Angel Falling Softly
A novel
by
Eugene Woodbury
Zarahemla Books
Provo, Utah
Copyright © 2008 by Eugene Woodbury. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Zarahemla Books. Smashwords Edition. Cover design by Jason Robinson.
Epigraph
Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned, or rejoice
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,
To God more glory, more good will to Men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
—John Milton
Paradise Lost
Chapter 1
The devil lives next door
Bedlam beat against the boards. The oaken beams shuddered. The reverberations echoed through the great hall of the manor house. The sound of thunder, perhaps. Or the Master slamming through the empty rooms in another one of his senseless rages. The child they’d brought him had not satisfied. He would beckon her soon enough, glower and remonstrate, pace lines on the drawing-room carpet, smacking the leather of his riding crop into the palm of his hand.
Always the same accusation: “You have wrung her dry! Do you hand a hard sponge to a thirsting man?”
Always her plea: “But there are three of us and only one of you!”
Always his dismissive answer: “You are children. You need hardly a drop!”
She closed her mouth and clenched her teeth and repeated to herself: I am not a child, and one day you shall know this.
Another harsh report. Milada’s eyes flew open. The darkness hung around her like funerary curtains. Her heart raced. She listened closer. No, these were not the echoes of the Master’s temper. It was not lightning, nor was it thunder. It was the sound of angry men and their fists pounding on the door.
Kamilla turned to her, eyes glowing in the dark. “What is going on?” she demanded. “What have you done?”
The heavy iron hinges were beginning to give.
Chapter 2
Fortune favors the bold
The sonic boom echoed across the city from the West Desert bombing range, rattling the window frame. White light struck Milada hard in the face. She jerked her head away from the growing patch of sunlight. A draft of air from the vents had caught the curtains away from the glass. She covered her eyes with her hands and groaned. So early, and the day had defeated her already.
Milada climbed out of bed and pulled on her nightgown. After retrieving her cell phone from the dresser, she approached the window and cracked open the curtains. Then leaned back as a veritable blast of light sprang into the room.
From her safe vantage she contemplated the Salt Lake City metropolis. What a strange city it was, housing no more people than Yonkers yet filling a county half the size of Long Island. The urban landscape flowed down from Federal Heights and out from Temple Square like the gush from a fire hydrant flooding onto Brooklyn asphalt. Zoning was left to nature, and nature was an undisciplined commissar.
Her cell phone chirped. Jane’s wake-up call. “Morning, Milly,” Jane said in her always cheerful voice. “How are you finding Utah?”
“It is very bright,” Milada replied.
An understatement, to say the least. There was nothing subterranean here, no shade that was not filled with light. Late yesterday afternoon, waiting for the Hilton limo to pick her up at the airport, the air had been as hot as an oven and as dry as sandpaper.
On the phone Jane was saying something about Garrick. Milada shifted her attention back to her executive assistant as Jane said, “He left a note. ‘Ask Milly about the last time she’s had anything to eat,’ it says.”
Milada had to laugh, though she was really laughing at herself. A biting truth underpinned the kidding reprimand. She did not live by bread alone.
“Oh, and I have Kammy’s local phone and pager numbers,” Jane said.
“I should be seeing her later today, but let me have them anyway.”
Jane ran through the day’s itinerary. Milada half-listened as she talked, and mostly to the comforting familiarity of her voice. Two thousand miles, and it sounded like she was next door. Milada already felt a touch of homesickness. She not only understood her stepfather’s solitary ways, but she was starting to take after them. That’s what worried Garrick.
Jane said, “Your contact at Loveridge & Associates is Merrill Loveridge. Odds are they’ll push some flunky on you.”
“Just as well,” Milada replied. Most corporate officers equal to her in status were wont to treat her like a precocious teenager.
The hotel room phone rang. Jane heard it as well. “I’ll let you get that, Milly. That’s all I’ve got on my end.”
Milada said good-bye. The call was the concierge saying that her driver had arrived. Before returning to the bedroom, she paused again before the window. As she gazed down from her aerie on this unrolling sod of civilization, it appeared to her as Mars might have through Percival Lowell’s telescope: an exotic, unexplored country. No, it was definitely not New York. But she was intrigued by what its people had to offer her.
The game would soon be afoot.
Chapter 3
Only the good die young
Rachel folded her arms across her chest. The doctor stopped talking. He’d used a lot of acronyms: Jennifer’s ANC (absolute neutrophil count), her FDP (fibrin degradation products), and the wicked joker in the deck, GVHD (graft-versus-host disease). Nothing had changed: her daughter’s levels were all flat. In this business, no news was bad news.
But her husband nodded. He was the bishop, after all. Being understanding was his job. Not two years ago, over a span of six months he had blessed a newborn child, married the parents, and then conducted the funeral for all three. He understood that suffering came with the territory, that death was part of the job description.
The bishop’s wife did not. She hadn’t understood then, she did not now, and the good doctor hadn’t said a thing that meant anything to her. His empathy did not inspire in her any confidence. She didn’t care if he could feel her pain. She didn’t want him to feel, she wanted him to do.
“Tell me her chances.”
The bishop said, “Rachel—”
“Give me a number,” she insisted. Something she could hang her faith on. Otherwise, the substance of things hoped for was no better than a child’s wish for a pony on her birthday. We can’t afford a pony, dear. That’s what they were telling her.
The doctor pushed his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat. He shook his head somberly—he had somber down. She pressed. “Sixty-forty? Eighty-twenty? One out of ten? One out of a thousand?”
She was beginning to sound hysterical. But she knew they understood. Hysterical mother was her job description, and they were very understanding men. The bishop put his hand on her shoulder. It took all of her self-control to resist jerking free of him. She stood there, Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of bitter salt.
The doctor’s eyes briefly met hers. “There’s no way to say in cases like this.”
There are no other cases like this! she wanted to scream at him. This is my daughter—she didn’t come with a spare in the trunk! Instead, she calmly said, “So it’s all or nothing.”
The doctor sighed. Rachel took the sigh as a yes. Like boys shooting free throws: How about double or nothing, God?
