“It’s a mess right now,” she said, glancing behind her. But she stepped back, allowing me inside.
I took in the space itself. The one overhead light was rather harsh. The shed was divided into different sections. I saw there was a small refrigerator and a portable cook top, along with a cabinet that had a couple of dirty pans and dishes on top of it and a sink under the window. I could see a tiny door that was probably a bathroom. Sarah could really retreat here for days on end if she wanted to.
On the other side of the room, there were several large, blank canvases, as well as cans of paint neatly ordered on shelves. But there were also piles of ruined canvases heaped together, scraps floating in the flow of air from the space heater. Sarah was carefully keeping away from the pile of ruined things, as if touching them would hurt her all over again. I felt sympathy for her then, dealing with this invasion and cruelty, whoever it had come from.
“Did any of your work survive?” I asked Sarah, investing my voice with all my compassion. “I’d love to see something.”
“All my favorites, the new things, are gone, but I’ll see what I can find,” Sarah said in a muted tone. She was so different here, vulnerable and hurt. Who had done this to her? Stephen, as she thought? Did that lead me back to her as the best suspect for the murder? Not if she hadn’t found the destruction until today, as she said she had.
Sarah picked through some paintings and I felt sorrow on her behalf as more scraps of ruined canvases fell to the cement floor. They had been cut by a knife, I thought. Repeatedly, and with some viciousness.
“Were you an artist before you married Stephen?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Sarah’s tone was distant as she picked through the stack of canvases. “I dabbled a bit. I never finished college.”
“Oh? Why was that?” I asked.
She stiffened at my question and let go of the canvases. “I got pregnant when I was a sophomore and dropped out of school.”
I had guessed as much—Talitha didn’t look much like Stephen, whose genes were too obvious on all the other children’s faces, and I’d wondered if an out-of-wedlock pregnancy had been part of how Sarah had ended up here on the Carter compound. “What about the father?” I asked nosily.
Sarah made a sound of disgust, apparently at her past, youthful self. “Same old story. I fell in love with another student. I thought he loved me, too. But I was an idiot, didn’t know anything about birth control because my Mormon parents hadn’t bothered to tell me about it. And I got pregnant.”
“You didn’t consider an . . .” I trailed off, finding it hard to say the word “abortion” out loud after years of avoiding the word in Mormon settings. It wasn’t against Mormon doctrine to use birth control, at least not anymore, but Mormons were certainly still encouraged to have large families and to start at a young age. As for abortion, the Mormon church allowed it only in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the mother’s life. Even then, you had to get clearance from your bishop if you wanted to keep a temple recommend and avoid discipline.
“No. I don’t know why. I fell in love with my baby before she was even born. I thought her father would feel the same way about her, which was idiotic of me, I know.” She made a derisive sound. “The day after I told him, he disappeared. Talitha and I have never heard from him again.”
She paused a moment and I wanted to say that I was sorry, but surely that would sound condescending to her so instead I said, “What about your parents?” Why hadn’t they been a backup for her?
“My parents only wanted to offer me a place to stay if I repented of my sins and gave the baby up for adoption.” She was staring at her hands. I knew the Mormon church encouraged adoption for unmarried mothers, but it shouldn’t have been forced. I was suddenly so angry at those parents from so many years ago. What might Sarah’s life have been like if they hadn’t been so judgmental? “I was sure I’d never have my own life again after that,” Sarah said. “So I . . .”
She paused, and I filled the silence. “So you married Stephen.”
Sarah nodded and the worn defeat in her eyes startled me. It might have been the look of a woman twice her age. “Yes, I married Stephen. I was so na?ve.”
If her parents had been here, I would have given them a piece of my mind. No young woman should have to go through so much in such a short period of time—getting pregnant, getting dumped, losing her family and their financial support, having to abandon her education, feeling backed into a drastically different lifestyle and nearly new religion, all at once.