by Brenda Novak
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?
Faith looked carefully around as though she feared being seen. “Thanks for coming.”
“Do you want to talk somewhere else?” Hope asked. “We could go for a drive.”
“No. If I get in that car with you…” Faith let her words fall off and took the swing next to Hope, using her feet to sway slowly back and forth.
If she got in the car, what? Hope nearly asked, but she didn’t want to press Faith. She wanted to give her the chance to say what she’d come to say.
An old truck rumbled down Main Street. Hope could see it stop at the light glowing red near the corner of the park, then take off when the signal changed, but there wasn’t much traffic in Superior, especially this late at night. The Everlasting Apostolic Church didn’t believe in shopping or going out to eat on the Sabbath, so the few businesses that did open on Sunday closed down by five, even the gas station.
“So you can drive?” Faith asked when the rumble of the truck engine dimmed and the only sound was the creaking of their swings.
Hope nodded. “I learned how when I was nineteen.”
“Where did you go today? After you left the park?”
“Up to Provo. I thought it might be more interesting to shop at a different mall.”
“Provo’s pretty far away.”
“I had the time.” With a deep breath, Hope studied her sister. “It’s Arvin, isn’t it?” she asked. “The father of your baby.”
Faith’s face contorted in distaste. “Yes. How’d you know?”
“It wasn’t difficult to guess.”
Silence.
“So how is it, being married to Arvin?”
“How do you think? He pretends to live the Gospel, but he’s really arrogant and mean and stingy.”
Somehow, even as a child, a sixth sense had warned Hope about the existence of a dark side beneath the eager smile Arvin had always offered her, together with the candy he carried in his pockets. Hope had done everything possible to keep her distance from him, which had eventually led to her outright rebellion. Faith, on the other hand, possessed a calmer, more long-suffering temperament. Hope had last seen her when she was only eight years old, but even then Faith had been a peace lover. A typical middle child, she was like a kitten that immediately curled up and purred at the first hint of praise or attention—the most patient and tractable of Marianne’s five daughters.
And this was what Faith’s good nature had brought her, Hope thought bitterly, staring at her sister’s rounded stomach. Arvin’s baby.
“Did Charity refuse to marry Arvin, too?” she asked. “Is that how it fell to you?”
Frowning, Faith cast Hope a sideways glance. “What you did eleven years ago embarrassed Daddy in front of the whole church. I don’t think he wanted to push Charity into doing the same thing.”
“She would have refused?”
Faith shrugged. “Charity’s more like you than I am.”
“Are you saying a woman should marry a man she detests for the sake of her father’s pride?”
“No.” Faith’s swing continued to squeak as she moved. “Arvin always admired you. He’d been asking Daddy for you since you were small, and Daddy had already promised him, that’s all. I’m just trying to explain why Daddy did what he did.”
“I know why he did it, Faith. But that doesn’t make it right. I was in love with someone else.”
Her sister stopped swinging and scuffed the toe of one tennis shoe in the dirt, as though finally cognizant of the fact that the generous skirt of her cotton print dress had been dragging. “That was the other reason Charity didn’t have to marry Arvin,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about Bonner.”
The mention of Bonner’s name sent chills cascading down Hope’s spine. “What about him?”
“His parents came over a couple of years after you left and said they’d been praying about Bonner’s future, and God told them Charity was to be Bonner’s first wife. They said God wanted to reward
him for not running away with you.”
Reward him? For clinging to the safety of his parents and their traditions, even though he didn’t believe in them? For breaking her heart?
Hope told herself to breathe, to suck in air, hold it, then silently let it go. The pain would ease…“So Charity’s married to Bonner?” she asked, her voice sounding small and tinny to her own ears. “Those are his children I saw with Charity today?”
“Actually they have three,” Faith said. “You probably didn’t see the oldest. Pearl, LaDonna and Adam.”
