“Let her go right now!” I demanded, and pulled at the hand that Sarah had latched onto Talitha’s shoulder.
“She’s mine.” Sarah’s face was beet-red and she was shaking with emotion. “She’s my daughter. She’s the only one who is mine, and I’m taking her with me.”
Talitha had bared her teeth like a dog—or a cat, I suppose.
“Look, why don’t you stay a few more days?” I asked, grasping at anything that would get Sarah to stop. “Until we have a chance to sit down and talk things out with you and Talitha and Rebecca?”
As soon as I said the name “Rebecca,” Sarah’s whole body spasmed. “I’m not giving her Talitha. I’m not!” Sarah said hysterically. At least she had stopped hitting Talitha. She had let go of the little girl, who had collapsed on the floor.
I heard footsteps coming from the stairs, and in a moment, Naomi was cradling Talitha in her lap. Kenneth was behind her, a wall of masculine strength protecting both of them.
“There is no other choice,” Sarah said, but she sounded defeated. She sagged against the wall, the angry energy drained out of her.
Naomi was examining Talitha’s face gingerly. The skin on her lower left cheek was broken from the sharp stone on Sarah’s wedding ring and there was blood dribbling down to the girl’s chin and staining the pink T-shirt below.
“Is she all right?” Sarah asked faintly. It seemed ironic, when she had done this to her daughter herself. But I saw no regret or apology in her, only exhaustion.
I tried to recall Talitha’s behavior around her mother before this. Had it been fearful? I hadn’t noticed. After all my excuses to Kurt about staying here for Talitha’s sake, I’d been too caught up in the drama surrounding Stephen to protect the little girl I’d vowed to Naomi to help. I couldn’t help but think that Georgia must be watching me from heaven and thinking she was lucky to have been spared living with me as a mother. If I couldn’t protect Talitha when I had been warned she was being abused, how could I have protected my own daughter, if she had lived?
Naomi sent Kenneth to the kitchen to get a bag of ice for the wound, cocooning Talitha with her own body.
“Does she need to go to the hospital?” I whispered, not trusting myself anymore to make a decision.
Naomi shook her head. “There’s a lot of blood, but the cut isn’t big enough for stitches. I think she’ll heal on her own well enough,” she said. Neither of us said anything about contacting DCFS. I looked at Naomi and I could see the guilt in her eyes. We both should have known better. The abuser isn’t always the obvious choice.
After Kenneth brought the ice, he helped Naomi carry Talitha to one of the couches and she reclined there, very stoically saying she was fine and she just wanted to go get dressed and eat lunch with everyone else. Sarah stayed where she was, sitting like a child on the floor by the door with her legs splayed out in front of her.
Rebecca came back from Carolyn’s house then. I watched her reaction when she saw Talitha’s face. She whitened and looked at Sarah, the weight of guilt on her features familiar to me now.
She’d known, I thought. All this time, she’d known and covered for her sister—no, her daughter whom she did not dare acknowledge as such.
“I fell,” Talitha said in a very practiced tone. Clearly, she knew better than to point a finger at her mother and my heart burst at the thought that she had lived her whole life like this, knowing that even adults who had seen what happened would likely not take her side.
“I see,” Rebecca said. “Is there anything special you need? Some Tylenol? A juice drink so you don’t have to sit up to eat?”
“I just want regular food,” Talitha said. “I’m hungry.”
“Grilled cheese sandwiches?” asked Rebecca, brightening. “With potato chips?”
“And dip,” Talitha said, nodding with a little smile on her face.
I had the sickening sense that this was a routine between them, a favorite treat in exchange for her silence and “good” behavior despite what had been done to her.
No wonder the poor girl had been so attached to her pet cat. No wonder she had wanted so much to believe that Lucy would be in heaven with her. The way that Mormons talked about forever families must be terrifying to a girl like Talitha who was abused and encouraged to be silent by all the adults around her who were supposed to be her eternal family. The cat had been her buffer against all of that.
But did anyone here really want to spend eternity with anyone else? I wasn’t convinced that they did.
“I’ll set the table,” Sarah offered, standing up at last, and straightening her dress. She was strangely and suddenly calm. She went into the kitchen with Rebecca, leaving me alone with Kenneth, Naomi, and Talitha.
I couldn’t help but revise in my head the story of her miserable life here that Sarah had recited for me in her painting shed. Stephen might have had good reason to take away Talitha when she was a baby and give her to the other wives to be looked after—maybe Sarah had been dangerous to her baby. And the minor infractions for which Stephen had meted out his punishments were perhaps not so minor. I had never liked Stephen Carter, but I had to remember that at least Sarah’s view of him was not to be totally relied on.
“Kenneth,” I heard Naomi say, “we have to do something now. Something legally binding, not just taking her in for a few weeks.” She was trying to speak quietly enough that Talitha didn’t pay attention, but I could see Talitha had gone tense with alertness.
“She comes home with us today. Permanently,” Kenneth said firmly. “We can figure out the legalities of the adoption as we go.”
