For Time and Eternity (19 page)

“Oh,” Amanda said, clapping her thin white hands, “I can’t wait to meet them. Nathan has said such wonderful things about his daughters.”

Our daughters.
But I spoke no such correction.

Within the next few minutes I’d tossed my satchel into the back of the wagon with the rest of the Dunns’ worldly possessions, which included great bits of furniture that would never find a home in the overseer’s cabin at the quarry. I myself was handed up to the seat, where I squeezed between father and daughter Dunn. Following Amanda’s example, my bonnet was again on my head, creating a world seen only through a tunnel of calico. This made it nearly impossible to communicate with Nathan, given I’d have to crane my neck around the figure of Brother Kenneth, so I simply sat back on the seat and listened to their easy conversation about the progress of the temple and the perils of the trail. Every now and then, Amanda made a little sound, something between a sigh and a laugh. After the third such noise I turned toward her, and she toward me—our bonnets connecting.

“I’m just so happy,” she said.

“About being here?”

“About . . . everything.”

Her words rang out like a woman who’d been given a promise.

* * *

At Brother Kenneth’s request, we drove straight to the mouth of the quarry. It was, by now, late in the afternoon on a Saturday, and all of the workers had left to prepare for the Sabbath. There were a dozen places where I could have excused myself and hopped off the wagon to make my way to prepare for Nathan’s homecoming, but I felt compelled to stay right by his side to ensure that such a homecoming would take place.

The accommodations left for Brother Kenneth were, by any definition, modest. I don’t suppose anybody took into consideration that he might arrive with a fashionable young daughter—or any woman, for that matter. The quarry was overrun with bachelor quarters and crude bunkhouses meant to provide the minimal comforts of home for those men tithing their time in their labor for Heavenly Father.

Pulling up, it seemed the overseer’s cabin was little more than that.

“Home sweet home,” Nathan said, gesturing grandly. “I know it doesn’t seem like much now, but wait. Soon you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with blessings you could never imagine. Better a cabin in the land of Zion than a castle among the Gentiles, I always say.”

In fact, I’d never heard him say any such thing, and now he spoke with such forced energy that I doubted he believed his own words. I could only imagine what kind of house a man who owned several businesses in London lived in, though I had some idea after my peek at the furniture in the back of their wagon. My best guess was that none of it would fit through the door.

Brother Kenneth stepped down from the wagon and turned to offer me his hand. I would have preferred to wait, as Nathan was handing Sister Amanda down from the other side, but it seemed rude to refuse such an offer, so I accepted, giving myself over to his unusually steady grip. Like some odd little family, we walked inside—the door having been left open by the trusting previous tenant. All was neat and tidy in the large room. An enormous desk dominated the space, with a narrow sofa and two other chairs against the far wall; a small woodstove stood watch in one corner near a small shelf that held one pan and one pot.

“Bed’s behind that curtain, I guess.” Nathan appointed himself guide and walked across the room to poke his head behind the fabric hung over a rope. “Yep,” he confirmed.

“Did they not think I would have a family?” Brother Kenneth asked.

“Guess not. But I don’t know much of anything. I just offered to ride in with you.”

“And we’re so grateful that you did,” Sister Amanda said, laying her hand on my husband’s arm. “I think we might have been lost without you.”

“There’s a sign on the door,” I said. Given another opportunity, I might have kept my mouth shut lest I appear ungracious, but I had no reason to regret my words, as it didn’t seem anybody in the room heard me. Brother Kenneth was already steeped in whatever was written in the large ledgers on the desk, and Nathan and Sister Amanda seemed steeped in each other.

“I realize the house is less than ideal,” Nathan said, not pulling his arm away, “but I’m sure you’ll soon find our society will more than make up for what lacks in creature comforts.”

