Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  I sigh. I like Brewer, I do. I wish I could help her.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I just… I want to atone for my sins.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Rachel, First Wife

  It didn’t take Tina too long to convince me to go to Vegas. Because the truth is, when I considered the alternative—going back to the ranch—I felt the walls of my world were falling away. So we got more or less straight on the road, in Blake’s old Chevy. Didn’t even stop for clothes. Kind of reminded me of when I ran away from the Homestead that second time. The time I actually made it.

  Our car holds the acrid scent of nail polish, and I glance across to see Tina’s fingertips on the steering wheel are fresh-painted. She must have reapplied while I was in the bathroom in the diner.

  Tina drives us west, past the mighty crater of the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine. I lean out the window to look. From what I’ve heard, a lot of boys from the Homestead wound up working here. Even from this distance, the thing is jaw-dropping. It’s got to be at least two miles across, with concentric circles going deeper and deeper into the earth, like an amphitheater for giants. I always pictured the mine as orange, but it’s beige, with a white crust, like salt.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Tina looks across, catching the direction of my gaze. “Guess all those mountains hold a lotta copper. From what I’ve heard, you can see it from outer space.” She blows hair from her face. “Is it any wonder men start thinkin’ they’re gods,” she adds, more to herself than me, “when they got tools to dig out the side of the world.”

  I can tell she’s thinking of Blake.

  We rumble along the interstate, and I think how beautiful it all is out here and how I never really got to see it. I was so concerned with making the perfect home. The amber and yellow sand stretches out for miles, dotted with balls of green grass. Mountains of layered red and pink rock fork up in different shapes—jagged peaks and flat summits. It’s such a long drive it gives me time to think.

  Images are drifting in and out of my brain.

  Blake is on the white bed. The women are arranged at the foot, wearing loose white robes.

  “You have to be comfortable being undressed,” he tells them. “Your nakedness is no sin in this room.”

  The women pull off their robes. Only now I can see at least half of them aren’t really women. Two are barely of age, high-breasted with sparse tufts of pubic hair. Blake lounges, watching, a hand on his crotch.

  “God wants you to be sexually excited,” he tells the girls. “Help each other. Go on.” He nods. The girls start touching one another, stroking, fondling. A few look resigned. Others confused.

  “I’ll tell you,” says Blake, “you ladies are lucky you don’t know what faithless men are like.”

  “We’re grateful we don’t,” murmurs a brunette girl obediently, glancing at the others.

  Blake beckons the dark-haired girl. Now I can see her face, the sea-green eyes. It’s Melissa.

  “Come over here,” he says. “You can show the others how to give me comfort.”

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Tina glances across, interrupting my thoughts. “I used to make this drive in the early days of courtin’ Blake. Nothing but me, a flat ribbon of road, and rolling pink-red desert. I’d feel this joy, you know? I remember thinking this landscape couldn’t be an accident. Something this beautiful couldn’t just be some random event. Maybe that was even what convinced me to convert to the faith in the end,” she considers.

  I smile at her. I’ve never seen this side to Tina before, the breeze flapping her dark hair as the road zooms under us. She looks as though she’s flying.

  We’re about halfway to Vegas when Tina makes a sudden dramatic stop.

  “Just thought a’ somethin’,” she says. “Wait here.”

  I sit in the car watching her go. Then I lean across and check Blake’s gun is still where he left it, under the driver’s seat. Glancing to make sure Tina’s out of sight, I scoop it out and toss it under the seat in the back. Then I remember, Blake has a hunting rifle someplace in the trunk too.

  The door pops open. Tina swings into the car and drops something into my lap. It’s a phone.

  “Hey,” she says. “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing. I thought you said we couldn’t use phones,” I say, changing the subject. “The police will track us.”

  “It’s a burner phone,” says Tina. “A phone that can’t be traced,” she explains, seeing my blank expression. “We can use them to talk to each other. Little somethin’ I learned in my hustlin’ days,” she adds, flipping a strand of black hair off her face. “Not as dumb as I look, huh?”

