CHAPTER 15
I was standing at the door, ready to open it to leave, when I heard two male voices shouting.
“That’s Tomas and Liam,” said Anna. She swayed a little and I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me for stability.
Liam thundered downstairs. He didn’t look much like Tobias; his thinning hair that revealed the shape of his head to be quite square. But in his nose, chin, and hazel eyes, it was easy to see he was Tobias’s son. His lips were trembling, sweat beading up along his crown. “He’s gone,” he said.
“What?” said Anna. Her eyes widened and I knew she was thinking the same thing that I was, that Tobias had died while she was away from him and she would never be able to ask him about the sealing, let alone say goodbye to him.
But Liam said, “Out of his bed. We turned around for a moment, talking to the nurse in the bathroom after she had helped him to the toilet. Then he was gone. I thought he would be down here with you. Did you see him?”
Anna looked at me. We had been so involved in our conversation—could we have missed him if he’d gone right by us quietly enough?
“He couldn’t have—” Anna said.
“The back door is open!” shouted Tomas. “He’s out in the garden.”
Of course he was, out in the garden.
We all hurried outside to where Tobias knelt in the garden some distance away, on the middle of the three landscaped tiers. The moment felt as holy as being in the temple, the veil between worlds very thin.
The sun was bright overhead, part of a week-long thaw that had left the ground bare of snow for a while. Tobias’s shoulders were shaking, as Liam’s had been when he came downstairs, but there was nothing angry in Tobias’s bearing. He had a hand to the ground, touching it, caressing it. He brought a finger to his lips and tasted it. I could see the change in his back, that he relaxed, as if suddenly in a familiar environment again.
Home.
The garden didn’t look like much now, it was true. There was mulch piled on top of most of it, and old tomato cages stacked together like Boy Scouts on parade. There was a grape arbor over the eastern side of the garden, a dry, bare winter skeleton of twisted brown vines.
The stepping-stones down to the first level of the garden from the back porch were tufted with natural Utah prairie grasses. I could see the indentations in the ground where the frames for the climbing beans had gone, and there were remnants of last year’s kale and cabbage. The kale was still inky about a foot high, the outer leaves limp and laced with insect damage. There were a few green leaves valiantly trying to grow from the crown, hoping for an early spring.
When Tobias had come to speak to the Relief Society several years ago about gardening, he had discussed the passage from the book of Moses about all things being created spiritually first, and the fact that every plant, tree, every bit of dirt, every insect, and the earth itself had “living souls.” He treated his own garden as reverently as he did his temple clothes.
Seeing him out there in his garden right now, I felt a pang for the ward that we would never hear another lesson on gardening from him. We would never stir at his descriptions of a garden in full bloom. I’d never again see him out puttering around in the front yard, not gardening so much as talking to his plants, being one with them. I was struck with the thought that Tobias out in his garden was as godlike as any person I had ever seen. He knew these plants. He knew them better than anyone else. And he loved them, just as they were. He wanted desperately to stay with them. Maybe more than he wanted to stay with his sons or his wife.
He raised his hands over his head and then knelt down.
Tomas and Liam were calling at him to come back, but he didn’t seem to hear them.
He leaned forward, his hands still overhead as if in some strange yoga pose, and he let his face fall to the ground.
That was when Liam leaped down the porch steps and began running toward him.
Tobias’s mouth was touching the dirt. I could see when Liam pulled his head up that his lips were black with rich soil. The old man spit out something that flew away on the wind—a leaf or some bit of branch.
I thought for a moment that he would come willingly, that he was too weak to fight. But as soon as Liam tried to pull his father to his feet, Tobias began to struggle. I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Whatever it was, it seemed to be very emotional, because both Liam and Tobias were red faced.
By then Tomas had caught up and joined them in the garden.
The hospice nurse came down to stand with me and Anna by the door. “What do they think they are doing?” she said.
“Bringing him back inside,” I said.
“They could hurt him. They should leave him be. What is so terrible about him being in his garden?” said the nurse.
“They are worried he will die out there,” I said. “And that would embarrass them.” Male pride again.
“Or are they worried he will live out there?” said Anna. She stepped forward, and I held her back.
“If you get involved, it will only make it more difficult.” As she had said herself, they were not her sons. And this was their father.
So we watched together as Tomas and Liam struggled with a recalcitrant man. He kept trying to swing his arms at them. Any impact would end up with fragile elderly bones breaking, and Tomas and Liam had to keep ducking, and shouting, and then at last I saw Tobias collapse. It was as sudden as if he were a puppet and the strings had been cut.
Liam caught his upper body and then Tomas gathered up his legs. They carried him through the dirt, into the house, and back upstairs.
