So she was Talitha’s mother, I thought. “You and Rebecca share this house?” I asked aloud.
“Yes, because we’re sisters, but the other wives all have their own homes close by.” There was that wide smile again, and it almost seemed to have something wolfish underneath it now.
“That makes sense,” I said, though my head felt like a butter churn, trying to imagine what it would be like to live like this, behind a padlocked gate in a location that even Google didn’t seem to know about. I was trying not to leap to conclusions, but Sarah did not strike me as a happy person, despite her nice clothing and her handsome features.
Sarah showed us into the front room, which was filled with musical instruments, including a baby grand piano in a strange shade of pink. There were also several recliners and a white-and-green plaid couch. The wallpaper was busy and floral, peeling at the edges.
“What a lovely room,” I said politely. I felt acutely uncomfortable and wished at the moment that Kenneth and Naomi had been here with us to ease the way, but Naomi had wanted me to have this unfiltered view of her father’s world.
“Our sitting room, but it doubles as our music room,” Sarah said. “Carolyn comes to give lessons here when she isn’t pregnant.” She gestured to the couch, and Kurt and I sank into it. “Rebecca will be here shortly,” she said. “She’s been waiting for your arrival all day.”
There was a long moment of silence until I said, “This seems a lovely, private piece of property.”
“Oh, it is private, all right,” said Sarah.
That didn’t sound very positive. I glanced at Kurt, who was studiously not looking at Sarah. He did that sometimes when he found a woman attractive. So that left polite conversation to me. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, from how long Sarah had been married to why she’d decided to join her sister in polygamy and how they dealt with things like food preparation and, well, jealousy.
Instead, I tried something innocuous. “How many children do you have?” I asked.
“Five,” she said. “Two boys and three girls.”
I nodded. “I have five children, too.” We had something in common now, which should open things up. “How old are they?”
She shrugged. “Far too young,” she said.
I was left trying to figure out if she meant they required a lot of care or something else. “My sons are mostly grown,” I said, guessing at the former. “I have one granddaughter now, but I remember the days when they were all at home. It was very noisy, very chaotic. Sometimes I would wish for just one moment to myself.”
Sarah stared at me. “And would that help?” she asked. “One moment to yourself, I mean. Were you able to pretend for a little while that they didn’t exist, that you were the woman you had once been?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. My suspicion about her being unhappy seemed confirmed now.
Kurt put a hand on my shoulder. “I think Linda has always been the same person,” he said gently.
Sarah looked sour at this, though I thought it was a nice compliment—and a surprising one considering our relationship right now. “Really? No changes? Then what did you do before you had children?” Sarah asked.
“Do?” I echoed, trying to refocus.
She waved a hand. “As work. Or were you one of those women who never thought she would do anything but be a mother, like my sister Rebecca?” There was clearly a nasty judgment in that phrase. All was not “well in Zion” here.
“I studied psychology, but I never went to work in it.” Unless you counted my trying to help troubled families behind the scenes as a bishop’s wife, I suppose. It certainly wasn’t paid.
“Then you never had grand ambitions that you gave up?” Sarah said.
“What? I guess not.” I’d heard younger women talk about regrets about being stay-at-home mothers, but that had rarely fazed me. I was happy with my choices in the past and my prospects for a future.
“Ah.” Sarah turned to Kurt, as if her interest in me was over. “And you? Were you always the bread and butter type?”
He didn’t wince at this blunt assessment, though I found myself wanting to defend him. Kurt was an accountant, but that didn’t mean that he was boring. He helped people, which he did by using numbers. He wasn’t a cog in a wheel. He was an individual and she didn’t know anything about him just by looking at him for two minutes.
“I always believed that earning a living honestly was nothing to be ashamed of,” Kurt said.
“Honestly? That means you think other people make a living dishonestly? People who don’t follow the rules like you do?” Sarah said, one eyebrow raised.
For a first meeting, she seemed to be making a lot of judgments about us. Maybe we were, too, but I felt like we weren’t blurting them out. I wondered if Sarah met people so rarely she didn’t have a good sense of what was socially acceptable or if it was just a mean nature that made her like this.