by Moriah Jovan
“What could they possibly have?”
“For starters, pictures.”
I stared at him, confused. “Pictures of what?”
“You and me. In New York. While we were dating. Dancing at Cubax. Us on your porch, walking together. Kissing. Having dinner, the wine bucket next to the table. Feeding you that cordial cherry at Jacques Torres. Me kissing you in the emergency room, with my hand up your blouse. We— You and I look very...involved. Like lovers. It’s very easy to infer what must have happened behind closed doors.”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, but that wasn’t going to ward off the migraine I had coming on. “And of course Greg has informed them I was a prostitute.”
“Yes. They’ll want to know if I married you out of guilt for having sex with you. Better yet—paying you for sex.”
“I don’t buy that. Even if every minute we spent together was photographed, none of it’s incriminating.”
He sat silent for a long time and I felt dread curdle in the pit of my belly.
“Mitch,” I growled.
He sighed. “I think...Sally may have confessed...to having an affair with me.”
My mouth dropped open. Closed. Opened again, but what could I say? My Mitch? My brilliant and powerful lover—with such a needy woman?
Inconceivable.
“And...Greg was going to force Hayleigh to write a similar confession. You know once that got out, I would’ve been arrested and charged. If you hadn’t gotten her out when you did...”
My stomach turned over.
“Okay,” I said briskly, determined to find a way to salvage this. “So it’s Sally’s word against yours.”
He shrugged wearily. “That’s all it’ll take. Greg’s managed to gaslight seventy percent of the ward, seems like.”
That sounded about right. “Rivington did that to Gordon from the time he was born. His mother, too. I’ve never met a more broken woman than my mother-in-law, who, by the way, lives in a posh mental hospital in Connecticut and gets visited by her granddaughters on a regular basis.” I paused. “You know, keeping Rivington around would’ve been more fun, so I could flaunt my success, rub his nose in his destitution. Find little ways to torture him. But Gordon was on the verge of insanity when he went to prison. I couldn’t risk Gordon’s relapse if Rivington were in close proximity to him once he got out.”
Mitch laughed bitterly. “And all I had to do was actually listen to what Mina and Louise were trying to tell me, and then do something about it.”
“Oh, you can’t explain gaslighting to someone who hasn’t lived through it and come out on the other side with a thorough understanding of how it works. Mina had had a taste of it. It’s why she married you, right? Louise had to clean up the messes he left behind.”
We fell into silence, and together watched the clock tick toward seven.
“You think they’re really going to excommunicate you, don’t you?” I murmured after a while.
This time he paused. Too long. “No,” he murmured. Then he burst out, “This is so out of my realm of experience. I—” He waved a hand. “I’m trying to have faith that the Lord wouldn’t let this happen when he knows the truth of it, but...”
“But you said Greg’s part of the tribunal.”
“Yes.”
“He’s already cemented the relationships. Being present—he’ll take over. Wrap you up and tie you in a bow.”
Mitch said nothing.
Then something occurred to me. “Why didn’t you just ask to be released from the bishopric when all this began?”
He sat still for a second or two. “I did,” he murmured. “Twice. I was refused.”
“Oh, now that makes no sense. If Sitkaris is so beloved, and he’s such good buddies with everybody, there is no reason for this to have gone this far. All they had to do was release you and install him. Everybody’s happy.”
“The Lord calls bishops. The stake president prays about it and is told who to call. Petersen said he had been...instructed...not to release me.”
I barely kept myself from snorting, but this was my husband and I respected him, so I would attempt to keep my cynicism to myself. “By that reasoning then, the Lord knows he’s a rat bastard.”
“Yes.”
Or not. “Thus, the Lord,” I sneered, “is letting this happen to you.” I regretted it as soon as it came out of my mouth, ridiculing his beliefs exactly as he’d feared I’d do. Mitch’s eyes closed and he let his chin drop to his chest as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it up anymore.
Then I knew: He had already come to that conclusion and felt abandoned.
I’d experienced abandonment and I hurt for my husband in ways I didn’t remember hurting for myself. And I’d added to it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I won all the battles,” he muttered as if he hadn’t heard me or didn’t care. “And I lost the war.”
I cleared my throat and asked with some hesitation, “Couldn’t they have just asked you if we had sex? If you were involved with Sally?”
“Petersen did that,” he grumbled. “With the presumption that I was guilty. It didn’t matter what I said.”
“So you didn’t deny it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, why the hell not?”
“I never explain anything,” he snapped and got out of the car, then walked around the front of it to open my door for me. He offered his hand, as usual, ever the gentleman. “I don’t have to.” I stared up at him, the King of Steel, who, tomorrow morning, would still be one of the most powerful men in the country, but would not be a bishop of a Mormon ward or even, as a matter of fact, a member of the Mormon church.
And his heart was breaking.
I reached up slowly, laid my hands on his cheeks and brought his face close to mine. I looked into that handsome, troubled face—
“I love you, Mitch.”
