CHAPTER 20
On the Monday after Tobias Torstensen’s funeral, the brief thaw ended and snow began to fall again. In the midst of it, Jared Helm went in to talk to the police in a formal interview. His father went with him, along with a lawyer his father had hired. To my delight, I was asked to watch Kelly while Jared and his father were gone.
It was nearly lunchtime, so I made Kelly peanut butter sandwiches and apple slices, which she ate eagerly.
“Grandpa Alex says I should eat grown-up food,” said Kelly, when I cut off the crust of her sandwiches. “He said Mommy treated me like a baby.”
How dare that man say such a thing to such a vulnerable, hurting child? “I see,” I said, trying to speak with care and not frighten her. “It sounds like your grandpa, Alex, and your mother didn’t get along very well.”
Kelly shook her head solemnly. “Mommy and Grandpa Alex used to shout at each other.”
“Did they frighten you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Daddy kept me safe.”
“Good, I’m glad.” Jared Helm was good for something, it seemed.
I got Kelly a glass of lemonade and watched her make a face each time she took a sip.
“Sour,” she said when I asked her if she didn’t like it.
“Do you want me to make you something else instead?” I asked, thinking I should have made grape juice.
She looked at me steadily. “I like sour,” she said, but she kept making the same face and shivering when she took a sip. It was adorable and a little heartbreaking, to see a little girl who seemed to think shivering like that meant she liked it.
But when I told her it was time to clean up lunch, she spilled lemonade on her shirt hurrying to drink it down. So I took her upstairs and asked her to show me what she wanted to change into. “Grandpa Alex will be mad,” she said softly.
“Why?”
“He does the laundry. He doesn’t like to do extra laundry,” she said.
“Oh, then I’ll do a load before he gets back. He’ll never know.”
She took off her shirt and opened one of her drawers. It was carefully stacked with folded shirts. Even her sock drawer, which I opened, was divided with plastic bins into white socks, dark socks, and socks with stripes. Her underwear was similarly divided. And her closet was organized by color of dresses, from yellow to red to blue and purple.
“Did Grandpa Alex arrange your closet, too?” I asked.
She nodded. “He likes things neat,” she said.
Neat was one word for it. “All right. I’m going to go put in that load of laundry. Why don’t you sit here and read a book for a few minutes, okay?” I settled her next to me on her bed with several books. At the touch of her warm body, I felt another surge of that emotion I’d felt when she played the piano with me. It felt like the whisper of the Spirit was saying, She is yours. She belongs with you.
I hugged Kelly tightly and I felt her arms wrap around me and hug me just as tightly. Did she imagine for just a moment that I was her mother, as I was imagining for just a moment that she was my daughter? I was a great deal rounder than her mother, and old enough to be her grandmother. And she was too young to be my daughter, if my daughter had lived. But I had missed the small arm years, and maybe those were the parts I wished to have back the most.
Maybe that is why other women like the idea of having their children back to raise again at the age they lost them. It never works that way, though, does it? We can’t have any children back, no matter how much we miss them. Time marches on, even for the eternal. We have to find new children to love, grandchildren or other replacements, if we want to continue to be mothers.
“Mommy likes books,” said Kelly, pulling back and looking at me curiously. “She reads lots of books to me. But sometimes she cries when she reads them.”
“Oh? Did she read you sad books?” I asked.
“No. Books her daddy read to her when she was little.”
Was Carrie so unstable that she often cried in front of Kelly, or was she just nostalgic for her own childhood?
“Which do you want me to read to you first?” I asked Kelly.
“I will read it to you,” said Kelly. “So I can show you the right way to do it.”
I didn’t know if she had already learned to read so well or if she had simply memorized the stories, but she read with a great deal of emotion. She read through Pig Pigger Piggest and even did voices for each of the pigs and witches. I was impressed. “Did your mother teach you how to do that?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kelly said.
“Well, I think those voices you did are so cute.”
Kelly looked at me as if I was crazy. “You have to do voices, to make the story fun.”
She was a special child. She had a light in her, a talent for life and for learning. It was electric, and it sparked on me whenever I was with her.
