“Yes, of course. I will miss him, as will Abuelo.” Her English was perfectly Midwestern, with a few hints of Utah twang in it.
The way she turned to her grandfather again made it clear that she thought that he and Stephen were closer than she and Stephen were. Which made me wonder what Stephen had really been doing here.
“Did Joanna come with you?” Maria asked, looking behind me to the door.
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Of course, she and Joanna would be closer in age and must be friendly.
“Oh, well, I miss her. Will you tell her I hope she will come soon? I have a video I want to show her on YouTube.”
Considering her FLDS background and old-fashioned clothing, I was surprised that Joanna would be interested in anything on the Internet, but I nodded. “I’ll tell her when I go back. Right now I’m wondering if Stephen said anything special to you on that last day, something I could pass along to Rebecca to remember him by.” It was lame, but it was the best thing I could think of to get her to talk to me about Stephen.
“To me?” Maria said. “Why would he do that?”
“Stephen loved you, Maria,” said Mr. Perez. “You know that he did.”
“And I loved him, like an uncle, Abuelo.” She sounded cautious now, as if she didn’t want to offend her grandfather, but she also wasn’t far from disgust.
“It would have grown into more than that, Maria. Stephen was waiting for you to be ready.”
So Stephen had been grooming a teenager? Was that what he’d done with Joanna, too, planting the idea of marriage and then waiting until she was eighteen? At least now I had a reason Stephen might have wanted to change his will, if he was planning to take on Maria as a sixth wife. Then again, why would he change the will now to include her if he was going to wait two more years before they got married? This wasn’t quite adding up.
Maria stared at her grandfather. “Stephen was nearly as old as you are. He was your friend, not mine. I’m only sixteen. I’m going to college. I’m going to have a job, a life. And when I get married, if I get married, it will be to someone my own age who I choose myself.” She looked and saw me, and then flushed with embarrassment that I’d overheard her scolding her grandfather.
Mr. Perez tsked at her. “He was not nearly as old as I am, Maria. He was a young man, still vigorous. In his prime. And he had much to offer you.” He turned to me. “These teenagers, they do not understand the real world, do they? They do not see the danger in it, and how they need protection.”
I had no idea how to answer that. It was uncomfortable for him to be involving me in the conversation, but also useful that it was unfolding in front of me.
He turned back to Maria, whose jaw was tight. “Maria, he would have built you your own house. He would have provided handsomely for your children in time. My great-grandchildren.”
“Children? With Stephen Carter?” said Maria, shuddering.
“You do not know what’s good for you, Maria. I do. I have lived much longer than you have. I have watched my son and daughter-in-law both die, and they made me promise I would make sure that you had a better life than they did. Stephen was my way to honor my promise to them. I am not going to be here much longer, you know.”
Maria seemed caught between shouting at her grandfather and comforting him. She chose comforting in the end, going to his side and wrapping an arm around him. “Don’t say that. You’ll be here for a long time yet. Long enough that you don’t need to worry about marrying me off like that.” She seemed to remember I was still in the room. “This must all seem crazy to you. I don’t know what Stephen thought, but whatever it was, I didn’t know anything about it.”
“Of course not,” I said sympathetically. Her grandfather hadn’t killed Stephen, I decided. He’d approved of the relationship Stephen intended. And Maria wouldn’t have killed Stephen, either, since she didn’t seem to even know what was going on. It seemed like coming here had just steered me back at the wives for my list of suspects.
“Excuse me. I’m going to bed now. I’m very tired and it has been a difficult day,” Maria said. She hurried upstairs after a long look at her grandfather, leaving me alone with him.
I tried to think of anything else I could ask. Was it possible Mr. Perez knew anything useful about the murder? I couldn’t ask him if he knew who’d killed Stephen without revealing that he’d been buried without a police investigation. “Mr. Perez? What did you think of Stephen Carter?” So vague it might yield nothing.
“I thought he was a great man. A true Mormon, with courage to live as God meant us to, from the beginning,” said Mr. Perez warmly.
“Do you mind if I ask if you were born here? And if you’re a member of the Mormon church?”