I thought about how many times in my life important conversations had happened right here, in this kitchen, while I was doing the dishes. Joseph had confessed he was about to ask Willow to marry him. To me, not to Kurt. And Adam had told me he was interested in his best friend’s girlfriend, who turned out to be Marie. I’d given him the best advice I could about how to manage the situation, which was to be honest with everyone involved. He had ended up being estranged from his best friend temporarily, but once Hank got engaged to someone else, everything was good between them again.
“I think it’s just hard for him to adjust,” I said. “He’s trying to adjust his expectations for the future.”
“But I’m the same person I was before. I just—needed to be open about this.”
“I know what you mean, I think,” I said, and debated whether to go on before adding, “Would it bother you to know something about me that I’ve kept secret for a long time?”
Samuel stared at me for a moment with wide eyes. Then he smiled. “You, Mom? A secret?”
I felt like my chest was about to burst. This is what Samuel had felt like on Sunday, I reminded myself. Breathless and unsure if he should do it, but then realizing that he had been lying for too long, even if it had seemed to be for a good reason at the time. I would have to tell all of the boys at some point, but right now it seemed fair to share this with only Samuel.
“I was married before I married your father,” I said softly.
Samuel’s head jerked up. “What?”
I nodded. “It was only for eighteen months, and it was a disaster from the first night. I left the church for a few years afterward because of it. I felt so angry that God had allowed me to be so hurt.”
“Did he hit you?” Samuel asked. His hands were tightly clenched, and so was his jaw.
I laughed gently. “No, Samuel. It wasn’t anything like that.”
Samuel relaxed. “Then what? How was it a disaster?”
I had always been more comfortable talking to Samuel about personal things than the other boys, but this was difficult even with him. “To be honest, I think Ben was gay. He never used that word, but he was never—uh—interested in me sexually, and that was devastating. At first all I could think was that there was something wrong with me, that I didn’t dress right, or that I’d said something wrong.” I was rushing through the words, and tried to force myself to slow down. “It took me most of those eighteen months to realize it wasn’t me, it was him.”
“Ben? That’s his name? Do you still keep in touch with him?” asked Samuel.
I didn’t mention the Facebook search or the brief message Ben had sent. That was not keeping touch. “Not really.”
“Maybe he wasn’t gay,” Samuel said. “Maybe he was asexual. I’ve been studying up on different kinds of sexualities, and apparently that’s real. People who just aren’t interested in a physical relationship. Ever.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” I said, and considered the idea now.
I remembered the day I’d tried to catch Ben’s interest by wearing a sexy swimsuit, but instead I had only caught the change in his expression when he looked at another man at the pool. The heat in Ben’s eyes—he must have been gay.
“I guess we should ultimately let people define themselves, but my best guess was that he was gay,” I said.
“And you actually left the church because of how your marriage ended? That seems pretty extreme,” said Samuel. He was looking down at his hands on the counter now.
It felt like admitting to failure, even still. “I really felt like I had been guided to marry Ben. And when I divorced Ben, it was like I was divorcing God, too.”
“Do you think that you did the wrong thing and now God is making you go through it all over again? With me?” asked Samuel, moving to stand up.
“No!” I pulled him back to his seat, and held his face in my hands so he could see the truth in my eyes. I hadn’t meant anything like that.
“You think this guy being gay almost destroyed your spiritual life,” Samuel said. “So what does that say about me?”
I took a moment to think this time before I opened my big mouth. “It says that you aren’t Ben Tookey. And the church isn’t telling you to get married no matter how you feel. It says that you being open about who you are is brave and right.”
“So if I tried to find a woman who would marry me anyway, you’d tell me it was the wrong thing?” Samuel dug his hands into the soft skin around his neck, until I pulled them away.
Why was he even considering that? Was this what he thought Kurt would want him to do? “Yes, I would say I thought it was the wrong thing. But I would also try to listen to you and let you make your own choices. So long as you were honest about who you are, and so long as I believed that she was a good person, I’d ultimately have to trust you to be guided by the spirit in your own way.”
Samuel shook his head. “That’s not my plan at the moment.”
My chest expanded in relief. “Okay,” I said.
“Right now, I’m not sure I have much of a life plan. Except going to the U and studying biology.”
I glanced again at the door to Kurt’s office.
What more of a future could Samuel look forward to, in Mormonism? What did it mean, really, if God made some people gay in a world where we were all supposed to be getting married and having eternal families? If you could only get to the highest order of heaven through marriage, and marriage was only heterosexual, that only left the idea that gay people would somehow be made heterosexual in the next life. I was sure that we all had parts of us we didn’t realize were wrong and needed to be fixed, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Samuel that this part of him was fundamentally a barrier to getting to heaven and living with God again. Or that God had made him this way on purpose, knowing that he would forever be disallowed from having a family and children, which were the sweetest blessings of life to heterosexual couples, and the way that we understood God’s divine love for us most clearly.
