Yes, the dress was beautiful.
And I’d never hated anything more.
“Well, girl,” my uncle clucked me under the chin, “it’s been a long time coming and you’ll make a fine bride.”
My gaze swept the beaming faces. Only my younger sister, Jenny, lowered her eyes with sympathy. She was the only one who suspected the dread which consumed me over this arrangement. Winston Allred had first announced his intentions for me when I was Jenny’s age, sixteen. My father, at the command of his brother, had agreed.
But then several things happened at once. The state of Utah raided our sister city due to an anonymous tip that underage girls were being forced into plural marriages with men old enough to be their grandfathers. Families were separated and some of the prominent leaders of the Faithful Last Disciples and Saints were taken away. And though our town of Jericho Valley was across state lines, we knew the leaders of Phoenix eyed us suspiciously.
The men had tried to run off the media trucks which kept idling curiously through Jericho Valley. We’d always been taught that our fame came from envy. That the nation looked at us with the mysterious puzzlement of the covetous and desired the simple lives we enjoyed. The women who were chosen by the select few elders of the church were blessed to carry in their bodies the next generation of Faithful. The fact that they had no choice in the matter seemed scarcely relevant.
Also, there had been several tragic births in recent years. Joyous occasions turned to terrible ones. There was only one midwife in town who was able to tend nearly eight hundred women and she didn’t have too many years left in her.
Meanwhile, the attentions of the media and the looming threats of law enforcement were taking took its toll. My uncle pondered what to do. One of his own daughters, a wild and beautiful girl named Rachel, had left Jericho Valley in the dead of night only hours before she was to become the sixth wife of Emory Thayne. Her name, thereafter, was a curse.
I supposed the fact that they chose me had something to do with my father. He favored me among all his daughters. Though the girls of Jericho Valley were pulled out of school by their ninth year, I had always shown an academic aptitude and was easily tutored sufficiently to pass the high school exit tests. I supposed that was the other reason I was chosen.
It hadn’t mattered to me why at the time. Why I was selected. I was elated for the opportunity to attend the Hale College of Midwifery in Salt Lake City. My own mother had suffered a stillbirth in my childhood. She had nearly died herself of blood loss and shock. Once I completed the four years of training I would be enormously helpful to the exhausted women of Jericho Valley. More crucially, my marriage to Winston Allred would be postponed until I graduated.
And then, six weeks ago, on the day of my twenty first birthday, I finished my clinical studies and sat for the exam which would place me among the North American Registry of Midwives. I passed easily.
“Promise,” my sister whispered from the neighboring bed. The room was dark and there was no moon outside. The only other noise in the small house was the even breathing of our sleeping mother. My father was spending the night at one of his other homes.
I closed my eyes, letting a hot tear trickle down my cheek. At this time tomorrow I would be in the bed of my husband, doing what he required of me.
Jenny had always known when I was feeling poorly. From toddlerhood she been such a sweet girl, intuitive and kind. We were five years apart in age but were the only two of my mother’s children who had lived and that cemented a rare bond.
“Promise,” she said again in a sad voice and I didn’t answer to my name. Jenny knew my agony anyway and with a sigh she crawled into bed next to me, not saying a word as I sobbed and drifted off to sleep.
The morning dawned brilliantly. It seemed unfair. I dressed quickly, leaving Jenny to sleep quietly for a little while longer. My wedding was in less than five hours. I needed to find my father.
Ruth was my father’s first wife and she’d always seemed to bear my mother a grudge. She greeted me grumpily on the doorstep of the tiny prefabricated home which was a typical dwelling in Jericho Valley.
“He’s at Connie’s,” she growled before shutting the door in my face.
I chewed on my lip as I walked the short distance to the home of John Talbot’s third and, it was rumored, most beloved wife. I tried to piece together what I would say to him. Finally I decided it didn’t matter how the words came out. I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry Winston Allred.
“Early for a walk, Promise,” said a low, suspicious voice and I froze in my tracks. It wasn’t my father’s voice. It was my uncle, the grim church Bishop, a man to be respected. And feared.