CHAPTER 35
Samuel wouldn’t speak to me Monday night when I got home. There was no pretense of Family Home Evening.
“He’s mad you could have gotten hurt. He’ll come around,” said Kurt, as he helped me up the stairs to our bedroom.
I hoped Kurt was right about Samuel. I couldn’t bear for my youngest son, the one most like me, to hold a grudge.
When I woke up the next day, I felt as if my skin had been filled with sand while I slept. There were no muscles inside me, and I felt very heavy.
Kurt brought me breakfast in bed, and I spent the morning on the phone with the older boys, who were apparently still talking to me. Samuel had gone off to school without a word, and he hadn’t answered either of the two text messages I had sent him.
Kurt had taken time off work, despite the clients who insisted they had “emergencies.” I was touched by that. We also had a visit from Cheri Tate, who said she had arranged for meals to come for the next week.
Kurt didn’t hover, but went down to his office and got to some church paperwork he’d been putting off for a while. About noon, I got up and coaxed myself into taking a careful bath. The heat seemed to melt away the sandy feeling. My left arm still hurt where they had put in stitches, but if I put on a long-sleeved shirt, I could almost forget about it. No one else could see it, either, and when I looked at myself critically in the mirror, I did not think any of the events of the day before showed. I looked tired and my eyes were a little red, but there was no more proof that I had nearly been killed than that. But the change was inside me, even so.
I thought of going for a short walk, and I stepped outside without knocking on Kurt’s door.
The first thing I saw was a FOR SALE sign in front of the Helm house. It hit me hard and I could feel my legs falling out from under me. I went down on my knees on the sidewalk and then knelt there for a long minute. My ears rang, but I didn’t appear to have broken anything. I tried to laugh at myself. This was literalizing the metaphor, wasn’t it?
A car drove by, and I saw the kind face of a ward member poking out from a window.
I lifted a hand and waved them on. “I’m fine,” I called out. Just wanted to kneel on the ground for a few minutes. They probably thought I was being super devout and had decided in the middle of my walk to kneel down and pray. Or maybe they just thought I was crazy. That would be closer to the mark.
I pushed off the sidewalk with the palms of my hands and got to my feet. I took a few small, steadying steps before deciding that I was fine, that I could do this walk, so long as I didn’t have to face any more bad news about Kelly Helm.
I went back inside and told Kurt I was going to Anna’s. He asked me if I was sure, but he didn’t try to stop me.
“I’ll be here if you need anything. Make sure you have your phone,” he said.
In case I fell again and needed help getting up, yes.
I walked over to Anna’s house and we went around the neighborhood. When we passed the Helm home, Anna’s hand tightened on mine.
“Don’t look,” she said to me.
“I already saw it,” I said, and looked again. It still hurt to see it. I found myself holding my breath, unable to keep walking. The pain in my left arm suddenly flared up and I felt almost as if I were back in the house with Aaron Weston and his knife.
No, I was home. I was free of him. Kelly was free of him, too.
But not of Jared and Alex Helm.
“She will be fine,” said Anna. “She will go to another ward and she’ll be taken care of there. You have to depend on that. There are good ward members all over the world.”
I stood there, staring at the window. Kelly’s window. She was not my daughter, my Georgia. She hadn’t come into my life to be a substitute for me. But she had come for a reason. She had come to bring me to myself.
“Have you seen her at all since the funeral?”
“A couple of times,” I said.
“It’s not your fault, you know. That Jared is taking her away. He would likely have done it anyway. He needs a new start, and maybe Kelly does, too.”
Maybe.
I caught a glimpse of a face out the window, and then there was a small hand waving at me. I smiled and waved back. Then she was gone.
“We should keep going,” said Anna. She rubbed her shoulders as if it were still winter. “It’s cold.”
She was doing it for my sake, I knew, pretending that I should do it for hers.
We had headed back up the street when suddenly something hit me from behind, at about thigh height. It was soft and warm and I thought at first it must be one of the neighborhood dogs that sometimes get out. I would probably recognize it when I turned around and could help it find its way home.
But it wasn’t a dog.
It was Kelly Helm, and she was alone. I looked back at her house. How long until either Jared or Alex came running after her and snatched her up? A matter of seconds, most likely.
So I turned around and wrapped my arms around her, lifting her into the air. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked. She wasn’t my daughter, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy her little-girl softness and her little-girl smile.
She started babbling at that pace young children have, so fast a lot of the words got lost in the mix. “Daddy bought a new house, and it has a little house in the backyard just for me. He says I can have sleepovers in it and I can have a kitty. And he says my new mommy will be there for me. And I’m going to go to school there. The school is just across the street and I will be able to walk there. When the summer is done I’m going to meet my new teacher and my new friends and I’ll get a new backpack and new shoes and maybe even a new hat and mittens. And my new mommy will make me a lunch to put in a sack and I already went to church there. And they sing the same songs that we sing here, except they also sing one about snow and rain and sunshine.” She began to sing in a sweet, clear soprano.
Tears stung my eyes, thinking of the musical ability in her that I would never be able to nurture. Not my daughter, I reminded myself again.
“Do you want to come see my room? It’s all packed up in boxes. It looks funny.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, looking up at the house again. Where were Jared and Alex? Who was looking out for Kelly? “Let’s take you back home. I’m sure they’re wondering where you are.”