There are no words to explain the sickness I felt—the utter lack of air in that room, as the atmosphere was so clogged with the two of them. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. I suppose on some level I knew the day Nathan left that he would come back with another woman. After all, wasn’t that how he’d found me? Our seven years’ marriage hadn’t changed so very much for him; he remained the man looking for an eternal family, while I was nothing the same. Looking at him now was like looking through some magical glass, seeing him as the man he was when we met. The honey in his voice, the promise in his eyes. Only now, I was seeing all of that being poured out on another woman. And she was falling, throwing herself straight into his path, uncaring that I, his wife, stood so close by, could touch the arm not claimed by her grip. I held my breath and held my tongue, determined not to judge the girl. She was young, after all. Older than I had been when I first met him, but somehow I knew that if, even then, he had told me that I would be one of a dozen wives, I would still have followed Nathan Fox. His hold on my heart was that strong.

As for that, little had changed. Still, it was not the fault of this young girl that she was so clearly in love with my husband.

“Perhaps . . .” I cleared my voice and repeated the word, louder. “Perhaps we can find someplace else for Sister Amanda to stay until this home can be made more suitable.”

Nathan turned to me. “Oh, Mil, you don’t know how happy I am to see you take such a kindness to her.”

“I’ll walk with her to Elder Justus’s house,” I said, easily avoiding what was sure to have been Nathan’s suggestion. “They should have room to put her up. I’ve never known them to turn away a person in need.” Though in her fine dress and bonnet—and whatever else might be in those trunks stacked in the wagon—she hardly qualified as a person in need.

“That sounds fine,” Nathan said, doing a marvelous job masking his disappointment, something Sister Amanda failed to do.

“I don’t think I like the idea of staying with strangers.”

“None of us are strangers, Sister Amanda,” Nathan said. “We are all brothers and sisters—children of Heavenly Father. Family, in every way.”

“Don’t you think her father should have some say in this?” I barely held back from physically placing myself between them.

“What?” Brother Kenneth said, preoccupied. He waved us off, never taking his eyes from the books. “Yes, yes. Whatever you think is best.”

Dismissed, Nathan, Amanda, and I walked outside. The sun was beginning to set, and I thought of Kimana and the girls back home, sitting down to their evening meal, bowing their heads to pray for my safe passage and for God to bring Papa safely home. I wished I’d never left.

“You take the horse home.” Nathan was speaking, putting the reins in my hand. “I’ll drive Sister Amanda to Elder Justus’s home. He has a barn and can put up the horses.”

“We have a barn,” I said, grasping at any logical argument that would bring Nathan home with me. Now. “She can take the horse—”

“She’s not coming to our home, remember? And we can hardly expect her to find her way alone.”

“I’m completely in your hands,” Sister Amanda said. “A stranger in a strange land.”

A strange land, indeed.

And so it was I found myself uncomfortably astride our newest horse while Nathan and Sister Amanda rode companionably in the wagon beside me until the time came for us to split off to our separate ways.

“You will hurry home?” I said before peeling off. “Our daughters will be quite eager to see their papa.”

“Of course,” Nathan said. “Just as soon as I help Amanda get settled in.”

“And we’ll see you in church tomorrow?” Sister Amanda asked. I sat, silent, trying to process exactly who she meant by
we
. She and her father? She and my husband? For months everybody in our ward had been asking me this same question, and for months the answer had been no. Before my eyes the vision of Nathan and Sister Amanda sitting on a wagon seat became one of the two of them sitting on the rough-hewn pew at church. In my mind’s eye her arm looped through his, and my daughters—Melissa overjoyed to be in her house of worship—flanked the two of them.

“Yes.” In the end Nathan, not I, supplied the answer.

Before I could say another word, he clicked to the team and off they went. I allowed Honey to pick her way slowly along the path home. Nathan’s worn leather satchel topped the bundle behind the horse’s saddle, and curiosity more than suspicion called me to lift it into my lap. I lifted the flap and saw it right on top—another bundle of papers wrapped in twine. With shaking hands I looked at my own handwriting. More letters, unopened.

Once the Dunns’ wagon was well out of sight, I jumped down and dropped the reins. Every moment I’d lived since eating my little bucket lunch in the clearing roiled within me, and then it burst out of me as I gagged and threw up in the brush. The sour taste left in my mouth felt somehow fitting. I said her name, “Amanda,” and got sick again. I longed for a swallow of water to wash away the taste of her, even if it could never take her away.

