“Yes, sir,” Fawn Dew simpered. All eyelashes and coy smiles, she stuck her bosom out and said, “I’d be so grateful and I know the Heavenly Father would guide you, if you could come over right now and deliver this baby. Then we could be out of your way in a minute.”
“Er…” He cleared his throat. “We can wait a bit longer.”
Even as he backed out into the hall, she followed him, insisting sweetly, “Please, Brother. The birth is slow and there is a problem.”
“Then we must speak with Brother Epperson,” he said.
“Yes, my husband will know what to do.”
Several minutes later, they returned with the master, who laid his hands upon Summer’s head. At his touch, a warm tide washed through her and her pain was miraculously relieved.
“The spirit is with me,” she breathed, filled with hope. God spoke through her husband and she trusted He would now save her.
Nathaniel continued in prayer for a little longer, then announced, “I will speak to the prophet,” and took out his cell phone, moving to the window.
A hushed awe descended on the room, broken only by the moans and gasps Summer tried to stifle. When Nathaniel returned he stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by his wives and the men who had been out on the search party, each with a rifle in his hand.
He raised his arms and said, “God has spoken. We will wait for Summer to bring forth her child. If she has not done so by dawn, that will be a sign from God that she must atone for the grave sins she has committed.”
Summer’s head spun. What was he saying? She caught Thankful’s eye and made a silent plea. Pale faced, Thankful came to her bedside and stroked the hair back from her face.
They both listened as Nathaniel concluded with some good news. “The child is blameless and he is worth ten of the mother. When the time comes, he will be spared.”
Chastity Young surfaced from a deep sleep and squinted at the digital display next to her bed. Two in the morning and someone was banging on her door. She turned on the lamp and swung her legs over the side of the bed, sliding her feet into a pair of fluffy mules. The doorbell rang some more, followed by a volley of loud knocks. She stumbled to her bedroom window in panicky confusion, assuming there had been an accident nearby or maybe something terrible had happened at a neighbor’s house. Lifting, her blackout shade, she peeped out at the front driveway and frowned at the sight of an old Chevy pickup.
Her thoughts instantly jumped to Adeline. Could her niece have run away and come back home? Had she caught a ride with a stranger? Elated at the possibility, Chastity hurried from her room to the front door. Through the peephole she saw a young man in his twenties wearing the plyg uniform of dark pants with suspenders over a plaid shirt. He looked vaguely familiar, and it seemed safe to assume he was one of her sister’s many offspring, but she made sure her security chain was secure before she opened the door.
Her nocturnal visitor did not waste any time on small talk. “Mrs. Young?”
“And you are?”
“Woodruff Fleming.”
Chastity tried to place him. “The fourth son?”
“The third, ma’am.” The reply was courteous but barren of warmth. “My daddy sent me. Is Adeline here?”
Chastity’s heart leapt but she was careful not to show her emotions. Schooling her tone to one of bland indifference, she said, “Your father took Adeline away about a week ago, remember?”
He craned past her to see into the house. “Has she been here since yesterday?”
“Why would she be here?” Chastity had to bite her lip not to spit the next question out like she was ready to punch someone. “Isn’t she married?”
“She went missing.”
“Missing?” Chastity caught her breath.
With an impatient snort, he said, “Thanks to you, she desecrated the good name of our family by running away before she could be sealed.”
“Nice of you to drop by and let me know.”
He was speechless for a few seconds. “If you take her in, you will atone.”
“Oh, I see.” Her temper got the better of her. “Your father was too chicken to come and threaten me himself so he sent you? What a piece of work.”
Woodruff handed her a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. “If she comes here, call this number.”
Chastity laughed. “Your sister won’t be coming here. This is the first place your father would come looking for her, so she’ll be headed in the opposite direction. She always used to talk about California, come to think of it. If I were you, I’d look there.”
He surveyed her dubiously.
“Seriously, er…Woodruff.” Chastity adopted a sincere, almost sympathetic tone. “Even though your family and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot things, I don’t like to think of Adeline out there by herself. A fourteen-year-old girl should be at safely at home where she can’t come into harm’s way. You know—end up molested by some disgusting pervert five times her age…that type of thing. Who did you say she was supposed to be marrying?”
Woodruff’s face was frozen in self-righteous affront. “God is watching you,” he warned, and strode off toward his pickup.
“Hey, Woodruff,” Chastity yelled after him. “God is watching you, too. And guess what? He said you shall have no other gods before Him. Think about that next time you break a commandment following orders from that self-appointed prophet you all worship.”
After she’d made this announcement to the entire neighborhood, she slammed her door and slid the security chain in place with shaking fingers. She should have felt a sense of satisfaction about making her point, but her older sister Vonda’s family was a lost cause. The Flemings had broken away from the mainstream Mormon church a few years after they married. Tucker, her sister’s husband, had started reading polygamist literature and decided that the only way to the celestial kingdom was through plural marriage. He duly announced a revelation from the Heavenly Father that Chastity should become his second wife, which, given he could barely keep his hands off her ass, seemed remarkably opportune. When she declined this honor, he moved his family to Hildale where he could find more submissive young women.
