sons.

Sister Helena had four boys and one girl, and Raylynn, the sixth and final wife—at the time Hope left, anyway—just had Melanie. Although they were separated by only two years, Hope had never liked Raylynn. From the beginning, she’d been bossy and outspoken, and had all but taken over the running of Marianne’s household, at least when Jed wasn’t around. A woman rarely had an entire house—or even mobile home—to herself, so Raylynn had come to live with Marianne, which had given Hope plenty of opportunity to get to know her.

The composed, ethereal Helena, however, who’d lived down the block in an old brick house built when the town was first founded in the early 1900s, was different. Hope had loved her. Unfortunately, Helena had always been Jed’s favorite, too, which made her a pariah among his other wives and children. Hope and her mother had never been able to hold Jedidiah’s partiality to Helena against her. Helena was too sweet, too withdrawn, as though she’d rather not be noticed at all. Even now, Hope saw her standing off to the side, staring into the distance, and wondered, as she often had as a young teen, what was going on behind the serenity of Sister Helena’s face.

Hope forgot all about Sister Helena and the others the moment she spotted her own mother. Marianne was late joining the party and was trudging across the uneven ground in a dress so similar to one she’d owned eleven years ago Hope couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the exact same. Two girls, one about twelve and the other fourteen, tagged along behind her, bearing rolls and a ham, and Hope immediately realized they had to be her youngest sisters.

They’d grown so tall; she doubted she would have recognized them had they not been with her mother. Even Marianne had changed. Her clothes now hung on her like garments on an old wire hanger, and her hair was completely gray. She looked at least twenty years older, instead of only a decade.

Bitterness toward her father and guilt for abandoning her mother swelled inside Hope. She’d always been her mother’s right arm and her only confidante.

Of all the places in the world, her family had to be from here, Hope thought, watching her sisters deposit the ham and rolls on the table closest to them. By some counts, there were 60,000 practicing polygamists living in Utah, northern Arizona, Idaho, Montana and parts of Mexico and Canada. So Superior wasn’t the only place where people practiced plural marriage. Most polygamists existed in relatively small communities made of up several families that espoused the same doctrines. But those doctrines weren’t necessarily the same from group to group and had ventured far from the original Mormon beliefs that had spawned so many breakaway sects. The most conservative insisted sex was only for purposes of procreation. Others, like her family’s church, believed a man could have sex with a woman at any time as long as she “belonged” to him.

Still, there were 1,517 souls in Superior, and only half of those were members of the Everlasting Apostolic Church. The chances of being born here, in this small community, had to be a billion to one.

Unfortunately, the chances of getting out were about the same.

The weight of her purpose finally propelled Hope back to the car, where she retrieved the flowers she’d cut from her yard for her mother. She had to make her presence known as soon as possible. She’d have a much better chance of an honest conversation with her mother and sisters while her father wasn’t around. Considering the years that had passed since she’d last had contact and the way she’d left, it wasn’t going to be easy to reach them, even without her father’s interference. Her mother believed that God’s acceptance required her to submit to her husband’s will, which made it almost impossible to get her to listen to anything that didn’t come directly from him or the pulpit.

Taking a deep breath, Hope walked resolutely toward the picnic area.

Sister Raylynn, with her eagle eye, noticed her first and used her hand for shade so she could see better. Her jaw sagged, and, for an interminable moment, Hope felt the old fear and confusion return. The strictness of her upbringing, the emotional blackmail her parents and the leaders of the church had used to control her actions, the overwhelming competition she’d always felt for any crumb of her father’s attention and the sermons railing about the fiery fate of the wicked—all those feelings and memories closed in, threatening to suffocate her. She could almost feel the flames licking at her ankles….

But then she saw her closest sisters. Charity, five years younger than Hope at twenty-two, had a child propped on one hip and a toddler at her feet. Faith, now almost nineteen, was pregnant.

Raylynn said something and pointed. Her mother stopped wiping the mouth of the child Charity held and they all turned to look, their faces registering alarm or surprise, Hope couldn’t tell which.

Just as quickly, she felt her throat tighten and begin to burn. How she’d missed them. It had been forever since she’d last seen her family, but she’d carried them in her heart into a world that had little idea about who polygamists were or how they lived or—most especially—why they did the strange things they did.

Because of her background and her allegiance to these people, Hope had always stood apart. Alone. That aching loneliness had occasionally tempted her to return. But she could never rejoin them. If she couldn’t live the principle at sixteen, she could never live it now.

“Hope, is it you?” her mother said, her voice faltering when Hope drew near.

Hope stopped a few feet away and tentatively offered Marianne the flowers, along with a tremulous smile. “It’s me,” she said. “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Her mother pressed one shaking hand to her bony chest and reached out with the other, as though to accept the bouquet or cup Hope’s cheek. But Raylynn interrupted. “Good, here he comes,” she said. “It’s okay, Marianne. You don’t have to deal with this negativity. Jed’s here.”

Her mother’s hand dropped, and dread settled in the pit of Hope’s stomach as she looked up to see her father entering the park. A scowl generally served as his customary expression—anything less would have been frivolous—but his face darkened considerably when a little girl ran up to him and brightly announced, “Her name’s Hope, Daddy. I heard her say it. Ain’t she pretty? Ain’t that a pretty name, Daddy?”

Her father passed the child without acknowledging her. Tall and imposing in an Abraham Lincoln sort of way, he still wore his beard untrimmed. Two gray streaks broke the black of it at each corner of his mouth, accentuating his frown. He’d lost a good deal of his hair; his face, on the other hand, hadn’t aged a bit. Time couldn’t soften his granitelike features any more than it could soften his granitelike heart.

“What is this? What’s going on here?” he cried, his long legs churning up the distance between them. Next to him hurried her two uncles, Rulon, a taller version of her father, who had eight wives at last count, and Arvin, the runt of the family—and the man she’d refused to marry. Arvin was almost skeletal in appearance. The bones of his hips jutted out beneath a tightly cinched belt, and his chest appeared concave beneath his wrinkled white shirt. But at fifty-six, he still had his hair. Black and stringy, it fell almost to his shoulders. He was older than her father by a year, yet she would have been his tenth wife.

Hope’s grip on the flowers instinctively tightened. She wanted to leave, but her feet wouldn’t carry her. Not while Charity was standing in front of her looking so haggard and careworn at twenty-three. Who had her father arranged for Charity to marry?

“Hope’s back,” her mother volunteered in a placating tone as Jed reached them.

Her father’s eyes climbed Hope’s thin frame, the frame she’d inherited from him. She knew he was taking stock of the changes in her, making special note of her khaki shorts and white cotton blouse. She was dressed like a Gentile, an outsider, and he wouldn’t like that any more than he’d approve of the fact that her apparel showed some leg. She’d considered wearing a long dress, but that was too great a concession. She was part of these people, and yet she wasn’t. She was an outcast. As much as she missed her sisters and her mother, the years she’d spent here seemed like another lifetime. She now knew the freedom of driving and making her own decisions, the power of education, the joy of being able to support herself. She lived in a world where women were equal to men. She could speak and be heard and have some prospect of making a difference.

That was what she wanted to give her sisters. A chance to know what she knew—that there were others in the world who believed differently from their father. A chance to get more out of life.

“Father,” Hope murmured, but the old resentment came tumbling back, making the word taste bitter in her mouth. If not for his final betrayal, if not for his favoring Arvin’s salacious interest over her happiness, maybe she wouldn’t have done what she’d done in the barn. Maybe she wouldn’t have had to pay the terrible price she’d paid.

“You have a lot of nerve showing up here on a day meant to honor mothers when you’re guilty of just the opposite,” her father snapped.

“I’ve never meant Mother any disrespect.” Hope glanced meaningfully at Arvin. “I would have dishonored myself had I done anything different.”

“You flouted God’s law!” Arvin cried, her acknowledgment of his presence enough to provoke him.

“God’s law? Or your own?” she replied.

“That’s sinful,” her father said. “I won’t have you talking to Arvin that way. He’s always loved you, was nothing but good to you. You were the one who wronged him.”

Briefly, Hope remembered her uncle’s eager touches when she was a child. His long, cool fingers had lingered on her at every opportunity, and he’d always been quick to take her to the potty or clean a skinned knee. He’d scarcely been able to wait until she was old enough to bear children to ask her father for her hand.

“He had no right to press his claim once I refused him. I was only sixteen,” she said.

Her father waved her words away. “Your mother was only fifteen when she married me.”

“That doesn’t matter. I would have been miserable.”

“Heaven forbid I should do something to displease such a princess!” her father bellowed. “Was I supposed to support you in feeling too good for a worthy man? Was I supposed to give in to your vanity? God will strike you down for your pride, Hope.”

“God doesn’t need to do anything,” she said. “What you’ve done is enough.”

“Hope, don’t say such things,” her mother pleaded.

But the old anger was pounding through Hope so powerfully now she couldn’t stop. “What you’ve done in the name of religion is worse than anything I’ve ever even thought about doing,” she told her father. “You use God to manipulate and oppress, to make yourself bigger than you really are.”

