“But Sarah can’t just make Talitha leave with her, can she? We have to stop her,” Kenneth insisted.
If the police were here, what would they say? But the police weren’t here. And Sarah was Talitha’s mother, biologically at least.
I sighed. “Does Talitha want to go with her?” Maybe she would be better off away from here. Though with volatile Sarah—I doubted it. What other choices did she have?
Kenneth grimaced. “She’s upstairs right now begging Naomi to let her stay here. She wants to be where her cat Lucy is buried.”
I hoped that didn’t mean that Sarah was going to disinter the cat’s body to take with them. “Sarah is Talitha’s mother. I’m not sure we can stop her,” I said. All Sarah had to do was threaten to call the police and Rebecca might well be willing to sacrifice one child to save the rest of the family. I hated to think about it that way, but she was the one who had put herself in this situation, even if I had helped her move forward with it.
“Don’t you think everyone should take some time to calm down and think this over?” Kenneth said.
That was a sensible suggestion. For a moment, I thought about offering to take Talitha home with me for a cooling-off period. Then she could have some space to make a decision about where she wanted to live without pressure from either side. And if only for a little while, I could be a mother again, which had always been my best skill. But Kurt and I had fought so terribly. It wasn’t a good time to bring a child into that.
“I’m going to ask Naomi if she thinks we should take Talitha in, at least for a while,” Kenneth said, his voice deep and gravelly. “What do you think?”
I was stunned, and then very proud of him. He’d had a few doubts about Naomi and her family just a few hours ago, but he had moved past them. Talitha would be much better off with her favorite sister.
“I think that is very noble of you, Kenneth,” I said, struggling against tears.
He rolled his eyes. “Not noble, Mom. I love Naomi, and I love Talitha, too. Naomi has practically been Talitha’s mother ever since she was born. Sarah doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body.”
No, I thought. Sarah wasn’t a mother in spirit. She was still a child herself, whatever her age.
“Are you going to stay for the funeral?” asked Kenneth.
“I’m staying until I find out who murdered Stephen.” For the mothers, and for me. As for Kurt, he would have to wait for me to come home and figure out things with him.
Chapter 21
Rebecca dispatched Lehi and Brigham to help Kenneth take the body to the grave. The two boys looked pale but determined. I didn’t think Rebecca had told them anything about the murder, and the knife wound wasn’t visible, since Rebecca had already wrapped Stephen in the rope braid rug and tied it with bungee cords herself. But still, this was their father who was dead, and they had to handle the body.
Kenneth looked at me and I nodded. This was it, the moment that we both decided we were in this for the long haul, that we were going to face whatever consequences there were for helping to cover up this murder.
Kenneth took a deep breath. “Boys, this is men’s work and you should be proud to do it, no matter how hard it is,” he said.
The two boys said nothing, just following Kenneth down the stairs, grunting with effort.
I didn’t know if Rebecca had asked the older girls to keep the younger children occupied in the basement for this, but none of them was watching during the twenty minutes it took to maneuver the body outside. I watched until I couldn’t see them out the back door anymore, then sat down on the couch in the living room and prayed that I hadn’t just done the worst thing a mother could do to her son, leading him to sin—or possibly to jail.
When the three came back, Kenneth ushered Lehi and Brigham to the bathroom to wash up.
Then Rebecca rang the cowbell and the children streamed up from downstairs with the older girls. We all sat down in the dining room for a rather grim, cold dinner of ham sandwiches and deviled eggs.
“Tonight is your father’s funeral,” Rebecca said after the too-quiet dinner. “We’re going to wait in the backyard until everyone is ready to go down together.”
The children trooped silently out to the backyard with Rebecca and then waited there for the other wives and children to gather. When Jennifer, Joanna, and Carolyn had arrived, along with their children, we all began the descent together. I noticed that Sarah wasn’t here, and that Naomi and Talitha weren’t, either. Good, I thought. Naomi could make sure that Talitha didn’t get taken away while Rebecca and the rest of the family were busy with the funeral.