Sanctuary

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.