The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(7)

When Kurt was finished with his advice, the simple wedding ceremony was merely a question, at which Perdita and Jonathan agreed to marry each other with a single-word answer: “Yes.”

They exchanged rings after the words were said, but it wasn’t a necessary part of the ceremony.

The couple turned around to the family members watching from their chairs. There was some light applause as people tried to decide if it was appropriate or not. The couple kissed a second time, this time a lot longer. The photographer zoomed closer, but I had the sense that this was a real kiss, not one extended for show. It gave me a good feeling. I was glad to see that what I had told Cheri earlier wasn’t a pleasant lie. These two had a better chance than most couples.

Cheri came forward and hugged her daughter and her new son-in-law. No tears in her eyes now.

More photographs of the extended family were taken. I watched with some satisfaction as they posed under the gazebo I had put together. It didn’t fall on anyone.

Kurt came up behind me and put his arms around me. He leaned close and I could feel his breath in my ear.

“Happy memories?” he asked.

I was a little choked up. I nodded rather than trying to speak.

“I was a lucky man then. I am an even luckier man now.”

“I frustrate you to no end sometimes,” I said. “And I have as loud a mouth as ever I did.”

“I frustrate you, too,” said Kurt. “And as for your mouth.” He slid his arms around me, then kissed me gently. “I have always loved your mouth, open or closed, full of words, full of love, or full of sharp barbs. I love it all. I love all of you.” We held hands for a little while, until he was called away.

I stayed through the end of the reception, and after the couple had gone, I helped Cheri clean up in the cultural hall, the halls around the church, and finally in the kitchen.

“Their car was kept safe?” I asked. That was one tradition I had never approved of.

“My husband had it in the garage. He came and brought it to them, so no one could cover it in slime.”

“Good for him,” I said. He was helping sweep the polished wooden floors of the gym.

I stared at the place and thought how strange it was that we could repurpose the same room for so many different things. This cultural hall would see everything in the course of its life. Funeral luncheons, weddings, basketball games, monthly Relief Society meetings, a Road Show or Stake Pageant, music practices, Sunday School, Young Men’s and Young Women’s activities, Boy Scout meetings, and the overflow from sacrament meetings and stake conferences.

In many ways, this hall was the most Mormon place of them all. Didn’t that make it holy in its own way? Maybe more holy than the quiet, white temple that was not part of our weekly worship?

This hall was where God came, if you believed in God.

And I did. After all this time and all my doubts, I did.





CHAPTER 3




Kurt went to church two hours early on Sundays, at six thirty. We shared our building with two other wards in the same neighborhood, and since we had the nine o’clock schedule this year—instead of the more envied eleven o’clock schedule or the nap-stealing one o’clock schedule—that meant his meetings with our other ward leaders were mighty early. He sometimes tried to get home for fifteen minutes before church started so he could spend time with the family and get some food.

I had started making breakfast when he called. I sighed, knowing the fact that he was calling meant he wouldn’t make it home before church this week. It was likely he wouldn’t be done meeting with members and giving callings until late afternoon. And he would have to go back in the evening for a fireside or other activity.

“Brother Rhodes called to ask me to talk to him,” he said.

Brother Rhodes wasn’t an “official” member because he lived outside the ward boundaries. He had argued with his own bishop and thus had come to our ward as a kind of rogue member.

I made a small sound—not quite a groan. “You know he isn’t your problem,” I said.

“He feels like my problem,” said Kurt.

“At some point, someone needs to tell him to go back to his own ward and mend fences.”

“I tell him that every time he talks to me,” said Kurt. “But he has some genuine grievances. You know he does.”

Brother Rhodes was a stickler for historical fact. This did not always go over well in gospel doctrine classes, which were designed to give people a warm feeling about the church, and perhaps a bit of a kick in the pants to work harder and stop criticizing so much. But Brother Rhodes had a PhD in history and he could not bear inaccuracy. When polygamy came up, he had to explain every date in detail, every bad story about Joseph Smith that had been told, and what he thought was likely or unlikely about it. A number of ward members found these kinds of frank discussions about the founder and greatest prophet of Mormonism unsettling.

“I hope you take notes,” I said. “I want to hear all the details of what we’re doing wrong.”

“I’ll do my best to remember, but I don’t want him to think that I’m taking notes for use in a church trial. You know he is paranoid about that.”

“Ah, well,” I said. A church trial is convened if membership privileges are at stake. It doesn’t necessarily end in excommunication, but it is the church’s only way to discipline its members.