My emotions swelled in that moment. He and Naomi were very young and it would be difficult for them financially to manage a ten-year-old girl while they were still starting out. But Talitha was clearly so emotionally connected to Naomi. It was the right solution for her, and I found I cared much less about what either Sarah or Rebecca thought of it.
“Do you want to come live with us, Talitha?” Naomi asked the little girl, walking over to the couch and gently pulling the ice pack away from her face.
“But you don’t live together, right? You’re not married yet, are you?” Talitha said.
It was quite a practical question.
“We could move up our wedding date, couldn’t we, Kenneth?” Naomi said.
“We’ll get married tomorrow if we need to,” Kenneth said gravely.
I didn’t know if it could happen that quickly in Utah. But they could make a quick trip to Vegas, I supposed. My heart sank at the idea of them getting married without me and Kurt and the rest of our sons to witness the ceremony. But a child’s welfare was at stake here. Besides, we could do a second wedding or a reception later that everyone could publicly cry and laugh at.
“We don’t have any space for her right now,” Naomi pointed out. “I have my one bedroom, and you have a one bedroom. Where would Talitha sleep?”
“I could sleep on the couch at your place,” Kenneth volunteered. “For the next couple of weeks. You two can share the bed. And I can start looking for a two bedroom for all of us. It shouldn’t take too long to find something.”
I thought of offering them the empty bedrooms in our house, but knew immediately that Kenneth would reject the offer. There was no privacy for them there, and of course, the relationship between Kurt and Kenneth would not benefit from that kind of close living. Still, I ached not being able to help mother Talitha in the way I wanted. And Naomi and Kenneth, too, for that matter.
“But what about your honeymoon?” Talitha said. Her lower lip was wobbling. “You don’t want me around for all that.”
The fact that Talitha was thinking about the needs of the adults, and about their sex life no less, was disturbing to me, almost as disturbing as the physical abuse had been.
“Of course we do,” Naomi said, and she and Kenneth joined together to give T
alitha a big hug.
Sarah came past us from the kitchen toward the dining area with plates for the table. I could see her tense at the sight of the new threesome, snuggled together. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Naomi pulled away from Talitha, making sure with a glance that Kenneth was still with her, then helped Sarah with the plates. “Let’s just talk about the next few weeks, Sarah. I’m sure you need some time to get settled in your new life.”
Sarah grunted at this. Would she really let her daughter go? I couldn’t see any evidence that Sarah was concerned about Talitha’s well-being, only her sense of ownership.
“Talitha can stay with Kenneth and me for a while, not here with Rebecca and the others, and we’ll discuss a permanent solution later. All right?” said Naomi gently.
I got up and took the remaining plates from Sarah, who seemed to have stopped in her tracks before she reached the table. She was looking out the window by the front door, her throat moving as if she was swallowing many different answers to Naomi’s words.
Finally, she got out, “You may think I’m selfish, but it’s the first time in more than eleven years I’ve done anything for myself.”
The words seemed to hang in the air, until they fell, unanswered.
In that moment, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Sarah, too, despite her treatment of Talitha. Her parents had pushed her away when she was pregnant, and her biological mother had allowed her into this terrible situation that had only made things worse for her. I couldn’t excuse her, but I could pity her.
“I love you, Talitha,” Sarah said, looking like she had shrunk several inches. She stepped closer to her daughter and held out her hands for a hug, but Talitha only turned her face into Kenneth’s shoulder.
At that, Sarah’s face became its own study in cold emotion. Lunch seemed to be forgotten. She didn’t glance back once at the table or the kitchen. She simply went to the door, her jaw set, and swept out without another word.
I moved to the window to see what I believed was the family’s only car rattle by.
“Godspeed,” Rebecca said, before I realized she was standing there beside me, watching her daughter drive away, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
It was only then that I thought of Joanna’s warning again. I should leave for many reasons. Whoever had killed Stephen, I hadn’t been able to figure it out. Rebecca would have to figure it out on her own, if she really wanted to know the truth.
At least Talitha, who was the original reason I’d come, was safe now, and Naomi and Kenneth had made a big step in their future.
Chapter 31
It was time to call Kurt and tell him I was ready for him to come get me. I dialed the number, waiting with a thumping heart for Kurt to answer.
“Hello? Linda? Are you all right?” Kurt said. “Do you want me to come pick you up now?”
I started crying at the sound of his familiar voice. All I could manage verbally was a vaguely affirmative, mucusy “Mmm-hmmm.”
“What happened?” Kurt asked in that solid voice I loved so much, and had missed almost unbearably. This was the man who had been with me through Georgia’s stillbirth, through every moment of our five sons’ lives. Even if I wasn’t home, I felt home in his love.
“Stephen’s dead,” I got out.
“What? How? When?”
I couldn’t find it in myself to repeat the lie that Rebecca had offered, that Stephen had had a heart attack. “He was murdered,” I said.
I heard something loud in the background. Maybe Kurt smashing his desk with his fist? “How does this always happen to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t. It was either really bad luck or God wanted me in particular locations at particular times and seemed to be arranging for it to happen.
“Are the police there right now?” Kurt asked. “Will they let you leave if I come up?”
