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?