Ties That Bind (10 page)

She could pretend that she’d never violated all the tenets of her religion and had premarital sex. That the boy she had loved so easily, and fallen for so hard, was now dead.

She dropped down to the floor, her bottom pushed up against the bathroom cupboard, the hard wood biting into her back, and fought back the tears.

Sex had been nothing like Jeremiah promised. But she wanted him, wanted the status of being seen on his arm. Wanted the prom date he had dangled in front of her. Wanted to be popular and so unlike that other one—the new girl. The one who had turned on Jeremiah. The one who had called him out. The one they all hated.

The worst part was that Whitney was pretty sure that Jeremiah had not killed himself. Oh no. She was pretty sure he’d been murdered.

And she was more than a little worried she was next. That would certainly solve the problem of telling her family she was pregnant.

TWELVE

Sam stuffed her feet in some flip-flops, grabbed her gun off the dresser where it always sat, ready for action, and ran out the front door, headed for her car.

She reached the detached garage and almost entered the code for the automatic garage door opener when she realized that she was holding the keys to her department vehicle. She turned and ran for it instead, clicking it open with the remote and throwing herself into the driver’s seat, quickly starting the car up, and heading to her parents’ house. It was only six blocks away, but it felt like six hundred miles.

Who had called her? She knew it was her mother, because Sam’s father would have had a conversation with her. If he’d been awake, which he never was at midnight. The only person who would have made that call and not spoken was her mother. Was she coming out of her catatonic state? Worse, if it wasn’t her calling, who was it? The same maniac who was killing teenagers?

Sam reached her parents’ house, pulled into the driveway haphazardly, and propelled herself out of the car, barely stopping to pull the keys from the ignition. She snatched her gun off the right passenger seat, where she had put it hastily when she turned the car on.

Gun in right hand, keys in left, she reached the front door and shakily went to enter the house key she still had—then realized that she
didn’t
have it, because she had only grabbed her work keys. But instinct kicked in, and she turned the knob, and of course the door opened. Her father hadn’t locked the doors to their house for years.

He was still waiting for Callie to come home.

Or for someone evil and menacing to come in and destroy her family again—this time for good.

Sam’s heart beat so loudly she felt as though it would draw every criminal in Smithland County to her. A melodic, angry beat screaming,
Come and get me! I am terrified! Ba-dum-bum!

She entered silently, trying to control her breathing, and she kept the gun slightly in front of her, ready should she have to fire.

She inched her way down the hallway, using the crouch and spring methods to make sure that the living room, small kitchen, and bathroom were clear. She carried on down the hall to her parents’ room and fear melted her heart, turning her blood to sludge as she slowly creaked open the door.

All of the old lessons came back to her then. She had made so many mistakes. She hadn’t called for backup, lesson number one. You have to call for backup. No one knew where she was. She had fled her house without using reason or thought process, so sure that either her mother was trying to talk to her or someone was trying to kill her.

Nonetheless, even knowing how many rules she had broken, she proceeded. If this was nothing, she didn’t want to share her private embarrassment and agony. She’d done that enough growing up. Too many people felt pity for her. It made her want to beat them up.

Sam flipped on the light, to see that her father was sound asleep, mouth slightly open, snoring loudly. He lay on his back, as he always did, wearing only his thin temple garments. The sheets and comforter covered him to his waist. The sacred marks over each breast rose and fell as he breathed in deeply, sound asleep, having slept through crying babies, suicidal children, and a catatonic wife. He was just so tired that nothing could rouse him at night.

Where Sam’s mother normally slept, however, there was only the indented impression of a head on the pillow, and mussed sheets and blankets.

Ruthie Montgomery was gone.

Sam finally called for backup. Despite her strong sense of privacy, she’d been right. Something was wrong here.

What the hell is wrong with you, Sam?

Was it Callie speaking to her or herself offering up derision on a plate, like it was a palatable assortment of cheese and crackers?

