the baby. “I’ll pay you back.”
“When?”
Parker knew that wasn’t an easy question to answer. For the past six months the center had been inches away from closing its doors. The money had been spent on payroll and utilities and supplies.
“As soon as I can,” she snapped.
“Considering that you pump every dime you have into this place, I don’t think you’re a very good credit risk,” John said. “And I don’t want the money back. I want the baby you promised us.”
Lydia looked beaten as she gazed around the office. “This center has been my life,” she said. “It’s what I’ve fought for and loved for more than thirty years. But this time I’ve gone too far. What we’re doing goes against everything I believe in.”
“What we’re doing?” John said. “You’ve already done it, Ms. Kane. You did it when you took my money.” He motioned impatiently with one hand. “But you’re making a bigger deal of this than it has to be. You’re not doing anything that’s going to hurt this baby’s mother. So you’ve told her you’re putting her baby up for adoption. In a way, you are. It might not be through a legitimate agency, but that doesn’t matter? You—”
“Doesn’t matter? How can you say that?” Lydia interrupted. “What we’re doing is illegal, Congressman. You, of all people, should know that.”
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,