Her father’s hand flexed as though he’d strike her. He had beaten her a few times in the past—like the night she’d fled Superior—but Hope knew he wouldn’t hit her now. Not in front of everyone. If he assaulted her, she’d have a legitimate complaint to file with the police, and the Everlasting Apostolic Church wanted no part of that. Though it was next to impossible to enforce the law, polygamy was, after all, illegal and there had been a few isolated cases in which polygamists had actually gone to prison, though mostly for related crimes and not for polygamy per se.

Still, the murmuring in the crowd that was quickly gathering told Hope she’d gone too far. She’d come with the intention of being diplomatic, of reassuring herself of her family’s well-being and seeing if she could do anything to help her sisters. Instead, she’d disparaged the church and her father. But she couldn’t help it. She was viewing their lifestyle with new eyes, and too little had changed.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” her father said.

It was a public park, but Hope didn’t bother pointing that out. Her father had always believed that his power extended beyond the normal domain. Among his family and in the church, it did. For him, there was no world outside of that and, if she stayed, she’d only make matters worse for the others.

She glanced at Faith and Charity. “Anyone here want to leave with me?”

Her sisters stared at the ground. Her mother opened her mouth as though she longed to speak, but then clamped her lips firmly shut.

“All right, I’ll go,” Hope said when no one spoke, but Faith caught her by the arm.

“It’s Mother’s Day,” she said, appealing to their father while clinging to her. “Can’t Hope stay for an hour or two?”

“It’s been so long since we’ve seen her,” her mother added. “She doesn’t mean what she says. I know she doesn’t.”

“Why does she have to leave at all? I think we should celebrate,” Faith said. “You know the story in the Bible about the prodigal son returning. This should be a joyful time.” She hesitated. “Even if she doesn’t plan on staying long. At least we get to—”

“You keep out of it, missy. I’ll not have her poisoning you, too,” Arvin said, and something about the proprietary tone of his voice told Hope that Faith was more than just a niece to him now. Was that his baby her sister carried?

The thought made Hope ill. She’d come too late for Charity and Faith. A profound sadness swept through her as she gazed at her beautiful eighteen-year-old sister.

Again Faith wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I meant every word,” Hope told her father.

“Then leave, and don’t bother coming back,” he said.

Hope took in the many women and children surrounding her—the adults, the teenagers, the babies and all those in between. “I won’t. You have so many children, what’s one twenty-seven-year-old daughter more or less?”

Dropping the flowers on the ground, she turned and stumbled blindly to her car. She couldn’t save anyone here, she realized, swiping at the tears that rolled down her cheeks. They were too firmly entrenched in the lifestyle, too easily manipulated by the visions and visitations her father claimed to have.

Just as she used to be.

But when she reached the parking lot, the same little girl who’d called her pretty a few minutes earlier hurried out of the bushes and intercepted her before she could open the door of her car. The child had obviously been running and had to pause for sufficient breath.

“Faith said…” pant, pant “…to tell you to meet her at the cemetery…” pant “…tonight at eleven.”

CHAPTER TWO

HOPE SAT ON ONE of the swings in the park, which was lit by a bright moon and the streetlight across the street, while she waited for Faith. Her sister had asked to meet at the cemetery, but Faith would have to pass the swings to get there, and Hope had no desire to go inside. Not because it was spooky in the Halloween sense. She didn’t like Superior’s cemetery because the stooped and weathered headstones represented the people who’d never escaped the yoke of the Everlasting Apostolic Church. Her mother would be buried there, and so would her sisters when they died, even though they’d never really lived….

“Hope? Is that you?”

Faith’s voice came from the darkness behind her, and Hope turned. “It’s me. Come have a seat.”

Her sister moved into the moonlight, one hand braced protectively against her swollen abdomen, and Hope was struck by how far along Faith must be. Eight months? More?

Faith looked carefully around as though she feared being seen. “Thanks for coming.”

“Do you want to talk somewhere else?” Hope asked. “We could go for a drive.”

“No. If I get in that car with you…” Faith let her words fall off and took the swing next to Hope, using her feet to sway slowly back and forth.

If she got in the car, what? Hope nearly asked, but she didn’t want to press Faith. She wanted to give her the chance to say what she’d come to say.

An old truck rumbled down Main Street. Hope could see it stop at the light glowing red near the corner of the park, then take off when the signal changed, but there wasn’t much traffic in Superior, especially this late at night. The Everlasting Apostolic Church didn’t believe in shopping or going out to eat on the Sabbath, so the few businesses that did open on Sunday closed down by five, even the gas station.

“So you can drive?” Faith asked when the rumble of the truck engine dimmed and the only sound was the creaking of their swings.

Hope nodded. “I learned how when I was nineteen.”

“Where did you go today? After you left the park?”

“Up to Provo. I thought it might be more interesting to shop at a different mall.”

“Provo’s pretty far away.”

“I had the time.” With a deep breath, Hope studied her sister. “It’s Arvin, isn’t it?” she asked. “The father of your baby.”

Faith’s face contorted in distaste. “Yes. How’d you know?”

“It wasn’t difficult to guess.”

Silence.

“So how is it, being married to Arvin?”

“How do you think? He pretends to live the Gospel, but he’s really arrogant and mean and stingy.”

Somehow, even as a child, a sixth sense had warned Hope about the existence of a dark side beneath the eager smile Arvin had always offered her, together with the candy he carried in his pockets. Hope had done everything possible to keep her distance from him, which had eventually led to her outright rebellion. Faith, on the other hand, possessed a calmer, more long-suffering temperament. Hope had last seen her when she was only eight years old, but even then Faith had been a peace lover. A typical middle child, she was like a kitten that immediately curled up and purred at the first hint of praise or attention—the most patient and tractable of Marianne’s five daughters.

And this was what Faith’s good nature had brought her, Hope thought bitterly, staring at her sister’s rounded stomach. Arvin’s baby.

“Did Charity refuse to marry Arvin, too?” she asked. “Is that how it fell to you?”

Frowning, Faith cast Hope a sideways glance. “What you did eleven years ago embarrassed Daddy in front of the whole church. I don’t think he wanted to push Charity into doing the same thing.”

“She would have refused?”

Faith shrugged. “Charity’s more like you than I am.”

“Are you saying a woman should marry a man she detests for the sake of her father’s pride?”

“No.” Faith’s swing continued to squeak as she moved. “Arvin always admired you. He’d been asking Daddy for you since you were small, and Daddy had already promised him, that’s all. I’m just trying to explain why Daddy did what he did.”

“I know why he did it, Faith. But that doesn’t make it right. I was in love with someone else.”

Her sister stopped swinging and scuffed the toe of one tennis shoe in the dirt, as though finally cognizant of the fact that the generous skirt of her cotton print dress had been dragging. “That was the other reason Charity didn’t have to marry Arvin,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about Bonner.”

The mention of Bonner’s name sent chills cascading down Hope’s spine. “What about him?”

“His parents came over a couple of years after you left and said they’d been praying about Bonner’s future, and God told them Charity was to be Bonner’s first wife. They said God wanted to reward him for not running away with you.”

Reward him? For clinging to the safety of his parents and their traditions, even though he didn’t believe in them? For breaking her heart?

Hope told herself to breathe, to suck in air, hold it, then silently let it go. The pain would ease…“So Charity’s married to Bonner?” she asked, her voice sounding small and tinny to her own ears. “Those are his children I saw with Charity today?”

“Actually they have three,” Faith said. “You probably didn’t see the oldest. Pearl, LaDonna and Adam.”

Hope thought about putting her head between her knees to stop the dizziness washing over her, but she told herself that after eleven years she could take news like this. What she felt for Bonner had dulled into disappointment long ago, hadn’t it? This was no more than she should have expected. “Does he have any other wives?”

“He had to take the Widow Fields.”

“Because…”

“Because no one else wanted her, I guess. She petitioned the Brethren, and that’s what they decided. It was sort of a consensus.”

Hope didn’t know what to say. Though Bonner wasn’t yet a man when they’d pledged their love, only a boy of eighteen, she’d expected so much more from him. It was as though he’d never whispered those things to her in the dark, as though he hadn’t helped hatch the plan that had culminated in so much heartache.

“He married JoAnna Stapley, too, about three years ago. And he’s already asked for Sarah, when she’s old enough,” Faith added.

Mention of another sister caused Hope’s scalp to crawl. “He wants Sarah?”

“Why not?”

“She’s only fourteen!”

“She’s so excited to get a husband under the age of forty she’s willing to marry him now.”

Hope sighed in disgust and resignation. “That’s crazy, Faith. She’s still a child. And he’ll be thirty-two by the time she turns eighteen, which isn’t so much younger than forty.”

“Maybe to the outside world it seems strange, but not here. You’ve been gone a long time.”

Too long. Or not long enough. Hope couldn’t decide which.

“Why’d you come back?” Faith asked. “Was it because you were hoping that…maybe…Bonner had changed his mind?”

Hope touched her own stomach, once again feeling the phantom kicking of Bonner’s baby in her belly. She’d thought a lot about Bonner over the years, had dreamed he’d change his mind and somehow find her, that the two of them would recover their child and become a family. But she knew that if he hadn’t had the strength to leave before, with their love and their child at stake, he never would.

