CHAPTER 24
For the next several days, the whole ward had to deal with the reality of the Helm situation. Jared Helm was in jail on charges of spouse abuse, presumably to be followed by murder charges. In the meantime, Kurt was dealing with Jared’s father. Alex Helm was demanding that the ward send character witnesses to Jared’s bail hearing. He also wanted the names of all the lawyers in the ward so he could ask them to donate their services to help the lawyer he had hired.
Meanwhile, I stewed over thoughts of Kelly alone with her grandfather. I’d seen a good moment between them, but that was no guarantee that there were many such moments. And just because Kelly Helm was physically cared for did not mean her grandfather’s misogyny wouldn’t have far-reaching effects.
On Wednesday God sent me a distraction from my worries about Kelly. Anna Torstensen called to tell me that the woman in the photos had been found.
“Her name is Ellie Vasquez. She claims that Tobias offered her a thousand dollars all those years ago to pretend to correspond with him as his wife and to dress up in some clothes that he sent her and have photographs taken. She thought it was a little creepy, but she needed the money.”
So, I had guessed right—or had been guided in that leap of intuition. “So how did Tobias find her, did she say?”
“Apparently it was on a business trip to California. He happened to see her and told her that she looked like his wife. He asked for her name and address and wrote to her when he returned home. She felt sorry for him at first, she said.”
“And why did Tobias do it? Did she have any guesses?”
“She said that she thought it was because he was lonely. He wanted to imagine his wife was still alive, that she might come home. Ellie Vasquez took advantage of that, tried to get more money from him. But at some point, she worried that the fantasy had become too real. She moved to a different location and never had contact with him again.”
Somehow, this sounded more like the Tobias I had known. Emotionally unstable, perhaps, but not a bigamist. “Well, you must be so relieved.” But if his wife was dead, then I had to go back to the question of whether or not Tobias had killed her.
“I feel guilty, too,” said Anna. “I should have known that Tobias would never have done any of those things to me. I lived with the man for thirty years. I should have known him better.”
“You are still in shock over losing him,” I said to Anna.
“Maybe,” she said.
At that, I decided it was time to change the subject. “What about the house? Have you made any decisions on that?”
“The boys are very upset, and I feel terrible about selling it, so we’ve reached a compromise. Liam wants me to rent it out for a year instead of selling it outright. That way, I can go on my cruise and still have some money from rental, but I can also come back to it if I want to. I even got a promise of more time off from my job, if I want it.”
It sounded like a sensible solution. “Do you have enough money otherwise?”
“Liam agreed to give me a loan against the value of the house at no interest. He’s not even making me sign a contract.” Anna chuckled at that. “If you knew Liam, you’d see why that seems so out of character.”
“He loves you,” I said.
She let out a long breath. “And I do love him and Liam. So much. I wondered when I first married Tobias if I could love them as much as they needed to be loved. I still wonder that sometimes.”
“Anna, you gave those boys more love than most women give to their blood children,” I said. We say that mothering is “natural,” but it isn’t really. Animals in the wild feed their children and carry them around—most of the time. They also sometimes eat them. That is just as natural, as far as I could see.
“Do you really think so?” asked Anna. “I always worry I was too strict with them. And that I was too much of a marshmallow.”
“Which is exactly what any mother who had given birth to children would wonder, Anna. It’s the way I feel about my own boys.”
“You seem so sure of yourself. I always thought I had missed that sense of certainty. That if they were born to me, I would somehow know what I was doing was right,” said Anna.
I let out a laugh at that. “I’m glad I fooled you, Anna, but no, I am never sure of myself as a mother. Well, only of one thing. I love them, and I want what is best for them. But it is always a struggle, figuring out who they are now and what is best.”
“I thought that God granted mothers some special power.”
“Well, all I think he granted me was the gift of loving them. And on some days, not even that.” There had been times when I wanted to throw all of the boys out of the house. Come to think of it, I had done that once. Sent them to sit out in the snow to wait for Kurt to come home, because I had had enough of them all.
“But your boys are at least like you,” said Anna. “I look at Tomas and Liam and think that there is nothing of me in them.” Her laugh was breathy. “I can’t even see anything of their mother in them. They’re all Tobias.”
“It’s the testosterone. It kills anything female in them,” I suggested, thinking about my own grown sons. They had been such sweethearts until they hit the age of about fourteen. And then there were all those years when the hormones were going wild. It was almost as if they needed to beat their chests to get the testosterone out or to find out what their place in the pecking order was. Kurt had had to step in so often to parent them then.
Anna said, “Thank you, Linda. You have made me feel so much better.”
“And don’t you feel a bit guilty about going off on this cruise of yours. You deserve it. Those last few weeks with Tobias were difficult.”
“You don’t think it makes me, well, weak?” asked Anna.
“Because you want some time to yourself after giving and giving to a dying man? Anna, it makes you smart and independent, which is the opposite of weak.”
“It feels a bit like I am running away.”
