She was doing it for my sake, I knew, pretending that I should do it for hers.
We had headed back up the street when suddenly something hit me from behind, at about thigh height. It was soft and warm and I thought at first it must be one of the neighborhood dogs that sometimes get out. I would probably recognize it when I turned around and could help it find its way home.
But it wasn’t a dog.
It was Kelly Helm, and she was alone. I looked back at her house. How long until either Jared or Alex came running after her and snatched her up? A matter of seconds, most likely.
So I turned around and wrapped my arms around her, lifting her into the air. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked. She wasn’t my daughter, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy her little-girl softness and her little-girl smile.
She started babbling at that pace young children have, so fast a lot of the words got lost in the mix. “Daddy bought a new house, and it has a little house in the backyard just for me. He says I can have sleepovers in it and I can have a kitty. And he says my new mommy will be there for me. And I’m going to go to school there. The school is just across the street and I will be able to walk there. When the summer is done I’m going to meet my new teacher and my new friends and I’ll get a new backpack and new shoes and maybe even a new hat and mittens. And my new mommy will make me a lunch to put in a sack and I already went to church there. And they sing the same songs that we sing here, except they also sing one about snow and rain and sunshine.” She began to sing in a sweet, clear soprano.
Tears stung my eyes, thinking of the musical ability in her that I would never be able to nurture. Not my daughter, I reminded myself again.
“Do you want to come see my room? It’s all packed up in boxes. It looks funny.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, looking up at the house again. Where were Jared and Alex? Who was looking out for Kelly? “Let’s take you back home. I’m sure they’re wondering where you are.”
“Grandpa is on the phone,” said Kelly. “He’s talking to the movers.”
Ah, that explained it. And Kelly had slipped out while he had his back turned. Again.
And she would be punished again if he noticed she was gone.
“You go on, Linda,” said Anna. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to get home now.”
I watched Anna’s receding back and felt a little lost. A part of me wished she had stayed, but another part of me had an impulse to pick Kelly into my arms again and run to my own house with her. I could put her in the car and take her out for ice cream and then? There was no “and then.” She had her family and I had mine. We were sealed to them, and not to each other.
“You can walk in,” said Kelly. “The door isn’t locked.”
“You go in and when I ring the doorbell, you can open it,” I told her, thinking that the confusion of me at the door might make Alex or Jared not notice that Kelly had been coming in, not coming down the stairs to the door.
After Kelly let me in, it was a minute or two before Alex Helm appeared with a cell phone to his ear. He said, “Look, I’ll call you back, all right?” He put the cell phone away and then looked up at me again, as if he expected I might have disappeared in the meantime.
“Hello,” I said.
“Kelly, are you finished in your room?” he said to get rid of her. “Are you ready for your father to come get you and take you to the motel for the night?”
“Yes,” said Kelly. “It’s going to be an adventure!” She smiled up at me brightly.
Would she remember her mother at all? I had tried to give her that photograph, but it was still at home where I had tucked it away. Maybe it was better for Kelly this way, to forget the mother who was dead now. Her father was getting remarried and she would have a new mother, and she could keep smiling like that for the rest of her life.
I thought of Helena Torstensen, and Tobias. And Liam, who had tried to forget his mother’s last moment of life.
“I’m very happy for you, Kelly,” I said. “I wish the very best things for you.”
“Now up to your room,” her grandfather said, pushing her away and up the stairs.
“But I want Sister Wallheim to see our new house,” said Kelly. “Can she come with us when we go today? Or tomorrow? Please, she could bring us some food.”
“No,” said Alex Helm. “That’s not appropriate. She lives here. And you will live there.” Alex Helm looked acutely uncomfortable.
“I’m very busy this afternoon and tomorrow anyway,” I said, though the last word was thready. I didn’t want to say those words at all. I wanted Alex Helm to say no to Kelly. I wanted him to be the bad guy. But he was going to be in Kelly’s new happy life, and I wasn’t. So I did what I did for her sake, not his. Not mine.
“Oh,” said Kelly. Her lips turned downward for just a moment.
“But remember, after we see the new house, we’re going to McDonald’s,” said Alex Helm.
“McDonald’s! Yay!” said Kelly. She looked at me, and for a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to meet her there, too, and I would have to tell her no again.
“Go on and check your room one more time. Make sure that your dolls are all safe,” said Alex Helm.
Kelly trotted up the stairs obediently, and I was left alone with Alex Helm.