“Oh, Lord,” I prayed, knowing only he and the horse would hear me, “you cannot ask me to do this. I love my husband and I will honor him, but this . . . you cannot.”

And then, in the distance, I heard familiar laughter dancing across the rays of sunset. I’d know it anywhere. Melissa, Lottie. They and the Lord would be my strength. Wiping my mouth with my sleeve, I reached blindly behind me for the reins and, grabbing them, led the horse home.

Chapter 18

It is a strange thing for a wife to watch her husband court another woman, for
courting
was the only possible word to describe Nathan’s behavior. A casual observer might consider his attentions those of a concerned villager striving to make a new resident feel welcome. Someone not privy to the ways of these people might overlook the way in which Nathan seemed always to be at Sister Amanda’s side, his hand hovering too near her waist. The fact that their heads tipped toward each other more closely than propriety allowed might have been misconstrued as something as harmless as a bit of gossip-laden conversation.

But there were no casual observers in Cottonwood. Ours was a ward dedicated to the scrutiny of each other. That first Sunday when Nathan and I walked up to the church house together, we were met with celebration dedicated to my return to worship as much as his return home. Why had I never before seen his need for such adoration? He grew a little taller with each hand extended and bowed indulgently to some of the older women who wished to greet him with an exuberant kiss on his clean-shaven cheek. I clung to him as I never had before, gripping his laundered shirt with all my strength, not sure if I relied on him to keep me in this place or to merely keep me standing. I doubt our welcome would have been as warm if everybody knew the prayers screaming inside my head.

Protect me, Lord, from the lies spoken here. I stand only at the side of the husband you sought to bring me. Forgive my silence in the midst of such distortion. I wait for the moment you will open my mouth.

Eventually we all moved inside and were given wide berth to the bench we had always occupied as a family. I must admit I had a twinge of bittersweet comfort being so wholly a part of Nathan again. The night before we’d been together in our bed as man and wife for the first time since that winter night so long ago, and I’d somehow been able to push the image of Sister Amanda far from my mind as I gave my body over fully to my husband. Her name was never spoken from the moment he walked through the door of our home to the moment we walked through the door of the church house. And here, with the memory of last night warming me from within and the heat of him pressed against my side, I began to think I’d imagined it all. Melissa sat on his other side; Lottie perched on his lap. We were surrounded by friendly conversation, and something close to contentment began to take root.

This could be enough, Lord. To have you in my heart and my family around me.

Then, like the gradual end of a rainstorm, the chatter in the church house trickled into silence. I didn’t have to turn around. I knew. She’d walked through the door. Perhaps with her father; perhaps accompanying her hosts, Elder Justus and Sister June. I refused to join those slack-jawed, smiling Saints who cast such adoring glances to the apparition behind me. Whatever warm bubble of peace I’d had now burst, leaving me too empty to produce even the bile of yesterday. Nathan shifted beside me, and I felt myself becoming a shell, drained of everything I had to offer him as a wife. If I’d been standing, I might have collapsed. As it was, his weight moved away as he turned; I willed my back to remain straight, straighter.

It took all the strength I had not to claw at his sleeve to stop him from standing, to cling to him as he rose and beckoned for the woman to join us. To take her place on our family’s bench. I remained rooted, no more inclined to make room for her here than to allow her into the bed my husband and I had shared just hours ago.

Now there were just as many eyes trained on me as had ever followed her journey up the aisle. My cheeks burned under the scrutiny. A tiny, cool hand touched my cheek as Lottie cupped her hand to my ear and whispered, “You need to move down, Mama. To make room.”

I filled my arms with the warm bundle of my daughter, pulling her into my lap and drawing on her innocent strength to propel my body the mere inches I allowed to accommodate this intruder. Then Nathan was once again beside me with a protesting Melissa on his lap, and next to him Miss-Sister-Amanda Dunn.

