Ties That Bind (26 page)

Sam stared at the clothes in front of her and felt her stomach churn. She did not understand this religion she had been born into; she never had.

The garments had four marks on them, one shaped like a reverse L, over the right breast. Another, shaped like a V, appeared over the left breast. There was a horizontal line about three-quarters of an inch long in the midsection, and a similar mark just above the hem of the right leg.

Sam knew that before old garments could be discarded the marks she was looking at now were supposed to be cut out and destroyed. Her earliest memory of this was a year or two before Callie died, as Sam happened upon her father in the backyard, burning trash in a barrel.

She watched as he dug into his pocket and then tossed small white pieces of fabric into the burning pit.

“Daddy, what are you doing?”

“Nothing, Sammy. Just throwing some kindling on the fire.”

“That doesn’t look like kindling.”

“It is. Now go find your mother and see if she needs help setting the table for dinner.”

At the time, Sam really hadn’t thought more about the incident, but now she wondered why her father hadn’t explained. Why was so much of this ritualistic religion a secret? It was like being the outsider on an inside joke, over and over and over again.

When Sam was sixteen she had questioned Susanna about the temple garments and ceremonies and had received no answers. “You will find out when it’s your time to go to the temple, Sammy.”

Now, she still knew little about this strange clothing and was even more offended that strangers were to come with her and actually do the dressing of her mother’s body, just because they were “inside” and Sam was out.

“Sam, the sisters are here,” her father called from the living room. She gave the odd clothing one more glance, then put it all into the small colorful flowered suitcase her father called her mother’s “temple” bag and zipped it up.

“I’m coming,” she called back to her father. On a whim, she opened her mother’s closet and pushed hangers aside as she looked at some of her mother’s old dresses. Everything dressy enough was out-of-date and faded; Sam’s mother had worn nothing but housecoats for years now.

Yet, for reasons Sam didn’t understand, her father had never emptied the closet of her mother’s church clothes. In the middle of the sad, old-fashioned dresses Sam saw a vivid purple dress that was festooned with dark purple daisies with yellow centers.

Memories of her mother putting on the dress filled Sam’s mind. She remembered looking up at her mother as she combed her hair and put on some lipstick, readying herself for a Sunday church meeting.

The four girls had been bathed and dressed first, and everyone was waiting for their mother, who was just finishing up the last touches of hair and makeup. The other girls were in the living room, already fighting over who was going to get to sit on the end of the pew during Sacrament meeting, but Sam loved watching her mother get ready for Sunday meetings.

Sam’s father walked into the room, straightening his dark blue tie, and grabbed his suit coat jacket off a chair. He shrugged into it, then turned and looked at her mother.

A look of dismay came over his face. “You’re wearing that?”

“Well, yes,” Sam’s mother said, her face going from lighthearted and carefree to worry filled in just seconds. “You don’t like it? I thought it was so pretty and colorful, and it was on the sale rack at ZCMI.”

“It’s a little bright, I think. Maybe something you could wear to a party, but not really church appropriate.”

“To a party? When do we ever go to parties?”

“Well, you know, the Church has parties.”

“The Church has no parties. Not the kind of parties that you’re talking about.”

“You understood all this when you became a member, Ruthie. Mormons do things differently. We wear our best clothes to show our respect to God, and we don’t want to look gaudy or garish.”

Sam’s mother turned away and pursed her lips tightly, a stray tear escaping out of the corner of her eye, and then she saw Sam, sitting on the floor, forgotten as they had their exchange.

“Go ask Susanna to comb your hair again, Sammy,” her mother said roughly. “I have to change.”

*   *   *

“You were a convert to the Church,” Sam murmured softly, wondering why she was just remembering this now. Or why it had never sunk in. Her father talked about his pioneer roots constantly. But her mother had been … something else.

Sam walked over to the round mirrored vanity, where her mother had always sat to brush her hair and put on her lipstick. She remembered a pair of purple beads that perfectly matched the dress. She also remembered her mother taking those off before changing into a staid blue suit for church.