“They are marrying in the temple next Friday,” he said. There were no rules about waiting to be married in the temple for a certain period of time after a death, like there were with divorce. You just had to get a special temple recommend from your bishop to do living ordinances for yourself. And Kurt hadn’t told me that Jared Helm had come to him in the last week. Maybe it had been even earlier.
“If you would like to come—” Alex Helm added.
It was an olive branch, but I shook my head. It wasn’t as if Kelly would be there, and I didn’t feel that comfortable with Jared or Alex Helm in any case. “But thank you. Give him my best, if you will.”
“He’s at the office today. He’s leaving the moving to me and Ginny.”
Ginny was to be Kelly’s new mother, it seemed. I nodded.
There was a honk, and I looked over my shoulder. A woman with short dark hair had pulled into the driveway.
“There she is. Ginny,” said Alex Helm.
I had a few moments to stare at her. She seemed completely different from Carrie Helm, who had been beautiful and so very feminine. Ginny seemed more no-nonsense, capable. She was small, but sturdy. I liked her immediately, and that surprised me. I hadn’t expected Jared Helm to choose a woman like that. Except—she was different from Carrie. It made a kind of sense that he would want that.
“I told him not to pick someone who needed rescuing this time,” said Alex Helm in my ear, the intimate understanding of my thoughts uncanny enough to make me shiver. Then he moved around me and went to speak to Ginny.
She turned off the car and came in.
“This is Linda Wallheim, Jared’s bishop’s wife,” Alex Helm introduced us. But not his? He lived here now, didn’t he? But if he owned another home, that would count on church records.
Ginny held out a hand, and I shook it, impressed with her firm grip. She had an unabashed way of looking at me, straight in the eye. “Thank you for taking care of my family until I could find them,” she said. I had the feeling it wasn’t just words to her, that she meant it.
Alex stepped into the house and called for Kelly, who bounded down the steps and threw herself into Ginny’s arms.
“I’ve got your car seat already buckled in, so you can do the rest yourself,” said Ginny.
Kelly ran to the car and got inside.
Ginny turned to me. “So nice to meet you and thank you for all you’ve done.”
“I’m not sure it was much, but I am glad to meet you. Take care of Kelly for me, will you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “And Jared and Alex, too.”
Of course, Jared and Alex, too. Later that afternoon, I he
ard the moving van and let myself look out the window just once. Six men in worn clothes were packing the last of the Helms’ belongings into a huge truck. Then the house would be empty. It was time to move on.
I went home and began planning a special family dinner. Because they were my family, and that was the only reason I needed for a celebration.
CHAPTER 36
By June, a new family quickly moved in to the Helm house. They had three young children and the mother seemed very frazzled.
Later that summer, I knocked on Anna’s door for our daily walk, but she held car keys in her hand.
“It’s Helena’s birthday today,” she said. “I thought we would go visit her grave. And Tobias’s. Do you mind?”
I knew she hadn’t been to the cemetery since Tobias was buried.
We drove down to the city cemetery. Helena’s remains had finally been released to her family, and then buried beside Tobias, in the plot where Anna had always imagined she would be.
“Have you decided what to do yet?” There wasn’t a plot directly next to Tobias’s on the other side, but she could buy another plot nearby.
“The cemetery said that I could be buried on top of her. They’d be willing to rebury her further down.”
“And do you feel good about that?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “Maybe that’s another reason why I’m here today. And why I wanted you to come with me.” She leaned over and gripped my hand tightly. She had already turned off the engine and was staring at the expanse of green grass.
It was a beautiful day in Utah, one of those summer days when the sky seems endlessly blue and you can’t imagine that winter will ever come again. There is no hint of cold in the air. It is all dry, scorching heat trying to turn you into a desert stone.
Anna took a deep breath and reached for the door. I stepped out with her into the shimmering heat.
We walked in silence over to the left, where Tobias was buried. The last time we were here, there had been no headstone. Now there were two.
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER was carved under the name Helena Torstensen. I pointed at it. “Did you choose that?” I asked Anna.
“The boys and I chose it together.”
We stood over the two graves, the final date for Helena thirty-two years before Tobias’s.
“What do you think?” Anna asked. “About me being buried with her?”
“I think you’re going to live for a long time yet,” I said. “Maybe you will get remarried and you’ll decide you want to be buried with your new husband.”
“You are such a romantic,” said Anna.
“Me? I’m practical. You’re young and attractive.”
