The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(35)

“I’m going to gain all that weight back. I’m planning it. The month after I’m released, you and I will eat out every night, and I will always get dessert.”

“Unless you get called to be stake president,” I said, teasing. It was the fate of many a competent bishop, being given a more difficult job as a reward for the years of service.

He shook his head and looked sternly at me. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare.”


KURT AND I went to visit Tobias the next night, and I made Anna some tea and talked to her about a book I had been reading as we sat at the kitchen table, but after a few minutes, it felt like I was talking into a void. “I shouldn’t be prattling on,” I said.

“Oh, don’t say that. I like your enthusiasm. And I’d like to borrow that book sometime. Later.”

“Of course. I’ll bring it by.” Later, I thought.

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the susurrating sounds of Kurt and Tobias upstairs.

“Thank you again for coming,” said Anna, when Kurt came out of the bedroom. “You made me forget myself for a little while and I appreciate that enormously.”





WEDNESDAY EVENING AFTER his church meetings, Kurt suggested we go to visit the Torstensens. He had called earlier in the day to ask Anna if we could come by late. Tobias wasn’t sleeping well, snatches here and there when the pain medication was working, but when it wasn’t, there was nothing that could be done.

After one look at Tobias in his room, I reconsidered my position on euthanasia. He was skin and bones, a scrap of humanity that breathed in and out with great pain. He moaned with every breath, and the sound rattled out of him as if he were already a corpse. I had to bite my lower lip hard to keep myself from weeping aloud. Luckily, I didn’t have to stay long with him. Kurt motioned me to take Anna out while he talked to Tobias.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, as we walked back down the stairs.

“We’re fine. I’m just—waiting. It’s a difficult time,” said Anna. Her eyes were bright with tears and her words were a whisper.

I put a hand on her arm. “Please. Tell me something I can do to help.” Maybe I needed it more than she did, but I asked anyway.

“Well,” said Anna at last. “Tobias keeps talking about his first wife. He wants to see her grave, he says. But I don’t know where it is. I could call the boys myself, but I just don’t have the energy. Why aren’t they here yet? What are they waiting for? He is dying, and he wants his sons here with him to find a little peace. I have the feeling he could talk to them about his first wife when he won’t talk to me.” She waved a hand impatiently.

I remembered the important “work projects” that both Liam and Tomas claimed they had to finish before they flew to see their father on his deathbed. Anna had told them Tobias was dying almost a week ago.

“I’ll call your sons,” I said, glad to do something with my angry energy. I’d either get them out here tomorrow or get information out of them about their mother’s grave that would help ease Tobias’s mind. “Do you have their phone numbers?” She wrote them out for me on a scrap of paper. “Thank you,” she said, and held my hands inside of hers. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry,” I said to her.

She nodded, then went to bring Tobias a glass of water. “I forgot this before. He needs to drink. He needs to keep his lips wet,” she told me as I followed her back up to his room.

I stood in the doorway and heard only the last bit of conversation between Kurt and Tobias. “But—” Tobias was saying, then he looked up and saw us. He was startled into silence.

Kurt patted Tobias on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it now. You enjoy a bit of time with your wife. I’ll come back to see you again tomorrow.”

Kurt and I walked outside together.

“He has something weighing on his mind,” said Kurt.

“Did he say anything to you about his first wife?”

“Not directly.”

“Maybe he was trying not to be a bother,” I said and explained to Kurt what Anna had told me about his desire to see his wife’s grave. “Do you have any idea where she would be buried?”

Kurt rubbed at his face. “No, I don’t. She died long before we were in the ward, and the records just list her death place as Draper, but she’s not in the city cemetery.”

How strange that the death place wasn’t always recorded in Mormon genealogical records, I thought. Shouldn’t death be holy? Shouldn’t we see it as the moment when the soul is invited back into the presence of God?

“Do you think he is worried about whether he will be with Anna or with the other wife in the afterlife?” I asked. We were getting closer to home and walking more and more slowly.

“Surely God will make the choice, if one has to be made, that will bring the most happiness to all involved.” Kurt was staring past me, and I realized he was looking at the temple set on the mountain so recently.

“He seemed upset when we came in. Did he tell you anything?”

Kurt hesitated, then shook his head. “Something about a sin, but he wouldn’t say what. And I couldn’t tell you about it even if he did.”