The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(37)

“So far, he hasn’t had to,” I said.

“He sounds … different when I talk to him. I’m worried. Somehow it sounds like he thinks it’s all his fault.”

Did he? And here Kurt had been telling me to stop thinking that everything was my fault. “We should have seen more,” I said simply.

“Mom, you can’t do everything, you know. You’re trying to make sure Samuel gets through school and you’ve got other people in the ward to worry about.”

“Being busy is never an excuse for not helping,” I said. It was an old mantra of mine, whenever the boys complained about a service project while they had homework to do.

“Our grades suffered because of that rule sometimes, you know,” said Adam. He was the oldest, and we had made him do countless service projects for the youth organizations, Eagle Scout projects, not to mention the canning, apple picking at the church farm, visiting the nearby retirement home to do sacrament meetings and weekday services, shoveling snow during the winter and weekly church cleanup. He had been a good sport about it. He never complained, just did the work. A good example to the younger boys, for whom he always tried to make it fun.

Adam was the kind of kid you never worried about when he was older, but it had been a wrench when he left home. I’d felt keenly the loss of his help in mobilizing the troops. Even simple things like dinnertime conversation had seemed more chaotic and less kind when he was gone. But of course, he needed to make the leap and start his own family.

Marie was good for him, energetic and intelligent. I didn’t know why they hadn’t started a family yet. It was likely something they felt pressure about from within the church. They’d been married for four years now, and I knew it was none of my business to ask about grandchildren. But after listening to Gwen Ferris, I wondered if there was more going on than just the two of them trying to finish school before they took on another financial responsibility like kids.

“Well, you still got into BYU,” I said, “so I can’t say I’m too sorry for you.”

“Luckily, BYU cares as much about service to the church as they do about grades,” said Adam.

He was being a little disingenuous there. He might not have had straight As, but he had a lot of them, and he had tested superbly well. He could have taken a full-ride scholarship offer to the University of Utah. He’d also been accepted to Stanford, but we couldn’t afford it and BYU had always been Kurt’s first choice for his sons, so Adam eventually accepted their offer.

“How is Marie?” I asked.

“Fine.” The conversation devolved from there into a discussion of classes they were both taking. Adam was hoping to be an engineer, which meant most of his explanations of what he was studying were hard for me to follow. Marie’s nursing course kept her studying until the wee hours. Maybe that was the real reason they hadn’t had any children yet. No time to make them. But it wasn’t my place to say that, either.

Finally, Adam ended the conversation with, “Mom, take care. Of yourself and Dad, all right? Not just Samuel.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised him, and hung up.

Then I cut up the brownies and wrapped them in plastic to take over to the Helms. I didn’t need Kurt’s permission. It was just something that needed to be done.

I was self-consciously aware of the fact that the news vans were filming me as I walked up to the door and rang the bell. That meant that not only Kurt but everyone else in the ward might know what I had done by evening. Not that I was trying to hide anything. Or that I really knew that anything I did would end up making any difference at all.

Jared Helm opened the door eventually and hurried me inside. Cameras caught it all on tape, but I was hopeful that I wasn’t about to become part of the nightly news segment. There was nothing interesting about a neighbor bringing some brownies over, surely.

“Is there something wrong, Sister Wallheim?” said Jared.

It was a ridiculous question, since there were so many things wrong. “I brought these for Kelly,” I said instead. “She said she loves brownies.”

“Carrie used to make them with her,” Jared said. His face was tense and grey with exhaustion. Before he could call for the little girl, however, she came rushing down the stairs and threw herself at me. I had to take a step backward to keep from falling over.

“Mommy called!” she said. “She said she is bringing me some brownies.”

I stared at Jared. “Did Carrie really call?” I asked. Because if she had, surely this was something the police should know about.

Could it be true—was she alive? Or was it just a delusion on Kelly’s part? Children sometimes had such vivid imaginary lives. When Zachary was little, he had such difficulty telling the difference between dreams and reality.

“Can I have one? Can I? Can I?” Kelly asked, hopping up and down and looking at my plate of brownies.

“One,” said Jared. “I don’t want you to spoil your lunch.” He took the brownies into the kitchen, where he gave Kelly a plate with one brownie on it. Then he rewrapped the plastic and put the plate on top of the refrigerator.

Kelly ate happily while I changed my focus to Jared. I tried my question again. “When did Carrie call?”

“This morning,” said Jared shortly.

“Did you speak to her yourself?” I asked.