In the waiting room outside the bone marrow transplant unit, a big picture window framed the Salt Lake Valley. The smoky city skyline shimmered in the midmorning sun. The Great Salt Lake sparkled in the distance, the brown-blue brine dissolving into a tan horizon etched by the rocky outlines of Stansbury and Antelope Islands and the hazy sky above.
The bishop said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Rachel searched out the golden spires of the Salt Lake Temple, dwarfed by the stressed-concrete-and-glass façade of the Church Office Building. She looked for Moroni and his trumpet, the angel perched on his golden ball like a little toy soldier, bugle raised toward deaf heaven. But it was too far away, the smog too thick on the ground.
The bishop said, “You’re squishing the dragon.”
She looked at the golden wyvern clenched in her fist. She relaxed her hand. The stuffed animal uncurled its wings in her palm. The bishop put his hands on her waist and kissed her on the cheek. For a moment, she melted at his touch.
And then he had to leave. Rachel remained at the window. I’m okay. What a lie that was. Her daughter was dying. She didn’t care if faith no greater than the grain of a mustard seed could move mountains. The mountains could stay put. All she was asking for was the life of one small child. So where had her faith been weak? What prayer, what blessing, what sacrifice hadn’t been good enough? She’d offered the marrow of her bones.
Children died all the time. She knew that. The Bromley child hadn’t been six months old. But if that was the way God was parceling out justice these days, he could stop being so ironic about it. They’d beaten the cancer. Now it was Rachel’s marrow that was killing Jennifer. She had a vicious immune system. Not content with her ovaries, now it was bearing down on her offspring. She drew air deeply into her lungs. Her heartbeat slowed. Time stopped. Nothing bad could happen.
She exhaled. Her shoulders slumped. One breath always followed the next. She returned to the sterile pale-blue room and sat by her daughter’s bed. Again, she found herself counting the breaths. She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her ringing skull of the siren’s song. She reminded herself, reprimanded herself: there was still Laura, the daughter who would live, the daughter who needed her attention as much as the daughter who didn’t even know she was there.
Chapter 4
Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth
Milada’s driver from Executive Ground Transport was young, well groomed, and extraordinarily polite. His name was Steven Day. A premed student at the University of Utah, he was married and had two children, a fact she found stunning in this day and age. Steven met her at the front desk and accompanied her to the limo.
“Eagle Gate Plaza,” she said. She placed her parasol on the seat next to her. It was a short ride, so she kept on her gloves and hat. The Lincoln merged into traffic. Milada said, “Steven, I gather that you’re working your way through college.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is this not difficult, with a family to support at the same time?”
He glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “It’s a lot of work, ma’am, but we’re getting by.”
“You must have married quite young to already have two children.”
“We met at Brigham Young University my freshman year. We got married right after my mission.”
“Your mission?” She recalled her Frommer’s Utah guidebook. “Ah, you mean a proselytizing mission.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Steven turned onto South Temple and stopped beneath the pink granite facing of Eagle Gate Plaza. He walked around the car and opened the door. Milada said, “I shouldn’t be needing you for the rest of the afternoon.” She added, “From now on, we shall use the parking garage entrance.”
Milada rode the elevator to the seventeenth floor, where Loveridge & Associates occupied all but two suites. She presented her card to the secretary at the front desk. “I’m here to see Mr. Loveridge.”
“Just a minute, ma’am.” She digested the information on the card. “Your sister’s in the south conference room.”
Kammy could be counted on to be punctual.
A minute later, a man walked up to her. “I’m Edward Christensen. Mr. Loveridge has asked me to take care of any concerns you might have.”
As Jane had predicted, they’d assigned her a handler. Milada supposed that her embossed business card reading Chief Investment Officer, Daranyi Capital Management was not by itself persuasive, especially when the woman presenting it looked barely twenty.
They shook hands. “Milada,” he said, motioning for her to accompany him, “we’ve arranged for one of our conference rooms to be at your disposal whenever you’re in town. Here we are.”
Milada strode ahead of him into the conference room. Kammy was leaning back in a chair reading a medical journal. Her stocking feet rested against the edge of the heavy oak table. Her platinum-blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her fedora and slicker sat on the table. She was wearing green hospital scrubs.
Kammy looked up at Milada, her eyes shielded by her wraparound sunglasses. “It’s about time. The seminar starts in thirty minutes.”
“The seminar?” Milada echoed.
“The Biomedical Informatics Seminar at the University of Utah. You insisted, remember?”
Milada remembered.
The room faced south. She closed the curtains, removed her hat, and took out her small Sony laptop. Edward stood in the doorway like a bellhop waiting for a tip.
“Is there anything else, Milada?”
From the corner of her eye, Milada was sure she saw Kammy smirk. She said, “Edward—”
“You can call me Ed.”
“Edward,” she said again. “You may begin by addressing me as Miss Daranyi.” Still wearing her sunglasses, she looked directly at him. “Before I left New York, I asked Mr. Loveridge to prepare the SEC filings on Wylde Medical Informatics. I’d like to see them now.”
“Yes, Miss Daranyi.” Edward wheeled around and marched out of the room.
She said to her sister, “You have read the prospectus I sent you?”
“You couldn’t have bought a company in Seattle or San Francisco? The UV index got up to nine yesterday.”
“You tolerate sunlight better than I do. Be thankful this isn’t Phoenix.”
“I’m just saying.”
“The prospectus?”
Kammy shrugged. “Did you know the company started out as a chain of funeral homes? Love the irony.” She grinned, showing her sharp lateral incisors. “The informatics stuff looks solid. The long-term demand for genome-sequencing data is all upside as far as I can tell. Tie it into the genealogical data and you can do deCODE genetics one better. I figure that’s the market you’re aiming at.”
“You can do deCODE genetics one better. You’re going to be running it.”
“Yeah, right.”
Milada sighed. “But it looks solid, you said.”
“The people in charge of the science seem to know what they’re doing. I think it’s the same Wylde guy who funded a wing at the hospital.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m going to be late.” She leaned over and pulled on her shoes.
Milada said, “I’m going to try and get you onsite. It’s what they’re really doing that matters. Not what they say they’re doing in press releases.”