How could I tell my husband that I hadn’t called the police and had, in fact, cooperated in covering up the murder? “It happened Tuesday morning and the investigation is still ongoing. But they’ve had the funeral already,” I said. This list of questions wasn’t what I had wanted when I called Kurt, but I’d known it would happen. It was part of why I’d delayed this moment.
Kurt let out a long breath. “Is that why you’ve stayed so long? To help his wives deal with the funeral and such?”
“Yes.” That was mostly true.
“Well, I can come up immediately, then. There’s nothing going on in the ward that can’t wait.”
I felt a wave of relief and love for him. He wasn’t demanding an apology. He wanted everything to go back to the way it had been between us before, just as much as I did. It wasn’t going to be that easy, but at least it was a start.
“Thank you,” I said. “And . . . well, just thank you.” He was always there for me. He really was.
“Do they know who murdered him? Was it one of the wives?”
“I guess I don’t really know.”
“And you’re not trying to find out?” He sounded surprised, and a little amused.
The man was my sanity, I thought. “I’m trying,” I said. “But failing, sadly.”
“Does it by any chance have anything to do with the FLDS?” asked Kurt.
It was such an odd question. “Why would you ask that?”
“Linda, I did some online research on Stephen Carter and his history after I left. I was worried about you, and about him.” Now he sounded embarrassed. My Kurt had done some investigating on his own? It did seem out of character for him.
“What did you find?” I asked, my curiosity leaping to the forefront of my emotions again.
“Well, first of all, I found out about the house fire Stephen mentioned,” Kurt said. “They only ever found the two adult bodies in there.”
“What? Not his brother?” I thought back to what Hector Perez had said. “Was he an only child after all?”
“No, why would you think that?”
I didn’t have time to go into my talk with Hector Perez, so I said, “What happened to his brother, then?” What was his name? Edward, wasn’t it? I tried to bring up the image of the tombstone, but failed.
“Well, in the newspaper article I found online, Stephen is quoted as saying that his parents had told him to get his younger brother out first, which he did. And by the time he tried to go back for the adults, it was too late. The flames were too high.”
Then why was there a gravestone for his brother? “Did the brother die soon after, from injuries related to the fire or something?” I asked.
“No, Linda. He’s alive.”
I felt my chest constrict. This mattered. This could be the piece of information that solved the case. And I hadn’t had it the day before because I wasn’t talking to Kurt. My pride, it seemed, had gotten in the way.
“Linda, he’s not only alive, he’s close by. Edward Carter owns a residence in Short Creek, Arizona, though he also seems to own a house in Spanish Fork.”
“He lives in Short Creek?” That made no sense. Short Creek was a very closed community, only for the FLDS. My mind leaped to Joanna, who had grown up in Short Creek.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Kurt said urgently, “Edward and Stephen were both in foster care for a number of years with a Grace and Thomas Jeffs, who are some of the Jeffs of FLDS fame. They’re apparently cousins of Stephen’s mother, and they took Edward back after the fire. To Short Creek.”
“Grace,” I murmured. Joanna’s oldest daughter was named Grace. The one born while she was still part of the FLDS. It could be a coincidence. But my gut told me it wasn’t. “But if the Jeffs took in Edward after the fire, why didn’t they take Stephen, too?”
“An article I read about the fire said that Stephen was eighteen by that time, which means he had aged out of the system. I suppos
e he could have petitioned for guardianship of his brother as a young man.”
“But instead he went to medical school,” I said, “and buried any memories of his brother in the backyard.”
Based on what Stephen had told us and Hector Perez, he was more than happy to erase his brother from his life in one way or another. But how might Edward feel about that? If Edward had left Short Creek at some point and discovered Stephen’s financial success, not to mention his ownership of the property that had once belonged to their parents and should perhaps have been split between them, he could easily have been angry about it. Could it have led to a murderous rage?
I’d been so focused on one of the wives doing the deed that I hadn’t thought about the possibility that she was just an accessory to it. Those damned keys to the gate. I’d gotten so focused on them and on the insular nature of life on the compound. Of course any of the wives could have opened up the gate for someone else. But I hadn’t given much thought to that because the wives were so isolated here. Who could they have known outside the compound who would be willing to commit murder? It had seemed much more likely that one of them would have done it themselves.
Now I had a new possibility: that one of them had been married to a man who hated Stephen and had probably spent years waiting for the right moment to take his revenge.
Joanna had to have been part of this. She could have easily let Edward Carter onto the property Tuesday morning. Her reasons I could only guess at. Did she hate Stephen more than I had ever suspected?
Then I remembered suddenly that Joanna had said her first husband believed in her gift of prophecy. What if she had never truly left him—or the FLDS?
She had acted as if she had escaped, but the way she wore her hair, the way she dressed, and the way she dressed her children had all pointed to the fact that she had never really changed her beliefs from her FLDS days. How long had this particular revenge been in the making? Joanna must have known Stephen was going to be attacked. When she’d warned Stephen of danger while Kurt and I were there, and that night, when she came to the house and argued with Sarah—she had to have been trying to save him. It hadn’t been a premonition at all.
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