Chapter 1

The grease on her fried chicken had already gone cold. She set the fork down carefully, the metal clicking against the pottery rim of her plate. “Why?”

Her mother, Ruth, dabbed at her lips with a napkin and avoided Layla’s gaze. Beside her, Layla’s younger brother, Caleb, was too busy shoveling mashed potatoes to notice the tension coiling around the table like smoke.

“Because I invited him,” her father said. William Johnson was a broad-shouldered man with a graying beard and the kind of voice that could pitch a tent revival or silence a room. Tonight it was the latter. “We have matters to discuss.”

“What matters?” Layla asked.

Her father’s jaw tightened. He looked at Ruth, and something passed between them—an old, tired signal Layla had seen before. It meant: you tell her, or I will.

Ruth set her napkin beside her plate. “Baby, Pastor Mitchell stopped by this afternoon. He talked with your father and me about… about the church’s building fund.”

“What about it?” Layla’s hand curled into a fist in her lap.

“There’s a shortfall,” William said flatly. “Eighteen thousand dollars. The bank won’t extend another loan, and the deacons have been covering it out of pocket for months. I can’t keep doing that, not after the layoff last year.”

Layla’s stomach dropped. “So we’re talking about money? What does that have to do with Deacon Webb?”

Marcus Webb owned Webb’s Hardware on Main Street and a tract of land outside town big enough to host the annual fall festival. He was a quiet man, widowed five years now, with grown children in Atlanta. He also had a habit of watching Layla during potlucks in a way that made her skin prickle.

“Marcus has agreed to cover the debt,” William said. “On one condition.”

Caleb finally looked up, his fork mid-air. “What condition?”

“He wants to marry Layla.”

The word dropped like a stone into still water.

Layla’s breath caught. “No.”

“Layla, listen—”

“No.” She stood up, her chair scraping the linoleum. “I’m twenty-three years old. He’s forty-three. I don’t love him. I don’t even like him.”

“Love grows in marriage,” Ruth said softly. “Your father and I didn’t know each other well when we wed, and look at us now.”

Layla looked. They were two people who shared a house and a pew and little else. “That’s not a recommendation.”

“Watch your mouth,” William snapped. He rose too, and suddenly the kitchen felt small. “This is not a request. The church is in trouble. Our family’s name is on that debt. Marcus has offered a way out, and you will honor your family and your faith.”

“My faith?” Layla’s voice cracked. “You’re selling me to pay a bill and calling it faith?”

Ruth winced. Caleb stared at his plate.

William’s face reddened. “You will be a wife to Deacon Webb. You will keep his home, bear his children if the Lord wills it, and you will do it with gratitude. The wedding is in two weeks.”

Layla stood frozen. Two weeks. Two weeks to pack her life into boxes and hand herself over to a man who smelled like sawdust and spoke only when spoken to.

She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. But the house had only one door that led anywhere, and her father stood between her and it.

“I won’t do it,” she whispered.

William’s eyes hardened. “You will. Or you will no longer be a daughter of this house.”

Silence stretched. Ruth began to cry quietly. Caleb pushed his plate away.

Layla felt the floor tilt under her. She looked at her mother, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. She looked at Caleb, who was just a boy, helpless. She looked at her father, who had already made up his mind.

“Fine,” she said, the word tasting like ash. “But I won’t pretend to be happy about it.”

William nodded once. “That’s all I ask.”

He sat back down and picked up his fork as if the matter were settled. Ruth dabbed her eyes. Caleb went back to eating, though slower now.

Layla excused herself and walked upstairs, her legs heavy as iron. She shut her bedroom door and leaned against it, staring at the worn lace curtains she’d hung when she was sixteen.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed seven.

From downstairs came the sound of a car engine cutting off, a car door closing. Footsteps on the front porch. Her father’s voice, warm and welcoming.

“Marcus! Come in, come in. Layla’s just upstairs. She’ll be down in a moment.”

Layla pressed her palm against the door. She could stay up here. She could refuse. But her father’s words echoed: You will no longer be a daughter of this house.

She had nowhere else to go.

Slowly, she turned the knob and stepped into the hallway, each step carrying her down the stairs toward the man waiting in the living room—the man who had bought her for the price of a church debt.