Hope thought about putting her head between her knees to stop the dizziness washing over her, but she told herself that after eleven years she could take news like this. What she felt for Bonner had dulled into disappointment long ago, hadn’t it? This was no more than she should have expected. “Does he have any other wives?”
“He had to take the Widow Fields.”
“Because…”
“Because no one else wanted her, I guess. She petitioned the Brethren, and that’s what they decided. It was sort of a consensus.”
Hope didn’t know what to say. Though Bonner wasn’t yet a man when they’d pledged their love, only a boy of eighteen, she’d expected so much more from him. It was as though he’d never whispered those things to her in the dark, as though he hadn’t helped hatch the plan that had culminated in so much heartache.
“He married JoAnna Stapley, too, about three years ago. And he’s already asked for Sarah, when she’s old enough,” Faith added.
Mention of another sister caused Hope’s scalp to crawl. “He wants Sarah?”
“Why not?”
“She’s only fourteen!”
“She’s so excited to get a husband under the age of forty she’s willing to marry him now.”
Hope sighed in disgust and resignation. “That’s crazy, Faith. She’s still a child. And he’ll be thirty-two by the time she turns eighteen, which isn’t so much younger than forty.”
“Maybe to the outside world it seems strange, but not here. You’ve been gone a long time.”
Too long. Or not long enough. Hope couldn’t decide which.
“Why’d you come back?” Faith asked. “Was it because you were hoping that…maybe…Bonner had changed his mind?”
Hope touched her own stomach, once again feeling the phantom kicking of Bonner’s baby in her belly. She’d thought a lot about Bonner over the years, had dreamed he’d change his mind and somehow find her, that the two of them would recover their child and become a family. But she knew that if he hadn’t had the strength to leave before, with their love and their child at stake, he never would.
When Hope didn’t respond, Faith grasped her swing. “I’m sure he’d take you back,” she said. “I saw it in his face when Charity told him you’d been at the park.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No, I saw regret and…and pain.”
Whatever pain Bonner had suffered couldn’t compare to what Hope had endured. That much she knew. “So you think I should become his…what? Fourth wife?” she asked, chuckling bitterly. “That’d make Jed happy.”
“It would,” Faith said earnestly.
Hope shook her head. “No, it would smack too much of me finally getting my way, and he couldn’t set that kind of precedent. He still has two daughters to coerce into marriages they may not want. Maybe he’s even planning to give them to Arvin.”
Faith visibly cringed. “I don’t think so. He’s not very pleased with…with the way Arvin treats me. Deep down, he knows you were right about Arvin. Daddy’s just not ready to admit it.”
How many daughters was it going to take?
“How’d you get away tonight?” Hope asked. “I can’t imagine that after seeing me in town, Arvin would stay anywhere but with you.”
“He and Rachel, the seventeen-year-old Thatcher girl, were married a week ago, and he hasn’t tired of her yet. He likes his women young—real young, Hope. He would hardly leave me alone the first year we were married. But then I got pregnant. He finds my swollen belly…unappealing, so now he almost always sleeps elsewhere.”
“Does that bother you to know he’s with others?”
“No, I’m grateful. I can hardly stand it when he touches me,” she said with a shudder.
Bile rose in Hope’s throat at the thought of her eighteen-year-old sister not being young enough for Arvin. Or maybe it was the mental image of him touching Faith in the first place that bothered Hope so much. “We should call the police,” she said. “If Rachel’s not eighteen, that’s statutory rape.”
Faith’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t do that to Daddy. It would bring too much negative publicity on the church and hurt families who are trying to live the principle the way it’s meant to be lived.”
Hope had some questions as to how the principle was meant to be lived in this day and age. But she understood that Faith would be much more sympathetic to the church’s beliefs than she herself would, especially after being away so long. “Sexual predators shouldn’t be tolerated in any community. Even one as tightly knit as this,” she said, sticking with a line of reasoning Faith could not refute.
“I don’t think you can call him a predator,” she said. “Rachel married him willingly enough. And he’s careful not to touch anyone who isn’t his wife.”
