The Bishop's Wife

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “Well, you still got into BYU,” I said, “so I can’t say I’m too sorry for you.”

  “Luckily, BYU cares as much about service to the church as they do about grades,” said Adam.

  He was being a little disingenuous there. He might not have had straight As, but he had a lot of them, and he had tested superbly well. He could have taken a full-ride scholarship offer to the University of Utah. He’d also been accepted to Stanford, but we couldn’t afford it and BYU had always been Kurt’s first choice for his sons, so Adam eventually accepted their offer.

  “How is Marie?” I asked.

  “Fine.” The conversation devolved from there into a discussion of classes they were both taking. Adam was hoping to be an engineer, which meant most of his explanations of what he was studying were hard for me to follow. Marie’s nursing course kept her studying until the wee hours. Maybe that was the real reason they hadn’t had any children yet. No time to make them. But it wasn’t my place to say that, either.

  Finally, Adam ended the conversation with, “Mom, take care. Of yourself and Dad, all right? Not just Samuel.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised him, and hung up.

  Then I cut up the brownies and wrapped them in plastic to take over to the Helms. I didn’t need Kurt’s permission. It was just something that needed to be done.

  I was self-consciously aware of the fact that the news vans were filming me as I walked up to the door and rang the bell. That meant that not only Kurt but everyone else in the ward might know what I had done by evening. Not that I was trying to hide anything. Or that I really knew that anything I did would end up making any difference at all.

  Jared Helm opened the door eventually and hurried me inside. Cameras caught it all on tape, but I was hopeful that I wasn’t about to become part of the nightly news segment. There was nothing interesting about a neighbor bringing some brownies over, surely.

  “Is there something wrong, Sister Wallheim?” said Jared.

  It was a ridiculous question, since there were so many things wrong. “I brought these for Kelly,” I said instead. “She said she loves brownies.”

  “Carrie used to make them with her,” Jared said. His face was tense and grey with exhaustion. Before he could call for the little girl, however, she came rushing down the stairs and threw herself at me. I had to take a step backward to keep from falling over.

  “Mommy called!” she said. “She said she is bringing me some brownies.”

  I stared at Jared. “Did Carrie really call?” I asked. Because if she had, surely this was something the police should know about.

  Could it be true—was she alive? Or was it just a delusion on Kelly’s part? Children sometimes had such vivid imaginary lives. When Zachary was little, he had such difficulty telling the difference between dreams and reality.

  “Can I have one? Can I? Can I?” Kelly asked, hopping up and down and looking at my plate of brownies.

  “One,” said Jared. “I don’t want you to spoil your lunch.” He took the brownies into the kitchen, where he gave Kelly a plate with one brownie on it. Then he rewrapped the plastic and put the plate on top of the refrigerator.

  Kelly ate happily while I changed my focus to Jared. I tried my question again. “When did Carrie call?”

  “This morning,” said Jared shortly.

  “Did you speak to her yourself?” I asked.

  Jared nodded. “I wouldn’t let Kelly answer the phone in these circumstances.”

  Of course. He must get a lot of calls from reporters.

  “But I thought that her cell phone was still here, at home.”

  “It is,” said Jared.

  “Then how did you know it was her?”

  “I didn’t until I heard her voice,” said Jared. “It wasn’t a number that I recognized.”

  I stared at him in astonishment. “And so you answered it anyway? It could have been a reporter.”

  “It was out of state,” he said with a shrug. “I thought it was worth taking a chance, anyway. And I was right.” He nodded to Kelly. “She heard her mother’s voice and knows she’s all right. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “But—surely the police need to know this,” I said. Whatever the phone number was, they could trace it and find Carrie.

  Unless—a part of me felt cold and wondered how difficult it would be to convince a five-year-old girl that her mother was on the phone. How many details would someone have to get right? Not many, I thought. Kelly would be primed to want to hear her mother’s voice, especially if her father told her who it was.

  “I don’t think the police would believe me,” said Jared flatly. “They’ve already made up their minds about what happened and any evidence they get all points the same way.” He hesitated and then met my eyes. “But if you called them for me, Sister Wallheim—”

  Why me? Because I was the bishop’s wife and therefore more likely to be believed? Because he didn’t think he could carry the lie that far?

  “Can I see the number?” I asked. I wanted some proof of my own before I delved into this.

  Kelly hopped off her seat, brownie crumbs all over her face, and grabbed the phone. She knew exactly how to get the number to show up on the screen. I didn’t recognize the area code, which meant it was probably a mobile number. “Have you tried calling it back?” I asked.

  Jared shook his head.

  “I’ll call it back,” said Kelly eagerly. And that is just what she did, before Jared or I had a chance to react and stop her.

  Then she handed the phone to me.

  I looked at Jared, who didn’t seem alarmed. I listened to the sound of ringing in the background. After five rings, someone picked up on the other end. It was not a woman’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. My name is Linda Wallheim,” I said, using the telephone etiquette my mother had taught me. “I’m calling because a woman called recently from this number and I wanted to talk to her.”

  “Oh, you mean Carrie.”

