The Bishop's Wife (16 page)

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.

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.

Her shoulders shook, and the sobs were soundless, as if she was worried Tobias would hear her, but tears dripped down her face. She tried to wipe at the counter, but I put an arm around her and she let herself fall against my chest. I could hear the muffled sounds of her gasping breaths and realized she was terrified. As if a train were coming directly at her and there was no way for her to get out of the way. Was that the way it would feel for me, if Kurt were to die? With my daughter, there had been no chance to feel the anticipation. It had already happened before I realized it and had to take it in.

“I'm sorry,” Anna said, and pulled away from me. She wiped at her face with the same wet dishcloth she'd been using on the counter, then stared at it as if she didn't know where it had come from.

“You don't have to be sorry,” I said. “I'm happy to help in any way I can.”

She shook her head. “I shouldn't make you feel sad when you've done nothing but be helpful and so kind.”

But feeling sad was what I was here for, to feel sad with her. “No
one expects you to do this alone. Or without showing your real feelings,” I said.

Anna looked closely at me then, as if seeing me for the first time. “Do you know, I always thought of you as rather emotionless. Controlled. In charge.”

I had plenty of emotions. I just didn't let myself show them because they tended to get out of hand. “I'm not in charge,” I said softly. I was the bishop's wife. I wasn't in charge of anything but making the bishop dinner, not officially.

“At church, you always sound so assured when you answer questions. I think the Sunday School teacher quakes in his boots, hoping you don't correct him. He thinks you have the whole Bible memorized.”

“Well, I don't,” I said, astonished. I had always thought that I was just on the border of heresy, and she seemed to think I was some sort of icon of Mormon womanhood.

“I thought you would quote Bruce R. McConkie at me and expect me to accept death with grace and courage. As a relief and a triumph.”

Bruce R. McConkie, author of multiple volumes of the once-beloved
Mormon Doctrine
, had spoken at General Conference just days before his death from cancer in the 1980s. He had looked pale and gaunt, and his voice was one of those harsh whispers that made you stop and listen. He had stood on the pulpit and before the audience of millions of Mormons had declared that he knew Christ lived, and that even when he was dead, he would not know any better then than he knew now that Christ was real. No one who had heard the speech live would forget it.

I said, thinking of that certainty in the face of death, “It's nice to have grace and courage after the fact. But I'm afraid most of us are all too mortal and only find grace and courage in special moments. The rest of the time we're alternately angry or fiercely afraid.”

“You—afraid?” said Anna.

There was a long moment when I didn't know if I could be honest enough to tell her the truth. My mouth opened, but the words wouldn't be pressed out. They were too big to fit through the sieve.

“I lost a daughter,” I got out finally, the words hardly audible.

“What? I thought you had five sons.”

“And one daughter,” I said.

“But—what happened?” she asked.

I took a deep breath, and then another. We hadn't lived here then, so no one in the ward knew. We moved here two years later, after Kenneth was born. Samuel and Zachary were the only children born in our Draper house.

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't know what happened and sometimes that is harder than anything else.” This had nothing to do with Tobias and Anna. This wouldn't help her deal with her own difficulties. I told myself to be quiet, that she didn't need to hear the details. But it had been so long since I had spoken about it. I wasn't sure I ever really had. And so I kept talking.

“I was scheduled to be induced the next day. She was overdue and the doctor was tired of waiting, I think. He never saw any problems in the ultrasound. She was losing weight, though. He said that babies sometimes did that at the end. He said it was nothing to worry about.”