“Are you sure about that? What about his children?”
“I don’t think he’s hurt any of them,” Faith said, but the lack of conviction in her voice made Hope more than a little nervous.
“Have you talked to Jed about your suspicions?”
“What suspicions? I said I don’t think he’s hurt any of his children.”
“You’re worried that he might.”
Her sister didn’t answer right away.
“Faith?”
“Okay, I tried to talk to Daddy about some of the things Arvin’s said to me, but he didn’t want to hear. Arvin’s his brother and a pious church member.”
“Pious?” Hope scoffed.
“He pretends to be, especially to the other Brethren. And you know the police won’t do anything. You’ve heard Daddy say it a million times: ‘This is America. It goes against the principles on which this country was founded to persecute people for their religious beliefs. We’re just living God’s law. Are we supposed to forget what our God has told us just because man decides we should?’
Hope was willing to concede that respect for religious freedom might be a small part of the reason the police typically left polygamists alone. But she knew politics were at work, too. In 1957, the last time authorities had made any kind of concerted effort to stamp out polygamy, television stations had aired newsreels of fathers being torn from their crying wives and children, and public sentiment had quickly turned against the police and their efforts.
“The police will help if we can prove that children are being abused,” she said.
“That’s the problem. I have no proof. Just this nagging sense that something isn’t right with Arvin.”
Hope had experienced the same nagging sense eleven years ago. But it was tough to convict someone on suspicion alone.
“They love you, you know,” Faith said out of nowhere, spinning the conversation in a new direction.
“Who?” Hope said.
“Daddy. Bonner. Maybe even Arvin.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, Daddy does at least.”
“There’s no room in a heart filled with such beliefs.”
“I know he’s passionate about the church, Hope. But he’d let you come back. You just have to show him you’re willing to repent.”
Hope had already repented. She repented every day—for trusting an eighteen-year-old boy who said he loved her more than life. And for being financially unable to care for the child he’d given her. But she knew that wasn’t the kind of repenting sweet, innocent Faith was talking about. “And that embarrassment you mentioned earlier?” she said. “How could Jed forgive me for something so m
onumental?”
If Faith picked up on the sarcasm in Hope’s voice, she gave no indication. Her face remained as solicitous as ever. “He’d have to forgive you, Hope. The Bible says, ‘For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’
Hope knew what the Bible said. Verse after verse had been drilled into her from birth. She’d scarcely been allowed to read anything else. But she hadn’t so much as glanced at a single page in the entire eleven years she’d been gone. Because of the way the scriptures had been used—as a tool to force her into a life she didn’t want—just the sight of the black simulated-leather binding made feelings of claustrophobia well up in her. “Seventy times seventy,” she muttered.
“That’s right,” Faith said. “If you come home, the Brethren will insist that Daddy forgive you, even if he won’t do it on his own. And then you and Bonner can be together at last.”
She and Bonner…“Along with a couple of my sisters and the Widow Fields?”
“Is that so bad?”
“Maybe not to you.”
“Then marry someone else, someone who refuses to live the principle, too. Maybe someone who’s not even a member of the church. There’re people here in Superior who don’t believe in plural marriage. And there’re other towns close by. You don’t have to separate yourself from us completely.”
“I thought marrying outside the church precludes me from heaven,” Hope said just to hear her sister’s response.
“I don’t know, Hope,” Faith said. “I don’t pretend to know much about heaven anymore. If there is one, I’m having a tough time believing in it. Since I married Arvin…well, Mother would say that my faith is being tested.” She offered Hope a weak smile. “But I’m not so certain everything the church teaches is really true. If it is, why are we the only ones who believe it? Surely we’re not the only people on earth who are going to heaven. Anyway, I know this much—family is all we have in this life. And we’ve missed you. Daddy might have thirty-five children, but Mother has only five, and you’re one of them. She hasn’t been the same since you left.”
