The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(69)

Meanwhile, I stewed over thoughts of Kelly alone with her grandfather. I’d seen a good moment between them, but that was no guarantee that there were many such moments. And just because Kelly Helm was physically cared for did not mean her grandfather’s misogyny wouldn’t have far-reaching effects.

On Wednesday God sent me a distraction from my worries about Kelly. Anna Torstensen called to tell me that the woman in the photos had been found.

“Her name is Ellie Vasquez. She claims that Tobias offered her a thousand dollars all those years ago to pretend to correspond with him as his wife and to dress up in some clothes that he sent her and have photographs taken. She thought it was a little creepy, but she needed the money.”

So, I had guessed right—or had been guided in that leap of intuition. “So how did Tobias find her, did she say?”

“Apparently it was on a business trip to California. He happened to see her and told her that she looked like his wife. He asked for her name and address and wrote to her when he returned home. She felt sorry for him at first, she said.”

“And why did Tobias do it? Did she have any guesses?”

“She said that she thought it was because he was lonely. He wanted to imagine his wife was still alive, that she might come home. Ellie Vasquez took advantage of that, tried to get more money from him. But at some point, she worried that the fantasy had become too real. She moved to a different location and never had contact with him again.”

Somehow, this sounded more like the Tobias I had known. Emotionally unstable, perhaps, but not a bigamist. “Well, you must be so relieved.” But if his wife was dead, then I had to go back to the question of whether or not Tobias had killed her.

“I feel guilty, too,” said Anna. “I should have known that Tobias would never have done any of those things to me. I lived with the man for thirty years. I should have known him better.”

“You are still in shock over losing him,” I said to Anna.

“Maybe,” she said.

At that, I decided it was time to change the subject. “What about the house? Have you made any decisions on that?”

“The boys are very upset, and I feel terrible about selling it, so we’ve reached a compromise. Liam wants me to rent it out for a year instead of selling it outright. That way, I can go on my cruise and still have some money from rental, but I can also come back to it if I want to. I even got a promise of more time off from my job, if I want it.”

It sounded like a sensible solution. “Do you have enough money otherwise?”

“Liam agreed to give me a loan against the value of the house at no interest. He’s not even making me sign a contract.” Anna chuckled at that. “If you knew Liam, you’d see why that seems so out of character.”

“He loves you,” I said.

She let out a long breath. “And I do love him and Liam. So much. I wondered when I first married Tobias if I could love them as much as they needed to be loved. I still wonder that sometimes.”

“Anna, you gave those boys more love than most women give to their blood children,” I said. We say that mothering is “natural,” but it isn’t really. Animals in the wild feed their children and carry them around—most of the time. They also sometimes eat them. That is just as natural, as far as I could see.

“Do you really think so?” asked Anna. “I always worry I was too strict with them. And that I was too much of a marshmallow.”

“Which is exactly what any mother who had given birth to children would wonder, Anna. It’s the way I feel about my own boys.”

“You seem so sure of yourself. I always thought I had missed that sense of certainty. That if they were born to me, I would somehow know what I was doing was right,” said Anna.

I let out a laugh at that. “I’m glad I fooled you, Anna, but no, I am never sure of myself as a mother. Well, only of one thing. I love them, and I want what is best for them. But it is always a struggle, figuring out who they are now and what is best.”

“I thought that God granted mothers some special power.”

“Well, all I think he granted me was the gift of loving them. And on some days, not even that.” There had been times when I wanted to throw all of the boys out of the house. Come to think of it, I had done that once. Sent them to sit out in the snow to wait for Kurt to come home, because I had had enough of them all.

“But your boys are at least like you,” said Anna. “I look at Tomas and Liam and think that there is nothing of me in them.” Her laugh was breathy. “I can’t even see anything of their mother in them. They’re all Tobias.”

“It’s the testosterone. It kills anything female in them,” I suggested, thinking about my own grown sons. They had been such sweethearts until they hit the age of about fourteen. And then there were all those years when the hormones were going wild. It was almost as if they needed to beat their chests to get the testosterone out or to find out what their place in the pecking order was. Kurt had had to step in so often to parent them then.

Anna said, “Thank you, Linda. You have made me feel so much better.”

“And don’t you feel a bit guilty about going off on this cruise of yours. You deserve it. Those last few weeks with Tobias were difficult.”

“You don’t think it makes me, well, weak?” asked Anna.