Kammy’s head popped up. “What? Oh, sure. That’s cool.” She rose to her feet at the same time Edward returned with the folders.
“Is there anything else?” he asked stiffly.
“No. This should keep me busy for the time being.”
Kammy grabbed her slicker and hat and followed Edward out the door. She said in a loud-enough voice for Milada to hear, “Hey, don’t take it personally. When she travels, my big sister’s a bitch to everybody.”
Milada shut her eyes. Hearing the door close, she opened her eyes and scanned through the folders. The filings for the current year-to-date were missing. But she’d had her fill of Edward. Instead she spent the rest of the morning answering correspondence, devoting her attention to anything from Jane, her broker Garrick Burke—the family was his only client—or her stepfather, Michael.
The conference room door opened. A young secretary said, “Ms. Daranyi? You’ve got a call from Ken Garff Mercedes.” Noticing the absence of a phone, she darted out of the room and rushed back in with a telephone, which she plugged in next to the network cable. “Line two,” she said.
Milada hit line two. “Milada Daranyi.”
“Ma’am?” said a male voice on the other end. “Oh, yes, Ms. Daranyi. The S500. We don’t have the tinting you ordered in stock. It should be here by Thursday, Friday at the latest.”
“That’s fine. Please call me when the car is ready.”
She gave them her cell phone number and hung up. The secretary again poked her head into the room. “Ms. Daranyi? Um, want to get some lunch? The Seagull Room.” She bobbed her head toward the ceiling. “It’s pretty good.” She spoke with a complete lack of conviction.
Milada said, “That sounds nice—” The sentence trailed off with an obvious question mark at the end.
“I’m Karen, Karen Talbot.”
“Well, Karen, shall we plan for twelve-thirty then?”
The secretary took a deep breath, showing more relief than she’d probably intended. She nodded and smiled and ducked out of the room.
Chapter 5
A good example is the best sermon
Rachel opened her eyes. The book she’d brought with her lay open but unread in her lap. The clock on the wall said one o’clock. She always tried to be home when Laura returned from school, so she’d better get going. There was no telling what might come up between here and there.
She bade the nursing staff good-bye with a smile and a nod to Veralee, Jennifer’s critical-care nurse, who returned her pleasantries. “See you tomorrow, Sister Forsythe.”
Yes, tomorrow, Rachel thought darkly. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. When Jennifer started on the chemo, Rachel had stayed overnight at the hospital for a week. She was better acquainted with the night shift at Deseret Children’s Hospital than with most of her neighbors.
She walked down the open staircase from the third floor. Freed from the calm cocoon surrounding her daughter’s bedside, she found that the vague feelings of anger, the glimmering sense of upset, returned. It was something more than the cosmic injustice of it all. It was David. He’d powered Jennifer through the chemo with prayer and raw emotional muscle. But then came the GVHD and the coma, and he was out to sea. He did things with the kids or did things for them. Faced with a child who did nothing, he had nothing to give. It was easier to work and tend to his flock. Easier to deal with other people’s problems.
But hadn’t she wanted to be a bishop’s wife? Come to believe she’d earned it? Deserved it? No, not growing up. Not when they were first married. And not even when David was briefly elevated to the stake high council. Nevertheless, there was little subtlety in the politics of picking a Mormon bishop. When David was called as first counselor four years into Bishop Ackerlind’s term, everybody knew David was going to be the ward’s next bishop.
She found herself looking forward to that which she’d once scoffed at. It would be like being first lady, enjoying no de jure authority but having all she said taken with extra seriousness.
Though by now it was beginning to wear. All things being equal, it was the hours of David not being home that truly gnawed at her. Not being out in the garage, or at the computer, or mowing the lawn. Just not being around.
Worse was the pedestal. How did her brother Carl put it? “Sooner or later they stop admiring you and start looking up your skirt.” She dreaded the day that Laura hit puberty full on. David would be done as bishop in two years, and then the pressure would be off. With luck they could escape all those idiotic arguments between parents and their teenagers that David was always being called on to mediate.
Such as another piercing, two in each ear like Kathy Reid. Laura had brought up the subject twice already. But she couldn’t. Not while David was bishop. Not while any other kid in the ward could turn to the bishop’s child, her child, and make her the example.
Once he was released as bishop, Laura could turn her lobes into sieves—that’d be fine with Rachel.
She pulled out of the parking garage and drove down from the University of Utah campus. The mountains rose up behind the hills in the east. To the west, the bright city slowly hid itself behind a green curtain of trees.
Chapter 6
Look before you leap
The secretary returned to the conference room promptly at twelve-thirty. As they rode the elevator to the penthouse suite, Milada said, “I take it the invitation was Edward’s idea?” While Karen stammered for an answer, Milada continued, “No matter. I appreciate the thought.”
The city looked deceptively cool through the tinted windows, but Milada asked the waiter to seat them away from the wall of plate glass.
Milada said, “What do you recommend, Karen?”
“I usually get—” She didn’t seem too sure about what she usually got. “I usually get the chef’s salad.”
Milada said to the waiter, “Two chef’s salads.”
The waiter retrieved the menus and left. Karen said under her breath, “To be honest, I don’t eat here that often.” She quickly added, “But the chef’s salad really is good.”
Milada smiled. She appreciated that the girl was not good at lying and knew it. “Tell me, Karen, are you married?”
Karen shook her head. “Engaged. Well, almost.”
Milada took a sip of water. “An employee at the firm?”
“Tom Wilkins.” She brightened saying his name. “He’s an accountant with Smith Barney. We met at the Salt Lake AICPA conference last fall.”
“Where do you live?”
“I share an apartment with Cindy—at the front desk. Tom’s building a house in Draper up on the bench. It’s got a great view of the valley, but it’s a little far from things, you know? At least it’s not as bad as commuting from Lehi or American Fork. Draper’s the only place on the east side that’s affordable these days.”
“Where would you prefer to live?”
“Sandy would be nice, or Granite. But you’ve got to be totally rich to live there.” Karen reflected for a moment. “It’s going to be a real nice house, Tom’s.”