“Careful, careful!” warned the nurse.
Tobias was filthy from his feet to his lips. Anna made a face as she saw black mulch falling into the carpet.
“Tobias always made sure he didn’t get the carpet dirty after he worked in the garden,” she said, more wistful than upset about the dirt.
“I’ll clean it,” I promised, and followed her upstairs, looking for any sign of a vacuum.
As soon as Tobias was back on the bed, the hospice nurse began taking his blood pressure and pulse. “He’s very close to the end now,” she said. “He exerted himself too much. I should have seen this coming, but perhaps it is for the best.” She glanced up at Tomas and Liam.
“For the best,” muttered Anna angrily. Not long before, when Liam had come down the stairs, she had believed that Tobias had died without her at his side. Now she was going to make sure that wasn’t possible. She pushed the nurse aside and held Tobias’s hand. “Get out!” she shouted, the veins in her forehead red and protruding. “All of you, get out. I want to be alone with my husband now!”
I retreated first, strangely satisfied at her outburst. Shortly afterward, I heard the other three come down the stairs behind me.
The sons stared at me as we stood facing each other in the front room, but I was used to dealing with grown sons staring. I wasn’t going to say anything contrary to Anna’s request. She deserved this moment alone with her husband, and I was glad she had finally felt able to demand it. It must have been very difficult, having the nurse and her two stepsons in the house, even if she loved those sons as her own.
I asked about a vacuum and Tomas found it for me. I spent twenty minutes doing my best to erase any sign of garden dirt through the house while the sons talked quietly in the kitchen with the nurse. When I was done, I put the vacuum away and wandered to the back door, where Tobias had so recently been brought in.
A part of me was waiting because I didn’t know if Anna would want me to be there when she came back down. But as I stood there looking at the garden, I caught a glimpse of something in the soil where Tobias had been, something that wasn’t mulch, and wasn’t dirt or plants.
I opened the door and stepped outside, thinking about Tobias’s insistence on seeing his wife’s grave. A little wind blew into my face, and I walked down the stepping stones and then up to the second level where Tobias had been.
In the summer, I would never have been able to see it. It would have been covered in plants. In the winter, it would have been covered in snow. And as soon as spring came, Tobias would have been out there, digging around, putting in wood chips or setting out the tomato cages and the climbing frames for the beans. But now, just now, because Tobias had not yet had a chance to go out, I could see the flat off-white stone, glittering with bits of silver like granite did. It was granite, I thought, even if it was uncut. It looked like a stone you might pick out at a stonemason’s for a gravestone. It was flush with the ground here, nearly invisible. But this was where Tobias had come and knelt, his arms stretched out almost as if to cover the stone with his whole body. He had kissed the dirt with his lips. Or was it not the dirt he’d been kissing at all?
My mind whirled. Tobias said he hadn’t scattered his wife’s ashes anywhere, but what if he had been lying? Or if he had forgotten? Could she be here?
It might even make sense that he would lie about it to Anna. Clearly, she was sensitive about the topic of her husband’s first wife. It might bother her to think that all that time her husband spent in the garden was time spent with his first wife, in his heart.
Why wouldn’t he tell his sons? Did he think they might judge him, think him morbid? Or even a little creepy?
I leaned over and saw there was something long and thin half-buried in the dirt near the stone. I dug at it, curious, and when I pulled it out, I realized it was a hammer, ancient enough that the wood was almost rotted through and the metal head was rusted.
Tobias had let other tools get rusted and ruined. I had already seen that in the shed. I suppose it was no stretch that he might leave tools out in the garden, as well. Was it an accident that it was here, left outside since the fall? I didn’t know what he would use a hammer for in his garden, but that didn’t mean anything.
I stood up and carried the hammer back into the shed. I began to wipe at it to get off the dirt, though I knew it made no sense. I should just throw it away. A large chunk of dirt fell off the hammer, and I bent down to pick it up off the floor I had spent so much time cleaning only a week ago. That was when I saw what was underneath the dirt. There was hair, matted together by something brown and flaking.
Could that be—blood?
And whose hair was it?
I dropped the hammer and heard it thunk against the garden detritus.
My heart was pounding and I felt like all the saliva in my mouth had suddenly disappeared.
The dress I had found in the shed, dotted with blood along the back of the neck. The stone that looked like it had been made to mark a grave. And now this.
A hammer with hair on it that suggested violence. A woman whose cause of death was rumored to be any of several different things, even among her immediate family. A woman who had died young, leaving her sons with her husband. A woman whose gravesite was unknown. I walked out of the shed and back inside the house. I pretended that everything was fine with Tomas and Liam, though Anna was still alone upstairs with Tobias. A man who might very well have murdered his first wife. Should I stay to tell her what I suspected? No. Not until I knew for certain. I could not add to her burdens, which were already considerable.
