Before Kurt or I had a chance to say object, Stephen called for Sarah and Rebecca. Sarah was already coming up the stairs from the basement, carrying canned green beans, and a few moments later Rebecca appeared on the staircase coming down from the second floor.
“Even if Naomi and Kenneth aren’t here, we want to make sure our guests feel welcome to stay the night,” Stephen said to Rebecca. “Can you sort out which room would be best? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to take care of. I’ll be in my basement office.” With the matter safely in his wives’ hands, Stephen seemed ready to leave us.
I stopped him, reaching out instinctively and putting a hand on his arm.
“Yes?” he said, looking down at his arm as I pulled back my hand.
“Talitha,” I said, but the word came out like a bleat because my mouth was dry. I swallowed and tried again. “Is Talitha all right?”
“She’ll be fine,” Stephen said. “She’s up in her room resting.” He shook his head, smiling faintly. “Little girls and their little problems. When she wakes up tomorrow she probably won’t even remember that cat.”
Little problems—so dismissive a phrase. “You mean . . . Is she in bed for the night?” I asked.
“She is very upset right now,” Rebecca said sadly. “We hope she’ll cry herself to sleep soon.”
I fought a wave of frustration—I needed to talk to Talitha.
“No reason to dilly-dally, ladies,” Stephen said to his two wives. “Go on, all of you.” He made a shooing gesture, then turned and headed down the basement steps Sarah had just come up.
The man seemed to think he could tell Kurt and me what to do as well as his wives. I looked at Kurt, expecting he was going to resist, tell the two women they shouldn’t bother with a room because we weren’t staying the night. But he didn’t say anything, and I thought with relief that Talitha’s plight must have changed his mind.
Sarah and Rebecca shared a quick glance, and by some silent agreement Rebecca took the canned beans from Sarah, while Sarah beckoned for us to follow her upstairs. We walked down a hallway of closed doors, stopping at a linen closet so Sarah could take out new sheets and a couple of quilts.
“We buried the cat on the mountain, over by the scrub oaks,” Kurt told her as Sarah stacked sheets in the crook of her elbow. “Whenever Talitha is ready, we’ll be happy to show her the spot.”
“I’m sure knowing that will change everything difficult in her life,” Sarah said with clear sarcasm.
In a contest of least happy Stephen Carter wife, Sarah was beating out even Carolyn for first place. And she didn’t have pregnancy hormones as an excuse. I wished the woman could overlook her own discontent for her daughter’s sake at the moment.
Kurt offered to help carry the quilts, but Sarah refused the assistance. “I don’t need a man to help manage the simplest tasks of my life, thank you very much,” she said tartly. She led us to the third floor and stopped in front of a door. “Here,” she said, opened it, then stepped back to let me enter first.
It was not a typical guest room with a double bed and bland furnishings. This was clearly one of the boys’ bedrooms, cluttered with football paraphernalia and cramped by childishly short bunk beds, and I couldn’t help but think that Sarah had brought us to the least comfortable room she could as some kind of revenge. For interrupting her routine? Or did she think we were Stephen’s allies against her in some way?
I gritted my teeth and decided not to make a fuss over this. Maybe they didn’t have a guest room that was any better than this. With so many children, they must not have much extra space. And it wasn’t as if I wished that Stephen had given up any of the adult bedrooms he shared with his wives. That would have truly made it impossible for me to stay under his roof.
I looked around the room, amused by the masculine decorating. There were several signed footballs covered in protective plastic domes and signed posters of famous BYU players, including Steve Young and Ty Detmer. I wondered if Stephen was nervous about letting his sons play in a room with so many valuable items.
Sarah had begun to strip the beds of blankets and sheets.
“Can I help?” I asked, secretly guilty she was changing the sheets when I wasn’t at all sure Kurt and I would ever use them.
“It’ll be faster if I do it myself,” Sarah said. She was practiced at the maneuver, as I had never been when my boys had had bunk beds. It was always the upper bunk that was tricky. I felt like I needed eight arms to get everything to lie flat.
“This is Stephen, isn’t it?” Kurt said, pointing to a photo of a younger version of Stephen in football gear that looked like it had been taken in the ’80s.
“Yes. In his college days,” Sarah said.
“How interesting,” I murmured in hopes that she would say more.
A big cowbell sounded in the kitchen as Sarah was pulling the second comforter taut across the bed. “Dinner time,” she said, and walked out of the bedroom without any further fanfare.