Magdalene (36 page)

“He has a thing for me,” I said, just to
poke at her.

“No kidding.”

“I wasn’t sure anyone else noticed.” The
corners of her mouth began to twitch. “He’s kind of, shall we
say...smarmy.”

“Cassie,” she drawled, trying to suppress
her amusement and failing.

“Apparently you and I are the only ones who
know what a faker he is.”

She sighed.

“Also? He’s a manwhore.”

“I know that,” she said in a sing-song
voice.

I started. “You do?”

“You know what happens when you don’t
gossip?”

“People tell you things.”

“Exactly. And you know what they say about
knowledge.”

“I’ll trade some of my power for some of
yours.”

She said nothing. I was preparing to
apologize for having taken our banter beyond her threshold of
offense when she said smoothly, “You willing to put your money
where your mouth is?”

“Uh...” Dammit, the woman had cornered me
rather neatly. At this rate, I was going to catch a serious
girlcrush. “Okay. I’ll bite.”

“After class.” She whipped an iPhone out of
a hidden pocket in her dress. “But for now, stats, please.”

We were still thumbing our contact
information into our respective devices when Sally returned to her
defensive position on my right. I ignored her sniff of
jealousy-tinged disdain. Whether it was over the gadgets or who had
dibs on me or something else entirely, I didn’t know, but I stopped
thinking about it because Relief Society began.

Like the week before, Louise made me
welcome.

“And you are?” she said to someone else.

Prissy, Sally, and I all looked to the right
to see whom Louise had singled out. An older woman, with dull
salt-and-pepper hair, wrinkled skin a shade darker than the color
my Italian ancestors had bequeathed me, tired brown eyes, and a
hint of a widow’s hump, stood and smiled vaguely. Her simple floral
shirtwaist dress was faded and nearly threadbare, and her dingy
cardigan had a hole in one elbow.

“Sister Schoonover,” she said. “From DC.
Visiting for a while.”

“Are you moving here?”

“No,” she said as she sat, obviously
uncomfortable with the attention. “Just passing through.”

“Do you need anything while you’re
here?”

She hesitated. “Um, no. Thank you.”

“Welcome, then,” Louise said with a
smile.

“She looks like she’s been rode hard and put
away wet,” Sally muttered with a sniff.

I hate women.

“Sally,” I murmured, “that was mean.” She
flushed and bowed her head, wrung her hands in her lap. I opened my
mouth to put a scalpel-sharp point on it, but an elbow poke in my
ribs made me shut it again.

Not without a huff, which Prissy
ignored.

I revisited my phone and occupied myself
with tasks I could accomplish in the next forty-five minutes. I
emailed my architect and designer. First: Remodel the unused fourth
floor of my townhouse into a bedroom fit for a perpetual honeymoon
(to exacting specifications). Second: Transform The Bordello into a
separate apartment (to even more exacting specifications). Third:
Do it yesterday. I emailed my daughters and told them to move in
with Gordon and Nigel for the next couple of weeks or else deal
with construction dust
without complaint
.

A mother can dream.

We were deep into the lesson (to which I was
not paying attention) when Prissy whispered, “I know her from
somewhere.”

I looked at my friend and saw her casting
glances at the woman from DC.

“Where?”

Prissy started, vaguely focused on me, and I
realized she hadn’t meant to say anything at all. “Uh...” she said
after a second or two, her attention suddenly split between trying
to dig out a memory and displaying basic etiquette. She shook her
head and went back to digging.

The lesson ended, the closing hymn was sung,
the closing prayer was given, and the post-worship exodus
began.

“Sally.”

I looked up to see an ordinary-looking man
standing next to Sally’s chair, his hand held out in a gallant
manner. Her mouth tightened and she looked away.

“Hi, Dan,” Prissy said brightly.

“Hi, Prissy,” he said without looking away
from Sally. His expression was one of the most heartbreaking I’d
ever seen: love, hurt, betrayal... Things most men were adept at
hiding, but this man clearly had no pride left.

