CHAPTER 14
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.”
I wanted to take the wet dishcloth from her and use it. I wanted to do something with my hands while I spoke, but instead, I just stared down at them.
“That night, I went to bed and slept well for the first time in months. When I woke up in the morning, I realized it was because she hadn’t moved all night. Kurt came over to touch my belly because he said it looked different. And somehow, that moment, he knew. He started crying. I called the doctor and asked for an appointment. I went down and ate some breakfast. And read one of those pregnancy books, which reassured me that the baby might just be uncomfortable or asleep. I was so sure that the doctor would say everything was fine, and that Kurt was a crybaby for nothing.” I smiled a little at that. Kurt was often more emotional than I was.
“But he was right. There was no heartbeat. They rushed me to the hospital and induced me right away. Even then, I kept thinking that if I delivered quickly enough, maybe they would be able to revive her.” The sounds of my own breathing were so loud that they embarrassed me.
“I’m sorry. I never knew,” said Anna.
I shook my head. I could feel tears falling, but they were cold by the time they landed on my cheeks. It was all so long ago. People talk about how you recover from tragedy. But it’s more like scar tissue. It’s always there; you just find a way to work around it.
Anna was staring at me.
I felt suddenly self-conscious. I’d spilled my soul, and now I felt exposed. “I’m sorry. I came here for you, to talk about your problems, not mine. Please forgive me. I must be very tired.”
“No, don’t apologize. Thank you. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Did she realize that she was the only person I’d opened up to about this? My face felt sticky from the tears. A part of me wished I hadn’t said anything about my daughter, maybe a bit like someone who has a hangover and wishes she hadn’t had anything to drink. The aftereffects are brutal, but at the moment, I couldn’t have held back.
“I think I understand you a little better now. I never had a daughter. I never had sons, actually.” Anna put her hand over mine on the countertop, and I realized she did know how rare this truth of mine was, and she was honoring it with her own painful truth. “Only Tobias’s sons, but they were never fully mine, no matter how much I loved them. There was always a barrier with them. We decided not to have our own children because I needed to focus on Tomas and Liam, make sure they felt my complete love.” Her voice was strained. “But there is a certain pain in not being a mother in your body. I have put that away for a long time, but it is still there.” Her hand let go of mine and brushed against her stomach.
Yes. She understood. It was strange that a pain that was so different could be so much the same. We had both faced the loss of what we had expected, deserved, and dreamed about. A loss of the imagination, which was worse in some ways from any other loss.
“At least you are sealed to her, though,” said Anna.
I could quibble with the point, but I didn’t. She definitely wasn’t sealed to Tobias. “You should talk to him about it,” I said, following her unspoken train of thought. “He might be able to put your mind at rest.”
“What if Liam and Tomas object? What if they don’t want me sealed to their father?”
I was a little startled by that possibility. Did she think so badly of her sons? “Trust Kurt,” I said. “He will talk to them. He will make it come right.”
She took a breath, dropped her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “All right. I’ll speak to him.”
I hoped that we had not left it too late.