Kelly fell asleep on the last page, and I had to tug the book away from her. I tiptoed out of the room to leave her undisturbed, then went upstairs into the master bedroom on the top of the split-level house, nervous and determined. I opened the door and saw a room that was magazine perfect. The bed was made, decorative pillows and all. The curtains had been pulled back to let in the light. There wasn’t a hint of dust anywhere. There was one double dresser on the near side of the wall, and on top of it was a photograph, not of Carrie and Jared Helm, but of Grandpa Alex and Kelly.
The police had searched the car and the house already, but they weren’t looking for the same things that I was. They wanted evidence that Carrie might have been killed. I wanted evidence that she’d ever lived here. I wanted to know Carrie Helm’s story.
I opened a drawer and found nothing but male clothing on the right hand side. The left hand side of all the drawers was empty.
Where had it all gone? Had I missed the chance to find anything useful about Carrie? Surely, her father-in-law could not have erased all trace of her.
I went into the master bathroom and looked in the left cabinet for Carrie’s makeup, but that, too, was gone. There was a toothbrush and a man’s razor—presumably Grandpa Alex’s, because Jared’s were in the right cabinet. Was Alex staying in this room with his son now? That seemed a little strange, to say the least.
I looked for laundry, which was the reason I was supposed to be here, making up a load. But I couldn’t find any dirty clothes, either.
I backed out of the room and put Kelly’s things in the dryer. Then I went downstairs and searched through the lower levels of the house. There was a family room off the garage, then below that an unfinished basement, and that was where I found garbage bags full of Carrie’s things. The clothing I was less interested in, but there was a bag of her photos and other memorabilia, a wedding album that, strangely enough, had not a single photo of Alex Helm in it that I could see, and a cheap, flip-top cell phone.
There was also a stack of picture books, including a well-worn copy of Harry the Dirty Dog, which made me feel a pang of sadness at Kelly’s loss. I couldn’t bring it up to her now. Her grandfather would just put it away again, and likely be angry at Kelly, even if it was my fault. I held the book for a long moment. But the cell phone was far more important.
I tucked it into my pocket and left everything else as I had found it, or at least as close as I could manage. After seeing the rest of the house so carefully organized, I wondered if Alex Helm would notice someone had been down here.
The cell phone was out of battery, but when I got home, I would ask Samuel if he could find the right connector to charge it. Samuel was good at that sort of thing, and he wouldn’t tell Kurt about it if I asked him not to. I had no idea what Kurt would say if I told him about any of this, but I didn’t regret what I had done.
A few minutes later, I heard the sounds of Kelly stirring in her room. I went up and gave her a hug.
“I don’t like taking naps,” she said. She frowned at me as if to prove it. “I’m getting too old for so much sleeping.”
“I like naps whenever I get enough time to take them, and I’m a lot older than you are.”
“Really?” said Kelly.
I nodded and took her downstairs to the kitchen. I got her a glass of water and then we sat together on the couch. “Kelly, tell me about Grandpa Alex,” I said.
“He is Daddy’s daddy,” she said. She put a thumb close to her mouth, and then pulled it away with a guilty expression.
“Yes, I know that, sweetheart. What else can you tell me about him? You said that he shouted at your mother sometimes. Do you remember anything else?”
“Once I saw him hit Daddy,” said Kelly quietly.
“What?” I went very still. “When did that happen?”
“When he first came, after Mommy left. He said that Daddy had to learn to be strong.” She wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her head into them.
“Kelly, has he ever hit you?” I asked, ready to take her into my arms and haul her to my own house immediately. I would take her to DCFS and report Alex Helm to them as an abuser and he would never ever see Kelly again.
But Kelly shook her head.
“What about your mother? Did you ever see Grandpa Alex hit her?” Could his father have killed Carrie without Jared’s colluding in it? Could Alex have been behind the phone call I still thought might be fake?
It was horrible to think about. Maybe Jared Helm was as much a victim in all of this as Carrie had been.
“She didn’t let him come over unless Daddy was here,” said Kelly.
But Carrie had left Kelly behind for Alex now.
And what about me? Was I going to leave Kelly with her grandfather when he returned?
I had no legal right to her. I was not her mother, no matter how much I wished I were. I had a family of my own, and I belonged to them, not to her. It was crazy for me to think of doing anything to save Kelly when it would cost my own family dearly.
