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I stare at her. “So...I don't understand.”

“I think,” she says, sucking in a breath, “that one of Faith's parents is your cousin. And the other is your dad.”

I sink onto the stool.

Mrs. Wells taps on the door. “What on earth is taking so long? I don’t have all day for this.”

“Sorry!” Kappy calls. “The zipper got stuck. One more second.”

I’m glad she’s answering because I could not. Mary Joyce was fifteen.

Fifteen and crying in her bedroom loud enough for me to hear. Fifteen and sneaking out, growing increasingly desperate. How did he do it? Probably by catching her at something and holding it over her head, just as he did with Leila. He had a lot of power in the church…he’d only need to suggest that Mary Joyce's parents would be penalized and she'd have done whatever he asked.

“What do I do, Kappy?” I ask. “If I take this to the police or the press, if I make a stink about it, I don’t think Bright Covenant can cover it up. But then what happens to my sister? There’s no way they’d allow her to stay with my mom, is there? They’d put her in foster care until they’d located her grandparents, if nothing else.”

“You can’t let your dad get away with it, Grace. You know he’s going to do it to someone else. He probably already has.”

I wince and lean against the upholstered wall behind me, thinking of his late night over spring break. Was he with some other girl he’d forced or manipulated? Faith being removed from her home, as traumatic as that would be, isn’t as traumatic as what Leila suffered. But some unworthy part of me wants to choose her over those other nameless, faceless girls. Wants to at least give her the next decade with my mom before the truth comes out.

My mother would never forgive me if I didn’t choose Faith, but it shouldn’t be me making this choice at all.

“Unlace me,” I whisper, rising and turning my back so Kappy can undo all the ties in the back of the dress.

“What are you going to do?” Kappy asks.

I step out of the dress and grab the new one. “Do you have the DNA stuff with you?”

“Yeah,” she says, reaching into her bag as I pull on the second option. It isn’t awful. It isn’t what I’d choose, but it’s fine for this wedding I don’t want to be a part of, I guess.

“You have a copy of the results if something happens to me?” I ask, shoving the copies in my purse.

“Grace,” she says, her hand wrapping around my forearm, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to give my mother a choice,” I reply.

I walk out in the second dress. My mother urges me to keep trying on the others, but I don’t have the heart. How could she have stolen Mary Joyce’s child, under the circumstances? Maybe she doesn’t know he was the father, but I’ve seen the lengths she’s gone to in order to keep him happy.

She’d have raised Faith whether or not she knew.

The dress is purchased by Mrs. Wells with a patronizing pat of my mother’s hand. “I’m sure things have been tight since you left New Hope,” she says.

“Are we sending invitations?” I ask, glancing between the two of them.

“There really wasn’t time,” Mrs. Wells says. “We just announced it on the bulletin board at church.”

I turn to squeeze Kappy’s hand. “I need you there,” I say. “Can you come help me get ready earlier in the day?”

Mrs. Wells winces. “Outsiders aren’t normally welcome inside our spaces.”

“Kappy isn’t an outsider,” I reply. “She’s family. And I won’t get married without her there.”

Looks are exchanged and Mrs. Wells frowns at me. “It’s fine, I suppose, but don’t think you’ll carry on insisting on your way like this all the time.”

“I won’t,” I reply.

I won’t have to.

Tommy arrives from Bolivia a week later. I drive to Tallahassee with his parents to greet him at the airport, ever the dutiful fiancée. He looks relieved by the sight of me, and I fight an anxious clench in my stomach. In spite of what he tried to do, I don’t hate Tommy. I don’t want to embarrass him, to deprive him of the chance to marry someone. He’s handsome, and I’m sure he’ll have other options if he can bring himself to “settle,” but the shame of being left at the altar will hang over him for the rest of his life.