His eyes widened and his nostrils flared. His mouth touched mine and I melted into him. We kissed for many moments. His hand cupped my ass and pulled me in tight to his body—even in the church parking lot, even as he prepared for his pillorying.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I whispered against his mouth when the kiss softened.
“No,” he whispered back. “I need to do this myself.”
“I’ll wait.”
“It could be hours.”
“I’ll wait.”
He took a long breath and dropped his forehead to mine. “Thank you, Cassandra,” he whispered. “No matter what happens, it’s worth it just for that.”
I wrapped my arms around him, pulled his face into the curve of my neck, felt his ragged breathing.
“Go now.”
He released me slowly, then turned to cross the parking lot, one hand in his pocket and his coat gathered over his hand.
Swaggering.
I loved that ass.
That man.
I took a seat on the hood of the car and shoved my hands in my blazer pockets, only to start picking the lint out of it. A microscopic piece of paper came out and I looked at it. Blinked. Threw it on the ground and scrambled to open the car to find my purse, then dug in it to find the list of names Prissy had given me.
I reread the list more carefully than I had when I’d begun the task she’d set me, then pulled out my phone. “Nigel,” I said as soon as he answered. “Do you remember all that actuarial bullshit I sent you from Vorcester & Minden? That insurance company in Alabama? I need you to do something for me, and I need it fast.”
* * * * *
The Hour is Come
I started awake at midnight when Mitch opened the passenger door and dropped into the seat, his mouth tight. I watched him and waited, tense, for whatever news he had.
“I have to come back at noon,” he rasped, rubbing his eyes and dropping his elbow against the door ledge.
That was unexpected. “Why?”
“Two General Authorities are coming out from Salt Lake. Retir
ed lawyers.” He snorted. “Trial lawyers.”
To put him on the witness stand.
“They have to know this is wrong,” I said tightly as I started the car and headed toward home.
“No, they don’t. They have a pile of incriminating pictures and three false witnesses with no reason to distrust them. If I were looking at the kind of evidence they have, having Greg in my ear, I’d believe it, too.”
“Three? I thought it was just Sally.”
“Sally,” he muttered. “Some woman I don’t even know. And...Inez.”
My heart stopped. “Inez?” I whispered.
“Who...confessed...that she seduced me way back when she and I were dance partners, that she and I had a short fling after I came back from my mission. You know, before I married Mina. In the temple. After having lied about my virtue, or lack of it, to get in. And never having confessed or repented in the twenty-five years since, so I’ve been living a few lies all this time.”
“But—” My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.
“She’s here. She showed up about a month ago. She’s aged. Badly. I didn’t recognize her and she’s using an alias.”
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “That Sister Schoonover.”
“Yes.”
“Prissy said she looked familiar.”
Mitch nodded. “Prissy was part of my age group growing up. Everybody knew I had a thing for Inez. Everybody knew Sally had a thing for me. There are lots of people who can corroborate that Inez and I spent a lot of time kissing, making out. It’s not a stretch to believe it.”
“But...” None of it made sense. “What would she gain by doing that?”
“Thirty thousand dollars. From Greg. To feed her drug habit. And she asked me to double it.”
I sighed.
“The pictures of you and me just corroborate everything that’s been confessed.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Sebastian would be very proud of what I am said to have done with these women.”
My stomach seemed to twist and turn in on itself, but I kept my voice calm. “Yet they didn’t send you packing.”
“They have no way to come out of this unscathed. On one hand, they need to uphold the integrity of the Church. If I’m guilty, keeping me around would be wrong by any organization’s standard. But I have money, power, and connections. Those connections include a lot of people whose power and money equal the Church’s resources. Sebastian and Knox both have axes to grind. I could do some real damage to the Church if I wanted to, whether I’m guilty or not. What they don’t know is if I’m prepared to do it.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? As in, you didn’t speak? At all?”
“No.” He gestured in pure frustration. “What am I supposed to say, Cassandra? They have explicit written statements from three women and a mountain of pictures— Private moments between you and me, ones I cherish, are on display like a pictorial. We’re dancing, snuggling, skating, whatever, fully clothed, in public—some of the best moments of my life— They reduced us to a disease-ridden junkie having a back-alley quickie with a crack whore. And...I’m supposed to justify it to a room full of men who don’t know a coup d’état when they see one? Sit there like a five-year-old and say, ‘Nuh-uh, did not’? You can’t prove a negative and I’m not even going to try.”
I was so angry I wanted to drive his Bugatti right into a pilon just to hear metal crumple and glass shatter. If I’d been at home, I would’ve thrown dishes.
“And so...you just sat there and waited for the Lord to come reveal the truth to all these men of God who don’t know a coup d’état when they see one.”
He sighed, but I had lost all patience in this Lord of his.
We arrived home in silence and prepared for bed. I lay on my side, nude, to watch him undress then pause when he came to his garments. He took them off reluctantly, as if parting from a good friend. He threw the top and the bottoms on the bed and stared at them, his jaw clenching.