“I love you, Samuel,” I said, because the rest was too big for words.
Then we left the dishes and went out for ice cream for our own private Family Home Evening. For the time being, we didn’t talk any further about Samuel coming out, and it felt right.
When I came back, the dishes were done but Kurt was still in his office. I went to bed alone.
Chapter 15
The home phone rang at 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. I nudged Kurt to get it, and he heaved himself up to stumble across the room for the portable home line.
I heard Kurt say “Hello?” as he reached the door of the bedroom. He normally took bishop calls down in his office for privacy, and he was probably headed there, but he stopped. “Oh. Yes, she’s here,” he said. And he came to stand by my side of the bed. “It’s for you, Linda.”
For me? My heart thumped hard in my chest, like a fist punching me awake. I sat up, sure that this had to be bad news.
“It’s Alice Ashby,” Kurt added.
Alice Ashby? Why would she want me instead of the bishop? I sat up and took the phone. “Hello?” I said.
“William is gone,” said Alice’s trembling voice. She sounded like she was five years old, her tone was so high-pitched.
“Gone where?” I said.
“I don’t know where he went. He was upset last night and Mom thought she’d calmed him down. But I was worried about him and I kept waking up to check on him. The first two times, he was in his room. But now he’s not.”
“Does he have a cell phone?” I asked.
“Yes, but he didn’t take it.”
“Maybe he just went for a walk to clear his head,” I suggested.
“It’s been an hour, and he didn’t take his diabetes kit,” said Alice.
I hadn’t known he had diabetes. “Does the bag have his insulin, too?” I asked. That wa
s all I knew about diabetes.
“Yes, it has insulin, but that’s for when his blood sugar is high. High blood sugar isn’t likely to kill him and he has a pump that mostly takes care of that,” said Alice. “The bag is more in case he goes low and needs glucose to avoid a diabetic coma.”
I wondered how likely it was that he would go low if he had a pump and had been treating his diabetes properly. “Diabetic coma” sounded pretty serious. “Right.” I yawned. “Sorry. I’m just having trouble waking up. I’ll be right over.”
“Okay, but be quiet. I don’t want to wake up my mom.”
Of course she didn’t. She could have called her home teacher, her Young Women’s leaders, any of her church friends. But she had called me instead. “I’ll be over in ten minutes. Wait at the door and let me in so I don’t have to ring the bell.” I hung up.
“Do you want me to deal with it?” Kurt asked.
I shook my head, wondering if this was really a crisis or not.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“William is missing without his diabetes kit and Alice is freaked out about it,” I said succinctly.
“Ah,” said Kurt. “Carl would have been furious. He had very strict rules for those kids.”
“Stricter than your rules?” I asked. I’d always thought Kurt was hard on our sons. Fair, but he accepted no half measures.
“My rules? Compared to my father, I’m a pushover,” said Kurt.
He was right about that, I was sure, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t been strict for our generation.
Wondering if Kurt would go back to bed, I threw on some yoga pants. From our bedroom window, I could see lights on all over the valley.
I could have taken a car, but I was afraid that the engine would wake up Emma, so I walked over.
As I headed up the front steps, the door opened, and I saw Alice’s face peek out.
Instead of sitting on the couch in the front room, I led her back into the kitchen, and then downstairs into the family room. I’d had time to think on the way over. “What aren’t you telling me about William?” I asked in a hushed tone.
Alice folded her arms across her chest in a typical teenage defensive gesture. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you were going to help me find him.”
“Why would you keep checking on William all night? Why would you call me as soon as he was gone? What are you so nervous about?” Not waking her mother wasn’t just about protecting her from further worry, either.
“I told you, I was worried about him.” Alice shrugged. “Since Dad died, he’s been really weird.” She shrugged again.
I thought of the way William had acted with the police, and my inkling that they might suspect him in his father’s murder. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Alice studied me for a long moment. She should have called someone else if she didn’t want questions. Finally, she said, “He’s been talking about stuff lately.”
“What kind of stuff?” I sat down on the couch, but she remained standing, agitated.
“He’s been mad. And he wants to do something about it.”
“Mad?” I said, and waited.
She let out a long breath. “He thinks he knows who killed Dad,” she said.
Now we were getting somewhere. “Who does he think did it?” Although it proved nothing conclusively, it was a relief to me to realize that Alice, at least, did not believe her brother had killed their father.
She hesitated, then said, “Brother Rhodes.”
I was baffled. “Why?” Emma had mentioned an argument between Carl and Grant, but Grant Rhodes seemed so unlikely to ever become violent.
“They had been having arguments about church stuff,” said Alice.
“And William thinks that was a reason to kill? I don’t think you should worry about that.”
“William has Brother Rhodes’s keys from mowing his lawn,” Alice added breathlessly. “He said he was going to use them to get inside and deal with him.”