  She rolls her eyes, flips more black hair from her face.

  “I never thought you were dumb.”

  She tosses me a look. “Yeah, right.”

  “Look…” She glances across at me from the passenger seat. “I’m gonna be straight with you. I used to be a real bad person. Full-on mean. I kinda had to learn it to get by, you know? Sorta blank out my emotions. I learned not to care. Not about myself, but about anyone. I’d lie, I’d steal, just for my next fix. I even…I even rolled over some of my friends.”

  “No one’s perfect,” I tell her. “Jesus will forgive you, but first you’ve got to just forgive yourself.”

  Tina glances at me, then looks back to the road. “You know that is the Mormoniest thing you have ever said to me?” She takes a hand off the wheel and scratches the side of her nose with a pink fingernail. “I’m just sayin’, we’re headin’ back to where I grew up, and you might see an ugly side to me. You wouldn’t have liked me back when I worked the strip.”

  “I don’t like you now.”

  To my surprise, Tina throws her head back and laughs, revealing a little group of cheap metal dental fillings. “I been waitin’ over a year to hear you own up to that,” she says. “Least you’re being honest, finally.”

  She taps her bright fingernails on the wheel, puts her foot on the accelerator.

  “Okay, let’s go over the plan,” she decides as we speed away.

  “You have a plan? What is it? We drive on over there and knock on the door?”

  “Don’t be such a wise-ass. Look, if we’re gonna get along, you need to cut that shit out, right? I mean it. Quit with the snarky comments.”

  “Well then. You need to stop being so…so blunt about everything.”

  I’m not sure where this frankness has come from. I guess it has something to do with the coffee.

  “Alright,” Tina says. “Truce. We’ll pretend we like each other. And as it happens, you’re right about the plan. We go knock on the door. More or less.”

  A prickling feeling lifts the hairs on the back of my neck. I’m wondering just how deep Blake got into Homestead affairs and how the heck I’m going to hide it from Tina.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  Last night I kinda regretted giving Rachel the coffee. On the road, she had gotten this glittery-eyed look, which was a little scary. Plus, when we pulled over around midnight to get some sleep, she talked nonstop about our relationship for a full hour and took no hints I was trying to get some rest.

  It’s early morning now, still dark, and she’s passed out in the passenger seat, doing this heavy breathing thing like her body wants to snore but her mind won’t let it.

  I figure we’re maybe an hour from Vegas. The landscape changed a while back. The pretty rainbow of Utah’s mauve-striped mountains and honey-colored sand hardened up, getting redder. Meaner. The parched grass got more attitude, stickin’ up all punky in little pale tufts.

  I’m pretty sure even the air is different. Utah is placid, like it’s chewin’ its cud. Nevada air has a little zip to it.

  I glance at Rachel. Maybe the land makes the people and not the other way around.


  I turn on the engine and pull out, trying not to wake her, but she comes to, blinking her eyes groggily.

  “We’ll be in Vegas by sunup,” I tell her, watching the road fly past as we pick up speed.

  “H’okay,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Great.”

  For a long time, we drive in silence. It’s nice. Like we’re actual buddies. Feels strange to be making this journey again with Rachel. Like my life in reverse.

  In the distance, the sun is peeking above the horizon.

  It’s getting light when Rachel speaks.

  “If this Dakota person is in real estate, then wouldn’t you know her?” she asks in this real unconvincingly casual voice.

  “No,” I snap. “I mean, why would I?” I look across, tryin’ to figure why this is the first thing she’s said.

  “Just a thought.” She’s backtracking. “It’s a small world, right, real estate?”

  “No,” I tell her. “Real estate is a very big world. Lotta people buy property. Even our husband.” I smile at my own joke. “Look, this isn’t gonna work if you don’t trust me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “It isn’t personal. I know it’s a…problem. My upbringing, I guess. It was drilled into us. Only blood family counts. Blake didn’t like it either. I’m nervous is all. I’ve never been to Vegas before.”

