At seventeen, a girl discovers she’s pregnant. When her deeply religious adoptive parents cast her out, she believes she has reached the end until help arrives from a place she never expected. “Get out!”

The scream ricocheted through the hallway like a thunderclap.

Marissa felt the words hit her harder than any shove could. She stepped backward until her shoulders brushed the wall, her trembling hands rising instinctively to shield her tear-stained face. “You shame our entire household!” her adoptive mother, Geraldine, roared, her voice high with fury and conviction.

“I will not allow a sinner—an unrepentant one—around your younger brothers and sisters!”

Marissa’s gaze darted to her adoptive father, Isaac. He stood rigid near the dining room doorway, fingers pressed to his forehead as though he wished he could disappear. His eyes flickered toward her, then away, unable to hold the weight of her silent plea.

Please… please don’t let this happen. But Isaac had never contradicted Geraldine in all the years Marissa had lived under their roof. He wasn’t going to start now.

Geraldine grabbed Marissa’s arm with a vice-like grip and pulled her toward the front door. “The sins of the mother pass to the daughter,” she hissed. “I should’ve known you’d turn out like her.”

Her.

The biological mother, Marissa, had never met. The nameless figure Geraldine invoked whenever she wanted to remind Marissa she wasn’t truly their child. The door was wrenched open, and the next thing Marissa knew, she was on the porch, the cold evening wind biting her skin.

The door slammed, the sound final and unforgiving. For a moment, she stood frozen. Then her knees gave way, and she sank onto the steps, chest heaving with sobs she couldn’t hold back.

Her home—her only home—had rejected her in one violent breath. She had been adopted as an infant. Geraldine and Isaac had taken her in when she was barely a week old and had raised her alongside their other four children.

But their household ran on strict rules: no makeup, no outings with friends, no celebrations—birthdays and holidays were “idolatrous.” Her world had been school, chores, and church, week after week, year after year. By the time she reached high school, her longing for freedom felt suffocating. She wanted what other girls had: sleepovers, trips to the movies, quiet giggles about crushes, afternoons trying on clothes at the mall.

And when she turned sixteen, that longing turned into rebellion. She grew bold enough to sneak out on rare occasions—rare enough that she convinced herself she wouldn’t get caught. Then she met Tyler, a boy with charm, messy hair, and just enough danger to feel thrilling.

It didn’t take long for charm to feel like affection, or for affection to feel like love. When Marissa found herself staring at a positive pregnancy test months later, she’d felt her world tilt but hadn’t expected it to collapse. Her adoptive mother had seen the test before she’d even had time to process the news herself.

And now she was out here—seventeen, pregnant, alone. Minutes stretched in silence until the door creaked open again. Isaac stepped out, shoulders slumped, a backpack dangling from his hand.