Milada put on her sunglasses and turned toward the windows. “Where is Draper from here?”
“You can’t really see it because of the haze. It’s due south, right before Point of the Mountain.”
“And Sandy?”
Karen pointed off to the left. “Right there, where you can see the entrance to Little Cottonwood Canyon. That’s actually Granite. Sandy is west a bit.”
The waiter came with their salads. Milada straightened her chair and unfolded the napkin in her lap. She selected a fork and inspected it briefly. “Karen, is there a real estate firm that Loveridge employs on a regular basis?”
Karen thought for a minute. “Mr. Christensen uses Valley Real Estate Management.”
“When we have finished lunch, would you get them on the phone for me?”
Karen cheerfully said that she would.
After lunch Milada found the missing SEC filings on the table next to her laptop. Better late than never. She got out her cell phone and called Kammy. Some conversations she preferred not to make over company lines.
“What’s up, Milly?”
From the background noise, Milada guessed her sister was at the student union. “Where are you staying?”
“The Crocker Science House. It’s a dorm for post-docs. Why?”
Milada frowned. She lowered her voice to a few decibels above a whisper. “Where in the world do you keep blood in a dorm room?”
“Gee, Milly, a medical college. Where could I get my hands on whole blood? Hmm, let me think that one over and get back to you.”
“I was only asking. How was the seminar?”
“Not bad. I’ve got rounds, so don’t go penciling me in for dinner or anything.”
“You know, you could apply for a residency, open a practice—”
“Not going there, Milly,” Kammy replied in the singsong voice she used whenever her sister started waxing maternal. “Bye. Gotta go.”
Milada knew she shouldn’t be surprised. For the last two decades, a significant portion of the charitable donations made by the Daranyi Foundation had ended up buying internships and fellowships for Kammy. Or maybe Kammy being so content playing the eternal student was what annoyed her. She, on the other hand, did everything she could to come across older than she appeared.
Why couldn’t her sisters settle down and work for a living? She could only dream of Zoë disciplining herself sufficiently to even attend school.
The intercom buzzed. Karen’s voice announced, “LaDawn Gunderson from Valley Real Estate.”
Milada thanked her and picked up the phone. “This is Milada Daranyi. I’m an associate of Mr. Christensen’s. I’m going to be in Salt Lake City on and off for the next six months or so. I was thinking of renting a house in the area.”
There was a block of upscale apartments a hundred yards north of Eagle Gate Plaza. But the thought of sharing walls and floors and ceilings with strangers—not to mention the halls and lobby—made her skin crawl. At least in a hotel the people next door had no pretensions of being her neighbors.
“Mr. Christensen’s a wonderful man, isn’t he!” The voice of an older woman, bubbly and overly enthusiastic. “What part of Salt Lake?”
Sandy would be nice, Karen had said. “Sandy,” Milada casually suggested. “A small ranch or rambler with a finished basement. A covered porch facing north.”
The line fell silent. It was a clear connection. Milada could hear a pencil scratching against paper. LaDawn said, “I’ll see what I can find. I’ll phone Karen, okay?”
“That would be fine.”
LaDawn called back half an hour later. “Miss Daranyi, I have just the thing for you! Came on the market two weeks ago, a split-level rambler, three rooms up, bedroom and full bath in the basement. It’s in Cottonwood Estates. A really nice neighborhood. Right on Dimple Dell Park in Sandy. Would you like to see it?”
Milada tried to remember what time the sun set. “Would eight o’clock be acceptable?”
“Eight o’clock? Um, tonight?” The woman’s hesitation was obvious.
“Would seven be better?”
LaDawn collected herself. “Oh, sure!” she burst out, revealing a Midwestern accent tinged with Scandinavian roots. “The address is 1204 Larkspur Lane. Do you need directions?”
“I’m sure my driver can find it.”
“That’s just great. I’ll see you tonight, Miss Daranyi.”
“Seven o’clock,” Milada confirmed. After hanging up the phone, she opened the folder and thumbed through the SEC filings. LaDawn, she repeated to herself. In her long life, she’d never met a woman named LaDawn before.
It briefly occurred to her that she had no good idea about what she was getting herself into. She kept too many secrets not to know what she was getting herself into every minute of her life.
Chapter 7
Don’t judge a book by its cover
In purely utilitarian terms, being the mother of a dying daughter was not that difficult.
Every morning Rachel had someplace to go and something to do. It was almost like having a job again. She hustled the husband and the daughter out of the house, showered and dressed. And then hung around children for several hours in a teaching institution staffed by busy, competent professionals. Yes, many of the children were dying, but other than that . . . And it was only part-time employment. She was done every day by noon, one o’clock at the latest.
And so the days came and went.
In Sandy she stopped at Smith’s to get a few things, a few things that quickly filled her shopping cart. How many people had they invited to family home evening, again? Charlene was bringing a tossed salad. She’d talk to Doris at church on Sunday and get everything else on Monday.
She moved to the checkout queues. “Rachel!” A woman hurried up to her, a woman in her late forties stuffed into a Liz Claiborne pantsuit that would look much better if the person inside it lost twenty pounds and didn’t use quite so much makeup.
“Guess what!”
Rachel didn’t guess. A tree falling in a forest wouldn’t make a sound until LaDawn Gunderson told somebody about it.
“I’ve rented out the Lindstrom place!”
“The Lindstrom place? Oh, yes, the Lindstroms.”
“You’re going to have quite an interesting neighbor.” LaDawn spoke with an almost rapturous intensity. “Though I don’t think she’s a member. Didn’t seem at all like the kind of person you’d expect at Relief Society, if you know what I mean.”
“Not a family?”
“Oh, no. Single, early twenties. Very professional. Immaculately dressed. Quite attractive. The whitest skin you’ve ever seen. Rather a strange girl. No, eccentric, that’s the word. She wanted to see the place at night! Probably one of those supermodels you’re always reading about—doesn’t want to be seen in public. I didn’t recognize her. She drove up in this fancy car with her own chauffeur and everything!”
