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