In the fifteen years since then, he and Vonda had added ten more kids to their brood and he’d married two other women, the minimum to ensure his place as a god in the celestial kingdom. Chastity often wondered how Vonda coped without the antidepressants she’d been addicted to before the move. The last time they saw one another was when she’d showed up with Adeline three years earlier. Chastity had been shocked to open the door to a prematurely ageing woman unrecognizable as the funny, adventurous big sister she grew up with. Vonda was a mere shell of herself. She had a chronic cough and a bladder infection and said she could not cope with Adeline. Somehow she’d talked Tucker into handing her over to Chastity instead of marrying her off on her twelfth birthday to one of his brothers.
Despite the rationalizations Vonda trotted out about her illness and the need to make Adeline more feminine so she didn’t disgrace them when she was married—an argument that had apparently won the day with her husband—Chastity sensed an underlying desperation. Her sister had not yet surrendered the final vestiges of her own decency; she didn’t want her prepubescent daughter to be raped by her own uncle.
This small act of rebellion was the only sign Chastity could find of the woman she had once looked up to. She played her role in the necessary farce, assuring Vonda that she would help ready Adeline for decent wifehood at some later date, and there would be no dating, no haircuts, and plenty of scripture reading. The entire time they spoke, Adeline was silent and downcast, one hand toying with her tight braid, her gaze never leaving the floor.
As soon as the Flemings had left, Chastity said, “The first thing we’re going to do is get you out of those ridiculous clothes.” She led Adeline upstairs. “Let’s find something more comfortable for you to wear tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go to the mall and you can choose some new clothes.”
Within minutes, Adeline was standing in her closet with her, looking through racks of pants and tops. In the end she picked out a pair of old Levis and said, with trepidation, “Am I allowed to wear these?”
“I wear pants most of the time. And God hasn’t struck me down yet.”
Adeline wavered, glancing back at forth between a row of skirts and the jeans she obviously found more appealing. In the end the jeans won and she chose a rugby shirt to go with them.
After she’d taken a shower, she emerged, wrapped in a toweling robe, and nervously asked, “Sister, do you have a hairbrush I could use? I left mine behind.”
Chastity pulled out the chair from in front of her dressing table and said, “Sit down. I’ll comb out the knots for you. And I’m not your sister, I’m your Aunt Chastity. Okay?”
Halfway through the painful process, Adeline said, “I wish I had hair like yours. It’s really beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Chastity smiled. “I don’t know where the auburn came from. Everyone in the family is blond like you.”
“I’m not a proper blond. You should see my sister, Summer. Her hair is almost white.”
“Is Summer older or younger than you?” Chastity felt sad to think she knew only the oldest of her nieces and nephews, those born before Tucker Fleming had latched onto the perfect way to justify his infidelities.
“She’s thirteen. But I’m taller than her.”
Chastity smiled, remembering how important that once was to her. She’d been the shortest in her family until she was twelve, then she’d shot up four inches almost overnight. She still had long legs, no hips, and almost no breasts. Adeline had the same coltish build. Something about the girl reminded Chastity of herself as a kid, and it wasn’t just her physique. Adeline had an air of defiance even her nineteenth-century clothing could not disguise. It announced itself in the stubborn set of her jaw and the piercing intelligence of her gaze.
Her dark brown eyes sought Chastity’s and she said, “How long will I be staying with you?”
“Quite some time. Perhaps a year or so.”
“Where’s Uncle Orrin?”
“I threw him out a year after we were married.”
Adeline quickly lowered her head but not before she’d emitted a startled giggle. “Do my parents know?”
“I suspect not.”
The Flemings had attended her wedding seven years before, and the funerals of both her parents, but had not been in contact since. Chastity knew they would not have been so quick to leave Adeline with her had they known she’d not only divorced Orrin but had left the church, as well. Her temple recommend was automatically rescinded after her marriage ended, a fact that had rankled much more than Chastity expected. It bugged her that a blameless divorced women was deemed unfit to enter the temple, but a lousy ex-husband could come and go as he pleased.
She was so irritated by this that she refused to obtain a cancellation of sealing so she could get her recommend back. Instead, she started thinking about the way women were treated in the church, her anger giving way to an exploration. She’d spent months reading and thinking about the beliefs she’d taken for granted her whole life. The more she learned, the less she clung to the familiar, until the time came when she realized she was happier outside of the church than in it.
She stopped feeling angry and became aware of a strange sense of relief. For many people the church provided security, comfort, support, and certainty, and she could respect that. But she wanted to discover who she could be unfettered by the fear of failure that had dogged her adult life.
She didn’t discuss her journey of discovery when Vonda and Tucker arrived with Adeline. Her sister and brother-in-law saw mainstream Mormonism as lacking the fullness of the gospel, and the LDS leadership as traitors to the priesthood, but it was still better than living entirely outside the church. Chastity had the impression they expected her to see the error of her ways momentarily and catch the first Greyhound to Hildale, eager to abandon her business and her freedoms for life as a baby factory.