With those depressing thoughts in my mind, I heard a car drive up outside. Then there were voices, reporters calling out questions to Jared Helm. The only voice I heard respond was his father’s, harsh and low.
Then the door from the garage to the family room opened on the half-level below us.
“Kelly?” said Jared Helm.
“Daddy!” She jumped up off the couch, then hesitated, looking at her grandfather.
“Come give your father a hug,” said Alex Helm.
Kelly moved down the half set of stairs obediently and hugged her father. There was a possessiveness in Alex’s eyes that made me twinge.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“Fine,” said Alex Helm.
Jared Helm met my eyes. “They asked about me dropping her off at the bus station and why we went so early.”
“I told you, they’re trying to get proof you killed her,” said Alex Helm.
Jared flinched at that and stared at Kelly, whose eyes had gone wide. “Don’t say things like that around Kelly,” he said softly.
“She needs to hear the truth, too,” said Alex Helm. “No point in raising a girl who can’t hear the truth.”
The moment I heard his voice, I was ready to slap him again. Did the man have no softer side at all? Was he always a bombastic asshole? “She’s five years old,” I said. “Maybe some truths could be softened a little for her.”
Alex Helm glared at me. “You are not her parent,” he said.
“And neither are you,” I snipped back.
“I am her grandparent,” he said. “And I think that gives me the power to tell you it is time you were gone.”
I looked at Jared, thinking he must see his father truly now. But Alex had come to help him when the rest of the world had written him off.
“Of course, Dad. You’re right,” Jared muttered, not meeting my eyes. “Thank you for watching Kelly while I was gone, Sister Wallheim. We’ll take care of things from here on out.”
I could make a fuss and confuse Kelly or I could go cleanly. I chose the latter. “Goodbye, sweetie,” I said.
She blew me a kiss. As I walked out, I felt the weight of the cell phone in my pocket, the prize I had wrested from Alex Helm without his knowing about it.
As soon as I was away from the news vans, I started to run, partly in fear and partly in excitement at my successful theft. It has been years since I ran. It felt awkward, and I could feel my breasts thumping against my chest, and my flesh jiggling around me. I should have better shoes to do this, I thought. I should have a better body. But I only had the body that I had worked to get, and it was all the fresh cinnamon rolls that had brought me to this. The cell phone felt heavier than it should have. I slid on one icy patch of sidewalk and nearly fell, but caught myself, took a couple of walking steps, and started running again. I didn’t turn back to see if Alex Helm was watching me from his living-room window.
When I got home, my fingers were trembling. I checked that the bolt on the front door was locked three times over and then went into my bedroom and locked that door, too. At every sound I worried Alex Helm had come to my house to demand the phone back. My anxiety fed my imagination, and I kept thinking that a creak of the floor meant he had somehow come inside, that he would be brandishing a hammer.
Finally, Samuel came home. I showed him the phone and asked him if he had an adapter for it. He went to his room and poked around for a while, then returned with a cable. For the next several minutes, I waited anxiously as Samuel plugged it in. “Are you sure it will turn back on?”
“Just give it a minute,” said Samuel.
Then the phone beeped and I jumped.
“Mom, what’s on that phone?” he asked. “It isn’t yours, is it?”
“It’s Carrie Helm’s,” I said. “Please don’t tell your father.”
Samuel’s eyes went wide. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
I nodded. “A woman’s life is at stake here,” I said.
He stared at me, then shook his head. “I don’t want to know anything more about it, then.”
He was right. I had been unfair to put him between me and Kurt.
I checked the phone anxiously for several minutes, until it had charged enough for me to thumb through old calls … Mostly calls to Jared Helm’s cell phone, and to the family home phone. I was surprised at how few numbers were listed. There was Alex Helm’s number, but I couldn’t find it in Carrie’s outgoing call record; she had never called it, though she had missed multiple calls from him.
But there were also three phone calls to a Nevada area code.
I punched in the number and waited for an answer. A male voice picked up, and I was startled for a moment until I realized it had gone to voicemail. The voice said that the man’s name was Will. The same Will who had picked up the now-dumped cell phone? It sounded like him, but I wasn’t sure. I would have to try back later.