The sound of sirens reassured her. This was her world, and she was comfortable in it. Then she looked down at her attire and winced as she realized she wore boxer shorts, a thin tank top, and flip-flops. Not exactly fitting for her position.

The patrolmen on night duty had arrived quickly. Both gave her a second glance, then looked quickly away, and turned to their duties. They began to scour the house while Sam tried to rouse her father. He finally sat up, groggy and disoriented and very cranky. At least as cranky as he got.

“Oh, for hell’s sake, Sam. Why didn’t you just wake me up? I would have told you where to find her.”

Never mind that Sam had tried, unsuccessfully, to rouse him for quite a while. And she believed there was a killer on the loose in Kanesville. And she had received a phone call from her parents’ house—a phone call her father denied making.
Just disregard all that, Dad, and pretend nothing is wrong, like usual.
She knew he was telling the truth about being asleep and not making the phone call. He always fell asleep during the 9:00 news on Channel 13, after he set the sleep timer on his bedroom television. And he never moved again until morning.

“Why didn’t you just ask me where’s she been?”

“Hey, where have you been? You know you are going to get caught, Amy. You have to stop this.”

“Oh, please. No one knows I was gone. Who cares? Just let it go.”

The words in her head stopped Sam cold. It wasn’t just Callie’s voice, this time, but also Amy’s. Sam tried to remember more, but nothing came to her. Her father’s words, so similar, had triggered it. Was it a memory? She shook it off.

“Wait a minute, what do you mean you know where to find her? She’s done this before?”

Sam’s father sighed harshly and asked for his robe, covering up quickly and glaring at the patrolmen who had invaded his bedroom. He looked at Sam, his eyebrows a low, menacing warning sign, one she had known to heed as a child. But she wasn’t a child anymore, and this was serious.

“Dad? She’s done this before?”

He sighed, and all the fire went out of him. Sam had been a little surprised to see it there in the first place, because it had been so many years since he’d been anything but weary and resigned.

He jerked his head in the direction of the backyard, and she followed behind as he led her out the back door and into the large, tree-filled space behind the house. The two patrolmen followed closely behind.

And then she saw the immobile white shape at the base of the largest tree, the peach tree where Callie had died. Lying among the tangled, bumpy roots that had forced their way out of the ground, facedown, almost in supplication, was her mother.

THIRTEEN

Paul sat on the couch, staring forward at a black television screen. To the outside world, he probably looked like a man entranced by a basketball game, intense television program or movie. In his line of work, maybe even an LDS inspirational video. Except there was no residual glare from the television screen. No power switched on. He stared at the black. Waiting. Waiting for something that would never happen.

In this room, everything looked normal. He looked normal. As long as his visitors didn’t stray from this room, no one would ever wonder about him. No one would ever say, “I don’t think he ever got over the accident.”

No one ever got past this room.

Paul supposed that he was always going to be waiting for her to be there when he came home. To look up at him as he walked through the door and say, “Hi, honey, how was your day?” Trite, he knew. But he missed her. He would settle for trite.

He was responsible for her death, but in some ways so was Sam. She didn’t realize it, of course. She had walked away without a backward glance.

Liar. You walked away. Took the coward’s way out, and went on a mission, knowing full well you had left her.… Well.

He didn’t want to go there again. Not tonight. It was the reason he was a seminary teacher. It was the reason he did all the things he did. He was atoning. He’d known that for a long time.

It was easy to imagine the God he loved forgiving others. Him? Not so much.

He missed her. And he missed Sam. And he missed the children he had barely had a chance to know.

Sam. Just the thought of her made the guilt roil through his stomach. Sam had been the reason. For all of it.

The worst of it was, his wife had never even known how much he loved her. She died thinking he carried a torch for someone else. Did he? If he did, why did he miss his wife so much? Every. Single. Day.

