She parked the carriage and sank onto a wrought iron bench. What if she ran after her sisters and inserted herself into their circle?

Leah hugged her stomach and folded over her knees. What would happen? They’d be shocked to learn that they had a sister, that they’d been adopted, and that their parents hadn’t told them the truth.

Questions. Anger. Tears.

What if one sister rejoiced at the news and the other didn’t? Would they be divided?

A groan built in her belly and rumbled out. Mrs. Scholz was right. The girls were happy and well adjusted. Leah would bring chaos. Even if both girls embraced her one day, would it be worth the wedge she might drive between the girls and their parents?

Leah’s belly contracted, and a sob ripped out. She didn’t know her sisters. She only loved the idea of them, not the young ladies they were today. She hadn’t been there for the late-night feedings, the measles, and the essays. Mr. and Mrs. Scholz had. They’d poured fifteen years of love into Callie and Polly—as Leah wanted them to do.

She might have a right to reunite with her sisters, but to exercise that right would only be for herself. Not for the sisters she claimed to love.

Sobs heaved through her, over and over, a sound she hadn’t allowed for years. In the Jones home, crying led to a beating. In the orphanage, it led to ridicule and torment.

Now she couldn’t stop. A lifetime of abandonment and loneliness and rejection poured out.

Alone. Alone. Unwelcome. Unwanted. Unloved.

Her sisters belonged. Leah didn’t.

They were loved. She wasn’t.

She didn’t want them to share her fate. She wanted to share theirs, and she never would. Too odd. Too foreign.

Like Leah in the Bible, such an appropriate namesake, the unloved wife who yearned for love and never received it.

“Clay. Oh, Clay.” All her grief smashed together. Clay wanted to die and might already be dead. If she’d been the kind of woman he could have loved, could she have given him a reason to live?

No one loved her. Not her husband. Not her sisters. Not . . .

The sound of her own cries penetrated her ears and shifted. Another cry, desperate and fearful and hiccupping.

“Helen!” Leah sprang to her feet and blinked heavy-lashed eyelids. Helen lay in her carriage, her fists flailing, her face red and warped.

“Oh, baby! My sweet girl.” Leah snatched her up and clutched her to her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t.”

The blanket hung loose, and Leah grabbed it and dried her baby’s face and her own. “You poor baby. Mama’s here. Mama’s sorry.”

The hiccups disappeared but the cries continued, and Leah walked and rocked and cooed.