Pocketful of Pearls (26 page)

“Oh, no. And such a godly man, too, in other ways. He never let on to Phinehas, not once, that he knew. Never let it affect
his service, though I know it cost him. But he never left me alone in his presence, either. As if I would have been unfaithful
to him.” She snorted. “The love may have been gone, but I took my vows seriously.”

Her parents had been married twenty-five years, Dinah thought, dazed. And only two weeks of those years had been filled with
love.

“So Dad never loved me either?” she asked at last. May as well have the obvious out in the open.

“I think he did, in his own way. He let you go to college, after all. Not many fathers would have done that.”

“But not the way he loved Tamara.” Who was his own child.

“Not like that, no. He never knew about her and—and Phinehas.”

“So when it came to leaving me alone with Phinehas, he didn’t have a problem.”

“You were a child, Dinah. Phinehas isn’t like that.”

“But it has to start somewhere. And he gave me love, then.”

“Yes, Phinehas did do that. Try to think of that during the dark times. Try to forgive.”

“The problem was, Mom, he had an ulterior motive. He was priming the pump for what he planned to do later.”

“Please don’t say that, Dinah.”

“It’s true. Matthew says that’s what abusers do.”

“Matthew?” Her mother straightened in her chair, her hands gripping the arm rests. “Matthew knows about all this?”

“Oh, yes. His knowing is what saved me.”

“Dinah, please tell me he won’t say anything.” Her mother leaned forward, her eyes wide with apprehension. “Please.”

“He doesn’t have anything to say. It’s me that has to act.”

“Don’t. Please.”

“Why not, Mom? Phinehas is a criminal. He has to be stopped. I told you that before.”

The fear in her mother’s eyes clouded over, and she slumped, her spine a curve of hopelessness. “He’s the power in Washington
State, Dinah. Nothing we say will do anything. And he can do everything to destroy us.” Pain wrote lines on Elsie’s forehead.
“We’re taught to lay up treasures in heaven. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much else, and he can take away what
I do have. Our place, our reputation . . . he can Silence us or cast us Out altogether. And then what?”

Dinah sat wordlessly. She knew it. If he were cornered, he could take away everything her mother had lived for and built up
in the absence of love. Everything, in essence, that she had, except for the ground they stood on.

“One last thing, Mom.”

“I hope so. This is the most painful conversation I’ve ever had with you.”

Dinah cocked an eye at her. “It’s the only valuable one we’ve ever had, too.”

“Honesty is a hard virtue. But we have to start somewhere. What else?”

“Did Dad allow it? Did he even think about stopping Phinehas once he started coming to my room? Even once?”

Elsie sighed, a long, troubled sigh that ended in a hitch. When Dinah glanced over, she saw a single tear track its way over
the cheek that had once been smooth and smiling.

“No, sweetie,” she said at last. “In fact, he locked me in the bedroom to prevent my going out into the hall and diverting
Phinehas away. He was afraid that if he didn’t let him have you, he’d come after me. Not that I meant anything to him by then.”
She paused, and swallowed. “He said he was doing what Jesus commanded, and rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s.”

B
E CAREFUL WHAT
you wish for.

For years, Dinah had wondered what could possibly have kept her parents from protecting her. Now that she knew, the long-awaited
confirmation just made her sick.

Not throwing-up sick, though that in itself was unusual. She hadn’t been losing her meals as much lately, and consequently
was feeling stronger and able to catch herself before she said hurtful things. Her vow to honesty didn’t, after all, include
contempt and sarcasm, those weapons that came easiest to hand.

In the spaces that contempt had once filled came compassion. She supposed she had Tamsen to thank for that. The next day,
as she was giving Tamsen her bath in a plastic tub on the kitchen counter, the baby laughed out loud at some soap bubbles
and clapped her hands to make them fly. Dinah felt a helpless sinking in her heart that she recognized some time later as
the moment she fell completely and unreservedly in love with her niece. Half-sister, she amended to herself. She was no longer
a burden to be kept clean and fed, but a person, a member of their household with likes and dislikes and the ability to love
right back.