  I’m shocked into silence. Rachel has just voluntarily owned up to a vulnerability.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll take good care of you. This doesn’t mean we’re friends though.”

  “Okay. There is one last thing,” says Rachel as Vegas glitters on the half-lit horizon.

  “Right!” I smack my forehead. “We need to get you some new clothes. You can’t walk around Vegas like you wandered in from Hicksville. Don’t worry. There’s a mall on the outside of town. We can make a stop.”

  “I wasn’t referring to that,” she says, frowning. “I meant, what if you’re wrong? What if Dakota is a regular Realtor?”

  “With a prairie dress and claw hair? Are you kiddin’ me?” I look over at Rachel. “You gotta do something with your hair too. So it doesn’t look so Mormony.”

  “It doesn’t look Mormony.” She sounds like she’s insulted without knowing why.

  I shake my head. “Jeez Louise, Rachel. You never noticed that women in Utah have a particular look? We’re incognito, remember? Absolutely no one in Vegas has long, mousy hair with home-done highlights, braided down their back. Nothing says Utah out-of-towner more than that getup. Trust me.”

  “I have my hair up for the road,” she says, touching it lightly with her palms. “I’ll shake it out in a more regular style.”

  “Rachel, I hate to tell you this, but your hairstyle is regular for an eight-year-old girl. No offense,” I add.

  “It’s okay.”

  We’re hitting the first few blocks of Vegas now, and I figure Rachel must realize my point. Since this is party town, there are a mess of dressed-up people eating breakfast burritos and downing Bloody Marys in roadside places. Every girl has bleached or dyed hair, blow-dried straight or framing the face with curls.

  “I’ll do your makeup, too, if you like. And we’ll get you somethin’ nice to wear,” I tell Rachel. “A big butt doesn’t have to write you outta good clothes. Look at Beyoncé.”

  “You know, this is what I mean about blunt.”

  “This is good. We’re communicating.”

  On the road ahead, I see the downtown gas station I remember from my Vegas days. “Give me a minute,” I say, swinging the car into the lot and turning off the engine. “I’m gonna fill up.”

  “Didn’t we do that already?”

  “Better to be prepared. And I’m maybe a little nostalgic,” I confess.

  Rachel just nods. It’s good she has so much on her mind. Because she barely even looks up as I go into the gas station. So she doesn’t see me buy a box of bullets for the gun in our car and slide them into my purse.

  Chapter Sixty

  Emily, Sister-Wife

  When I was in high school, there was a boy I liked named Peter Brown. He sat near me in class and did all these doodles of old-style cartoons on his notebook. I used to pray every night that he would notice me, but he never did.

  And you know what? Right after I got engaged to Blake, I ran into Peter downtown, and he asked me out on a date. Said something about how different I looked.

  I have the same kind of feeling now. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, after all those years of pretending I didn’t exist, have come to visit. Detective Carlson says they want to pay my bail, but only under certain conditions.

  “My momma’s gonna come down and post bail,” I told Carlson. “She’ll be here real soon, you’ll see.”

  I could tell he felt a little sorry for me then.

  The Nelsons are waiting, looking real uncomfortable.

  Mr. Nelson wears a suit, which strikes me a strange choice, given the occasion. But I guess he doesn’t have a lot of clothes, besides the overalls and cotton shirts he wears to the store. Mrs. Nelson is in a perfectly ironed checked dress and matching shoes, with her hair sprayed up in its usual poufy style. I never could get my hair that high, on account of it being natural blond and very limp. I used to pray for mousy hair that could be bleached and teased up.

  But Mrs. Nelson’s hair doesn’t look so perfect today. There are tufts where the hair is breaking away in clumps. Like she’s stopped being so careful with how she applies the bleach. She’s not wearing her usual perfume either.