LaDawn lowered her voice to a whisper. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said, patting her friend’s arm for emphasis, “but she paid six months all in advance. Wrote out a twelve-thousand-dollar check, just like that—like she was buying groceries! Can you imagine?”
“Ma’am?” said the checkout clerk, leaning over the scanner to get her attention.
“Sorry,” said Rachel.
LaDawn said, “Well, I’d better get going, myself.” She stopped and asked, “And how is Jennifer doing?”
“She’s doing fine.”
Such transparent lies no longer bothered Rachel when it came to greasing the wheels of social conviviality.
She pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto Sego Lily Drive.
Cottonwood Estates was the quintessential Salt Lake subdivision. Pluck this plot of earth out of the ground and deposit it outside the beltway of any Midwestern American city, and nobody would notice.
It was so unremittingly normal that the developers felt compelled to mess up Brigham Young’s commonsensical east-west, north-south street-numbering system with meandering mazes of ways, lanes, places, trails, circles, and avenues. She had to wonder when a neighborhood got too good for plain old streets.
Still, it was safe, quiet, and clean. The neighbors’ kids behaved. The neighbors’ pets did their business on their own lawns. Yes, she had in her youth sworn that she would never end up in a place like this, just as she had sworn she would never end up a bishop’s wife. But right now she was perfectly willing to sacrifice a small part of her principles for nothing jumping out and surprising her.
She drove up Larkspur Lane. There was the Lindstroms’ house. Mary had been second counselor in the Relief Society. Rachel missed her. But the Lindstroms were a young, upwardly mobile couple, and their future lay in Sacramento, not Salt Lake City.
An R.C. Willey furniture delivery truck was parked in the driveway and a pair of rusty pickups out by the curb. A small crew was busily trimming the lawn, washing the windows, sweeping the porch, flushing out the sprinkler system. This was a tenant LaDawn wanted to impress.
A supermodel, LaDawn had suggested. How did one welcome a supermodel to the neighborhood? Would a supermodel appreciate a loaf of homemade whole-wheat bread? Or would that be like giving a chicken bone to a cocker spaniel? She had no idea.
Rachel made the dogleg from Larkspur Lane onto Willow Way and up the driveway of their three-bedroom rambler. The garage door opened at a touch of the remote. She popped open the back door of the Honda Odyssey and hauled the groceries into the kitchen.
After dumping the groceries haphazardly on the table, she ran a glass of water at the sink and paused at the kitchen window. The lots bordering Dimple Dell Park were a cluttered no-man’s-land of yellow backhoes and concrete foundations. Men with sunburned shoulders and tool belts slung low around their waists marched around like a small army on maneuvers, making war with circular saws and air hammers.
One good earthquake would topple the whole street into the Dry Creek arroyo, to be carried away with the alluvial flow.
The front door opened and slammed shut. Laura tromped into the kitchen. Rachel asked, “How was school, Laura?” and began putting away the groceries.
“Okay.”
Rachel had read an article the other day about how to get a child to reply to such questions with more than one-word answers. She’d have to read it again.
Laura asked, “What’s with the Lindstroms’ place?”
“Oh, yes. I ran into Sister Gunderson at Smith’s. She said she rented it out.”
“Who to?”
“A woman, she said.”
“Any kids?” Laura got the orange juice out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass.
“I gathered she was single.”
“So why’s she moving here?”
“I don’t know. LaDawn did say she was quite attractive. Like a model.”
“She’s a model? Really?”
“She said she looked like a model.”
“Oh,” said Laura, disappointed. She put the glass on the counter. “I’m going to Heidi’s.”
“Be home by five.”
“Yeah, Mom.”
Rachel returned the orange juice to the fridge. It was time to start thinking about dinner. She looked in the refrigerator and found the pork chops left over from Sunday dinner. A bell pepper, an onion, a can of stewed tomatoes, tomato paste—she could whip together a cacciatore in thirty minutes.
That was enough thinking about dinner. She went down to the family room and turned on the computer. “Move it, cat,” she said, nudging the animal with the toe of her shoe. The cat had a habit of camping out next to the warm power brick. It jumped up and headed to the living room to find a patch of afternoon sun under the bay window.
Three e-mail messages were waiting for her. Two from her brother Carl and one from her brother Phillip. The first was a programming question from Carl directed to Phillip. Unless it was of an expressly personal nature, Carl mailed his messages to everybody on his list, regardless of relevance.
They want me to add all this interactive garbage to the website, Carl wrote, and I can’t remember the JavaScript routines and I’m too lazy to look them up and I figured you’d know it off the top of your head anyway.
“They” were Carl’s investors, or the government, or the church, the forces of nature, the Godhead. Whatever. His was a binary view of life: thumbs up or thumbs down. Things were okay or they were stupid, and most things in life were stupid.
The message from Phillip was a solution for Carl.
Carl’s second e-mail was addressed to her alone. Debby hates our guts and wants new parents. You have a spare bedroom available these days. What do you say?
Rachel had stopped being offended by Carl soon after he was born. She hit the reply button and typed, No thanks. We already have one pubescent teenager. Maybe Mom & Dad will take her.
Carl would get the joke. They grew up in Maine until their dad took a job in the physics department at Utah State University. No surprise, then, that their parents had retired to Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay. It was, if not in the middle of nowhere, then within shouting distance. The week they’d spent there last summer for the family reunion, Debby and Laura had died multiple deaths from boredom.
Rachel pushed the chair back from the computer and stared out the sliding glass doors. New neighbors were always interesting. A model, she thought again. Michelle Montgomery still did some modeling for Macy’s. Maybe Michelle knew the new woman.
She shook her head in self-reproach. No, that was as absurd as the habit Utahns had of assuming that any two Mormons living east of the Mississippi must necessarily know each other. Still, a model for a new neighbor would be interesting. Not as interesting as having a daughter dying in the hospital. But even tragedy got boring when it dragged on long enough.
Chapter 8
Money and a room of her own
Milada had not slept well since arriving in Utah. The sun came up no earlier than in New York, but the fine weave of the curtains made it impossible for her to escape the light. Better to have drapes of rough canvas. Had she planned on staying longer, she would have had them replaced forthwith.
No need for that now.
