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