When Hope didn’t respond, Faith grasped her swing. “I’m sure he’d take you back,” she said. “I saw it in his face when Charity told him you’d been at the park.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“No, I saw regret and…and pain.”

Whatever pain Bonner had suffered couldn’t compare to what Hope had endured. That much she knew. “So you think I should become his…what? Fourth wife?” she asked, chuckling bitterly. “That’d make Jed happy.”

“It would,” Faith said earnestly.

Hope shook her head. “No, it would smack too much of me finally getting my way, and he couldn’t set that kind of precedent. He still has two daughters to coerce into marriages they may not want. Maybe he’s even planning to give them to Arvin.”

Faith visibly cringed. “I don’t think so. He’s not very pleased with…with the way Arvin treats me. Deep down, he knows you were right about Arvin. Daddy’s just not ready to admit it.”

How many daughters was it going to take?

“How’d you get away tonight?” Hope asked. “I can’t imagine that after seeing me in town, Arvin would stay anywhere but with you.”

“He and Rachel, the seventeen-year-old Thatcher girl, were married a week ago, and he hasn’t tired of her yet. He likes his women young—real young, Hope. He would hardly leave me alone the first year we were married. But then I got pregnant. He finds my swollen belly…unappealing, so now he almost always sleeps elsewhere.”

“Does that bother you to know he’s with others?”

“No, I’m grateful. I can hardly stand it when he touches me,” she said with a shudder.

Bile rose in Hope’s throat at the thought of her eighteen-year-old sister not being young enough for Arvin. Or maybe it was the mental image of him touching Faith in the first place that bothered Hope so much. “We should call the police,” she said. “If Rachel’s not eighteen, that’s statutory rape.”

Faith’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t do that to Daddy. It would bring too much negative publicity on the church and hurt families who are trying to live the principle the way it’s meant to be lived.”

Hope had some questions as to how the principle was meant to be lived in this day and age. But she understood that Faith would be much more sympathetic to the church’s beliefs than she herself would, especially after being away so long. “Sexual predators shouldn’t be tolerated in any community. Even one as tightly knit as this,” she said, sticking with a line of reasoning Faith could not refute.

“I don’t think you can call him a predator,” she said. “Rachel married him willingly enough. And he’s careful not to touch anyone who isn’t his wife.”

“Are you sure about that? What about his children?”

“I don’t think he’s hurt any of them,” Faith said, but the lack of conviction in her voice made Hope more than a little nervous.

“Have you talked to Jed about your suspicions?”

“What suspicions? I said I don’t think he’s hurt any of his children.”

“You’re worried that he might.”

Her sister didn’t answer right away.

“Faith?”

“Okay, I tried to talk to Daddy about some of the things Arvin’s said to me, but he didn’t want to hear. Arvin’s his brother and a pious church member.”

“Pious?” Hope scoffed.

“He pretends to be, especially to the other Brethren. And you know the police won’t do anything. You’ve heard Daddy say it a million times: ‘This is America. It goes against the principles on which this country was founded to persecute people for their religious beliefs. We’re just living God’s law. Are we supposed to forget what our God has told us just because man decides we should?’

Hope was willing to concede that respect for religious freedom might be a small part of the reason the police typically left polygamists alone. But she knew politics were at work, too. In 1957, the last time authorities had made any kind of concerted effort to stamp out polygamy, television stations had aired newsreels of fathers being torn from their crying wives and children, and public sentiment had quickly turned against the police and their efforts.

“The police will help if we can prove that children are being abused,” she said.

“That’s the problem. I have no proof. Just this nagging sense that something isn’t right with Arvin.”

Hope had experienced the same nagging sense eleven years ago. But it was tough to convict someone on suspicion alone.

“They love you, you know,” Faith said out of nowhere, spinning the conversation in a new direction.

“Who?” Hope said.

“Daddy. Bonner. Maybe even Arvin.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, Daddy does at least.”

“There’s no room in a heart filled with such beliefs.”

“I know he’s passionate about the church, Hope. But he’d let you come back. You just have to show him you’re willing to repent.”

Hope had already repented. She repented every day—for trusting an eighteen-year-old boy who said he loved her more than life. And for being financially unable to care for the child he’d given her. But she knew that wasn’t the kind of repenting sweet, innocent Faith was talking about. “And that embarrassment you mentioned earlier?” she said. “How could Jed forgive me for something so monumental?”

If Faith picked up on the sarcasm in Hope’s voice, she gave no indication. Her face remained as solicitous as ever. “He’d have to forgive you, Hope. The Bible says, ‘For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’

Hope knew what the Bible said. Verse after verse had been drilled into her from birth. She’d scarcely been allowed to read anything else. But she hadn’t so much as glanced at a single page in the entire eleven years she’d been gone. Because of the way the scriptures had been used—as a tool to force her into a life she didn’t want—just the sight of the black simulated-leather binding made feelings of claustrophobia well up in her. “Seventy times seventy,” she muttered.

“That’s right,” Faith said. “If you come home, the Brethren will insist that Daddy forgive you, even if he won’t do it on his own. And then you and Bonner can be together at last.”

She and Bonner…“Along with a couple of my sisters and the Widow Fields?”

“Is that so bad?”

“Maybe not to you.”

“Then marry someone else, someone who refuses to live the principle, too. Maybe someone who’s not even a member of the church. There’re people here in Superior who don’t believe in plural marriage. And there’re other towns close by. You don’t have to separate yourself from us completely.”

“I thought marrying outside the church precludes me from heaven,” Hope said just to hear her sister’s response.

“I don’t know, Hope,” Faith said. “I don’t pretend to know much about heaven anymore. If there is one, I’m having a tough time believing in it. Since I married Arvin…well, Mother would say that my faith is being tested.” She offered Hope a weak smile. “But I’m not so certain everything the church teaches is really true. If it is, why are we the only ones who believe it? Surely we’re not the only people on earth who are going to heaven. Anyway, I know this much—family is all we have in this life. And we’ve missed you. Daddy might have thirty-five children, but Mother has only five, and you’re one of them. She hasn’t been the same since you left.”

Hope couldn’t help reaching for her younger sister’s hand. They’d lost eleven years they’d never be able to recover and she regretted the pain she’d caused her mother. “Faith, I appreciate what you’re saying, I really do,” she said. “I didn’t leave here because I wanted to. But I can’t come back. If I don’t live the principle, Jed would never let me associate with you. He’s too afraid I’ll pull you and the rest of his children away from his beliefs. Besides…” Hope hesitated, unwilling to barrel on for fear she’d upset her sister.

“Besides what?” Faith prodded.

“I don’t want to come back here,” Hope admitted. “I can’t live in a place where guilt is used to motivate my every action. I can’t submit my will to a man’s, because I no longer believe women are inferior. I can’t believe our sole purpose here is to procreate, not when we have so many other talents and abilities. And I can’t believe God has so little compassion for His daughters that He would expect us to give more to our husbands than we get in return.”

Silence met this announcement. Hope felt slightly embarrassed about the passion that had rung through her voice, and knew that what she was saying would probably sound radical to her sister. But she’d spent many years agonizing over what she believed and what she didn’t, and she could hardly feel indifferent about her conclusions.

“I’m not going to say I think you’re wrong,” Faith said, “because I don’t know.”

“Then how do you do it?” Hope asked. “How do you stay here and let Arvin come to your bed?”

“I’ve been telling myself the dissatisfaction I feel is Satan tempting me away from the truth but—” she tucked her dress around her legs “—you’ve probably already guessed it’s not working. If it was, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be protecting myself from your ‘dangerous influence,’ as Daddy told us all to do after we saw you today.”

“That was generous of him,” Hope muttered. “I guess he feels a little differently about prodigals than the father in the Bible did, huh?”

“He said the prodigal in the Bible was humble and repentant.” She turned her face toward the cemetery. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it was easy for him to spurn you today.”

Hope didn’t want to debate the issue. She had almost no feelings left for her father. She’d never had many positive ones to begin with. “What does Mother say about your situation with Arvin?”

“She claims having a baby will help. But she admitted the loneliness will probably never disappear.”

“Don’t you think that’s a tragedy?”

“What?”

“To expect to be lonely your whole life, when you’re beautiful and healthy and only eighteen?”

Faith bit her lip as she seemed to consider Hope’s words. “I think she sees it as a burden we, as women, must band together and carry,” she said at last.

“Why?” Hope asked.

“For a greater reward later on, after this life.”

“You just told me you’re not sure the church’s teachings are correct. That means your sacrifice might be for nothing.”

No response.

“You don’t have to stay here,” Hope said. “There’s a whole world out there, Faith.”

“What about Mother? And my sisters? I have nieces and nephews and friends here.”

Hope noticed she didn’t mention her husband or their father.

“You can’t live your whole life for other people,” Hope said. “You have to let them make their decisions, and you have to make yours.”

“But I’m not as strong as you are, Hope. I’m not sure I can make it on my own. And sometimes what I hear in church really speaks to me, you know? Sometimes I think Daddy has to be right.”