The house in Sandy turned out to be a champion idea. Both the house and the neighborhood were utterly prosaic. But the view was not.
The Wasatch Front, the ragged range of mountains running north to south along the eastern rim of the valley, was not the subdued Catskills. It strained meaning to use the word mountains to refer to those rolling hills. Here at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, the Wasatch Front was a skyscraping battlement of stone, as if giant slabs of granite had been punched upwards through the earth by some aggrieved Plutonian god.
The financial transactions proved simpler than she had expected. A dollar certainly went farther here than it did in Manhattan. The lady with the funny name recommended an interior decorator named Brittney. Milada gave Brittney a budget of four thousand dollars and told her to keep it simple.
“The bedroom set goes down in the basement,” she told her.
“You don’t want the upstairs rooms furnished?”
“I suppose you could put a couch and an armchair in the living room, for the off chance I am forced to entertain.” Milada did not think it likely. “And a kitchen table, a few chairs. Put the telly in the family room—is that what you call it? And a sofa and a coffee table.”
“Some plants perhaps? I know where you can get the most wonderful hanging macramé holders. Maybe some wall coverings?”
“Macramé? I am not enthusiastic about plants. Nothing that requires extra effort to keep alive.”
What Milada ended up with was subdued Western chic, sandy tans, light blues, and off-whites. A Remington knockoff in the foyer—she supposed she could hang her hat on it—and a couple of not-bad Monet prints on the walls. Considering the milieu, Milada would have recommended O’Keeffe, but Brittney must have been working under the assumption that people of East Coast extraction went for French impressionists over American abstract modernists. Though that didn’t explain the bucking bronco in the foyer.
Saturday evening she picked up the S500 at Ken Garff Mercedes. Steven was confused. “Will you need a limo on Monday?”
“As always. Driving for me is strictly an after-hours pleasure. Fetch me Monday morning at seven-thirty. You know the address.”
She settled into the Mercedes. Feeling in a very déclassé mood, she hit the search button on the radio until she landed on a country station at the high end of the FM dial. She turned up the volume and drove home to the suburbs with Tim McGraw booming out the windows.
Chapter 9
Every rose has its thorn
Rachel could still remember when they slept in on Sunday mornings.
Once upon a time, even with church running on the early schedule, they didn’t have to get up until seven or eight o’clock. There were so many things a person could do with an extra hour or two of sleep—other than sleep. She was sure she’d conceived Jennifer on a Sunday morning. Maybe if she convinced President Forbush that she became fertile only on Sunday mornings, he’d give her husband an early release, put him in charge of the nursery or something.
She lay in bed waiting for the alarm to go off. Other than daylight saving time, they hadn’t reset the alarm clock in two years. But even this was a big improvement. When David was first counselor in the bishopric, Bishop Ackerlind insisted on holding bishopric meeting at six a.m. in the bloody morning. Good man, Bishop Ackerlind, but he liked meetings too much.
When David became bishop, she’d laid down the law. Short of the Second Coming, he wasn’t leaving the house before six-forty-five. So he moved bishopric meeting to seven, cut it in half, and hacked Priesthood Executive Committee meeting down to thirty minutes as well.
The ward had survived.
The clock radio clicked on. The radio was tuned to KUER, the University of Utah station. Sunday morning they played gospel music from six till nine. Not music she’d ever hear in a Mormon sacrament meeting, but she liked it. It got the blood moving in her veins.
“Yolanda Adams and the Union Temple Concert Choir,” the disk jockey intoned in his low, rumbling voice, “singing the Lewis E. Jones hymn, ‘There is Power in the Blood.’”
The music started in a slow blues rhythm, the piano leading off, Hammond organ filling in between the chords. Rachel found the tune more familiar than the lyrics. Yolanda Adams began in solo:
Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful power in the blood.
The choir came in on the second stanza, repeating the last three lines in counterpoint:
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful power in the blood.
Yolanda sang in recitative shout and response, “You’ve got to make yourself free from your passion and pride. There’s power in the blood, power in the blood!” The chorus belted out in the background:
There is power, power, wonder-working power
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is power, power, wonder-working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
David climbed out of bed, stretched and yawned, and shuffled into the bathroom. Rachel put on her bathrobe and headed down to the kitchen. She got bacon and eggs out of the refrigerator, the frying pan out from under the stove. Except that today was Fast Sunday. She sighed, put the food back in the fridge, and stowed away the frying pan. She found a mug in the cupboard, ran the water hot at the sink, and added a teabag, herbal orange. There were limits to how far she could take this fasting business, and dehydration was right out.
To be honest, she’d never found much spiritual value in fasting, at least not in the warm-fuzzies department. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it worked for other people—she was willing to give any faith-promoting rumor the benefit of the doubt. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t given it her best shot. The first time the doctor had used the words cancer and Jennifer in the same sentence, she’d fasted every week until the bishop told her to cut it out.
“I’m doing it for Jennifer,” she’d insisted.
“You’re not exactly being spiritual about it.” He meant she was getting to be a real pain to be around. He was right. Low blood sugar made her grouchy and gave her migraines. Besides, she knew perfectly well what she was doing. If she couldn’t control the world, she’d settle for controlling herself. But God certainly knew the difference between faith and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Herbal tea, she rationalized, didn’t have any calories.
The bishop walked into the kitchen wearing a white shirt and tie, black pinstriped suit coat, and matching slacks. He hardly ever wore a suit to work, and once a week he really looked fine in one, the junior exec with the power marriage. Well, they could pretend.
“Hi, handsome,” she said.
He kissed her. “You taste nice.”
“It’s the orange.” She put the mug down on the counter and straightened his tie. “By the way, Norma and DeMar are up in Pocatello today. Grandchild number three. So I’ll see you at PEC.”
Since there was no breakfast to prepare, she held onto him a while longer. But they had their morning ritual to attend to. David fetched the scriptures from the hutch. They sat down at the kitchen table. Alternately, one read aloud from the New International Version while the other followed along in the official King James.