“Grandpa is on the phone,” said Kelly. “He’s talking to the movers.”
Ah, that explained it. And Kelly had slipped out while he had his back turned. Again.
And she would be punished again if he noticed she was gone.
“You go on, Linda,” said Anna. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to get home now.”
I watched Anna’s receding back and felt a little lost. A part of me wished she had stayed, but another part of me had an impulse to pick Kelly into my arms again and run to my own house with her. I could put her in the car and take her out for ice cream and then? There was no “and then.” She had her family and I had mine. We were sealed to them, and not to each other.
“You can walk in,” said Kelly. “The door isn’t locked.”
“You go in and when I ring the doorbell, you can open it,” I told her, thinking that the confusion of me at the door might make Alex or Jared not notice that Kelly had been coming in, not coming down the stairs to the door.
After Kelly let me in, it was a minute or two before Alex Helm appeared with a cell phone to his ear. He said, “Look, I’ll call you back, all right?” He put the cell phone away and then looked up at me again, as if he expected I might have disappeared in the meantime.
“Hello,” I said.
“Kelly, are you finished in your room?” he said to get rid of her. “Are you ready for your father to come get you and take you to the motel for the night?”
“Yes,” said Kelly. “It’s going to be an adventure!” She smiled up at me brightly.
Would she remember her mother at all? I had tried to give her that photograph, but it was still at home where I had tucked it away. Maybe it was better for Kelly this way, to forget the mother who was dead now. Her father was getting remarried and she would have a new mother, and she could keep smiling like that for the rest of her life.
I thought of Helena Torstensen, and Tobias. And Liam, who had tried to forget his mother’s last moment of life.
“I’m very happy for you, Kelly,” I said. “I wish the very best things for you.”
“Now up to your room,” her grandfather said, pushing her away and up the stairs.
“But I want Sister Wallheim to see our new house,” said Kelly. “Can she come with us when we go today? Or tomorrow? Please, she could bring us some food.”
“No,” said Alex Helm. “That’s not appropriate. She lives here. And you will live there.” Alex Helm looked acutely uncomfortable.
“I’m very busy this afternoon and tomorrow anyway,” I said, though the last word was thready. I didn’t want to say those words at all. I wanted Alex Helm to say no to Kelly. I wanted him to be the bad guy. But he was going to be in Kelly’s new happy life, and I wasn’t. So I did what I did for her sake, not his. Not mine.
“Oh,” said Kelly. Her lips turned downward for just a moment.
“But remember, after we see the new house, we’re going to McDonald’s,” said Alex Helm.
“McDonald’s! Yay!” said Kelly. She looked at me, and for a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to meet her there, too, and I would have to tell her no again.
“Go on and check your room one more time. Make sure that your dolls are all safe,” said Alex Helm.
Kelly trotted up the stairs obediently, and I was left alone with Alex Helm.
“They are marrying in the temple next Friday,” he said. There were no rules about waiting to be married in the temple for a certain period of time after a death, like there were with divorce. You just had to get a special temple recommend from your bishop to do living ordinances for yourself. And Kurt hadn’t told me that Jared Helm had come to him in the last week. Maybe it had been even earlier.
“If you would like to come—” Alex Helm added.
It was an olive branch, but I shook my head. It wasn’t as if Kelly would be there, and I didn’t feel that comfortable with Jared or Alex Helm in any case. “But thank you. Give him my best, if you will.”
“He’s at the office today. He’s leaving the moving to me and Ginny.”
Ginny was to be Kelly’s new mother, it seemed. I nodded.
There was a honk, and I looked over my shoulder. A woman with short dark hair had pulled into the driveway.
“There she is. Ginny,” said Alex Helm.
I had a few moments to stare at her. She seemed completely different from Carrie Helm, who had been beautiful and so very feminine. Ginny seemed more no-nonsense, capable. She was small, but sturdy. I liked her immediately, and that surprised me. I hadn’t expected Jared Helm to choose a woman like that. Except—she was different from Carrie. It made a kind of sense that he would want that.
“I told him not to pick someone who needed rescuing this time,” said Alex Helm in my ear, the intimate understanding of my thoughts uncanny enough to make me shiver. Then he moved around me and went to speak to Ginny.
She turned off the car and came in.
“This is Linda Wallheim, Jared’s bishop’s wife,” Alex Helm introduced us. But not his? He lived here now, didn’t he? But if he owned another home, that would count on church records.
Ginny held out a hand, and I shook it, impressed with her firm grip. She had an unabashed way of looking at me, straight in the eye. “Thank you for taking care of my family until I could find them,” she said. I had the feeling it wasn’t just words to her, that she meant it.
Alex stepped into the house and called for Kelly, who bounded down the steps and threw herself into Ginny’s arms.
“I’ve got your car seat already buckled in, so you can do the rest yourself,” said Ginny.
Kelly ran to the car and got inside.
Ginny turned to me. “So nice to meet you and thank you for all you’ve done.”
“I’m not sure it was much, but I am glad to meet you. Take care of Kelly for me, will you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “And Jared and Alex, too.”
Of course, Jared and Alex, too. Later that afternoon, I heard the moving van and let myself look out the window just once. Six men in worn clothes were packing the last of the Helms’ belongings into a huge truck. Then the house would be empty. It was time to move on.
I went home and began planning a special family dinner. Because they were my family, and that was the only reason I needed for a celebration.