“So did I,” Hope said. “Maybe he’s not wrong about some things. I believe it’s important to live a good life, to be honest, to serve others, to develop your talents. But is this the best place to do that? What about your baby? If it’s a girl, do you want her to have a plural marriage? To endure the emotional starvation of sharing her husband with who-knew-how-many other women. To have no hope of living without so much guilt she can hardly function?”

The moon bathed Faith’s troubled face in silver when she tilted her head to look at Hope. “Were you able to give your baby anything better?”

“I hope so.” Hope leaned her forehead against the cool metal chain above her right hand. “I have no guarantees, but at least I improved the odds.”

“So you’re okay with knowing you’ll never see your own child?”

Faith’s question was certainly blunt, even ruthless in a way, but there was no condemnation in her voice, only a sincere desire to plumb Hope’s regrets, to see how she’d lived and to know if the outside world was truly better.

“There are times I’m not okay with that at all. But I was promised she’d go to a good family, and I still trust the people who told me that.” Hope pictured the arresting face of the young administrator of The Birth Place. Parker Reynolds had been there to encourage her at a pivotal point in her life. And Lydia Kane, so alive with over sixty years of intense, passionate living, had set the supreme example of what a woman could be. Together, they’d inspired Hope to pull her life together, regardless of the obstacles in her path, and become an obstetrics nurse. But she’d had to leave Enchantment behind to do so. She couldn’t live somewhere that would forever remind her of the child she’d given away, forever tease her with the possibility that she might someday bump into her daughter.

“What are you thinking about?” Faith asked.

Hope steered her mind away from that long-ago place of adobe buildings, red sunsets, brisk clean air and pine-scented mountains. “Just that I’m glad my baby won’t have to go through what I went through,” she said. “Adoption provided her with a complete family, one that had the means to take care of her. But things are different for you, Faith. You wouldn’t have to give up your baby. You’d have a place to live, food to eat, a chance to go to school. That’s why I’m here. To help you, if you want my help.”

Uncertainty clouded her sister’s face.

“Don’t you ever dream of leaving?” Hope pressed.

“All the time,” Faith whispered.

Hope’s pulse leaped at the longing in her voice. “Then tell me what you want most out of life.”

“I want…” Her sister scuffed her toe in the dirt again. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Wrapping her arms around the chains of her swing, Hope leaned back to stare at the sky. “It matters, Faith. Dreams always matter. See those stars? You need to pick one and shoot right for it.”

Faith gazed up at the night sky. “The star I want is too far away.”

“Not if you really believe in it.”

“I want to feel good about myself,” her sister said softly. “And…and sometimes I dream of having a man of my own. A young man, who’ll devote his whole heart to me and our children.” She laughed in a self-deprecating manner. “I know it sounds vain and selfish, and Father would say I deserve to lose my salvation if I can’t be happy with a good, God-fearing man, regardless of his age. But I don’t love Arvin, Hope. I want to love the man whose children I’m bearing.”

Her last words were spoken so reverently they sounded almost like a prayer. “Every woman should have that right,” Hope said.

“No, those are evil thoughts, and I’m evil for thinking them.”

“They’re not evil,” Hope argued. “And neither are you.” Standing, she reached out to Faith. “Come with me. I’ll take you home and tomorrow I’ll show you a whole new world.”

Faith’s eyes went wide. “I can’t, Hope. As much as I want to—”

“Faith, you’re miserable. How long can you really expect to last? Don’t wait until you have more children. Then it’ll only be worse. You’ll feel even more trapped.”

Faith twisted the gold band on the finger of her left hand. “But I’ve made promises.”

“What about the unspoken promise of a mother to her child? Your promise to your child?”

She closed her eyes. “I hear what you’re saying, Hope. Part of me believes you’re right. I just—”

“What?”

She looked up again. “I don’t know if I can do it. It goes against everything—”

“Do it for your baby.”

“And if I regret leaving?”

“You won’t,” Hope said.

The confidence of this declaration seemed to be just what Faith needed, because she straightened as though feeling a sense of resolution. “Okay.” She stood up and took Hope’s hand. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here fast, before—”

“Before what, Faith?” a man’s voice interrupted. “Before your husband finds out?”

CHAPTER THREE

IT TOOK HOPE a moment to make out Arvin from among the long shadows of the trees. When she did, her palms grew moist.

“It’ll be okay, Faith,” she murmured, her heart pounding.

Faith looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Arvin, I—”

“You’re what?” he interrupted. “You’re planning to run out on me in the middle of the night? Is that what you’re doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” Faith said. “I know it isn’t right to leave this way. But I’m not happy, Arvin. I haven’t been happy since we married. I think you know that.”

“What, you’re not satisfied with having me in your bed? You want some Gentile rutting between your legs?”

Faith jerked as though he’d shot her, and Hope stepped between them. “That’s vulgar, Arvin. Below even you.”

“Vulgar.” He chuckled. “She’s so prim and proper, no one will want her. Look at her. You think some other man is going to desire a woman who’s bearing the child of her own uncle?”

“How dare you try to belittle her for what you—”

“You might be my uncle, but you’re also my husband,” Faith said at the same time. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Hope tried to bar him from coming too close to Faith, but he stepped around her. “They’re not going to care about your version of right and wrong, Faith. They don’t understand the principle. The outside world will think you’re a freak, a freak without an education or any way to support yourself. They’ll have no use for you or our baby. Is that what you want? To be a laughingstock? To have no one?”

“She’ll have me,” Hope said.

“You stay out of this. It’s none of your affair,” he growled. “You belong here, Faith. Don’t let Hope paint pictures of dreamlands that don’t exist.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Hope said. “I’ve painted no dreamland. Arvin is the only freak I know. Let’s get out of here.” She tugged on her sister’s arm, eager to get them both away before Arvin tried to stop them physically, but Faith resisted her efforts.

“What if he’s right, Hope? What if I don’t fit in?” she asked. “I can’t expect you to take care of me and my baby indefinitely.”

“You’ll fit in just fine,” Hope said. “When the baby’s old enough, you’ll go to school and learn to support yourself and your child. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of you as long as you need me. You’ll see. Come on.”

Still, Faith hesitated. “That’s asking a lot of you, Hope, and I feel so lost already….”

“What about your poor mother?” Arvin asked, his eyes shining like obsidian in the darkness. “Are you trying to break her heart? You’ve seen what Hope’s already done to her. Now you’re going to do the same thing?”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Faith said.

Hope gave Arvin a look of disgust. “Stop pretending. You’re not worried about our mother. You’re only worried about yourself.”

“Oh, yeah?” he countered, and those shiny eyes seemed to stab right through her, eliciting more of the revulsion she’d felt toward him even as a girl. “I have eleven other wives. I don’t need an eighteen-year-old girl who knows nothing about pleasing a man. Why, she’s so frigid I practically have to pry her legs apart.”

Faith gasped, and Hope raised a defensive hand as if she could ward him off. “Then let her go, Arvin,” she said. “She doesn’t love you. She never has.”

“And give you what you want? After the way you’ve treated me? Like hell!”

Hope couldn’t believe her ears. Unless she’d missed her guess, this wasn’t about Faith; he didn’t desire her, he didn’t need her, and he certainly didn’t want her. This was about the past. “See, Faith? He’s just trying to get back at me. We need to go.”

“Faith, come home with me,” Arvin said, his voice imperious. “Right now, before I feel the need to go to the rest of the Brethren and complain about your behavior.”

Hope wished she could wipe the smug expression from Arvin’s face. Obviously he thought he’d win the tug-of-war between them. She was afraid he would. But what could she do? Faith was of age and pregnant. She needed to make her own decisions.

“I said we’re going home,” he said even more forcefully.

Her sister glanced at the parking lot where Hope’s Impala waited. “I live in a house with two of your other wives,” she finally said, “who don’t seem to like you a whole lot more than I do. I don’t have a home.” With her back ramrod-straight, she turned and started toward the Impala.

Hope felt a rush of pure adrenaline and hurried after her. Faith was actually going through with it. She was leaving Arvin, Superior, the Everlasting Apostolic Church!

“You’ll be a pariah,” Arvin called after her.

“Don’t listen to him,” Hope murmured.

“I won’t let you come back here!” he shouted. “You’ve just kissed your friends and family goodbye, not to mention your eternal salvation. You’re going to rot in hell, Faith, right along with Hope!”

Hope opened her mouth to tell him he’d be there, sweating right along with them, but Faith turned and spoke before she could. “I’d rather go to hell with Hope than spend one more night with you,” she said, and got in the car.

Stunned, Hope scrambled into the other side, started the engine and peeled out of the lot.

THEY TRAVELED south without speaking, the thrumming of tires on pavement the only sound for more than an hour. Hope finally turned on the radio, hoping music might soothe the raw emotions jangling inside her and take her mind back to where it was before she’d returned to Superior. But when Faith’s gaze cut toward the radio, she quickly flipped it off. She didn’t want Faith to feel the shock of having stepped outside her sheltered existence quite so soon. Superior had regular radio stations of course, but the Everlasting Apostolic Church encouraged parishioners not to listen to the “devil’s music,” and Hope guessed Faith was one of those who obeyed.