Sam opened up the drawer and sorted through the clumps of jewelry, none of it expensive but all of it bright and colorful. She couldn’t remember her mother wearing any of it. As Sam scooped through the masses of beads, looking for the purple necklace, she saw a brown book at the bottom of the drawer.

She dug it out of the mass of costume jewelry and read the word “Journal” on the front.

She opened it up to browned pages and a back-slanted handwriting that she knew belonged to her mother. Sam wasn’t sure why she knew this, but these writings were a part of Ruthie Montgomery. A part of the Ruthie she didn’t know.

“Sammy?” her father yelled again. “It’s time to go.”

“Coming,” Sam said, tucking the journal into the front pocket of the floral suitcase, intending to remove it first chance she got. She grabbed the bag and walked out into the living room, where two women waited—women she vaguely recognized but couldn’t call by name. One burst into tears and grabbed her tightly, hugging her close. Sam shrugged away from her, stiff, not returning the embrace. Not only did Sam not really know this woman, but she was pretty sure her mother didn’t know her, either.

Sam’s mother didn’t even recognize her own children.

The woman looked around uncomfortably and then stepped closer to the other woman, who was more grim faced and didn’t look likely to hug anyone spontaneously.

Sam decided to stick close to her for the rest of the time, so the Crier wouldn’t get ahold of her again.

These two women, women who barely knew her mother, were going to be responsible for dressing her in the last clothing she would ever wear.

While Sam did not cherish the idea of dressing her mother’s dead body, she also did not feel that anyone had the right to take it away from her.

“I’ll follow you,” she told her father as he let the other two women into his car. He gave her a look that she knew well from her youth. A “why make this so difficult?” look. But Sam needed space and time. She needed an escape. She sure as hell didn’t need to be trapped first in a car, then in a funeral home with the Crier and the Grim Reaper. And her father.

Funny, she had never looked at her father that way before.

Her cell phone rang as she started up her car.

“Montgomery,” she answered, her voice clipped and abrupt.

“Sam, it’s Amy. I just heard about Mom.”

Sam left the car running, so the air-conditioning would cool it off, and sat speechless. Amy. Sam barely remembered her. The one who escaped. Sam tried to remember what Amy looked like; she couldn’t even remember her face. Her father did not keep old family pictures around. Where were those? Where were the memories?

Sam had no idea what to say to the sister she hadn’t heard from in years. How had Amy found her number?

“Sammy? Are you there?”

“How did you find me? How did you know my number?”

Amy was silent for a moment, then said, “Professional courtesy.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I know the same kind of people you know.”

Cryptic, isn’t she?

Right now, Sam didn’t care. She had too much to deal with. Too much to deal with on her own. She needed help.

“Are you coming home for the funeral?” The words were out before Sam could stop them. She didn’t ask Amy where she had been or where she was living. Sam had been abandoned so many times in her life that she no longer had any faith in the ties that bound a family together. This person, her sister, was nothing more than a stranger to Sam.

“I don’t think so,” Amy said. “I’m not really welcome there. I just wanted … Hell, I don’t know what I wanted. Let’s be honest. Mom’s been dead for years. A beating heart doesn’t make a person alive.”

“Actually, technically, it does.”

“Technically? Always the dogged one, Sam. Always so literal.”

“Where are you, Amy?” She hadn’t intended to ask, but there was a twang to her sister’s voice that she’d never heard before.

“Texas. Married a cattle rancher. Spend most of my days out farming. Never thought I’d love it like I do. Never. Oh, but you and I have something in common. I’m also on the police force out here. Part-time. Turns out I’m a crack shot.”

Sam pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it like it had just been possessed by the devil or contained some kind of hallucinogenic mind control drug that made her hear—

She put the phone back to her ear. “Cattle? Ranching? Texas? You’re a cop?”

“Part-time. Sheriff’s deputy, actually.”

“Amy, why don’t you ever call? Why don’t you come home?”

“It’s not my home anymore, Callie. It hasn’t been my home for years.”