  I felt a jolt of electricity and nearly dropped the phone. My hand was shaking visibly, and I switched the receiver to the other ear, as if keeping the sight of it from Jared made the conversation more private.

  “Carrie Helm?” I said. Was this yet another person involved in Jared Helm’s conspiracy to cover up his wife’s disappearance? That seemed less and less likely.

  “Yes, but she’s not available right now. Can I have her call you back?”

  “If she would, I would appreciate it. Can you ask her to call Linda Wallheim?” I rattled off my own cell phone number. “I desperately need to speak to her.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Now came the difficult part. I didn’t want to hang up yet. “Do you mind if I ask who you are and why she called on this phone?”

  “She doesn’t have her own cell phone, so she borrowed mine,” the voice explained, his tone annoyed at the obvious.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  He sighed. “My name is Will. I’m a friend of Carrie’s.”

  “A friend of Carrie’s? Where did you meet her? She’s from Utah, isn’t she? Where are you calling from?”

  “Las Vegas. Carrie and I met when I was in Utah a few months ago. Why do you ask? Who are you?”

  Who was I indeed? “A friend of Carrie’s from her ward in Utah.”

  He hung up immediately.

  I tried calling back as Jared asked, “What happened? Did he hang up? Why did he hang up?”

  I shook my head and moved away from him so he couldn’t take the phone. But Will, if that was really who the man on the other end of the line was, did not answer.

  After three tries, I gave up trying to keep the phone from Jared and let him call the number back. He had no more luck than I did.

  Jared slammed the phone down and cursed.

  I expected Kelly to startle at the coarse word, but she didn’t.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” asked Kelly.

  “Nothing,�
�� said Jared.

  “Can I have another brownie?” asked Kelly.

  Little manipulator. She knew Jared had told her one brownie, and now that he was distracted, she was asking again. Where had she learned that trick?

  I hated that I was so easily led to believe that Carrie Helm was cheating on her husband. It was exactly the kind of story the press would eat up and report on in the next news cycle. Everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and the footage with Jared in the family car in the middle of the night with his five-year-old daughter would become obsolete.

  What did I believe? That Jared had concocted all of this as part of a plan to make himself appear innocent? Or that Carrie Helm had run away from her husband and daughter and had called more than two weeks later because she had felt a prick of loneliness for the first time since then?

  Jared got Kelly another brownie from the top of the fridge, and then one for himself. He picked at it with a fork, still standing up.

  “Did you talk to Carrie yourself?” I asked. “When she called for Kelly?”

  “Just for a moment. She was very insistent that she wanted to talk to Kelly. I told her I wanted to talk to her afterward, but she didn’t wait.”

  “What did she say? Did she say where she was or if she planned to come back?” If she was struggling with depression, then that was an excuse for leaving her daughter behind, I suppose. But at some point, wouldn’t she want to come home?

  “All she said was that she was fine and she wasn’t hurt.” Jared’s fork was halfway to his mouth and he held it there for a long moment before putting it back to the plate.

  “I want Mommy to come back,” said Kelly. “Make her come back, Daddy.”

  Jared looked at me.

  “You have to tell the police,” I said. “Think of all the money and labor hours being spent on this case when they could be spent on another.” How many days ago was it that I had convinced the Westons to go on television to make sure the whole world knew their daughter was mysteriously missing? And now what was I doing?

  Jared swallowed hard and looked down at the plate.

  Kelly was eyeing his brownie as if she were ready to plead for a third.

  I reached over and swiftly lifted her father’s plate from the counter to the sink, dumping the brownie and then rinsing it down the disposal.

  Kelly looked sad for a moment, then brightened. “Will Mommy be coming home soon?” she asked.

  Jared patted her fluffy head of hair, as messy as ever. “I hope so,” he said.

  Would he take back a wife who had run off with another man, if she came back and asked him to? The letter the Westons had read seemed to indicate not. “Do you want me to sit with Kelly while you talk to the police?” I asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Jared. “I’d appreciate that.”

  In the end, he didn’t have me make the call for him. Only five minutes after he’d hung up, the doorbell rang. The real detectives had arrived.

  Jared spoke quietly to the police in the next room while Kelly and I played with some toys she’d brought down to show me. I murmured pleasant things to her while trying to listen in on the other conversation. I only caught occasional snatches and those brought me no new information.

  It wasn’t until the police were nearly finished that it occurred to me to follow up with Kelly on what she had said about dropping her mother off in the car. If that car ride had happened in the middle of the night, as the gas station footage seemed to suggest, then what did it mean that Carrie had called Kelly this morning?

  “Kelly, come here for a minute,” I said, and pulled her onto my lap. “Do you remember when you told me about saying goodbye to your mommy?”

  She nodded.

  “Did she sound the same to you then as she did today on the telephone?”

  “She didn’t talk before. She won’t talk when she’s mad at Daddy,” said Kelly.

  “And today?” I asked.

  “She was happy today,” said Kelly. “She said she would come back, that she was bringing me a new doll, the one with the blue hair like I told her I wanted. But last time, she said I couldn’t have it. She said she didn’t want me to have a doll with a belly ring.”