“You can listen if you want,” Faith said politely as the quick spurt of music died.

The tone of her sister’s voice gave no indication of what Faith was feeling, which made Hope uneasy. Tears would be good at this point, she thought. But after Hope had left Superior, she hadn’t been able to cry for a year, and she saw no sign of tears on Faith’s face, either. Maybe it was a Tanner thing.

“I’m fine with having it off,” Hope said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Headlights bore down on them from the opposite direction. A truck passed, and then they were once again alone on the road. Hope peered nervously in her rearview mirror, as she’d been doing since they left, just to be sure. She certainly didn’t want Arvin, or anyone else, following her. She’d spent too long making a safe home for herself to compromise it now.

“You going to be okay?” she asked, sending her sister a worried glance.

Faith sat in the same position she’d taken when they left—legs clamped tightly together, back straight, hands folded primly on her belly. “I think so.”

Hope adjusted the heater because it was getting too warm in the car, and at last forced herself to ask the question she knew she should pose before they went any farther. “Are you having second thoughts, Faith? Do you want me to take you back?”

Her sister stared through the windshield without blinking, and Hope imagined she was watching the broken yellow line in the center of the road rush past. Each break took her farther from her home, farther from everything she’d ever known, farther from everything she’d ever believed she would do….

Finally Faith shifted her weight and eased further into the seat. “No.”

Hope sighed in relief. Don’t worry. It’ll get easier as the days and weeks pass, she wanted to say. I’ve been there. But now wasn’t the time to go into what the future would or wouldn’t hold. It was nearly one in the morning. Her sister had to be exhausted. And if Faith’s feelings were anything like Hope’s when she’d run away, she was too confused to make sense out of anything.

A few more miles and Faith’s eyelids drooped until her lashes rested on her cheeks. As her breathing evened out, Hope began to relax, too. Faith’s situation might be similar to the one she’d been in eleven years ago, but Hope silently promised that it would end differently. Faith would get to keep her baby. She’d never experience the ache Hope felt every time she thought of the infant she’d borne but was never allowed to hold. She wouldn’t have to wonder if she’d made the right decision about giving up a child she would have loved with her whole heart.

She would, however, have to lie about her baby’s father.

The words Arvin had flung at them in the park came immediately to Hope’s mind, making her cringe. You think some other man is going to desire a woman who’s bearing the child of her own uncle?…You’re a freak…They’ll have no use for you or our baby…. The bastard. He’d made her a freak. And while Faith was swallowing her distaste and submitting to him because she believed it was God’s law, Hope felt sure he was delighting in the perversion of having church-sanctioned sex with his own niece.

Highway 14 came up on her right. Hope automatically made the turn that would take her to I-15 and then on to St. George. Her glowing instrument panel indicated she was speeding again, but she was too engrossed in her thoughts to care. The genetic connection between Arvin and Faith was unfortunate, for Faith and the child’s sake. But everyone had secrets. Hope had managed to keep her own past a secret from almost everyone, except the people at The Birth Place—Lydia Kane, Parker Reynolds and the others employed there.

What was one more skeleton in an already crowded closet?

AFTER ANOTHER HOUR and a half, the adrenaline that had kept Hope alert through the entire drive ebbed, and her eyes began to burn with fatigue. When she finally turned down her quiet residential street of small brick homes, she was longing for bed and a few hours of unconsciousness before trying to help Faith face the future. Hope had insulated herself from others by focusing on becoming functional and productive—and to a certain extent, being a chameleon. She blended in. She didn’t make waves. She withheld the part of herself that knew pain. But helping Faith meant she’d have to engage emotionally, and that frightened her more than anything. What if Faith couldn’t reject the teachings of the Brethren? What if she gave up and went back? What if Faith clung so tightly to the past that even Hope could no longer escape it?

Hope didn’t want to be thrust into that environment again, didn’t want to think about Superior and her days there, because doing so only revived old heartaches. Images and memories of Bonner sometimes hovered close enough as it was. He was so tied to thoughts of her baby…

Hope hit the garage-door opener and let the car idle in the driveway while she waited for the door to lift. So what if the man she’d loved had married her sister? It didn’t really change anything. It just created a jumble of emotions Hope hadn’t felt in a while—and something more. Something akin to…envy?

It wasn’t envy, she told herself. How could she envy Charity, who’d looked so pale? Sure, she had Bonner’s children, but Hope had control of her own life. Nothing was worth relinquishing that. What she felt now was the sting of her father’s betrayal. That he’d let Charity marry the man she’d begged him to let her marry spoke volumes about Jed and his lack of love for his ninth child. Had he given her and Bonner his blessing, they would’ve become husband and wife. She would’ve stayed in Superior and raised her child as part of the family.

But then she would have remained a member of the Everlasting Apostolic Church. Which wasn’t so good, she decided. Bonner had claimed he had no desire to take any other woman to his bed, ever. Yet he hadn’t been strong enough to make good on his words by leaving with her. And he’d gone on take three wives!

Maybe her father and Bonner had done her a favor. Hope knew she couldn’t have stood by and watched Bonner marry again and again, couldn’t have welcomed those other women into her home and into her husband’s bed. This way, she was out of Superior and the strictures of the church. She was living a normal life that promised far more than she would’ve had if she’d stayed. And now she had Faith.

She glanced at her sleeping sister as she parked in her small detached garage and cut the engine, recalling the times she’d read the Bible to her, or braided her hair, or curled up in the same bed on Christmas Eve because Faith was too excited to sleep. They never received much for Christmas—gifts detracted from the true meaning, according to her father. But they were filled with expectation all the same, if only for the little presents they gave each other.

Her last Christmas at home, Hope had earned extra money taking in ironing so she could give Faith the beautiful Barbie doll her little sister had seen in the store window and long admired. Her father had immediately condemned the gift as being too frivolous and expensive, but the joy on Faith’s face when she tore off that wrapping paper made Hope believe her money had been well spent. Later that night, she’d found Faith’s most prized possession on her pillow—a plastic journal with a small lock and key. The pages that had already been used had been torn out and replaced by some roughly cut scrap paper. A short note written in Faith’s childish scrawl told her she wanted her to keep the journal.

And here they were eleven years later. A lump swelled in Hope’s throat. Faith might have been overlooked by others, but she’d always been Hope’s favorite. More sensitive than the rest, she’d always soothed Hope.

“Faith, we’re home,” she said, gently shaking her shoulder.

Faith blinked and sat up. “I should have kept you company on the drive, Hope. I’m sorry.”

“No. It was better that you slept, better for the baby.”

Her sister’s gaze circled the garage. For a moment she looked completely bewildered. “This is your house?”

“Just the garage. And I don’t own it. I rent.”

Faith climbed out, following wordlessly as Hope led her around to the front of the house, where she nearly tripped over Oscar, a large gray cat, who screeched and ran for cover.

“What was that?” Faith asked as he slipped into the hedge separating her house from his owner’s and crouched to glare at them.

“That’s Oscar,” Hope said.

“Your cat?”

“He belongs to my neighbor, but I think he’s trying to move in with me. He comes over all the time.”

“Do you feed him?”

“Occasionally. Mr. Paris doesn’t mind. I guess we sort of share him. Oscar generally won’t let anyone but Mr. Paris touch him, anyway, so it doesn’t matter much. He just hangs out on his own.” A cat after her own heart, Hope added silently.

Bending, Faith held out her hand to coax him closer, but he was still put out by his close call. Whisking his tail in a show of irritation, he didn’t budge.

Hope unlocked the front door and swung it open. “He’s not very friendly, but I admire his independence.”

“I like cats.” Faith peeked into the house. “Do you live alone?”

“I’ve had roommates in the past, but ever since I started making enough to afford the rent, I’ve been living alone,” Hope said, holding the door.

Faith still hesitated at the threshold, glancing toward Oscar as though she’d rather hide out with him in the hedge. Probably the idea of moving in with Hope made a decision that had been somewhat impulsive now seem permanent. “So you’ve never been married or…or anything?”

“No. No husbands, no live-in lovers, no steady boyfriends.”

Faith finally stepped into the living room. “And you’re not seeing anyone?”

Hope thought of Jeff, her neighbor’s son from down the street, and the doctors, male nurses and other hospital staff who asked her out on occasion. She knew they talked about her, perceived her coolness as a challenge. But no one had managed to pique her interest. She wanted a husband and family eventually, but the moment whoever she was seeing began to push for commitment, she felt such a terrible panic she broke off the relationship. “Not really,” she said.

“But you’re so pretty.”

Hope chuckled. “I guess I’m a little jaded,” she said, nudging her sister farther inside.

The house smelled of the fresh flowers Hope routinely cut from her garden in back and kept in a small tin bucket on the kitchen table. She liked the contrast of fragile versus resilient, old versus new, delicate versus careworn.

Hope flipped on the light. “What a beautiful home,” Faith breathed, almost reverently.

Hope took a moment to see her surroundings through Faith’s eyes. The house was old. It still had its original hardwood floors and plaster walls, but had been remodeled so that the front room, which had once been a porch, was enclosed by a series of paned windows. The rooms were spacious, despite the fact that the house was only about a thousand square feet. The kitchen opened into the family room, both of which could be seen from the front entrance. An office, set off by double doors, opened to the left. The hall that led to both bedrooms branched off to the right.

