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“Let me speak to my mother alone for a moment?” I ask of everyone assembled.

My mother frowns while Kappy begins ushering the pastor’s wife and my sisters from the room. Mrs. Wells is the last to leave, a bitter pinch to her lips as she goes.

“You’ll need to try not to upset her like that going forward,” my mother says as I turn to face her.

I pull the DNA summary sheet out of the overnight bag I brought. “I don’t think we will be going forward,” I say, handing it to her. “How do Faith and I only share thirty-one percent of our DNA?”

The color drains from my mother’s face. She knows.

“What are you doing, Grace?”

“You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” I ask hoarsely. “You knew Faith was Mary Joyce’s kid. The kid she had with Dad.”

Her cheeks hollow in and she grips a chair for support. Outside us somewhere, an organ begins playing Ode to Joy. “Grace⁠—”

“Answer me,” I cry.

Her head hangs. “I didn’t know when it was happening. I suspected, but⁠—”

“You suspected, but then you did nothing and kept the baby?” My voice is rising. I clap a hand over my mouth as if I can hold this burgeoning hysteria inside me. I’ve had my father figured out for a while, but my mother…I never dreamed she’d allow things to go as far as they did.

“What did you expect me to do?” she whispers. “You were ten. Your sister was six. He’d have sent me away from you both if I hadn’t gone along with it.”

“You could have gone to the police,” I hiss. “The fact that he was sleeping with a fifteen-year-old was all you needed to tell them.”

She sinks onto the stool beside mine. “I didn’t know how that worked back then. I didn’t know that I could prove it with DNA. But also…Grace, don’t you understand what would have happened to all of us if your father went to jail? We’d have been sent up to Michigan. The girls there are so desperate to get out that they’ll agree to marry anyone from New Hope. Would you have wanted that for yourself? For your sisters?”

My laugh is tinged with disbelief. “Over letting him attack someone else, yes.”

“That’s easy to say when it’s not your children who will pay the price, but when you have a daughter of your own, you’ll feel otherwise.”

Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t. All I know is that right now…I’ve got to put the Mary Joyces and the Leilas of the world ahead of us. I have to.

“You know I’m being forced into this, don’t you?” I demand. “You know what they told Tommy to do?”

She winces. “I was worried, but I wasn’t sure. I’m sorry…There’s nothing I could have done to stop them either way, but I’m sorry. Tommy could still make you a good husband.”

I laugh again. “He’s not going to be my husband, Mom. I’ve got everything I need right here to stop this wedding in its tracks and put Dad in jail, and other people have copies too just in case Bright Covenant thinks this can be swept under the rug.”

Her eyes widen. “Grace…you can’t. You can’t. They’ll take Faith away from me. Do you want your sister given to her grandparents? They’re strangers to her.”

I climb to my feet. “Then help me.”

She stares up at me, her eyes full of unshed tears. “I don’t understand. You want to run? Fine. Run. I doubt you’ll get far, but I won’t stop you.”

“I’m not running, because that doesn’t remove my father from a position in which he works with teenage girls. You know things about him. I know you do. You must know the accusations about Kelly Maguire, about Leila. There are probably others. I’ve also heard that he forced you the same way he told Tommy to force me. It’s not perfect, but it’ll be enough if you’re the one who says it.”

“Grace,” she pleads, sinking into the chair, “don’t let some childish jealousy make the wrong decision for you.”

Childish jealousy? Is that really what she thinks this is?

“It’s not my decision, Mom,” I tell her. “It’s yours. I know you’ve got something on him that will solve this for both of us.”

She presses her face to her hands. “You can’t spring this on me. I’d need time to⁠—”

“I’m not marrying a guy I neither like nor respect just so you can take the time to think.” I wince at my own cruelty. I have sprung this on her, but I had to. She’d have told my dad, otherwise, and they’d have come up with a way to stop me. “Figure it out, or I’ll take care of it for you.”

“You’d sacrifice your sisters for this?” she asks. “For some stranger? You don’t even know if your father will do it again. I’ll talk to him.”