So I said I felt ill and needed to go home, and asked the boys to give their mother my regards.
For an hour or more, I waited on our front room couch for the bishop to come home. Then I asked if I could speak to him in his office.
His eyes flickered with surprise. “If you want.”
I nodded. I felt like this should be official. Kurt had said he didn’t want me to play detective, and I hadn’t meant to. But now I had to tell someone. I had to know what to do, and I wanted Kurt, as the bishop, to tell me. I wanted this taken out of my hands.
He sat at his desk. I sat on the couch opposite. And I listed the facts I’d uncovered. The stone in the dirt in the garden that looked like a headstone. The hammer under the dirt by the headstone. The blood and hair on the hammer, and the pink, faded dress with its stain.
“How can you be sure it’s blood this many years later? It could just be dirt that looks like dried blood,” he began.
I glared at him.
He sighed. “And even if it is blood, it could be from an animal. Or …” He seemed unable to think up another explanation.
“Why would Tobias put the hammer near that headstone? Why doesn’t anyone know what his wife really died of? Why doesn’t anyone know where she is buried? Why is Tobias so desperate on his deathbed to see his wife’s grave?”
“Maybe the hammer has nothing to do with the headstone,” said Kurt. He waved a hand, dismissive enough to make my fear simmer into anger. “Maybe it’s not a headstone, anyway. It could be a decorative stone.”
“Kurt, his garden is carefully groomed. Everything has a place. The decorative stones all match. This headstone doesn’t.”
“It could still have another, perfectly innocuous explanation,” he said. But he didn’t suggest one.
“Kurt, if there is a human being buried in his garden, don’t you think we should find out who it is?”
“You think it’s his dead first wife there,” said Kurt.
I shrugged. Who else was it likely to be? And with all the different versions of what happened to her, it almost made sense. But now that I was away from the garden, away from the sight of Tobias kissing the winter dirt, I was starting to reconsider my own conclusions. Tobias Torstensen, a killer? He was the nicest man. Could he do something like that to his wife? And no one had guessed for all these years?
“You seem to have a sudden tendency to think men guilty of killing their wives,” said Kurt. “Even if there’s no real evidence of foul play. Is there something wrong? Something you want to tell me about how you feel for me?” He smiled, trying to make it into a joke. He’d used that trick on the boys more than once, and they were all in stitches moments after being in the midst of a fight.
It wasn’t going to work on me. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said, and stood up. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not making things up here. I’m not leaping to conclusions. I didn’t call the police to trample through Tobias’s garden while he is on his deathbed. I’m talking to you.” I didn’t move to the door, but I wasn’t going to let him treat me like a child. I hadn’t made up what I’d seen in the garden. Or the hammer. Or the headstone. It was all there, and it had to mean something.
“He’s an old man, Linda. What do you possibly think we could get out of him at this late date? From a man who is dying?” asked Kurt. He had his hands templed on his desk. I knew that move, too. It was the “calm down” motion that he used when couples were arguing with each other in front of him. “Even if he is a murderer—which I don’t for one minute believe—what is the point of trying to punish him when God has already taken care of it?”
What about Anna? Didn’t she deserve to know the truth about her husband?
“I think you may want to consider that this is really about something else,” said Kurt.
“And what’s that?” I asked him.
“I think you’re letting your guilt over not noticing Carrie Helm’s unhappiness make you see abusive men everywhere. You’re angry. At God, at my entire sex, and at yourself, for not stopping what happened to her.”
Maybe I was angry, but if that was true, I had a right to be. And if Carrie Helm was fine, Tobias Torstensen’s first wife wasn’t.
But I put the anger aside, and sat back on the couch and tried to speak to Kurt the way he could hear me. Without emotion. “Look, I don’t think Tobias’s mental state is that much in question. And if he did this, he’ll want to confess to you before he dies. Asking about his wife’s grave, and the whole show yesterday in the garden—it means some part of him wants to let his sons know before he’s gone. It might be his last chance. So you could hint to him that you know. You could make it easier for him to tell you the truth, when you’re in private. That’s all I’m saying. Give him a chance. Don’t accuse him, but listen if it comes up. Will you do that for me?”
“I wish I felt something from the Spirit about this. I’ll go pray about it,” he said. And he did. I left his office, but he didn’t. He was in there all through dinner. Samuel and I ate alone.
Late that night, he went to visit Tobias Torstensen again, but whatever he found out, he didn’t tell me. And the call came early Tuesday morning that Tobias Torstensen had passed away in the night.