  A crass way to buy forgiveness—if it really was Carrie Helm.

  I concentrated once more on the footage of the family car at the gas station at 3:00 A.M. “Kelly, I want you to think hard about this. Why did your father take you in the car with him the morning your mother disappeared?”

  “He didn’t want to leave me home by myself,” said Kelly. “Mommy leaves me sometimes by myself, but Daddy never does.”

  And now I wondered what kind of a mother Carrie Helm had been. “Where was your mother sitting?”

  “In the front, by Daddy.”

  “Did you see her?” I asked.

  Kelly thought for a long moment. She shook her head. “I was sleepy,” she said.

  “But you know she was there?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Daddy kept talking to her,” she said.

  “One last question, Kelly. Do you remember where your daddy drove to? Was it any place familiar?” The gas station he had stopped at had been several miles north of Draper, just off I-15, but that didn’t say much. He could have been coming back and forth from almost anywhere north or west.

  Kelly closed her eyes, thinking hard. “It was dark out,” she said. “I sawed a big moon.”

  So that was that.

  The police left a few minutes later and Jared came in to thank me for watching Kelly.

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “That they would look into it. I can only hope they find her and this all ends.” He gestured at the news vans outside.

  “Do you want her to come back, then?” I asked.

  “Of course I do. More than anything,” said Jared. And of all the things he had said, this sounded the most true.

  CHAPTER 14

  It took two days for the police to find the cell phone that had called Kelly Helm from Las Vegas, but by the time they had tracked it, it had been thrown in the trash of a casino. There was no sign of Carrie Helm or the mysterious man named Will who had answered. The phone itself was prepaid and had been bought with cash in St. George, Utah, two weeks before Carrie’s disappearance.

  It seemed clear from the police statement to the press Monday morning that they were not reassured about Carrie Helm’s well-being, either. They said there was no evidence that she had left her home in Utah of her own free will, and they still considered her a missing person in serious danger. What worried me most was that the cell phone had been purchased two weeks before Carrie had disappeared. It could mean nothing or it could mean that Carrie had known what she was going to do. Or that Jared Helm had planned all of this a long time ago, down to the smallest detail.

  Meanwhile, there were plenty of other minor emergencies in the ward. The Torstensens’ ordeal was only one of many. Sister Grange had lost her father to a home accident in the tub. The Ringels were reeling from layoffs on both sides. The Andrews’ had all come down with whooping cough, despite the fact that they had all been vaccinated against it, and the Utah Health Department had become involved to make sure that the strain didn’t spread to other vaccinated people. The ward wasn’t even allowed to go into the home to bring aid. And if that weren’t enough, three of the Derringers were in the hospital with broken bones after a skiing trip.

  For Kurt, this meant an enormous amount of time spent comforting families and updating various organizational heads. Over the weekend, he had spent almost no time at home, and he had even taken Monday off work, mostly so he could sleep.

  Kurt had asked me to check in with the Torstensens every day that week. Despite the predictions of the hospice service, Tobias had survived past the ten day mark. The hospice nurse insisted that it was the arrival of his sons that had buoyed his spirits but did not think this meant any change in his prognosis. Both Liam and Tomas had
arrived on Friday, and had found a hotel in Draper to share a room in.

  I went over Monday afternoon, and was worried that Anna had begun to talk about plans for the future, as if Tobias would recover.

  “If he starts to fail again, I just want to be sure you’re prepared for it,” I said.

  “He wants me to help him out to the garden tomorrow so Liam and Tomas can do some clearing to prepare for spring planting,” she said as she sorted silverware from the dishwasher.

  “What about his wife’s grave?” I asked. “Did you find anything out about that from Liam or Tomas?”

  “Oh, that. I think he must have been confused. He says that she was cremated, and so there isn’t any grave.”

  It still seemed odd to me, but perhaps odd was not reason enough for suspicion. “Where are her ashes, then? Did he say? Maybe that was what he meant, that he wanted to go back to the place where her ashes were.”

  Anna shook her head. “He said he didn’t keep the ashes. He didn’t want such a morbid reminder of her death. He had the mortuary dispose of them.” She had opened the dishwasher again and was looking inside it, as if to find more dishes that had appeared there.

  “Anna.” I wanted her to listen to me carefully. “Do you want Kurt to come talk to you and Tobias about having your marriage sealed in the temple?”

  “That would be a lovely idea. You and Kurt could come and stand with us. Tobias always loves to go to the temple, and he looks so handsome in all that white,” said Anna.

  “Anna,” I said gently, because she wasn’t understanding the question. “I don’t think Tobias is going to be well enough to get to the temple. I meant Kurt could talk to you about having the sealing done after Tobias is gone. If that is what both you and he wish.” I wasn’t one hundred percent sure on the details of all temple ordinances, but I didn’t think it could happen until Anna was also dead.

  Anna’s mouth compressed. “He is doing so well right now.”

  “But this is important. This is about what happens after this life. Forever after.”

  Anna began to cry. I felt bad for bringing her to this point, but I also thought it was necessary. She had to face the truth about Tobias’s death.