I didn’t allow myself even a glimpse of her until we stood for the first hymn. All around me voices rose in song, and above them all floated a clear, controlled soprano. A new voice added to our Saints’ choir and, by the appreciative glances thrown our way, a welcome one. More of a reason for me to silence my own, which I did, not even bothering to mouth the detestable words of heroism and persecution. I swayed backward and took in a sidelong glance of my new seatmate. She wore a beautifully cut suit of a burnt orange and gray plaid. Her hair cascaded in intricate curls from beneath a perfect gray velvet hat. I didn’t need to see her face; it was burned in my memory from yesterday. I knew it held a perfect expression of reverence and poise; the inflections of her voice carried both.

Just before I tore my eyes away, I happened to glance down and see that Melissa was eyeing Miss-Sister-Amanda with every bit as much scrutiny as I was. With unabashed boldness, she moved her head up and down, taking in the entire vision before—without any prompting from me—turning to catch my eye.

I’ve often since thought of that moment as my first missed opportunity. So enthralled was this congregation with the words of their hymn and the newest voice among us, I could have grabbed the hands of my little girls and run out of that place. Surely our absence would have gone unnoticed until the beginning of the third verse, and we could have been halfway to Salt Lake City by the time they drew out the
amen
. The look in Melissa’s eyes told me that I would have met very little protest from her. Never, not even the day she awoke to find that her papa had left before the dawn, had I ever seen such sadness.

In a move completely out of place with the reverent tone of the song, Melissa climbed up on the bench and walked behind her father’s back and straight into my arms. We were of equal height now, and she laid her head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her thin little body and wept into hers, and when we drew apart, she wiped my tears. We said nothing, but stood, our arms wrapped around each other.

When it was time to sit again, Lottie settled on my lap, and Melissa wedged herself between Nathan and me. Of course that meant that he was closer to Amanda, touching her, probably. The innocent touch of shoulders and sleeves. As much as I longed for that same touch, I knew I’d never truly have it again. Whatever had been innocent and sweet about the love we had for each other was destroyed in that moment. My longing had turned into a greed-fueled lust I detested.

I bowed my head.
Oh, Lord, but I love him.
Somehow, though, the prayer rang as false as any word spoken from the pulpit that morning.

* * *

I should not have been surprised when, after the service, Nathan invited the Dunns to Sunday dinner along with Elder Justus and Sister June. Standing at his side, I smiled and said, “Of course we’d love to have you.” Still, I was grateful that Elder Justus’s pastoral duties and the Dunns’ introductions caused them to linger at the church house so Nathan and I could get a bit of a head start toward our home.

“I really don’t know what we have to serve,” I said, working to keep up with his stride. “Kimana was going to fry a chicken, but for eight people—”

“I told her we’d have guests. She’s prepared.”

“Oh. You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to upset you any more than was necessary.”

“A fine time to take my feelings into account.” I hated the small bitterness in my tone. The threat posed by Sister Amanda would never be thwarted by petulance.

“Girls,” Nathan said over his shoulder to Melissa and Lottie, who trailed in dancing circles behind us, “run ahead home and see if Kimana needs any help with dinner. Tell her we’ll have four guests joining us.”

“Yes, Papa,” they replied in chorus, thrilled to have him home to obey.

For a while we walked quietly, watching the kick of our girls’ Sunday shoes behind their skirts. I spoke first, staring straight ahead. “How could you do that to me?”

“What have I done?”

“Your intentions couldn’t be more obvious, Nathan. You intend to—” I choked on the word—“marry her.”

“If you’ll allow.”

I can’t explain the sound that escaped my mouth. Something between a laugh and a snarl, unfamiliar and out of character. “Allow? I’ve seen how you two look at each other. I wouldn’t dare get in the middle.”

“You sound like nothing more than a jealous wife.”

“What do you expect?” My steps had accelerated, and I felt his hand on my arm, drawing me back. Planting my feet, I shrugged off his grip. “You leave us for months on end and come back with that woman.”

“I told you I was leaving to search for God’s will in my life.”

“And I told you we could search for it together. Pray together. But of course that wouldn’t do, not if we don’t pray to the same God.”