It was a practice her husband had first observed when they visited her parents after getting engaged. He confessed to her later, “When I saw your mom reading out of that NIV Scofield Study Bible, making lengthy references to Dummelow, I thought I was marrying into one of those families of Mormon radicals. Next thing, you’d be trying to convince me that women ought to get the priesthood.”
“That’s sweet,” Rachel replied. “Wait till you meet my brother Carl.”
After meeting Carl once, David had done his level best to avoid ever meeting him again.
They were presently working their way through Isaiah, dense going no matter what the translation. David glanced at the clock. “I’d better get going.” He got up from the table, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. “See you at church.”
He picked up his briefcase and left. Rachel replaced the bookmarks and then flipped back through the pages to Job. She had developed an affinity for the last ten chapters of Job, even more so in the King James Version. Perhaps that was because the poetry of the language pretty much disguised the fact that for all the grief they give Job, Elihu and God don’t come up with much of a philosophy of suffering. She always imagined Robert De Niro as God, saying to Job at the beginning of chapter 38, “You talking to me, Job? Huh? Are you talking to me?”
Basically, God’s philosophy was: “I’m God. You’re not. Trust me on this.”
Nevertheless Job was somehow reassuring. No reasons, no answers, no profound philosophies of life. But Job gets his reward anyway. As if Job had his lawyers sue God and they settled out of court, big time. New house, new family, a whole bunch of sheep and camels to boot. Hey, sorry for the trouble. The moral of the story: complain hard and long enough and maybe the check won’t bounce.
She closed the book and put the bibles back on the shelf.
The bishop glanced at his itinerary, tugged at his necktie. With nine people stuffed into his office—his two counselors, the elders quorum president, high priest group leader, Young Men president, the ward clerk and executive secretary, and his wife representing the Relief Society—it was getting stuffy. Stuffy meant it was time to get it over and done with.
“Brent, you still need the Scout fundraiser totals, right?” Brent Millington was the Young Men president. “Catch Glen after church before we start tithing so he can print it out for you. And make sure he deposited the fundraiser checks against the Young Men account. He’s still learning the ropes.” He paused, shuffled his papers, and said, “All right, anything else?”
“Fast offerings,” said Bill Garner, the second counselor.
“Right.” Back to Brent: “Can you cover half the routes before church?”
“I’ll round ’em up.”
Brother Ellis, the elders quorum president, said, “I heard someone moved into the Lindstroms’ place.”
Brother Garner said, “Sister Gunderson’s been trying to rent it out for a couple of weeks now.”
The bishop’s wife said, “LaDawn told me she has a new tenant.”
Everybody turned. Other than to explain Norma’s absence, Rachel hadn’t spoken up till now. A good Relief Society president knew more about what was going on in the ward than anybody else, including the bishop. But Norma was out of town, and so was Mary. And so here she was filling in.
“It’s a single woman. LaDawn didn’t think she was a member. That’s just her impression, though.”
“We’ll have to make sure someone stops by and says hello.”
Brother Clark said to Brother Ellis, “Hey, Troy, hear that? She’s single.”
The bishop said to his wife, “Did Sister Gunderson say how old she was?”
“Mid-twenties.” No need to add attractive.
Troy said, “Okay, okay, you talked me into it.”
Rachel didn’t think Troy Ellis was the best person to head the welcoming committee. The bishop didn’t either. “Hold your horses, Troy. We’ll let the Relief Society handle this one.”
After the prayer everyone but the bishop’s wife filed out. The bishop kicked a jam under the door to let in some fresh air. Rachel said, “You’re going to be through at three, right?”
The bishop barked, “Todd!”
The executive secretary stepped back into the room. He opened his three-ring binder and shook his head. “Nothing three to six. Interviews at six-thirty, seven, seven-thirty.”
“There you go.”
The same routine every Sunday. Odds were fifty-fifty he’d be home on time.
The shower was running when she got home. Laura was up. Good. What else? Make a few calls, make sure Amy Lewis had the Relief Society lesson ready—
The doorbell rang.
She opened the door. Gary Reed and Kyle Matheson stood there in their Sunday best. Kyle was Laura’s age, Gary a year older. Kyle said, “Hi, Sister Forsythe.” Gary handed her a fast offering envelope.
She looked at the envelope. Across the flap she’d written the month before, Pay with tithing. Glen, the ward finance clerk, was supposed to pull all the pay-with-tithing envelopes, but he was still learning the ropes. She said, “How about I keep this, okay? I’ll give it to the bishop.”
“Okay,” said Kyle.
Rachel closed the door and tossed the envelope on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen. She put on an apron and got the roast out of the fridge.
Chapter 10
An open door may tempt a saint
Milada was pretty sure somebody was at the front door. She rolled over and tucked the covers around her shoulders. The clock radio on the nightstand flashed 9:05. In the bloody morning.
The doorbell rang again.
She groaned. It’s Sunday morning! Her visitors were impertinent and impatient. She could ignore them. Probably. Maybe it was some neighborly thing they did here, some city statute about welcoming new residents on Sunday morning. Hell, she didn’t know. This was new territory for her.
She pulled on her yukata, tying the sash as she marched up the stairs. She turned the deadbolt and flung open the door. Sunlight reflecting off the roof of the house across the street nearly blinded her. She squinted and took a step back, raising her hand to shade her eyes.
“What?” she said.
It was more a command than a question. The two boys heading down the steps stopped in their tracks and returned to the porch. The taller one said, “Um, Sister Lindstrom?”
Do I look like a nun? Instead she said, “You must have the wrong address.”
The boy held up a pale blue envelope. “This is 1204, isn’t it?”
She had to think about it for a moment. “Yes.”
“Oh,” the boy said, stymied.
“May I see that?” She plucked the envelope out of the boy’s hand. The label on the envelope read: Ryan & Maryanne Lindstrom, 1204 Larkspur Lane. She said, “I suspect the Lindstroms were the previous occupants.”
The boys shrugged in noncommittal agreement.
The cardstock envelope was sealed at the top with a Velcro flap. Below the address label it said in black block letters, Fast Offerings.
“What, pray tell, is a fast offering?”
The sunlight was beginning to irritate her skin. She hadn’t had time to put on any sunblock. “Why don’t you boys come inside and explain it to me?”