  They are both very serious, and I feel sorry for them. Mrs. Nelson looks broken with sadness. She won’t look in my direction at all, like she’s frightened if she does, she’ll lash out or something, start screaming at me. Her eyes are fixed hard on the table. Mr. Nelson clears his throat.

  “We’ve come to talk to you,” he begins. “We want to post your bail. It’s a large amount of money. A very large amount of money. I can get it, but it won’t be easy.”

  “You want to pay me off so I don’t say bad things about Blake in court?”

  Adelaide jerks in her chair. Ha. Guess they don’t think I’m too smart. Mr. Nelson sucks his cheeks, making a saggy spot where he’s missing teeth on one side. According to Blake, Mr. Nelson lived with tooth pain for two years straight, despite having dental insurance, because it cost thirty dollars in gas to make a round trip to the nearest clinic.

  Mr. Nelson clears his throat.

  “We know you and Blake were having problems of a sexual kind,” he says, looking directly at me. “And that Bishop Young gave you some…advice. Lawyers twist things like that. Make things sound perverted.”

  I have an image of them both, straight-backed in court while their family reputation is dragged through the dirt. For some reason, it brings a little smile to my face.

  “The truth is,” says Mr. Nelson. “Blake never did care to listen to our opinions.” His face sorta twitches. “Married Rachel without even consulting with us.”

  My eyes open wide. I didn’t know that.

  “Then went headlong into this…this adultery justified by scripture.” Mr. Nelson has this strange way of not quite looking at you when he talks. “Brought shame on the family who raised him. Never worked a hard day in his life.” He shakes his head. “After everything his mother did for him, and it was never enough.”

  Mrs. Nelson puts a hand on her husband’s arm. He looks at it as though he’s puzzled. She drags her eyes to mine, but it looks like it takes some effort.

  “Bishop Young told us,” she says, her features twisted in hurt. “He said you might see yourself as…as kind of a victim.”

  I don’t know how to answer that, so I just stare at her. She looks away again then, as though she might lose control.

  “We tried to explain to our son that polygamy is wrong,” says Mrs. Nelson, looking back at the table. She wipes aw
ay tears, but real careful with the bottom of her finger, so as not to smudge her makeup. “He wouldn’t listen. It felt like…we’d lost him. Now we’re losing him all over again.”

  She breaks down into this weird singsong sobbing and gives up on the makeup dabbing. It’s kinda shocking to see her this way, since Mrs. Nelson is always so in control of herself and well turned out. It’s like seeing Spider-Man with a beer in his hand or something. I expect Mr. Nelson to put his arm around her or comfort her or try make her feel better. But he pats her on the shoulder in this real awkward way, like she’s a dog. Mrs. Nelson sorta flinches away.

  I look at them both, trying to imagine how they ever had five children together.

  “You’re not gonna drag his name through the dirt, are you?” whispers Mrs. Nelson, managing to raise her eyes to my face. “We’ve worked so hard…for his brothers and sisters.” Her face is white. “I raised them all to respect God and family.”

  “The devil,” says Mr. Nelson suddenly. “The devil tempted him away. That Rachel or Rayne or whatever the heck she calls herself.”

  His lips press completely flat.

  “She convinced him to buy the old Homestead plot on the state limits. Three thousand acres! Who in the name of Sam Hill needs that amount of land? Blake wanted me to loan him the down payment too. As if it wasn’t enough I acted as guarantor for that ranch of yours.”

  Mr. Nelson catches my expression.

  “Oh, he didn’t mention that? No, I don’t expect he would. Blake always like to play the big man, taking care of business, but the truth was, none of the banks would give him credit. Last I heard, Blake was cooking up some kind of half-baked deal to buy that land with an out-of-town firm. I-talians. Mobsters.”

  He’s forgotten I’m of Italian heritage. Mrs. Nelson glares at him, and he stops talking.

  “We want you to know, we are trying to forgive you.” Her voice gets all throaty. “We want to believe you’re trying to do right. After…after everything.”