He’d finally explained, in those hours between the delivery of his summons and his hearing. He’d given me details Giselle hadn’t wanted to confuse me with, but now I had the whole thing from him, and what they represented to him: His virtue, the sacrifice of his family in the name of the Lord to tend to four hundred people who didn’t seem to know he existed until they needed him, the belief that he would have his family in eternity.
Especially Mina, the love of his youth and the mother of his children, whom he believed he would be with forever.
I hated that.
I was jealous of her, I realized, and had been since my lunch with Giselle.
I hated Mina for having first dibs on him and it didn’t matter that I didn’t believe a word of that bullshit; it only mattered that he believed.
He loved me in ways he had never loved his first wife.
But...a part of me was empathetic: I now knew how Mina had felt about Inez.
“Mitch?”
He looked up at me and I ached at the pain in his face.
“This,” I said, feeling my voice kink up in my throat. I waved a finger between us. “You and me. How does this work for us in the— Well, the afterlife?”
Mitch’s eyes focused fully on me then and he studied me, my body, lingering on my breasts and between my legs. He licked his bottom lip.
“Are you making some sort of commitment beyond the year I asked you for?” he asked, once he’d focused on my face again.
“Maybe. I’d like to know the terms and conditions first.”
He took a deep breath.
Turned.
Put his clothes on a nearby chair, then returned to drop onto the bed naked, his beautiful body stretched out. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“Cassandra,” he said abruptly, startling me a little, “Giselle explained this to you and I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours telling you everything you wanted to know, so... That’s not the question you want me to answer.”
Dammit, he’d done it again. The way he could get to the heart of an issue made me half believe he had a USB cord straight from God’s brain to his.
I draped myself over him and felt his arm around me, pulling me even tighter. “I want to know,” I said, swallowing my sudden panic because I really did not, did not want to know, “if you love me or Mina more?”
He sighed. “I was afraid you’d ask me that.”
Why had I done such a stupid thing?
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I love Mina. I always will. I couldn’t be with Mina and not love her. I suspect that you and she were very much alike when you were eighteen. Sweet, supportive, trained to be the perfect wives and mothers, and eager to be that. I wouldn’t have been able to choose between you then. Now you’re entirely different women, but I still can’t choose between you.”
“Why not?” I asked, hating the catch in my throat.
“Because I’m twenty-five years older and I’m a completely different man. I grew and changed. Got a better handle on the world and its shades of gray.”
“Gray? You think in black and white.”
He smiled then. “Gotcha.”
I growled.
“I can’t afford to think in black and white, Cassandra,” he murmured, caressing me. “Part of my job is to judge people worthy or not worthy and you know, there’s a whole world of mitigating circumstances in every person’s life to make the idea of worth, well, worthless. I learned that with Inez when she chose her lover over me.
“We’re here to do the best we can with what we’re given, to learn. Hopefully we learn some compassion and service. I try to weigh a person’s circumstance with their progress because there is no such thing as perfect. But there’s a time you turn the other cheek and there’s a time when you have to pick up a bullwhip and clean the moneychangers out of the temple. The hard part is knowing when to do which.”
And that was it. That was where he differed from his
wolf pack. He wasn’t as quick to pick up the bullwhip; he would wait until he had no choice.
“Mina and I had a good marriage. Strong, faithful. I got her away from her father and a forced marriage, taught her how to have fun, gave her the love and family she wanted. She believed in me and supported me without complaint, always cheerful, optimistic. Pushing me to see more of my own potential and arranging our life to clear my path, make sure nothing got in my way.”
“But she wasn’t your equal. Even she knew that. You said so.”
“If she hadn’t been sick, she would’ve been. She never had a chance to grow with me; she barely had the energy to get all our children to adolescence. As the bishop’s wife, she would’ve seen the heartbreak I’ve seen, dealt with the people I’ve dealt with, and she would’ve done it with grace and love. As the wife of a CEO, she would’ve been on my arm for all the events and conferences, hosted dinners and parties. I would’ve showered her in designer clothes and jewelry and cars, given her anything she wanted. She could’ve shared in the wealth she had an equal hand in creating.”
God, why had I asked that stupid fucking question?
He paused for long moments. “So...what does that mean for you and me if we go the distance?” he said slowly. “I don’t know. Not really. The Church teaches that I’ll be reunited with Mina and that you’ll be separated from me. I don’t want that, but I also... Mina wouldn’t be any happier about it than you are.”
I stared at him. “And so you don’t want to believe that anymore.”
“No. The last thing I want is to hurt either one of you.”
I sniffled. “I have corrupted you.”
“No. Love isn’t corrupt.”
Too. “So then I should—”
“Not if you don’t believe, Cassandra. I fell in love with you as you are and I have no interest in changing you. In any case,” he continued, “we have the here and now and I am not going to waste it thinking about what-ifs. Not many men are so blessed as to love two such wonderful women in their lifetimes.” He looked at me, his face worn and tired. “How would I choose between the most perfect diamond and the most perfect metal?”