“Young?” sputtered Anna. “I’m sixty-two.”
“Which is still young,” I said. It was only a few years older than me, and she looked younger still, or at least she looked beautiful and strong, the kind of woman men should want to marry. “Besides, it’s hard to live alone when you’re used to living with someone else.”
Anna shook her head. “You know, women who are happy in marriage are a lot less likely to marry again than men who are happy in marriage,” she said. “It’s a statistic I heard somewhere.”
“And you think that’s because of what? Women don’t need men as much as men need women?” I asked.
“That would be one explanation. Or it could be that the good men are already taken by the time you’d have a second chance.”
“I can’t believe that. There have to be good men out there who have lost their wives.” The words came out before I realized what I was saying.
“Exactly,” said Anna. “And then I would have to choose again, if I wanted to be buried on his other side. If I wanted to share him. Again.”
“It might not be like that,” I said. But it was too late to take it back. She was right. At her age, she was most likely to find someone who was either widowed or divorced. She would have to deal with being second all over again.
“And besides, I believe that Tobias and I were a miracle, really. That he found me and that I found him. I’m not sure that I could expect that ever again. He needed me and I wanted to be needed like that.”
“Do you still wonder who he will be with, afterward?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Somehow it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”
We walked quietly around the cemetery for another hour. Then we got back into the car and she drove home. We went inside her house, and she got out tea. We talked about Carrie and Kelly Helm, and about Georgia. I cried in Anna’s arms, and then I went home, to figure out the rest of my life, whatever I was going to make of it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Juliet Grames for taking a chance on this book. We met serendipitously at Sirens Conference in Vail, Colorado, in October of 2010 and she asked me to send her something if I ever wrote something she could publish. Over the next few years, I sent her several things, but none of them were right for Soho. Even when I sent her The Bishop’s Wife in January of 2013, I was merely asking for her opinion, not imagining she could publish the book. After all, Soho Crime mostly specialized in international crime stories. When she offered publication on that first read, I was stunned, happy, confused, nervous, and a whole host of other emotions. I asked her how she could publish a book set in small-town Utah that was not international, she said, “It’s like Mormons are a different country. They speak a different language, and you’re the interpreter.”* I’ve never worked so easily with an editor before. I found myself anticipating her suggestions, and having fun with them. Thanks also to Briony Everroad for a final tightening of this book.
Barry Goldblatt has been my agent from the first, and by that, I mean the first book I ever published, The Monster in Me, a contemporary realistic young adult that was my first attempt to get at this world I live in. Natalie Wills’s foster family was also Mormon, but I felt constrained in my ability to talk about their Mormonism at that time. Barry has guided me through the confusing maze of the publishing world and he has made it possible for me to try out this new form of storytelling. At his yearly client retreats, he often talks about “the book of your heart.” It has taken me ten years of retreats to realize what that even meant. After I figured it out, it was actually very easy to write it. To all his other clients, and to other writers out there, this is a real thing. There are actually books that only you can write. You will do yourself and the world a service by figuring out what they are.
Thanks to my book group, which was at first officially sponsored by our ward’s Relief Society, and has now become its own independent entity. Thank you for letting me be loud when I needed to be loud, and for reading my suggestions even when I forgot all the bad words and other naughty things. Thanks for making me feel like I was welcome again, when I felt I had lost myself and my place in the world. Thanks in particular to Sylvia Pack and to Jen Koldewyn, who have been fine examples of real bishop’s wives in my life. Thanks to the non-Mormon women who have joined our group rather daringly, and shown me the rest of us from their perspective.
To my own Mormon community, I sincerely hope that this book makes you laugh in parts, cry in parts, and that you feel I have done justice to the complexity of our doctrine and our culture. As Linda says, this is my Mormonism. It may not be yours exactly, but I hope it is close enough. I hope there are many Mormon women out there who read this book and see parts of themselves in Linda. I hope that there are many non-Mormons who read this book and see how smart, thoughtful, kind, and powerful Mormon women can be, even if they seem to be following a traditionally feminine path, and even if you do not see them in the church leadership. In that way, I think Linda is actually very ordinary, and that I, a stay-at-home mother of five who finds the power of motherhood overwhelming at times, am ordinary, as well.
* Editor’s note: Juliet remembers a different version of this origin story, wherein Mette pitched the book to her by saying, “I know Utah isn’t international, but it’s like Mo
rmons are a different country.”
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