The grip returned. “What are you saying?”

“My God doesn’t allow adultery.”

“Don’t be ignorant, Camilla. You know the prophet—”

“I don’t care about the prophet, Nathan. Not anymore.” I felt my strength growing, power from a source so far outside myself I barely heard my own words. “Brigham Young is not my Lord. Joseph Smith is not my savior. His words, his teachings, all of it. Both of us, I think, sought the will of God over the summer. But we both found very different answers.”

“What did you expect? I know you haven’t been to church. It’s no wonder you’re sounding so confused right now. It’s not easy to understand the teachings of the Lord.”

“I understand them, Nathan. Better than you know. And I don’t think—”

“Listen to me.” He bent low, the brim of his hat touching my bonnet. “The only thing you need to understand is that you are my wife, pledged to honor and obey me. For today, for this afternoon, for the meal we are about to share, that is the only thought you need to keep in your head. You will speak in agreement, or you will keep silent. I will not have Elder Justus think I am not in control of my household. Do you understand?”

I nodded, swallowing every word of argument.

He gathered my hands in his and kissed them. “I love you, Camilla. Every bit as much as I ever have. More, even, if that’s possible.”

“How can you say that?”

“How could I not? I made a vow to you and to God. We’re a family, Mil. Anything we can do as a family will only make us stronger. Do you trust me?”

I shut my eyes, focusing only on the feeling of his fingers wrapped around mine, and chose my words carefully. “I have always trusted you, Nathan. More than that, I trust God. I know he will somehow make all of this work to my good.”

“That’s my girl.” He gave my hands one last squeeze. “Now, we best hurry home or else our guests will beat us there.”

* * *

Minutes later, I hardly recognized my own home. The table was set with the very best of our dishes—four complete settings. The other two places were set with simple pewter plates, but all six had bright red cloth napkins folded in the center, giving a festive air. A cut-glass goblet graced each place, and a quick, clandestine conversation with Kimana revealed their origin.

“Miss Rachel brought them last visit. I was told to hide them for a Christmas present.”

There were no places set for her or the children; they would be eating a cold dinner in Kimana’s small cabin. Part of me felt great relief, especially knowing that the girls always thought of such occasions as respite from strict table manners and good behavior.

I took off my bonnet and donned an apron, ready to help with the last-minute preparations. Kimana had spent the morning frying not one, but two of our chickens; she stirred the drippings into a gravy while I arranged the pieces on our largest platter. There was also a salad of pickled beets with turnip greens along with fresh biscuits and a plate of brown-butter cookies for dessert. A pitcher of cool ginger water sat in the middle of the table.

“Nathan arranged all of this?”

Kimana kept her eyes trained on the gravy in the pot, a convenient excuse to avoid my barely masked temper. “He said only that he want to come home to a feast. I give him a feast.”

“You did, indeed.”

I knew our guests had arrived when I heard Nathan’s shout of welcome sing through the yard. As quickly as I’d donned it, I untied the apron and stashed it in the wood box. I smoothed my hair and had Kimana check my face for any stray mess before stepping through the front door to stand beside my husband.

What an imposing party they made: Elder Justus wearing his ominous black suit, his wife by his side in her equally black dress. Brother Kenneth looked positively dapper in dark green wool and a hat of brown straw. And Amanda, fairly bouncing on his arm, craning her neck to take in all of our property in one glance. I couldn’t help but notice that the excitement drained from her face with each passing second, to be revived only when Nathan left my side and took her arm to usher her into our home.

Never, not even the day the entire village gathered to help me mourn the death of my newborn son, had our cabin seemed so small. I held my breath, fearing Elder Justus might scrape his knuckles while removing his hat, and I feared continually that Sister June would back into the stove and set her silks on fire. Brother Kenneth’s face stayed set in a squint, scrutinizing every corner of the place. Measuring, no doubt, to see which of the great pieces of furniture he’d hauled could possibly fit. Sister Amanda’s eyes darted nervously from Kimana to Nathan, demanding an introduction.