“Did you decorate this place all by yourself?” Faith asked.

Hope nodded. “On weekends I search the classifieds looking for treasures, and I often pick up a piece of furniture for a fraction of its value. I fix and refinish wooden items in the garage, if I want the grain of the wood to shine through. Or I paint or stencil on various pieces I find, like that old church pew in the kitchen.”

“It’s lovely,” Faith said.

Hope dropped her keys on the counter. “An old widower down the street owns the house, but I take good care of it, so he pretty much lets me have free rein.”

Faith continued to walk through the main rooms before pausing in front of an arrangement of cross-stitch samplers on the kitchen wall. Large and elaborate, there was one for each season. “These are great,” she said.

“Thanks.” Hope liked to cross-stitch and collect odds and ends. Her dishes, silverware and linens were all mismatched antiques or one-of-a-kind items, like the Flow-blue plates and creamers from seventeenth-century England that adorned the white, built-in shelves on either side of the fireplace in the kitchen/living room.

“You must make a lot of money to live like this,” Faith said. “I’ve never seen anything more charming.”

“I don’t make a lot of money,” Hope said with a laugh, “but I grew up in the same household as you, remember? I know how to stretch a dollar.”

Faith cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re better at it than I am.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is just my version of The Boxcar Children. Remember that book? I used to read it to you when you were little.”

“I do,” Faith said. “It was my favorite.”

“This might sound silly, but when things got really tough for me after I left Superior, I used to pretend I was one of those children, finding or making what I needed out of the things other people discarded.” She moved into the kitchen to check the answering machine on the breakfast bar. No calls. Not unusual.

“I can’t believe you’ve done all this.”

“It’s nothing.” Hope changed the subject because her sister’s praise made her feel guilty for having so much when her family had so little. “You said you were living with two of Arvin’s other wives. Which ones?”

Faith paused next to the black-iron baker’s rack where Hope stored her pasta and cereals in uniquely shaped jars. “Do you remember Ila Jane?”

“That old battle-ax?”

A smile flickered at the corners of Faith’s lips. “She’s the only one of us who ever dares put Arvin in his place. He likes her cooking but doesn’t bother her for anything else, and she’s happy that way. Being around her was actually the best part of being married to Arvin. She took me under her wing, like another daughter. Her oldest is close to my age, anyway. But I’m not fond of Charlene, Arvin’s second wife. She lives with us, too. Her children are especially difficult, like her, all except little Sarah. Sarah’s only seven, but Charlene ignores her, so she spends most of her day with me.”

“Is Charlene still pretty?”

“Pretty enough, I guess. She’s given Arvin ten kids, so she’s done well by him.”

Hope no longer agreed with using that kind of measuring stick for a woman’s success, but she knew it would take a while for Faith to understand and adjust, so she said nothing. “Does he spend much time with Ila Jane or Charlene?”

“No, or his children, either. When he moved me into that old house on Front Street—”

“Not the big yellow one,” Hope interrupted. “We always thought that house was haunted, remember? We’d dare each other to ring the bell, and then we’d run.”

“That was when the Andersons lived there, and old lady Bird, Sister Anderson’s mother, used to sit rocking in the window of the attic for hours.”

“I take it she’s passed away.”

“Oh, yes, and her son was excommunicated for stealing from the storehouse. That’s how Arvin got the house.”

“So that’s where you’ve been living?”

“For the past few months. When he moved me in with Ila Jane, I knew he was putting me on a shelf.”

Hope rummaged through a glass-fronted cupboard for two mugs. “And you think it’s because of the baby? You said something earlier about your condition being ‘unappealing’ to him.”

“He claims he’s trying to leave me in peace, since pregnancy can be so uncomfortable. But I know he’s not really interested in doing me any favors. Arvin doesn’t work that way.”

“No kidding,” Hope added.

“He’s probably just sidetracked for the time being, what with marrying Rachel and everything.” She sank onto a stool at the counter.

A million biting comments about Arvin rose to Hope’s lips, but she voiced none of them. Setting the cups on the counter, she said, “I thought maybe I’d make us some hot cocoa before bed.”

Faith shook her head. “None for me, thanks. I’m too tired. All I want to do is turn in.”

Hope put the cups away, secretly grateful Faith had refused her offer. She was almost ready to drop. “Your room’s just down the hall,” she said, her sandals clicking on the floor as she moved through the house turning on lights. Stopping at the first room on her right, which was decorated in Battenburg lace and pink with yellow accents, she waved Faith inside.

“Nice,” Faith said as she stood at the foot of the bed and gazed around.

“Make yourself comfortable while I get you a nightgown and a toothbrush,” Hope said at the door. “Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for clothes and toiletries.”

“You don’t have to go to work?”

“Not until evening. I’m a nurse, so my hours vary. Tomorrow I have the night shift.”

Her sister plucked at her skirt, reminding Hope of a nervous habit their mother used to have.

“I know this must feel strange, Faith,” Hope said, “but you’ll be comfortable here, I promise. We’ll buy everything you need tomorrow.”

“But isn’t it going to be expensive to replace everything I left behind?”

“It won’t be too bad. I’ve got the money.”

Faith still seemed ill at ease, so Hope tried to combat her insecurity with a confident smile. “Don’t worry about anything.”

“Okay.” She started to turn down the bed, and Hope moved toward her own room to get the promised articles, but her sister called her back.

“Hope?”

“Yeah?”

“What happens if you get sick of me? Or we run out of money, or…whatever?”

Hope’s heart twisted. How vividly she remembered what it was like to feel as though the ground beneath her feet might crumble at any moment. She was still protecting herself from that possibility, wasn’t she? That was why she worked so hard to make her house a home. So she’d feel safe and protected.

“I might get sick of you, and you might get sick of me. But that won’t change the fact that we’re sisters, Faith. You’ll always be welcome here. We’ll work together to build lives we’re both happy with, and we’ll help each other get through the tough times.”

“Why?” Faith asked suddenly. “It’s been eleven years, Hope. Why bother with me when you have all of this?”

All of this. By most people’s standards, Hope’s home wasn’t anything special. But Faith had known only overcrowded trailers and duplexes and old houses with bad plumbing, all of which had been filled to bursting with children, secondhand clothing and shabby furniture.

“I know this will probably sound crazy to you, because you feel you’re forsaking God by leaving Superior, Faith. But I believe He’s put me in the position of being able to help you for a reason. I want you here, and Charity and the others, too, if they ever want to come.”

Faith smiled, and on impulse Hope walked back and hugged her. “It’s good to be with you again,” she said. “Whatever the future holds, we’ll get through it together.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy,” Faith said, clinging to her.

“No,” Hope agreed. “It won’t be easy. But nothing worth having ever is.”

CHAPTER FOUR

HOPE AWOKE to the sounds of someone moving around in her house. At first, the noise made her go tense with fear. But then she remembered she now had her sister living with her.

Excitement poured through her veins and mingled with something more difficult to define—not dread exactly, but foreboding. Hope didn’t want to go back to the way she’d felt eleven years ago, didn’t want to relive the loneliness, the fear or the struggle, even vicariously. But her sister’s happiness was worth the sacrifice. What frightened Hope wasn’t the difficulty of what lay ahead so much as the possibility that, at any point, Faith could give up and return to Superior.

“Faith?” she called.

The hall floor creaked as her sister came to stand in her open doorway. She was fully dressed, had already scrubbed her face and fixed her hair and it was only—Hope glanced at the clock by her bed—seven-thirty.

“You anxious to go shopping or something?” she teased. “The stores don’t even open until ten.”

“I just…I’m used to getting up early. I usually have work to do, especially now that it’s planting season. You should see the big plot Ila Jane and I have been preparing for our garden. We’re going to grow tomatoes and zucchini and corn and—oh, you name it—everything, even our own pumpkins for Thanksgiving.” She seemed to realize what she was saying and finished weakly, “At least, we were.”

Hope shoved herself into a sitting position and motioned for Faith to join her on the bed. “I have a big garden in back,” she said. “I grow a lot of flowers, some that I import all the way from Denmark.”

“Really? Why in the world would anyone need to buy flowers from so far away?”

“They’re dahlias and they’re beautiful. Wait till you see them. I usually grow a vegetable garden, too. Maybe you’d be willing help me with it this year.”

Her sister’s face brightened at the mention of such familiar work. She’d probably been wondering what, exactly, she was going to do now that there wasn’t an army of children to care for. In a polygamist household, it wasn’t uncommon for the wives of one man to share responsibility for all his children, regardless of who belonged to whom. The camaraderie the women enjoyed sometimes offset the lack of attention they received from their husband—not that every household was able to achieve this type of peaceful cooperation. Catfights broke out all the time. Some of the wives banded together against others or treated certain children with marked prejudice. But in Hope’s little house, the silence alone was probably enough to make Faith feel as though she’d lost contact with the real world.

“I—I thought I’d read the scriptures,” Faith said, her voice a little tentative. “But of course I wasn’t able to bring mine, and…and I notice you don’t have any lying around.”