Dinah had loved Sheba without reserve, but it wasn’t like this. She knew Sheba loved her, but of course a bird had no way
to express it except by taking what Dinah had to give. Tamsen showed it every day by greeting her in the morning with a big
smile and a screech of joy.

Unfortunately, love didn’t make the baby any quieter. Sunday Gathering and midweek prayer meeting were turning out to be quite
a trial, because Tamsen saw no reason why she shouldn’t vocalize along with the men, and she was a lot louder than they were.
Dinah spent most of the time standing out in the parking lot of the hall with the baby in her arms.

For a kid who hadn’t been wanted by anyone, she sure knew how to love. Matthew had been under her spell from the first. And
with the apple rompers and her determination to make changes, Elsie seemed to have succumbed as well. As she dried the baby
and dressed her in a pair of terry sleepers that were so small they’d cut the feet out of them, Dinah took a moment to marvel
at what Elsie had done.

Because her mother hadn’t stopped with rompers. Her sewing machine hummed every morning, and cream slipcovers piped in blue
appeared on the couch and chairs in the living room, covering up the ancient, dark print that had been the choice of her mother-in-law
back in the fifties. The brass lamps that had to be polished once a week gave way to lamps with china ginger-jar bases in
Blue Willow colors. And the oval portraits of grim Victorian ancestors—the first fruits of the gospel that Morton had so prized—came
down and were relegated to the attic, where Elsie unearthed a landscape with a lot of blue sky that went up in their place.

The UPS man began to call, bringing fabric that Elsie said came from a catalog, since the tiny shop in Hamilton Falls didn’t
stock the materials she wanted. And she wanted a lot. At this rate, Tamsen was going to have enough clothes to dress an entire
nursery of babies. When Elsie pieced a tablecloth in a cheery Irish chain pattern in pink, green, and cream for the kitchen
table, Dinah realized there was a revolution going on right under her nose.

“Mom, are you sure this is right?” she finally asked, when Elsie spread the cloth on the table with a snap and put the butter
dish down in the middle of it.

“I am sick—” Down went the salt and pepper shakers. “—to death—”
Clack
went the napkin holder. “—of living in a funeral home!”

Dinah gaped at her.

“This is the most depressing house in all of Hamilton Falls,” Elsie snapped. “My mother-in-law had awful taste, and Morton
wouldn’t let me change a thing. But if Rebecca Quinn can have pink roses on her armchairs, then I can have blue-and-white
lamps!”

“Absolutely,” agreed Matthew, holding Tamsen and looking ready to run.

“Get used to it, missy.” She fixed Dinah with a look. “The living-room drapes are next.”

“It’s your house,” Dinah said, holding up both hands in mock surrender. “You can do anything you want with it.”

“No one is going to want to buy a place that looks like a mausoleum. What do you think of pulling the carpets up and seeing
what shape the hardwood floors are in?”

“Buy?” Dinah said with a gasp.

“Are you thinking of selling?” Matthew asked.

“I can’t run the ranch, Matthew, and let’s be realistic—neither can you or Dinah. Hamilton Falls is growing and Linda Bell
tells me a big chain store might be looking to build where the apple factory was on the edge of town. If that happens, chances
are good I could subdivide this place and sell off luxury lots. We have three facing the river, after all, and the views from
up the hill are pretty good, too.”

For the second time in a week, Dinah had to pick her jaw up off the floor. “Are you serious?”

“Do you want to stay here?”

For how many years had she wished hopelessly to get away? “No.” She thought of the stock portfolio. And the shares of General
Electric and Microsoft. “But I wouldn’t mind having first dibs at one of your river lots.”

Now it was Matthew’s turn to gape at her.

“Well, I’m not going to rush into anything,” Elsie said. “But there needs to be change around here and I wanted you to know.”

“Why?” Dinah asked. She had never seen so much change in so short a time. It was one thing to change inside yourself. But
it was quite another to get a shock every time you walked in the door and saw that something else had disappeared or been
added.

Elsie sat at the table and smoothed a hand over the carefully pieced seams of the cloth. “‘The winter of our discontent,’”
she said. “Remember? Winter is over. Don’t you feel it, Dinah? Don’t you feel as though you’re going to burst if you don’t
change things, do them differently, open yourself up to something new?”

