Forsaking All Others (18 page)

God alone knew when I would see them again.

I smoothed the covers on the bed in an effort to hide the memory of my last night in Nathan’s arms, then fell to my knees beside it, burying my face in the faded, worn quilt.

They are still so close, Lord. I could run right now and catch up. Hold my feet if you would keep me here.

I wished for something to drown the doubt that twisted within my mind.

Oh, God, can you not give me a vision? Can your voice not fill this room? I’m just a woman. Just one small, frightened woman. Do you really ask this of me? To make my way in this world alone? To abandon my children? To escape my enemy?

My eyes scanned the room, but I saw nothing that spoke of refuge. Nathan’s warning rang in my ear. The church would have me back.

By blood or by baptism.

And I would not be baptized.

Chapter 14

Evangeline and I circled each other like cats the next day. Unfailingly polite cats, with cordial greetings and well-mannered discourse, but both of us seemed to have one eye trained on the other, except when she finally left the house for one of her endless rounds of church meetings. Wherever Mormon women gathered in a parlor for charitable work and small sandwiches, Evangeline Moss would be there to pick up the crumbs of both.

Today I knew she was telling them all. Sister this and Sister that—women whose names and faces were beyond unknown, but whose innocent gossip could seal my fate. Although she’d protected me until now, I supposed. At least no curious would-be counselors had shown up at the door, hoping to coax me back into my husband’s good graces. For now, I had only Evangeline’s grace to claim, and that I feared would waver in the shadow of her thwarted plan.

Down in the kitchen I built a substantial fire in the stove and set the last shreds of Rachel’s chicken simmering in a broth with an onion and a few carrots. I was just mixing dough for dumplings when she came blustering in.

“Mmm . . . what smells so good?”

“It’s the chicken,” I called out, inviting her in with my voice. “I’m making some dumplings, too.”

“I just came from the most fascinating Ladies’ Aid meeting. Do you know Sister Coraline? What am I saying? Of course you don’t. Living out by the quarry like you do. Or did. Well, she sang for us today, something beautiful. Brother Brigham says that he wants Salt Lake City to have theaters and opera houses just like any other big city, and we got to hear her today, and it was magical.”

By the time she finished her report, she’d shed her wrap and was holding her hands out to warm by the stove.

“Sounds lovely,” I said.

“Sister Coraline might sing at church meeting this week. You could hear her then.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It won’t be a secret much longer that you’re here. All of Brother Tillman’s household knows, and your daughters—they’ll probably tell everyone in the valley. I honestly don’t know what you’re hiding from.”

She spoke with such exaggerated innocence the hair on the back of my neck bristled.

“I was talking to some of the ladies this afternoon. And they—some of them—had the honor of
choosing
their sister wives.”

“Oh, Evangeline . . .”

“He would do it, Camilla. He would marry me if you asked him to. He loves you that much. He’d do anything—”

“He didn’t love me enough to keep me as his only wife, as much as I pleaded with him.”

“Well, of course not. You can’t expect a man to put the wishes of his wife above the will of Heavenly Father and the prophets.”

“Then I suppose you will have to wait until one of them tells Nathan to marry you. At that, I promise you, I will voice no objection.”

“You don’t think—” and here her voice crackled with tears—“it’s even a little bit possible that he might love me?”

My heart broke. Despite all of this, Evangeline was my friend, had been since the moment I met her, when she’d flashed a mischievous grin and told me to choose a favorite freckle. I wished I could offer her rescue from that hurt—the hurt she’d carried since that same day—but I could only offer the kindness of truth.

“No,” I said as gently as I could. “Not in the way that you love him.”

“But I wouldn’t need him to love me that way. Not the way he loves you. Not like last night—” She clapped her hand to her mouth, but she might as well have used it to slap me for all the color that rushed to my cheeks.

Flustered at both her discomfort and my memories of the previous night, I busied myself getting out bowls and spoons, keeping my face well away from her.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d find the extra bedding,” she continued, stumbling over her words, “so I went to your room and . . . I know I should have turned around and come right back downstairs, but—”

“Stop. This isn’t—You can’t just
talk
about this.”