How do you continue to live normally when the worst comes to visit? How do you walk and breathe and act as though nothing is wrong when the devil comes calling at your door and hands you the death card? Even worse, when you know you are responsible, how do you manage to put one foot in front of the other the next day? And the next. And the next …

Paul had been taught all his life that as long as one lived the principles of the Gospel—i.e., going to church, paying a full tithe, attending the temple regularly, living the law of chastity—his reward would be great.

Paul’s problem was that reward seemed hopelessly empty now. Now he was all alone, filled with despair, missing the woman he had killed and housing unhealthy emotions toward the woman he had abandoned.

When he sat with his colleagues at testimonials and meetings, he listened to them talk about the last days, the second coming of Christ, the Celestial Kingdom. And he wanted to scream. He wanted to yell, “This would be a good time. Now would be good!” Because this life was completely and utterly empty.

How I am supposed to walk on, every day, empty, unfulfilled, until that time comes? I am only human. I have needs. And they are stirring again. She makes me feel things I shouldn’t feel.

He was aware of a cramping in his hands and looked down to see he had his fists clinched tightly into balls, his fingers white. Sharp pains arced through the digits as he spread them out, opening up and closing the fist, regaining the feeling he had lost. If only the loss of real life could be solved as easily as the loss of circulation in his hand. Just open it up, move it a bit, and everything comes back to where it was before.

Before. Sam. She belonged to before. Before he had met his beloved wife. And the feelings Sam brought up in him were primal, and wrong.

What would happen if he acted on these strange, primal feelings? Would he lose his place in Heaven? Would he be destined for a life on the Terrestial plane, the lowest of God’s three kingdoms?

Would it be worth it?

Did you really just ask yourself that question?

If he were to hurry it up, worried about his eternal salvation as well as his burning loneliness and desire for a woman who was against everything he believed in, he wouldn’t get that reward. Suicide was against God’s laws.

He would just have to wait, living as an empty shell, until he could rejoin his wife and children in the Celestial Kingdom. Never again touching a woman. Never again feeling skin against skin. Never touching Sam’s quivering upper lip.

His heart pounded in his chest as he dropped his head into his hands and considered his dilemma. Sam had become his problem. His obstacle in the pathway leading to his Savior’s kingdom.

What was he supposed to do? Continue to get up every day and shower, shave, and get dressed. Go to work. Teach teenage children the principles of the Mormon Gospel and when they asked him questions answer like he knew the secrets of God’s kingdom.

He was a lonely, flawed man, responsible for his wife’s death and desirous of activities treacherous to his eternal salvation.

Or so the teachings said.

Do I believe this doctrine? It’s all I’ve ever known. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder how it could be this way. And I know my questioning of my faith, alone, is a great travesty. I don’t know how to change this.

What he did know was he loved his wife. He had treasured her.

And he’d killed her.

FOURTEEN

Ruthie Montgomery, never terribly compliant, was in no hurry to move. It took quite a while for them to get her to leave the base of the tree, and one of the patrolmen insisted they should call the paramedics, even though Sam’s father insisted that Ruthie’s lack of response was a normal state.

“Dad, maybe she should be checked out in the hospital.”

“Sammy, this is ridiculous; she comes out here several times a week. I keep telling you kids she is still
in there,
and no one listens. Well, this is just an example.”

“Then maybe this is a good sign, Dad, and if we get her help, maybe she’ll really come back to us. Isn’t that what you want?”

He stood, silent and staring, his face only half-lit by the bright spotlight he had turned on to light the backyard. The rest of his profile hid in mistrust and anger, and maybe a little bit of fear. He’d been living this way for so long, if things were to change, what would happen to him? Sam wondered if he would even be able to cope with it.

“Dad, please. Let’s get her checked out. She called my house tonight. Called it. Found the phone number, somewhere, and called. That’s progress.”

Her father stayed silent. Sam felt tears well up in her eyes, and she closed them tightly, not willing to cry in front of these patrolmen she outranked. It was hard enough to be the only woman on the squad, but any sign of weakness would be the crack through which the derision and disdain would enter. Bad enough she stood before them barely clothed.