“You’re running toward something, Anna. A new life. I think that takes a lot of courage.” I was a little jealous of her, in fact, and wondered what new life I should be running after. I felt as if I had been running in circles around my old life instead. I needed to go back to school or get a job or do something other than poke around in other people’s problems. Being the bishop’s wife wasn’t an excuse for having no life of my own.
Anna asked if there had been anything new with Jared Helm.
“He’s in limbo, I think. He’s been arrested for abuse. Apparently, Carrie Helm went to the hospital just days before she disappeared and was treated for bruises and cuts—all carefully placed so they were hidden by her clothes.” The hospital had taken pictures and documented the injuries and the police were able to subpoena those records now that she was dead. “But a trial date hasn’t been set yet because the police want to charge him with murder as soon as they can prove he strangled Carrie and dumped her body on the road where she was found.”
“But she did leave him,” said Anna. “And her daughter. Maybe she was killed by someone she connected with after she left. A new boyfriend or a man she thought she was safe with.”
“It could be that,” I said. But from my conversation with Will, I couldn’t suspect him. Even if Jared had paid him to lie about Carrie, he hadn’t seemed smart or determined enough to do something like murder her. He hadn’t sounded like he cared about her at all, and I didn’t think he was that good of an actor. “In any case, the funeral is tomorrow. They’ve released the body to her parents for burial, and I assume that means they’ve gathered all the evidence from it they could.” I hoped it meant they had found something they could use against Jared Helm. If he was the one who killed her.
“How terrible for her parents,” said Anna sincerely. “I’m going to be gone tomorrow morning to take some time sightseeing in California before my cruise, but give her family my best wishes, will you?”
“Of course,” I said. I was supposed to go over to babysit Kelly in a couple of hours, so that Jared, out on bail for now, and Alex Helm could go shopping for appropriate funeral attire for themselves and Kelly. I had offered to take her shopping myself, but Alex Helm had said he and Jared felt it was their responsibility. I translated this as Alex Helm’s not wanting to relinquish even that tiniest bit of control over Kelly.
The doorbell rang and I guessed it would be Alex Helm come to tell me he didn’t need me this afternoon, after all.
But it wasn’t Alex Helm at all. It was the Westons.
“Hello. Come in, come in,” I said, and folded Judy into an awkward embrace. “I am so sorry for your loss.” I turned to Aaron, and he put out his hand for me to shake instead. I was happy enough with the compromise, and shook his cold, surprisingly dry hands. My eye caught a splash of color behind the Westons, and I realized the tulips in Tobias Torstensen’s garden were already blooming beautifully across the way. They would make it that much easier for Anna to find a renter.
I ushered the Westons into the front room and then sat down on the couch across from them. “What can I do to help? Tell me anything and I will gladly do it.” I knew the Relief Society had the funeral luncheon already in hand. They had chosen to do it in our ward rather than in the Westons’ home ward, where Carrie had grown up. I felt it was the right choice, but it must have been a hard decision. There were plenty of people in the ward who did not think well of Carrie now. The truth might reveal her to be a victim, but the rumors were still pretty damning.
“I’m glad you asked that,” said Aaron Weston. “Actually, I was hoping that you would speak at the funeral.” He was standing very upright, his eyes steely and unavoidable.
It was a shock, and I could feel my jaw drop.
“I know that it is a lot to ask, but there aren’t many other choices. And you seem to have the right spirit about you when it comes to seeing Carrie fairly,” he added, still staring directly at me.
“I didn’t know her very well,” I said, and felt again that I had failed Carrie when she was in need. Was this my only hope at penance?
“I know that. But I thought you could speak about Kelly and what a good mother Carrie was to her.”
“I—” I did not feel comfortable standing in judgment over another woman’s mothering.
“Unless you think she wasn’t a good mother?” said Judy. She was holding tightly to her husband’s hand and it was obvious she was fighting back tears. He was her rock, as Kurt had so often been mine.
“Of course not. She loved her daughter. I can see that in everything about Kelly. She’s a strong little girl who is only doing as well as she is now because she grew up with a mother’s love in everything,” I said fiercely.
“That’s precisely the sort of thing we’re hoping you will say at the funeral. Kelly will be there, you see,” said Aaron. “We’d like her to hear that from you. Sadly, she isn’t going to hear much good about her mother in the next few years.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “About Carrie’s death, and about Jared and his father. I hate how they have made this all out to be her fault.” Certainly, Carrie had made some of the choices that led to this, but it was clear to me that those choices were influenced by a deep, desperate unhappiness caused by her husband and his father. And even if they hadn’t murdered her, it seemed to me that they were culpable for putting her in that vulnerable position in the first place.
“Thank you,” Judy whispered. Her head went down, and it seemed as if whatever strength she had mustered up to ask me for this favor was gone now.
“We’re going to try to get custody of Kelly,” said Aaron. “It’s a long shot, according to our lawyers, but at the very least, we want Kelly to know that we love her. And if we don’t get custody, we’re going to try for mandated visitation as grandparents. We don’t want Kelly to hear only from her father and grandfather about her mother. Or about anything else, for that matter. I don’t like how either of them think about the world.”
