Kurt leaned in and held my hand in his. His touch reminded me of how he’d found me in the fire. It reminded me of his touch on my back as I labored to give birth to Georgia, a child I’d already been told was dead. It reminded me of his touch when we had knelt across the altar in the temple to be sealed together.
Mormonism was all about binding people in love, not in coercion, and not against their own desires. At some point, we’d figure out how to work the doctrine around that one abiding principle. I hoped we would, anyway, and I fell back asleep in the sweet assurance that I could let go, for just a little while, and trust that God would be able to handle this on His own, without me.
Chapter 34
I got out of the hospital on Friday evening and Kurt took me home and treated me as if he were trying to keep me wrapped in my hospital bubble packaging. I slept snugged up close to him for weeks before he would let it go any farther than that. Our sex life was still not what it had once been, but it was something.
There were no legal consequences from concealing Stephen’s death for Kenneth and me, though Rebecca was fined and asked to do a certain number of hours of community service. Because of her lawyer, the police eventually let Joanna return home to Short Creek, though there was an ongoing custody battle over her three children, who were still in the care of the state.
Edward Carter, on the other hand, was awaiting trial for murder and arson. Dr. Benallie hadn’t been arrested, though she had lost her license, since this was not the first case of her doing something outside the bounds of the law. I wondered at Stephen’s choice of her as a potential partner. He seemed to have two models for wives, the ones he could manipulate and the ones who could benefit him in specific ways. Dr. Benallie might have been his idea of someone who could help him in shady medical plans that had only ever come to fruition with Carolyn’s lost baby. As far as the baby was concerned, I’d heard nothing of a lawsuit for custody, and I tried not to think too much about all of that, since it wasn’t my business anymore. It really never had been.
The Monday after the fire, Kenneth enrolled Talitha in school near a condo he and Naomi were now planning to buy in Sandy. It would be a thirty-minute drive for him to work and her to medical school, but the schools were better south of the city, and they were willing to make the sacrifice for Talitha’s sake. An official adoption was months off, but they had legal custody of her now that Sarah had signed papers relinquishing her own rights as a mother.
It seemed like everything was neatly tied up, except that the more I thought about the Carters, the less I could sleep. I was far away from the madness of the compound, but I’d lie in bed beside Kurt and start to smell the smoke from the burning house again. Even though I tried to relax, I could feel smoke around me, suffocating me. I could see the glint of kitchen knives. I could smell blood. I was barefoot and walking through blood-drenched carpet, going more and more slowly as it pulled me down.
When I actually managed to fall asleep, it was worse. In my dreams, I was frantically searching my burning house, or another house, or a park, or a car. There were children missing, dying, and I had to rescue them. But I couldn’t find them.
Sometimes the children were my own, younger versions of Adam and Joseph and Zachary and Kenneth and Samuel. Sometimes the children were left in my care by another mother, and I had somehow forgotten about them, and suddenly their mother reappeared with an expression of fury and horror. I had forgotten her children! I had left them in danger! How dared I be safe myself?
I wanted to call Anna up and talk all this through with her on one of our walks. But every time I tried to do that, I found myself paralyzed and speechless, unable to figure out a way to explain to her why what she’d said to me at church had hurt me so deeply. Going back to church also seemed a monumental task. I had skipped church the first week under Kurt’s insistence that I needed rest, and the weeks went on after that, each one making it easier than the last to stay at home.
When Kurt was at work, I spent time playing the piano and found some solace in that. It had been years since I had practiced seriously. And maybe this didn’t count as serious practice, either. It was pure therapy. I was pounding the keys, playing old familiar songs again and again. I wasn’t worried about technique or scales. I didn’t even care how the music sounded. I just needed it to be louder and more intense than my own thoughts. I was trying to stop thinking, to simply be.