Dinah had the feeling things were building up to an explosion no matter what she did or felt. Change was in the air the way
the scent of softening earth filled it when she went outside.

“If we move, what about Gathering?” Dinah thought to ask, fixing on something solid, a problem that would have to be solved.
“People have been coming here for Gathering for a hundred years.”

“I’m not sure about that. We still don’t have a Deacon. I’ll need to talk it over with Phinehas and Melchizedek.”

Elsie got her opportunity after lunch, when the phone rang. Dinah knew who it was immediately, from the soft, deferential
tone that crept into her mother’s voice. Blue-and-white lamps and declarations of independence notwithstanding, the habits
of years would not change so easily.

“Of course you can come, Phinehas,” she said into the phone. “Our home is always open to the servants of God. I’ll make up
your room and we’ll expect you for supper.”

“I CAN’T DO
this,” Dinah moaned, and tilted over until her face was buried in the cushion in the corner of Matthew’s couch. “I can’t
face him. Everything’s happening at once. It’s too soon.”

“If not now, then when?” Matthew went to sit beside her. “Is there ever going to be a time when you are ready?”

“Maybe.” Her voice was muffled. “A year from now.”

“There has to be a first time. And better now, when you’re surrounded with people who know the secret. He won’t have anywhere
to hide.”

“Mom will never let on she knows. Despite what she’s been saying, everything will be exactly the way it’s always been, and
he’ll come tonight the way he always does.”

“But tonight will be different. Tonight you’ll tell him no.”

“And he’ll have me Silenced.”

“Let him. Tell him your mother and I know, too, and if he even thinks about retaliating, I shall go to the police.”

Dinah wasn’t sure she had the strength to stand up to the most powerful man in the state. She no longer believed he had any
kind of connection with God, and it was difficult to believe that disobeying him would send her straight to hell. But the
fact remained that he had every power over the society she lived in, and could take away everything that made life worth living
for her mother. Friends, family, respect, all of it. With just a few words, Phinehas could reduce them to outcasts—and in
Hamilton Falls, that left them with nothing.

On top of that, even if she did speak, she had no physical proof there had been years of abuse. She hadn’t gone to see the
doctor, so there were no medical records. She’d never spoken of it to a living soul, so there was no history. All she had
was Tamsen and a white nightgown, and even that could have been bought anywhere, by anyone. It was Phinehas’s word against
hers, and without documentation it was pretty obvious whom the Elect would believe.

Documentation.

IN THE BABY’S
room, Dinah hunted out the manila envelope that contained the letter Tamara had left. She’d been so shocked and dismayed
by it that she hadn’t bothered to look at the other papers in the envelope, and had been too busy since to think about them.
The second piece of paper bore the address of a pediatrician in Spokane and a list of the shots Tamsen had had. There were
blanks next to upcoming dates.

Shots. She needed to get Tamsen registered under their medical plan. As what? An adoption? Was she Tamsen’s guardian or something
else? Did she plan to be her aunt, her sister, or her mother?

Oh, that was too hard. Dinah set the vaccination schedule on top of the letter. She’d deal with that later.

The third paper was a birth certificate. Under “Mother,” Tamara’s name was listed. Under “Father” . . . Dinah frowned.
Philip Leslie?
Who on earth was Philip Leslie?

Danny had said that Tamsen’s father was Phinehas. Or had it been a lie of the worst order and Dinah had been maligning him
for something he hadn’t done?

If it were true, somehow Tamara had found out the name Phinehas had been born with. Dinah couldn’t imagine how—Phinehas had
been Phinehas as long as the family had known him. It never occurred to anyone to think about the Shepherds’ birth names.
They were irrelevant to the call to preach, and it was tradition that they took the name of a biblical prophet, as befitting
modern-day preachers of the gospel.

But it all added up. Tamara had not slept with Danny, and with her mother’s story adding weight to his sin, she had no doubt
Danny had told the truth and Phinehas had been raping Tamara as well.

She wondered if he carried anything in his wallet or suitcase under his birth name. He must. The State of Washington wouldn’t
register a driver’s license to a man with no last name, prophet or not.