But then the silence that followed was worse, because I know we were both focused on what each had heard and felt. Nathan Fox—and all he meant to both of us—was a presence in the room, consuming our senses.

“What is it like?”

“Evangeline, please—”

“I don’t mean—of course it wouldn’t be proper. But to have somebody love you that much. I can’t even imagine.”

My own embarrassment waned, replaced with something akin to pity for this woman who might never know the power of a man’s touch. I should have told her that what she’d heard last night wasn’t love, not exactly. My love for Nathan encompassed so much more than my body. For all of our marriage—the marriage we alone shared—he’d been my very life, sharing my every breath and thought. When I thought about last night, I still felt the glow of his touch. No sense of shame clouded my memories, but I did suffer a slight tug of regret when I considered my weakness in the face of his presence.

“That should not have happened,” I said, carefully setting the wide, shallow bowls on the table. “Not here in your home. Now, don’t you realize? That’s what it’s like, being a sister wife. It’s night after night, listening in the dark, hearing your husband—the man you love—sharing another woman’s bed. You have no idea how that hurts. . . .”

But I could see in her eyes that she did.

The room was quickly turning gray with evening’s shadows. Desperate to get away from the topic, I amassed a load of false cheer and suggested we eat. Evangeline, even less convincing in her cheer than I’m sure I was in mine, poured us each a glass of water from the blue crock pitcher.

By the time supper was on the table, the room had grown dark enough to warrant lighting the lamp, stretching our shadows until our heads touched along the ceiling. My appetite for the thickened stew had disappeared with the daylight, and not even the perfectly turned dumplings tempted me as Evangeline and I joined hands across the table to bless the meal.

“Your turn,” she said, though I hardly thought to keep track.

I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth coming up from my steaming plate and the touch of her twiglike fingers.

“Most gracious Lord, thank you for your bountiful blessings. For the food on the table and the friendship with which we share it. May our loved ones far and near be so blessed under your caring, watchful eye. Amen.”

“Amen,” Evangeline echoed.

My hunger was restored with the first savory bite, then sated a bit with each one following. The only sound was the clink of our spoons and the practiced, ladylike sips as we touched our lips to the steaming broth.

“So,” I said after a time, “this Sister Cora? Was that her name?”

Evangeline swallowed a sip of water. “Coraline.”

“Sister Coraline. What songs did she sing?”

“Some of the songs were in German, so I couldn’t understand them. But then she sang hymns.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“It was. When she sang about our home with Heavenly Father and all of our children yet to be born, her voice was so clear and so perfect, I could just see it. I would give anything—” she cleared her throat and lifted her glass once again—“to be able to sing like that. Or to sing like anything.”

I smiled. In our younger days, especially during our westward journey, we’d all made light of Evangeline’s voice, the way she’d always mouthed the words in impassioned silence.

“It’s a wonderful gift,” I said.

“Maybe that’s how I’ll sing after I die. That will be Heavenly Father’s reward for my life. I could die a happy death tonight if I knew I’d wake up tomorrow able to sing like Sister Coraline.”

“Well,” I said, hoping to build on what was seeming like a lighter mood, “maybe you’d better put an extra log on the fire tonight to make sure you don’t freeze to death. Wouldn’t want to get to heaven with a sore throat.”

“Easy for you to make jokes.” Her voice had never sounded more tortured. “You know what’s waiting for you. He’s waiting for you. If anybody should wish to die tonight, it’s you.”

Perhaps if she’d said such a thing in the middle of a sun-filled afternoon, my body might have been spared the painful chill that scraped along my spine. As it was, the glare of the lamplight cast her face in a yellowed glow, with her freckles creating tiny pockets of darkness across her countenance—like an aged woodcut brought to life. The air outside was perfectly still—not the least bit of a breeze—but the cold was cruel, and tendrils of it crept through the kitchen like icy weeds. She’d spoken in a tone as thin and flat as the ice that floated in the washbasin.