The two exchanged nervous glances. But she had the envelope, and that was the only way they were getting it back.
The foyer opened onto the living room. Milada settled into the overstuffed armchair. She indicated the couch against the opposite wall. The two boys sat side by side with nervous civility. Milada pried open the Velcro flap. Inside was a three-by-five form with a yellow carbonless copy attached. Along the top of the form was printed in bold type: Tithing and Other Offerings. She read down the columns: Tithing, Fast Offering, Missionary, Humanitarian.
“The two of you are collecting religious contributions?”
The taller boy gulped and reddened. Milada realized without looking that the collar of her yukata had relaxed when she sat down, revealing most of her left breast. She suppressed a smile, tightened the sash, crossed her legs, and smoothed the yukata over her thighs.
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy squeaked.
“Explain to me what a fast offering is again?”
The shorter one piped up. “You’re supposed to skip two meals and donate the money you would have spent.”
“I am?” Milada was beginning to enjoy herself. “Two complete meals? Not just meat? Or fish instead? So this is a Mormon practice? And what are these contributions used for?”
“For poor people.”
Milada smiled again. These kids wouldn’t know a poor person if one smacked them up the sides of their blond little heads. But good intentions did count for something in the breach of actual experience. “A noble thought,” she acknowledged. She went into the kitchen and retrieved her checkbook. “I gather I keep the yellow copy?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused from the living room.
“And to whom do I make out the check?”
There was a flurry of deliberations. The shorter one spoke up: “Cottonwood Estates Second Ward.”
Milada slipped the check into the envelope. When she returned to the living room, the boys bounced to their feet. She handed the taller one the envelope and said good-bye.
They escaped as might a pair of mice freed from the clutches of a hungry cat. Milada returned to the kitchen and pinned the yellow copy to the message board next to the telephone. A trophy of sorts. She shook her head in wonderment and almost giggled. Some things were worth getting up early for.
Chapter 11
Little pitchers have great ears
A sentence the bishop’s wife hadn’t heard in church before: “She didn’t have a thing on under it!”
She slowed her stride. She didn’t stop and turn, having learned long ago that paying close attention to what a teenager was saying was the worse way to find out what he was saying.
“Get out!” That was Brian Shore.
“I’m telling you, I was sitting five feet away from her!” That was Gary Reed.
“What were you doing five feet away from her?”
Yes, Gary, what were you doing?
“Hey, she invited us in. And she gave us a contribution. She’s gotta be a movie star or something. Like that Touched by an Angel chick. She had a funny accent and this unbelievable hair. I mean, it was so white it was almost silver.”
Were platinum blondes so rare these days? In the church foyer, the boys walked past her and pushed through the doors into the bright sunlight. Ah! Rachel said to herself. LaDawn’s new tenant. Glen hadn’t sorted any of the fast offering envelopes. So they must have stopped at the Lindstroms’ place too.
Rachel walked home with Laura. At times like this, without Jennifer by her side, she ached to hold her daughter’s hand, but Laura was long past the hand-holding stage. Instead Rachel whispered to her, “You look very pretty in that dress.”
“Mom!” Laura protested. But her mother saw how her daughter beamed when she turned away.
The house smelled of roast beef. Rachel turned the swamp cooler on low. She changed into a blue paisley housedress and set to work on dinner. Her husband walked in the door at a quarter to three. Small miracles did happen. She called out, “We’ll be ready to eat in ten minutes. Laura, come down and set the table!”
David hung his suit coat on the banister post. He got the plates out of the cupboard and handed them to his daughter. “So, Laura, what did you learn in Sunday school today?”
“Some babe moved into the Lindstroms’ place.” She said it in such a way to indicate that the source of the information was a jerk. “Gary said they were collecting fast offerings and this half-naked lady answered the door.” She added quickly, “That’s what Gary said.”
“That’s right.” The bishop went to the banister and got his cell phone from the pocket of his suit coat. “Glen mentioned a contribution from a new member. Ah, yes. From Milada Daranyi, 1204 Larkspur Lane. Must be LaDawn’s new tenant.”
“Milada Daranyi,” Rachel echoed. “What an interesting name.”
Laura said, “Like I’m sure she’s a member.”
“Still, we should say hello,” Rachel said. “No one’s been assigned to the welcoming committee yet.”
“I assigned you, as I recall.” David glanced at his watch. “We’re going to the hospital after dinner to see Jennifer. Do you want to come with, Laura?”
Laura gave him a pained look. “She’s always the same, Dad. She just lies there.”
“Okay, Laura. You don’t have to.”
Laura sat down at the table and announced, “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
Her mother returned to the stove. She said over her shoulder, “Why don’t we stop and see Sister—Miss—Daranyi on the way back from the hospital?”
David thought that was a good idea.
Chapter 12
Behind every good man is a woman
As happy as Milada was with her Ozzie and Harriet accommodations, it occurred to her that the Mormons might take some getting used to. Early on in the project, Jane had prepared a fact sheet on the state’s demographics and overall fiscal health. It alone convinced Milada that they should consider acquisitions of several high-tech firms she’d been following on the NASDAQ small cap index.
What Jane hadn’t mentioned was that Salt Lake City proper was approximately fifty percent Mormon. Cottonwood Estates, Milada was beginning to suspect, boasted a higher-than-average concentration.
Two more were now arriving. Late thirties or early forties, she guessed. The man still preserved some of the athletic slenderness of his youth. His wife was attractively dressed in peach, a bright blue sash tied around her waist, tight enough to show her figure.
Milada observed them from her comfortable perch in the wicker chair, standing only when they climbed the steps to the porch. “Milada Daranyi?” said the man. He extended his hand. “I’m Bishop Forsythe. This is my wife, Rachel.”
Milada shook the woman’s hand as well. She said to the bishop, “You don’t wear a collar?”
It took him a second to parse the statement. He said pleasantly, “The Mormon church is run by a lay priesthood at the local level.” He thumbed the lapels of his jacket. “Everyday business attire.”
“Not every day.” His wife smiled.
“And when you are not being a bishop?”