CHAPTER 36
By June, a new family quickly moved in to the Helm house. They had three young children and the mother seemed very frazzled.
Later that summer, I knocked on Anna’s door for our daily walk, but she held car keys in her hand.
“It’s Helena’s birthday today,” she said. “I thought we would go visit her grave. And Tobias’s. Do you mind?”
I knew she hadn’t been to the cemetery since Tobias was buried.
We drove down to the city cemetery. Helena’s remains had finally been released to her family, and then buried beside Tobias, in the plot where Anna had always imagined she would be.
“Have you decided what to do yet?” There wasn’t a plot directly next to Tobias’s on the other side, but she could buy another plot nearby.
“The cemetery said that I could be buried on top of her. They’d be willing to rebury her further down.”
“And do you feel good about that?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “Maybe that’s another reason why I’m here today. And why I wanted you to come with me.” She leaned over and gripped my hand tightly. She had already turned off the engine and was staring at the expanse of green grass.
It was a beautiful day in Utah, one of those summer days when the sky seems endlessly blue and you can’t imagine that winter will ever come again. There is no hint of cold in the air. It is all dry, scorching heat trying to turn you into a desert stone.
Anna took a deep breath and reached for the door. I stepped out with her into the shimmering heat.
We walked in silence over to the left, where Tobias was buried. The last time we were here, there had been no headstone. Now there were two.
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER was carved under the name Helena Torstensen. I pointed at it. “Did you choose that?” I asked Anna.
“The boys and I chose it together.”
We stood over the two graves, the final date for Helena thirty-two years before Tobias’s.
“What do you think?” Anna asked. “About me being buried with her?”
“I think you’re going to live for a long time yet,” I said. “Maybe you will get remarried and you’ll decide you want to be buried with your new husband.”
“You are such a romantic,” said Anna.
“Me? I’m practical. You’re young and attractive.”
“Young?” sputtered Anna. “I’m sixty-two.”
“Which is still young,” I said. It was only a few years older than me, and she looked younger still, or at least she looked beautiful and strong, the kind of woman men should want to marry. “Besides, it’s hard to live alone when you’re used to living with someone else.”
Anna shook her head. “You know, women who are happy in marriage are a lot less likely to marry again than men who are happy in marriage,” she said. “It’s a statistic I heard somewhere.”
“And you think that’s because of what? Women don’t need men as much as men need women?” I asked.
“That would be one explanation. Or it could be that the good men are already taken by the time you’d have a second chance.”
“I can’t believe that. There have to be good men out there who have lost their wives.” The words came out before I realized what I was saying.
“Exactly,” said Anna. “And then I would have to choose again, if I wanted to be buried on his other side. If I wanted to share him. Again.”
“It might not be like that,” I said. But it was too late to take it back. She was right. At her age, she was most likely to find someone who was either widowed or divorced. She would have to deal with being second all over again.
“And besides, I believe that Tobias and I were a miracle, really. That he found me and that I found him. I’m not sure that I could expect that ever again. He needed me and I wanted to be needed like that.”
“Do you still wonder who he will be with, afterward?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Somehow it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”
We walked quietly around the cemetery for another hour. Then we got back into the car and she drove home. We went inside her house, and she got out tea. We talked about Carrie and Kelly Helm, and about Georgia. I cried in Anna’s arms, and then I went home, to figure out the rest of my life, whatever I was going to make of it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Juliet Grames for taking a chance on this book. We met serendipitously at Sirens Conference in Vail, Colorado, in October of 2010 and she asked me to send her something if I ever wrote something she could publish. Over the next few years, I sent her several things, but none of them were right for Soho. Even when I sent her The Bishop’s Wife in January of 2013, I was merely asking for her opinion, not imagining she could publish the book. After all, Soho Crime mostly specialized in international crime stories. When she offered publication on that first read, I was stunned, happy, confused, nervous, and a whole host of other emotions. I asked her how she could publish a book set in small-town Utah that was not international, she said, “It’s like Mormons are a different country. They speak a different language, and you’re the interpreter.”* I’ve never worked so easily with an editor before. I found myself anticipating her suggestions, and having fun with them. Thanks also to Briony Everroad for a final tightening of this book.
Barry Goldblatt has been my agent from the first, and by that, I mean the first book I ever published, The Monster in Me, a contemporary realistic young adult that was my first attempt to get at this world I live in. Natalie Wills’s foster family was also Mormon, but I felt constrained in my ability to talk about their Mormonism at that time. Barry has guided me through the confusing maze of the publishing world and he has made it possible for me to try out this new form of storytelling. At his yearly client retreats, he often talks about “the book of your heart.” It has taken me ten years of retreats to realize what that even meant. After I figured it out, it was actually very easy to write it. To all his other clients, and to other writers out there, this is a real thing. There are actually books that only you can write. You will do yourself and the world a service by figuring out what they are.
Thanks to my book group, which was at first officially sponsored by our ward’s Relief Society, and has now become its own independent entity. Thank you for letting me be loud when I needed to be loud, and for reading my suggestions even when I forgot all the bad words and other naughty things. Thanks for making me feel like I was welcome again, when I felt I had lost myself and my place in the world. Thanks in particular to Sylvia Pack and to Jen Koldewyn, who have been fine examples of real bishop’s wives in my life. Thanks to the non-Mormon women who have joined our group rather daringly, and shown me the rest of us from their perspective.
To my own Mormon community, I sincerely hope that this book makes you laugh in parts, cry in parts, and that you feel I have done justice to the complexity of our doctrine and our culture. As Linda says, this is my Mormonism. It may not be yours exactly, but I hope it is close enough. I hope there are many Mormon women out there who read this book and see parts of themselves in Linda. I hope that there are many non-Mormons who read this book and see how smart, thoughtful, kind, and powerful Mormon women can be, even if they seem to be following a traditionally feminine path, and even if you do not see them in the church leadership. In that way, I think Linda is actually very ordinary, and that I, a stay-at-home mother of five who finds the power of motherhood overwhelming at times, am ordinary, as well.
* Editor’s note: Juliet remembers a different version of this origin story, wherein Mette pitched the book to her by saying, “I know Utah isn’t international, but it’s like Mormons are a different country.”