The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(48)

CHAPTER 17




In the midst of getting ready for Tobias Torstensen’s funeral Friday morning, Kurt had a visitor. It was Jared Helm’s father, Alex, who looked as angry when I opened the door as Carrie’s parents, the Westons, had looked when they came to see Kurt.

Kurt had hoped to spend several hours reviewing his notes on Tobias’s life. Samuel was outside dealing with a few things in the yard that needed taking care of. A fallen tree that had to be cut down. A dam of leaves that hadn’t been raked up before it started to snow. And as always, putting out salt on the ice so that it melted quickly and no one slipped.

I knocked on Kurt’s door and told him Alex was here to see him. But he said, “Just a minute.” I showed Alex Helm into the kitchen, where he sat at a stool and looked around. His expression made me think he was making a snap judgment of me based on the dust on my cabinets and the scuff marks on the wall by the outside door. I immediately disliked the man.

But I was struck by how much Alex looked like his son. Or rather, the reverse. It wasn’t just in his features; they had the same mannerisms, the same useless hand motions when talking. And they had the same frozen look in their eyes when they were angry. The first time I’d seen it in Jared, I’d thought it was fear. But now that I’d seen it in his father, who was more voluble, I knew it was just banked anger, simmering not far below the surface.

Kurt came in after we’d made a few aborted attempts at small talk, and he took Alex Helm into his office.

I sat on a chair in the kitchen, thinking about Tobias Torstensen and whatever was in his garden. Occasionally, the sound of the voices in the other room was loud enough to disturb my thoughts. I didn’t hear much, but what I did hear made it clear that Alex Helm thought that his son had been wronged, that his daughter-in-law was crazy, and that the whole ward had a debt to pay for not seeing Jared’s needs earlier and helping him. He seemed to think we all should have taken Carrie Helm out of the home and sent her to a mental institution, that we should be giving interviews to the press about how wonderful his son was.

I guess every father has a right to defend his son, but I felt for Kurt. I would have told Alex Helm to get out and never come back. But Kurt had always been more diplomatic. I suppose that’s why he’s the bishop and I’m not, although the fact that I’m a woman doesn’t help, either.

When Alex Helm came out of Kurt’s office at last, I looked up from my book, checked my watch and realized he had been in there almost two hours.

Kurt gestured to me, and I came over. Alex Helm seemed to have calmed down a little. Another one of Kurt’s talents.

“Mr. Helm will be staying with Jared and Kelly for the next few weeks,” said Kurt. “With the press camped outside his house day after day, Jared needs someone to give him a break from childcare.”

“Wouldn’t it be good for Kelly to get out, too?” I asked. I had ached every time I’d thought of her in the week since I saw her last, and yet it seemed wrong that I felt so much for this child who wasn’t mine. “Kelly is such a wonderful little girl,” I said, the word catching in my throat.

I caught Kurt staring at me in surprise. I guess he hadn’t realized how much I felt for Kelly. Maybe I hadn’t, either.

“She’s a wonderful child because her father has made an effort to teach her right from wrong. Her mother never did any of that. She would let that child do whatever she wanted. Indulged her too much, like she indulged herself. And Jared put up with it because he loved her. I always warned him that nothing good would come of it, and now I’m proven right. Indulgence and evil always go hand in hand.” Alex Helm was only a couple of inches taller than I was, but he lifted his head and had taken several steps toward me before Kurt stepped forward and the older man backed off.

“Children do need to be corrected,” said Kurt. “And in this day and age, sometimes parents forget that.” I knew what he was doing, agreeing verbally with Alex Helm to lessen the tension of the conversation, but it still frustrated me to hear him take that man’s side.

“But not physically hurt,” I said. “Using the right tone and showing love is all that most children need.”

“You have no right to tell my son how to raise his daughter, so long as his method of discipline is reasonable and timely,” said Alex Helm. “That’s what the state law says. So long as he doesn’t use a belt or any other weapon but his own hand and he isn’t excessive.”

Reasonable and timely? What was this awful man’s idea of reasonable? The idea of Kelly being struck made me ill. I had to put a hand up to the wall to steady myself. She was the kind of child who spoke what she thought when she thought it, and she believed she would be listened to. If she was around this man for very long, what would happen to that open part of her?

“Of course we don’t mean to overstep our bounds,” Kurt was saying. “And of course Jared is doing a good job as a father. We don’t question that. Only that he might be stressed.”

I knew Kurt was trying to be conciliatory, but I was not in the mood for it at the moment. I burst out with, “Well, I think Christ taught clearly that children were to be lovingly corrected, gently and kindly, and that those who hurt children would regret it.” With millstones round their necks, no less.

“It isn’t hurting a child to grab her as she runs into the street into oncoming traffic, or to slap her hand when she reaches for a hot plate on the stove,” said Alex Helm. He looked at me with barely concealed disgust.