Scriptures. Hope barely refrained from wrinkling her nose. Before bringing Faith home, she’d purposely avoided any reminder of her past. There were times she wished she could be like the rest of the Christian world, or most of it, anyway, and think kindly on religion, but it had been eleven years since she’d sat through a sermon. The prospect of entering a church, any church, made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. If she ever got married, it would be in Vegas.

“I’m sure I have some here somewhere. I’ll dig them up and you can keep them in your room and read them whenever you’d like,” she said, knowing it would be useless to explain her aversion to all things religious. Faith would only fear that she was the devil, as her father claimed. Even Hope didn’t understand the overwhelming anxiety she felt when faced with the Bible, a church, a clergyman or even an overzealous missionary type. Not all her memories of gospel-related things were bad. Once, when she was a child, her mother had taken her and her sisters to Salt Lake, where she encountered a vagrant for the first time. He was mostly blind, slightly deformed, definitely filthy and almost skeletal in appearance. A woman in a conservative black suit and high heels hurrying past them on the sidewalk clucked her tongue and muttered something under her breath about how pathetic he was. But her mother stopped and gave him the last of their money. When Hope asked why, she said, “Jesus loves him, and so must we.”

“But he’s so pathetic,” she’d replied, feeling old beyond her years as she mimicked the other, more sophisticated woman. Her mother had smiled gently and lifted her chin. “That’s only on the outside, little Hope. Jesus doesn’t care about that.”

Hope had felt humbled and loved then. If Jesus could love a beggar, surely He could love a little girl with flyaway brown hair and scabby knees, who often had her mouth washed out with soap for losing her temper and saying things she wasn’t supposed to say to her father’s second wife. But even the warmth of that memory wasn’t enough to send her back into a church. The Brethren and her father had poisoned that part of her during her teen years, when they’d grown more and more controlling. Or maybe she’d lost her faith when she’d given up her baby. After all, that was when she’d felt as though whatever light she’d been trying to shelter inside her had finally winked out.

“What would you like for breakfast?” she asked, getting out of bed and heading to her closet for a robe. She’d hoped to sleep in after the emotionally exhausting day and night they’d spent. Especially because she had to work later on. But she couldn’t leave Faith on her own.

“I need a favor,” Faith said.

“Anything. What?”

“Don’t treat me like a guest, okay?”

Hope blinked at her in surprise. “I wasn’t. I was just…”

“I know, and I appreciate it,” Faith replied. “But I won’t be able to make it if I don’t feel as though I’m carrying my own weight, or at least contributing in some way that’s valuable to you.”

“Are you kidding? You’re going to work your…” Hope had been about to say, “butt off.” She’d been living around Gentiles long enough to have incorporated their more popular expressions and speech patterns. But her sister had not and would be shocked, even by such mild vulgarity. So she finished, “…fingers to the bone in that garden I mentioned.”

“That’s fine,” Faith said, still perfectly serious. “That’s what I need. That’s what I want.”

“Great.” Hope’s smile was brighter than her mood warranted. This was going to be even more difficult than she’d thought. Until she and Faith became acquainted again and learned how to be comfortable around each other, things were going to be awkward. “Why don’t you make breakfast while I shower, then?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have two fried eggs and toast. Everything’s in the kitchen. Just rummage around to find what you need, and if you get really stumped, holler.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Hope kept the smile on her face until her sister disappeared down the hall, then let her shoulders sag as she sank back onto the bed. What were they in for? Her life and Faith’s had taken completely opposite paths. Now they were so different that Hope wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to find common ground. What if taking Faith away from Superior had been a mistake they’d both live to regret?

She’d never know whether she could help Faith if she didn’t try, she decided. She just needed to take things one day at a time. And this day, they were going to buy clothes.

With a deep, bolstering breath, Hope got up and headed for the shower.

“FIND ANYTHING you like?” Hope asked, getting to her feet to take the stack of clothes Faith had carried into the dressing room several minutes earlier.

Faith bit her lip as she regarded the maternity jeans, T-shirts and jumpers Hope had selected for her to try on. “No, not really.”

“Why not?” Hope asked. “Nothing fit?”

The voices of people passing the store in the mall outside droned in the background. By the time Hope had shown Faith around the garden and the house, then taught her how to use the microwave, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, it was nearly noon. Activity at the mall was just beginning to peak.

“Everything fit,” Faith said. “It’s just that…well, I thought maybe I’d rather sew a few items for myself.”

Hope nearly groaned. Not more of the dowdy dresses that would instantly mark her as belonging to a polygamist community. “Faith, what’s wrong with these clothes? They’re comfortable and practical and—”

“They’re too…stylish,” Faith replied. “I don’t want to be vain, Hope. It’s not right.” She spoke in a whisper because the saleswoman hovered close by—but not because she wanted to help them. The moment they’d entered the store, the woman had watched them with contempt and the kind of curiosity one typically felt when viewing something fascinating yet distasteful, like maggots on meat. No doubt Faith’s appearance had given them away. Colorado City and Hillsdale, a large polygamist community straddling the Arizona-Utah border, was less than an hour’s drive away. The people of St. George saw more than their share of polygamists, some of whom lived right in town. The women were especially easy to spot because they typically wore pants beneath the voluminous skirts of their dated dresses, along with a pair of old tennis shoes.

But familiarity didn’t necessarily breed acceptance.

“A little style never hurt anyone,” Hope insisted, and turned to challenge the saleswoman’s stare.

The saleswoman crossed her arms, as though she had a right to gawk at them.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Faith said.

Protectiveness, and pride, wouldn’t allow Hope to leave just yet. She’d been away from Superior long enough to understand, to a degree, the woman’s fascination, but such rudeness was inexcusable. “No, we have as much right to be here as anyone. Pick out a few things.”

“I don’t want anything. I just need some fabric and—”

“We’ll get you some fabric and you can sew as many dresses as you like. Just pick out something you’d want if you weren’t worried about everything the church taught you.”

With a frown, Faith delved into the stack and came up with a plain pair of maternity jeans. Then she grabbed a top off the rack that resembled something an eighty-year-old woman would wear—an eighty-year-old woman with no taste.

“I said pick what you’d want if you weren’t worried about the church,” Hope said in exasperation, and selected a denim jumper and a cap-sleeve periwinkle blouse. “This okay?”

Faith shrugged.

“Good enough.” Hope piled the rest of the clothes on the chair in which she’d sat and carried the ones she planned to purchase to the cash register.

The saleswoman took her time sauntering over. “This everything?” she asked, her voice flat.

“For now,” Hope replied.

The woman started scanning the merchandise, but paused to glance over at Faith. “Disgusting,” she muttered.

“Excuse me?” Enough was enough. “Did you say something? Or were you simply proving that you’re as small-minded as I suspected from the start?”

“It’s okay, Hope,” Faith murmured at her elbow, obviously embarrassed.

“It’s not okay with me,” Hope replied.

The woman’s jaw dropped. Usually polygamists visited the mall in groups, stuck close together and ignored the whispers and derision they encountered. Hope had seen them scurrying about, sometimes pausing to gaze longingly in a store window that sold merchandise they’d never permit themselves to buy. In the past she’d always tried to ignore them because she didn’t want to acknowledge her roots. But being with Faith revealed her as surely as a sign hanging overhead.

Something mean and ugly flashed in the other woman’s eyes. But a second salesperson, who must have been away at lunch or on break, walked into the store, and the woman ringing up Faith’s clothing immediately changed her attitude. “I didn’t say anything,” she said, her attention now strictly on what she was doing.

Hope paid for the clothes, grabbed the sack and, with Faith scurrying to keep up, stalked out of the store. She had half a mind to complain to the manager. Except she knew that causing a fuss wouldn’t do anything to help her sister. Faith had been taught to turn the other cheek, even when confronted with ridicule. Hope, on the other hand, believed that valuing herself as an individual and setting boundaries for others who didn’t set boundaries for themselves went farther toward fostering respect.

She’d become a master at setting boundaries, especially with men.

“Is everything okay, Hope?” Faith asked. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

Hope realized she was striding through the mall as if her life depended on it. Slowing, she forced a smile. “Everything’s fine. I just figured that woman should be told her behavior wasn’t appreciated, that’s all.”

Faith nodded uncertainly, so Hope took her arm, anxious to get out of the mall quickly because the stares they drew grated on her nerves.

“Is this going to be too hard for you, Hope?” Faith asked. “I don’t want to be a thorn in your side. Is having me around worse than you expected?”

Hope wasn’t sure what she’d expected. She’d returned to Superior out of love and a sense of duty. She’d gone back as soon as she’d felt emotionally capable of making the trip. Now she feared she wasn’t as prepared as she’d hoped.

“You’re not a thorn. I want you around, no matter what,” she said, which was true for the most part.

“I hope so. Because I can’t let go of everything I’ve been taught. I’d lose…I’d lose too much of me. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand that the world is a very different place from Superior,” she said.

“The world is Satan, trying to bring you down,” Faith said.

