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for his father to nail down. Jacob studied his son. He had the Kimball nose, but his eyes and chin came from Fernie. As tangled as the Blister Creek lines had become over the years, Daniel looked more like his adopted father and his half brothers, Nephi and Jake, than he looked like Diego or Miriam, neither of whom had any Blister Creek blood in their veins. Thank goodness for that—and maybe Krantz would marry Eliza and bring in more fresh blood.
    Jacob was carrying lumber when he came across a side wall, where they’d framed a door that led to nowhere. “What’s this for?”
    “A framed doorway,” David called from the rafters.
    “I know
what
, I mean why?”
    “Don’t start, Jacob.”
    “It’s a good-size house as is. Could hold a nice family. Four bedrooms, room for another if you finish the space over the garage. Are you going to have so many kids that you need to build a whole new wing? Is there another doorway framed on the other side? I can’t see from here.”
    Miriam came past carrying a bucket of nails, which she passed up the ladder to David. “It’s a contingency. It’s not like we have someone picked out.”
    “Good, because the prophet has to approve any plural marriages.”
    “Stephen Paul took another wife,” she said. “Douglas Potts is engaged.”
    “And I discouraged them too.”
    “Good,” David called down as he disappeared with the nails. “You discourage, and let us make decisions about our own family. Sound good?”
    Miriam said, “I told you, it’s a contingency. That’s all.”
    She’d been acting strange lately. Almost soft, not the FBI agent she had been, quick to draw her gun and almost as quick to shoot it. Maybe it was finalizing Diego’s adoption that had done it, or maybe she and David had started talking about having a baby. But this?
    “Talk to me first,” Jacob said. “Don’t put it in some girl’s head—or, worse, her father’s head—before we chat.”
    David came back to the top of the ladder. He and Miriam exchanged glances, and something there made Jacob relax. They didn’t really want to enter plural marriage, he decided.
    He changed the subject. “You got a roofing crew lined up?”
    “Mostly,” David said. “We’re talking Saturday.”
    “Better make sure. The jet stream is going to bring fresh weather by Sunday. Rain this time, thank goodness, but heavy.”
    “Not sure rain is any better than snow. The creek floods again, we’ll lose the back eighty.” David held out his hands, and Jacob and Miriam fed him sheets of subfloor to lift into the attic.
    “Nothing we can do about that,” Jacob said. “The reservoir can’t hold another drop. Anyway, it’s better than more frost. We lost wheat yesterday. The Miller land got hit especially hard.”
    “Can’t believe all this is from a volcano on the other side of the world,” Miriam said.
    “And it’s spewing more now than it was last fall. We might get another summer of this. Maybe two.”
    “Wonderful,” David said.
    The weather felt fine now though. Under an open sky, with only rafters overhead, the temperature—about sixty-five degrees with sun—couldn’t have been better for this kind of work.
    David leaned over the edge of the plywood on which he was kneeling. “Daniel, grab me that screw gun. Right there. Thanks, buddy.”
    The conversation died and they fell into a comfortable rhythm of work and idle chat, punctuated by the sound of tools—nail gun, compressor, electric screw gun, saw. Jacob studied his son, the cheerful look on the boy’s face. And wondered.
    Last night after the kids had gone to bed, Jacob had helped Fernie into her shower chair. As he scrubbed her back and soaped, scoured, and flexed her rigid legs, he asked about her grandparents. “We’re not second cousins, are we?”
    “Third cousins once removed,” she said. “Brigham Young Junior was my great-great-grandfather and your third great-grandfather.”
    “That’s no big deal. Like any farming