The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(90)

“You’re saying all the same things that Brad says. That my therapist has said. I guess I need to hear it again and again,” said Gwen. “I—it’s hard for me not to think of this as God’s judgment on me. My father used to say that it was my fault he did it. He said that I was too pretty, that I tempted him. He said that I was born of sin, that Satan inhabited me.”

I cringed. Her father sounded so much like Alex Helm. Alex Helm, who was alone with a little girl. I had no reason to believe he was abusing her that way, but I didn’t know if Kelly Helm would be any less damaged in the end.

Gwen’s eyes were bright as she said, “I never thought I would get married, really. Getting away from my father was my highest ambition. But then I met Brad—and everything changed. I started to believe I could be happy, have a normal life. You know, I didn’t tell him about my past before we got married. I think that was wrong of me. But I just wanted to forget it had ever been. I thought that if I forgot about it, it would actually disappear as if it never was.”

I could only imagine how her wedding must have been, with her parents at her side. Or had they not come? I suspected they would have, if only for show. They would have wanted her to keep her secret as much as she had, I suppose. And Brad knew nothing of what he was getting into, poor boy.

“I’m glad you came to see me, Gwen. I’m glad you felt able to confide in me. I wish I could give you something in return. Is there anything I can do to help make things easier for you at church?” It seemed like such a small gift, but it was all I had to offer.

She smiled faintly. “I’m grateful for the offer,” she said. “I know you are such a fierce protector. That’s part of the reason I came to see you.”

I was flattered and overwhelmed with emotion for a moment.

“I had another protector, for a little while. But now she’s gone.”

“Carrie Helm,” I said, feeling inspired that I could see the connection.

“Yes,” she said. “She and I got to talking one night after a Relief Society meeting. We were in the parking lot. It was summer, and it was warm, but it was pitch black by the time I told her the whole truth. I think it had to be that dark for me to be able to tell her. Just me saying words into the darkness, almost as if she wasn’t there.”

I had thought of Carrie Helm as a victim so often, it hadn’t occurred to me to think of her as a savior at the same time. She must have been stronger than I thought, if with all her own problems she had been able to help Gwen with hers.

“That’s why I had to come,” Gwen said. “Because of what Carrie told me, when we talked. I don’t think she told anyone else, either. Though maybe Jared knew some of it. But when I saw her parents on television, talking about how she had been mistreated and abused by her husband, and that they wanted her real story out there, it made me sick.”

I put a hand to my stomach to hold back the nausea. I had been to the Weston home. I had felt strange there, known something was wrong. But I hadn’t guessed at this. How could I have been so blind—again?

“He abused Carrie sexually, just like my father. For years, from when she was very small until she was a teenager.” Gwen sounded more angry about what had happened to Carrie than she had sounded about her own abuse.

“I think he was trying to still abuse her, after she got married. It was one of the reasons that Carrie clung to Jared so fiercely.” Gwen looked down at her hands and tried to lay them flat in her lap again, but they kept moving. “She knew that there were problems with Jared, but he was strong enough to fight her father, in her mind and in real life.”

She looked me in the eye at that, and I felt like I was seeing to her soul. Kurt talked about this happening sometimes, that he was given the chance to see people directly as God saw them, with good and bad combined, past hurts and future, and that it was always a glorious moment. I felt like that now, like after all of the horror Gwen Ferris had experienced, she had come out of it somehow and made beauty. She made herself beautiful, even if she didn’t know it. God did. And now I did, too.

But what about Carrie? I had never had the chance to see her like this. I regretted that as much as anything else. All those missed opportunities. And of course, now I knew why a woman like Carrie would stay with a man like Jared Helm. It was the missing piece in the puzzle of her life.

“She told you about her father?” I said. I was trying to think how this would work, legally. Jared Helm hadn’t been prosecuted because Carrie couldn’t testify against him and the charges were so old. What about her father? Could Gwen testify in Carrie’s place somehow? Please, God, there had to be some way to make Aaron Weston pay for what he had done, to make people see that he wasn’t the man he seemed to be that day he had stood up in front of the cameras on the TV news.

“Carrie showed me some of her scars.” Her hand drifted to her right side, though if that was where Carrie’s scars or her own were, I couldn’t tell. “She was really careful about keeping them hidden. He didn’t just sexually abuse her. He hurt her physically, in every way he could. He tortured her.”

“And Jared?” I asked. “Did she tell you about him abusing her, too?” Or were the wounds she had gone to have documented at the hospital all from her father? Had I been wrong about Jared? Had he been Carrie’s Captain America after all?