“Well, I hope you do get custody,” I said honestly.
His eyes widened and I had the sense that he was taking note of this in his mind, which had the capacity to remember everything. He was a formidable opponent, I thought, and wondered who would win if he and Alex Helm were set against each other. It made me happy to think that Aaron Weston was the stronger of the two. He was more self-possessed and he would certainly sound better, more reasonable, to the average person in Utah.
“Would you be willing to give that opinion of the situation in court?” Aaron asked.
I considered for a long moment, then nodded. The danger was that I would fail and become an enemy of Jared and Alex Helm, and then I would have no access to Kelly at all, but I had to take a chance to get her into a better situation.
“That is more than we had hoped for,” said Aaron. The warmth of emotion in his voice surprised me. “But I still have to ask about the funeral. We need to get the programs printed and there aren’t very many speakers as it is.”
“Kurt is speaking, isn’t he?” I said.
Aaron nodded. “But I thought a woman’s perspective would be … kinder.”
I thought again about Jared and Alex Helm, and I shook my head. “I think it’s best if I don’t speak at the funeral at this point. I’d like to make sure I can see Kelly until the trial. They’ve been asking me to come in and take care of her when they have to go out. It’s been my one way of making sure she is well.”
Aaron’s hopeful smile disappeared, but he patted Judy’s shoulder. “We can’t fault her for that.”
“No,” she said softly.
“We believe Carrie was coming home to Kelly that night. That had to be why she was in Wendover,” said Aaron.
“Have the police said when she was killed?” I asked.
“Yes. They told us it was just hours before they found the body,” said Aaron. “I know it hasn’t been reported on the news, but I think it will all come out soon enough.”
So if Jared Helm had killed Carrie, he must have cold-bloodedly driven out to meet her somewhere and planned to do it. I wasn’t sure it fit with the image I had of Jared in my mind. I believed he could have killed her in anger, but this? Maybe it was someone else, after all. “I am so sorry.” What else could I say to her parents?
“Jared claims he never left the house that night. He claims that the reporters have footage of the whole night. He couldn’t have gotten out of the house without being seen,” said Aaron. His face was dark with anger. “But somehow, he is responsible even so. He is the one who drove her to do what she did,” Aaron continued. “And it doesn’t matter whose hand was on her neck when she died. It was his fault for forcing her to it.”
“Well, God doesn’t see responsibility the same way that the law does,” I admitted.
Aaron took a deep breath, gave me a searching look, and nodded. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then?” said Aaron.
I nodded and stood, then showed them out. I felt a headache coming on, and went to take some Advil before I headed over to babysit Kelly, all the while feeling a knot in my stomach over my promise to testify against her father in a custody dispute with the Westons. Was I right or wrong? I had been wrong so many times in this case that I couldn’t trust my instincts anymore. All I knew was that I loved Kelly and wanted the best for her.
We spent several hours playing with Barbies, something I had never done with my boys. They had scorned dolls, though they had played with action figures plenty. Kelly’s Barbies had lots of fancy dresses, but Kelly wasn’t very interested in changing their outfits. She preferred acting out different escape-from-jail story lines. We played them over and over again as I tried to guide her away from shootouts and other violent scenarios, but my heart went colder and colder as I thought of what this house had become for her.
When Jared and Alex came home, they called for Kelly and she jumped. Her face went expressionless and she hurriedly put her Barbies into their box. “Grandpa doesn’t like Barbies,” she told me. “He says their clothes are too small and too tight.”
She scurried downstairs while I put the Barbie box under her bed. I went down after her, in time to see Alex Helm showing Kelly the black dress that had been purchased for her to wear for her mother’s funeral. She put it on dutifully in the bathroom, then came down to show it off. It looked too big for her, boxy at the top, and went down to her ankles, but it was modest, at the very least. There wasn’t a hint of lace or any feminine detailing on it. I supposed Kelly would never wear it again after this, but still, it seemed a strange dress for a little girl.
“Perfect,” said Alex. “You look like an angel. Now go take it off and wash your hands for dinner.” He turned to me and dismissed me. “Thank you, Sister Wallheim. We’ll see you at the funeral.”
I had no interest in arguing with the man at this point, so I walked home in the rain.
JOSEPH CALLED ME that night to tell me that Willow was expecting in early September. I should have been over the moon. I tried to act it, enthusiastically offering congratulations and all the help I could. Was she sick? Did they need meals? Did they need any help with housework while she was in the early stages? Could I help take her to doctor’s appointments?
Joseph declined all my offers and said that they were just fine for now.
“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked.
“Not yet, Mom. We’re going in for an ultrasound in about three weeks and they think they will be able to tell.”
In three weeks, I would find out if I was going to have a granddaughter. The thought terrified me. How could I protect a girl in this world? Somehow it didn’t seem the right time for the next generation to start being born. We hadn’t figured out this generation yet.