“Don’t say such things,” I said, hearing nothing but the echoes of the elder’s threats.

“He still loves you. You’re his wife; he’ll call to you.”

“My life is in God’s hands. It is he who will call me to heaven when my days here are over, whether it’s tonight or tomorrow or fifty years from now.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do, with all my heart. Jesus Christ is my Savior, and the Bible tells us that in Christ, we’re all the same. No single person can lord eternity over another. Nathan doesn’t hold my eternity in his hands. He is my husband, yes. And it might be that he’ll be my husband for the rest of my life. But when my life ends, so does our marriage.”

“But the prophet says—”

“Hang the prophet.”

I got up from my seat only to find Evangeline doing the same, and we stood, facing off.

“Watch how you speak of him.” There was a definite hiss behind her words.

“No, you listen to what I have to say. Don’t you see what the prophet has done? How he’s made you a slave to this teaching? He has you ready to feed off the scraps of some other woman’s marriage for the privilege of spending an eternity with a man who didn’t love you enough on earth.”

“I tell you, Nathan could love me.”

“Not enough! He couldn’t love
me
enough to devote himself to me. He doesn’t love Amanda enough to stay away from the woman who left him. And he doesn’t love you enough to . . . to even
look
at you.”

She raised her hand to slap my face, but I caught it, my fingers easily encircling her wrist, and I hauled her to her toes.

“Hear this,” I said, my heart and words full of a strange, raging compassion. “Nathan Fox would marry you tomorrow if he thought it would bring me back to him. But I care about you too much to invite you into that kind of hell on earth. But if you wait around long enough, he just might marry you to gain Brigham Young’s approval. Then you can spend your life following the whims of the prophet, and when you’ve worn yourself out working for the church, you can go to your grave and wait for Nathan to call you. And you can wait and wait and wait. Because I might try to save you from hell on earth, but if you put your hope in Brigham Young, there’s nothing I can do to save you from the hell that waits for you after you die.”

My spine curled with every word, until Evangeline was cowering beneath my arched stance. I released my grip on her wrist and stepped away, spent.

“It’s late,” I said. It wasn’t, really, but it was dark, and the last few minutes had taken on the weight of an entire day. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

“Go on upstairs. I’ll take care of it.”

“But—”

“I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help. Go to bed.”

I dared not risk another word, lest she decide I wasn’t deserving of a bed that very night. “Very well, then,” I said. “Good night.”

I took a long matchstick from the tall box on the wall by the stove and touched its tip to the lamp’s flame. With my hand cupped to protect the fledgling light, I made my way upstairs, going directly to my window. One by one I touched the match to the three candlewicks on my windowsill.

“If there’s ever a time when you don’t feel safe . . .”

I’d no sooner touched the flame to the third candle than I heard a pounding on the door. Not my door, but the front door downstairs. Visitors to Evangeline’s home weren’t rare, but to have one at this time of night was unheard of. Instantly my mind went back to the last time I’d heard such insistent pounding, my last night at home with Nathan and the girls, the night Bishop Childress came to demand my renewed allegiance to the church.

And so they’d found Nathan again. Or he’d sought them out. They were at the door, and within minutes, Evangeline was at mine.

“Sister Camilla?”

She hadn’t bothered to knock. Why should she? This was her house, after all, and she’d caught me with the still-smoking match in my grip. Even though the light from the candles barely reached across the room, I could clearly see triumph in the very way she held her spindly shoulders.

“Who’s here?”

“Two men. They’re here for you.”

Chapter 15

I’d been up and down those stairs a thousand times, but that night it seemed one step was added for each one I took.

Evangeline followed right at my heels, hissing in my ear. “I should have told them everything you said. But I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to say such things against the prophet, even if they weren’t my own thoughts.”

I said nothing. My heart was beating ten times with every step, and I would not waste my words defending myself to Evangeline Moss. Instead, I prayed to God, asking him to give me the strength I needed to stand firm for his truth and to soften the hearts of my interrogators.