No one had mentioned William doing lawn mowing for Grant Rhodes. But this meant that William couldn’t have murdered his father if he believed someone else had. I tried to remember where exactly Brother Rhodes lived. It wasn’t within our ward boundaries, but it was fairly close by. “I’ll go see if I can find him over there,” I said. “You stay here in case your mother wakes up.”
Alice nodded, and I realized she had the same habit as her mother of chewing on her lower lip. She might not be biologically related to Emma, but she still looked like her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
I walked out of the house wondering if I should call the police instead of going over to investigate myself. But if William was there, doing what Alice thought he was doing, he could end up with a criminal record. I was annoyed with the boy for being reckless, especially when I had a hunch the police suspected him in his father’s murder, but I didn’t think he deserved permanent damage to his life plans.
I checked the stake directory for the exact address of Grant Rhodes’s house. It was about a mile from the Ashbys’ and I wished now that I had taken the car, but it would take longer to walk back home and get it. I also knew that if I went home, Kurt would likely insist on going with me, and I didn’t want him involved as bishop.
The fifteen-minute walk took me through utterly silent streets, past dark houses and not a single moving vehicle. I let my thoughts circle around Grant Rhodes. He wasn’t married, and I couldn’t remember if he ever had been in the past. But why would a single man buy a house in a family neighborhood like this one? There had been a rumor a year or so ago that he was gay, but Kurt refused to call him in for an interview on that topic based on rumors.
When I got to the right house at last, I saw that the lights were on in the garage, and I feared I had gotten there too late. Had Grant Rhodes already found William there?
Then, as I watched, the garage door opened and a car lurched out, one I had never seen in the church parking lot. It was a classic show car that had been meticulously restored. It was painted cherry red and looked like a gangster car from the movies. William’s head was visible over the steering wheel.
“William, stop!” I shouted. I leapt into the road in front of him and waved my hands. It was a stupid thing to do, on many levels.
William pulled sharply to the side to avoid me. The car made a terrible screeching sound and I turned in time to see it jump the curb on the other side of the road, then crash into the brick mailbox, leaving a nasty scar on the beautiful red paint job.
“William!” I shouted again.
I stumbled toward the car, feeling distinctly nauseous with guilt. I’d been trying to save him from doing something stupid, and instead I had caused him to crash. At his age, he shouldn’t have been driving any car, let alone one that expensive. Had he crashed on purpose or by accident?
Lights had started to go on all over the cul-de-sac. There was movement in the car. Did that mean William was okay?
The driver’s side door of the car opened and I rushed forward to help William out. He looked pale and sweaty, and his eyes shimmied around, unfocused, but he was cursing under his breath. Air bags weren’t standard when this car had been built, and William had a bad cut on his head. I pulled him toward the curb and he leaned against me as he breathed heavily. A part of me worried that the car was going to blow up. I had no idea where the gas tank was or if it had been punctured. I also remembered that William had diabetes and Alice had been worried he might go into a coma. Would I be able to tell if that was what had happened? Did I have anything sugary in my purse to put under his tongue and bring his blood sugar back up? Was that even the right thing to do?
“What were you doing in that car?” I asked, staring into William’s eyes. Was one pupil larger than the other?
“Had to—make him—pay,” William got ou
t.
Grant Rhodes, presumably. “By stealing his car?”
“Wrecking it,” said William, thumping his hand on the ground.
Well, he had succeeded at that. I let go of him and scrambled to my feet. What lesson was he going to take from this? That reckless behavior paid off?
Grant Rhodes came out of his house then, dressed in a robe and a T-shirt that had a photograph of Buffy the Vampire Slayer printed on it. “Oh my God!” he shouted, and ran toward the car. He put a hand out and touched it. Then he glanced up at William and me. “What in the name of Jesus Christ happened here?” he asked. I had never heard him swear like this before.
“It was an accident,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t.
Grant Rhodes had pulled his phone out and was dialing.
“We need an ambulance more than we need the police,” I said.
Grant Rhodes’s mouth was tight with an expression that was severely at odds with the goofy T-shirt he wore. “This car is insured. Even an accident has to be reported to the police for me to collect,” he said.
“But after we deal with more important things,” I said. “Like getting William to a hospital.” I waited a moment, but Grant didn’t contradict me. So I got out my own phone and called an ambulance. Grant Rhodes and I sat with William until it came.
I called Kurt and explained the situation as briefly as possible. Kurt promised he would drive over to break the news to Emma Ashby so she could meet William at the hospital.
When the paramedics came, I weighed my options and decided to let William go to the hospital alone. His family would meet him there, after all, and I wanted to see what Grant Rhodes would do next. As soon as the ambulance was out of sight, he called the police.
“There’s been an incident,” he said, watching me watch him. “My car has been damaged and I need an official police report.”
I was relieved he hadn’t mentioned William’s name. At least, he hadn’t yet. Maybe Grant Rhodes would be inspired to be merciful to this angry, suffering kid. I prayed for that and tried to feel peace that I had done as much as I could.
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