“Uh, I’m not Callie. I’m Sam. Callie’s dead.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. “Sorry, Sam. Freudian slip. Was just thinking about how first Callie died, then Mom died emotionally. And you were so little you didn’t understand any of it.”

“You’re only eight years older than I am.”

“Sam, I’m a lifetime older than you. But I don’t have time to explain. Tell the family I won’t be coming back. I’ll send flowers. But I won’t be back. I can’t ever come back.”

“But how did—”

“Good-bye, Sam. Look me up if you’re ever in Texas.”

“No. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to just walk away again! We need you.”
I need you.

There was silence on the other end of the line, which encouraged Sam to continue speaking.

“Did you know Susanna’s daughter, Whitney, is near death, from hanging? She was pregnant with a baby from a boy who’s dead now. She’s barely alive. Susanna is a shell. Now Mom’s dead. There is nothing left. This family is near extinction. And still you won’t come back?”

“Whitney hung herself?”

“No, she was hung. I don’t think she hung herself. I think someone is killing these kids. And now it’s in our family again. It’s a part of us.”

“Is she going to die?”

“We don’t know. But Susanna could sure use her family around.”

“Susanna never wants to see me again, Sam. She thinks I lured her husband. She thinks I … Well, at this point it doesn’t matter. In Kanesville, everybody believes what they want to believe anyway. I’m sure nothing’s changed. I’m sorry about Whitney. But my coming back there isn’t going to help anyone.”

“It would help me,” Sam said quietly.

“If you want the answers, Sam, I think you know where to look.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a patriarchal society, Sammy. It all starts with the priesthood holder. You want the answers, go to the source.”

“You want me to interview the president of the Mormon Church?”

Amy laughed, a harsh bark that was far from amused.

“I don’t even know you,” Sam said quietly, not sure how to take her sister’s reaction.

“No, you don’t. But you can trust me. And you need to trust me on this. If you want the answer, go to the source. Go where it started. But let me guarantee you, you aren’t going to like the answer you get.”

“Why don’t you—”

“Gotta go. Look me up if you ever get to Texas.”

The phone disconnected, and Sam didn’t even get a chance to say, “But I don’t know where in Texas you are. Awfully big state to just ‘look someone up.’” And Sam didn’t have any idea how Amy knew she was working as a cop, unless she kept in touch with her father. Sam knew that Susanna would not be the connection. So why had her father never said anything?
Go to the source.
Was her father the source?

A horn honked, pulling Sam out of her reverie, and she looked over to see her father’s stern face, staring at her from the driver’s side of his car. Next to him sat the Grim Reaper, and she didn’t even bother to turn her head, her lips pursed so tightly Sam thought they might remain frozen that way.

She nodded. Her father took off and she pulled out onto the road, following him the eight blocks to the local funeral home.

Susanna was in the hospital with Whitney. Amy was apparently raising cattle and chasing bad guys in Texas. That left Sam.

In two days she would bury her mother.

Let them dress the body. Let them do their rituals and say their prayers and look down their noses at her, because Sam knew the real truth: Ruthie Montgomery had died years ago.

But what had she been before she converted to the Church, married Sam’s father?

It was time to find out. Sam slipped the book out of the front pocket of the suitcase and tucked it under her seat.

Tonight, she was going to get to know her mother.

THIRTY-SIX

Sam sat in her cubicle at work and chewed on the end of a pen as she leaned back in her chair, swiveling it slightly from side to side.

“What, you retired now or something?” D-Ray said as he came in from the break room, holding a donut in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. She knew D-Ray thrived on their repartee, but she had too much on her mind to respond.

D-Ray looked down at his mug, then back at Sam, then shook his head. “You need a warm-up?”

Despite the Mormon environment, every police department across the state, with the possible exception of the one staffed by the polygamists in southern Utah, had a coffeepot or coffee machine. Sam survived on coffee.

She had a mug sitting on her desk, but the coffee had gone cold long ago.

“No, I’m good,” she said. A very puzzled D-Ray walked away.