Hope thought of Lydia Kane and Parker Reynolds and what they’d done for her ten years ago, and the people she worked with at the hospital now, who often went above and beyond the call of duty. She thought of 9/11 and the firefighters, and those people on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and the smaller acts of generosity and courage she witnessed on an almost daily basis. “I’m afraid that’s too simple an answer, Faith.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

Because she hadn’t lived in the real world. Yet. “In many ways, it’s easier to live the Brethrens’ teachings than not live them,” Hope said. “Then you always know what’s right and wrong—or at least you think you do. Because they’ve made all your decisions for you. And now…you have to start thinking for yourself.”

THAT NIGHT Hope’s shift at the hospital seemed to drag on forever. They had two mothers in labor, several newborns in the nursery and an ob/gyn who wasn’t responding to his page. But despite concerns that she or Sandra Cleary, her supervisor, would have to deliver the baby if the doctor didn’t arrive soon, Hope couldn’t keep herself from reflecting on Faith. Soon her sister would be doing exactly what the two women in rooms 14 and 15 were doing—giving birth. Then she’d have a newborn in the house, as well as a sister with whom she’d had no contact for almost eleven years—

“Hope, can you visit Mrs. Walker’s room?” Sandra asked. She had her head down and was busy finishing up some paperwork at the nurses’ station. “She’s signaling for us.”

“Of course.” Hope visited Room 14, where she’d already spent much of her time since coming on duty at ten. Mrs. Walker asked if they’d heard from her doctor yet. Hope had to tell her no.

“What happens if he doesn’t get here?” Mr. Walker asked, worry creasing his forehead.

“Everything will be fine,” Hope assured him. “I’ve been a nurse for five years and Sandra’s been here longer than I have. Between us, we’ve seen hundreds of births and even delivered a few babies. And there’s always the emergency physician on duty downstairs.” She didn’t add that he’d only be able to help if there wasn’t someone with a more pressing condition—like a heart attack—in the emergency room. She figured that was a little too much information at this point.

They seemed to accept her words, probably because they had no choice, and Hope fetched Mrs. Walker another blanket to keep her legs warm.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and went to the nurses’ station to see if Sandra had heard anything from their missing doctor.

“Not yet,” she responded, tucking several strands of shoulder-length brown hair behind one ear. “I swear, if we have to deliver this baby…”

If they delivered the baby, the stress would probably take a year off their lives, yet they’d make their normal salaries, nothing more. The doctor, who’d most likely turned off his pager, would still receive his full fee. Considering all the things that could go wrong…

Hope didn’t even want to think about all the things that could go wrong. “He’ll get here,” she said as confidently as possible, and glanced at the clock. Was it too late to call Faith? Hope hated leaving her alone so soon. She’d dug a Bible out of her attic for Faith to read before bed, hoping that might help her sister acclimate. But Hope’s world was so foreign to Faith, she could be feeling pretty lost. She could even be weakening and thinking about going back….

Unfortunately, it was past midnight. Too late to call. And Mrs. Walker was signaling for a nurse again.

Heading back to room 14, Hope told herself to quit worrying. Somehow, everything would work out for the best.

HOPE’S EYES were gritty with fatigue as she drove home from the hospital the following morning. She’d had to stay a couple of hours beyond her usual shift because Regina Parks, one of the morning nurses, had called in sick right in the middle of a surprise, preterm delivery.

At least Mrs. Walker’s doctor had shown up in time to actually earn his fee. After that, everything had gone smoothly—until the emergency that had kept her late. A teenage girl had arrived at 6 a.m., already in advanced labor. Fortunately, the emergency doctor had been available to help, and the baby, a boy, took his first breath just minutes before Hope left. The baby was tiny, barely four pounds, and had respiratory problems, but the doctor thought he was going to live.

Hope remembered the young mother’s excitement over her infant and wondered how Lydia had ever inspired her to become an obstetrics nurse. When faced with the normal scenario of appropriately aged mothers, attending fathers and supportive families, she could usually do her job without letting things get to her. But every once in a while someone like this young teenager came in—someone who invariably pulled her back to the day she herself had given birth. Then such a powerful longing gripped her, she could barely function. She’d told Faith she felt confident that her daughter was living a princesslike life. But there was no way to know for sure. Hope could only assume the best, and pray. As far as she’d drifted from organized religion, she still prayed about that. And she still dreamed of meeting her child, of touching the little girl she’d secretly named Autumn, if only just once.

Forcing her attention away from the empty ache she felt whenever she thought of Autumn, Hope stretched her neck to ease the tension knotting her muscles and pulled into the garage. With any luck, she’d find Faith in good spirits and be able to get some rest. She felt as though she could sleep for a week if—

The sound of voices reached her ears as she got out of the car and approached the house. Was it the television? She wanted to believe it was, but a flash of movement inside the front windows told her she and Faith had company.

CHAPTER FIVE

AFTER RUSHING to get inside before whoever had come could drag Faith away, Hope stood in her doorway as though transfixed. It was Bonner. After so many years, she’d begun to think she’d never see him again. She’d certainly never expected him to show up on her doorstep.

He’d changed. Of course, he was only eighteen when she’d seen him last; she should have anticipated some differences. But Bonner had done more than grow a couple of inches and put on a few pounds. Unlike most of the other men in the church, his thick dark hair was neatly trimmed and his face cleanly shaven. His clothes were modern and his teeth straight, despite the fact that few polygamists ever bothered with braces. And his eyes…

Actually, his eyes were the same. Maybe that was why his presence hit her so hard.

Slowly, he rose to his feet. Next to him, Arvin did the same.

Arvin’s presence came as much less of a surprise. Hope had worried that he might crop up again, somehow give them trouble. She had not considered Bonner’s involvement.

“What’s going on?” she asked, finally looking at Faith.

Faith folded her arms in a cradling, protective manner. “I’m sorry, Hope,” she said. “I…I felt I should call Mother, let her know where I was and tell her we’re okay. She said she was really grateful I did—”

“And then she sent Arvin after you.”

“I just wanted to give her some peace of mind.”

“Your mother did the right thing,” Arvin declared, his attention on Faith. “Now you need to do the right thing. I’m your husband, after all.”

“You’re her uncle,” Hope clarified. “Nothing more.”

“You’d bastardize your sister’s child?” he cried. “Listen to her, Bonner! See what she’s become? She’s trying to make a mockery of my marri—”

“Arvin,” Bonner interrupted, his tone sharp, “calm down and let me handle this.”

To Hope’s amazement, Arvin quickly backed off. “Fine. You take care of it, Bonner. I’m just…I’m angry, that’s all. She had no right to take my wife and child away. I’ve never done anything to Hope.”

Bonner spared him an irritated glance, and Hope braced herself for whatever he might say. He was the only man she’d ever loved. She’d had a few sexual encounters since they’d created Autumn, but those experiences had been, without exception, unsatisfying and mechanical.

“You look good, Hope,” Bonner said. “But then, you were always beautiful, more beautiful than any other woman.”

“You can say that to me when you’re married to my sister?” she asked, her stomach churning with leftover emotions she’d rather not name.

“You want me to lie?”

“I want you to go.”

“Only if Faith goes with us,” Arvin interjected.

Another pointed glance from Bonner shut him up. “I know you have no reason to hear me out, Hope, but I’m only asking for a few minutes of your time. That’s all. Surely what we shared warrants that much. Is there someplace we could talk?”

Hope felt tears sting her eyes, but she absolutely refused to shed them. She’d quit crying over Bonner long ago. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Just a few minutes,” he said. “I want to make things right between us.”

There wasn’t any way to make things right. Autumn was gone. Bonner could never restore what he’d taken from her.

But he’d been only eighteen….

Finally Hope gave a brusque nod and led him out to her back porch, where she sat in one of the two wrought-iron chairs. She would’ve offered him the other chair, but she could barely bring herself to look at him.

“It’s nice out here,” he said. From the corner of her eye, she could see his gaze sweeping the flower garden, the birdbath and hummingbird feeder.

Hope’s throat felt thick, as though she couldn’t speak. She turned her attention to the huge, colorful heads of orange, purple and pink dahlias and tried to draw strength and peace from their beauty. She inhaled the smell of moist grass and freshly turned earth. This was her haven, the safe place she’d created.

But her past had caught up with her.

“Say what you came to say,” she said, hoping for a quick release from the intensity of the moment. Her fatigue wasn’t helping.

“Look at me.”

Did she have to? She forced her eyes to meet his.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply, his expression somber. “I know I hurt you. I was young and stupid, and I’m sorry.”

Hope didn’t know what to say. She’d lost Autumn, and now he was sorry? “Not half as sorry as I am.”

“Then come home with me.”

Her heart skipped several beats. “What?”

“I’ve never stopped loving you, Hope. I’ve prayed and prayed that you’d come home eventually, that you’d come home to me.”

When she spoke, her voice was barely audible. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Things have changed. I have more power in the church. No one will mistreat you if you’re my wife. Everyone will forgive and forget, and things will finally be as they should’ve been in the beginning.” He propped his hands on his hips as though he’d thought it all out and arrived at a decision she could only agree with. “I’ve already received your father’s blessing. He gave it to me before Arvin and I came here. I want to take you home and marry you. Come back where you belong.”

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