Page 2 of Wife Number One

Samantha and Naomi kept their gazes on the floor, like the good women they were. I knew from every other time we’d done this, they would kneel and bless my womb without any sort of sisterly familiarity we might have once had.

Jacqueline, the last of my siblings, had grown into a young woman over the past few years. She’d become quite the beauty, a fact Josiah reminded me of more than once, while chills raced up and down my spine. The threat barely concealed in his expression.

Jacqueline might not have been a child in the eyes of our community, but she was only thirteen.

I hated the way men stared at her. It reminded me too much of the way a man on the outside had once looked at me. Like I was prey, just waiting to be eaten alive.

My breath caught on the memory, and bile rose in my throat.

But then the one good thing that had come from my time outside walked through the church doors and curiously peered up to where I sat.

Every bad memory disintegrated.

When I looked at her, I was reminded that the best thing in my life had come from the worst.

Hayley Jade.

My heart flickered, squeezing with love for the little girl with her dark hair and big eyes. Day by day, I’d watched from afar as she grew taller, stronger, smarter. But somewhere in her five-year-old face, I still saw the tiny baby who had been placed into my arms, and tears pricked the backs of my eyes.

A woman behind her prodded Hayley Jade forward, urging her along the blessing line.

My fingers curled around the armrest of my chair, fingernails digging into the hard, ornately carved wood. I wanted to stand and shout at the woman for laying a finger on my daughter, even though the touch had barely moved Hayley Jade’s small frame.

But that was not my right.

I was no longer her mother.

That privilege had been removed six months after I’d married Josiah when I’d failed to provide him with a child of his own.

The Lord had told him my attention was too focused on the child I had. The one born outside of our community, who brought dishonor to my new husband.

And so she’d been given to another woman to raise. A widow who had no children of her own.

“Kneel down, Jade,” the woman urged in a sharp whisper.

I hated that she’d shortened her name.

“But, Mama, it hurts my knees!”

My heart clenched at hearing my daughter call another woman Mama.

“Forgive me,” the woman said quietly, taking the girl’s hand and pulling her down to the altar steps, forcing her onto her knees. “She’s headstrong and still learning her place.”

Hayley Jade pouted up at me, a scowl twisting her pink lips and screwing up her button nose adorably.

Everything inside me ached to reach out and touch her. “She doesn’t need to kneel before me.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “She’s perfect, just the way she is.”

Hayley Jade’s expression morphed into a triumphant smile of pleasure.

I wanted to photograph it. So I would remember the way she’d looked at me forever. But technology had been forbidden at the farm for a long time now. I still mourned the loss of all the baby photos that had been on the phone I’d kept when I’d first come home.

Once Josiah had found it, I’d never seen it again.

“Kara,” Josiah snapped from behind me, using the voice he reserved for when I had disappointed him. Which was almost all of the time.

I hadn’t even realized he was there, listening, I’d been so caught up in getting this one, tiny exchange with the little girl I’d birthed so many years before.

“Shari is right.” Josiah studied the pair with hard eyes, making sure they knew that they did indeed need to kneel before the feet of him and his family. “The girl needs to learn her place.”

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