Sanctuary

“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?”