“Well, hel
lo
,” I murmured up at him
in my most seductive voice, a weapon of some consequence.

That
got his attention.

Sally’s, too.

I ignored her gasp and gave him the
once-over. He flushed. Her mouth tightened. She promptly placed her
hand in his, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She left pissed,
but he cast a relieved and very grateful smile back at me as they
exited the room.

“I haven’t had this much fun at church in a
long time,” Prissy said mildly as the last of the stragglers exited
and the doors clicked closed, the only sounds the quiet roar of
conversation from the hallway.

I turned to her. “Spill it.”

“You realize, of course,” she began
haughtily, “that I don’t like doing this. It makes me feel
positively filthy.”

“But...?”

“But...” She sighed. “I need to know. And I
don’t have the means to find out for myself.”

I waited while she gathered herself enough
to break her own code.

“I know some people in the stake who—
They’ve all had some weird financial problems the last couple of
years, kind of all at the same time. Wiped them out. The bad part
is that these are financially responsible people. None of them were
rich, but they were well off—you know, the millionaire-next-door
types—and they got that way with hard work and being frugal. But
now they’re barely hanging on. Can you—” I watched her struggle to
find words because it galled her so. “You have people, right?”

I nodded.

“If I give you their names, can you... I
don’t know, find out what happened to them? They don’t talk to
anybody, don’t come to church anymore.”

“You know these people personally?”

“Only a couple of them. But I hear
things.”

“So what’s the bearing false witness part of
that? Mitch has people, too. It’d be easy enough for him to check
out.”

“Well, for one, Mitch has enough problems
with just the people in this ward. There’s almost four hundred of
us. He doesn’t need to be dealing with the problems of people in
the rest of the stake, too, considering there are nine wards in it.
Do the math. They all have their own bishops for a reason.”

I could buy that. “And for two?”

She took a deep breath. “They and their
money problems all have Greg Sitkaris in common.”

I barely kept my mouth from dropping open.
“What does he do for a living?” I already knew that, but wanted
whatever details Prissy had that I didn’t.

“He works for Mitch’s father-in-law,
managing the Bethlehem office of Shane’s firm. Sells insurance,
annuities. Brokers mortgages. Does some financial planning. Kind of
a financial jack of all trades. People trust members of the Church
not to rip them off.”

I sighed.

“Whatever his other shortcomings, Shane
Monroe is an honest man, so I think this is all Greg. I wouldn’t
even be surprised if Greg’s cheating Shane, too.”

I wondered how much of this Mitch knew or
suspected.

“Anyway, everybody knows Greg and I don’t
get along, so anything I could say would be suspect. Me making
trouble.”

I could see that. “And...you want me to
spend
my
resources following
your
hunch.” Her eyes
narrowed, and I couldn’t help chuckling at her.

“He desperately wants to be bishop,” she
said low. “And he’s best pals with the stake president. Once Mitch
is released—which was overdue two years ago—I have no doubt Greg
will be called. And I— That can
not
happen.” She shuddered.
“I look at his wife and daughter and— Well, I can’t imagine the
emotional and spiritual devastation he would cause, and have a
grand time doing it.”

I sighed. “Surely there’s something you can
do to forestall or prevent that?”

“Oh, yes. We have a mechanism by which the
membership can object to someone being called to a position. I’ve
never seen it done, but I’ll do it. My husband will. A few other
people in the ward. But we’re a very small minority and we’ll need
proof for when they take us aside and ask why.”

“And protect yourself from retribution.”

“Right.”

She was holding something back, even now.
“All of it, Prissy. I need to know the end game.”

She harrumphed. “Fine. Louise and I are on a
mission to get Amelia and Hayleigh away from him. We don’t know how
to do that. Yet.”

...politically delicate.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.
Sitkaris is handsome, seductive, and well off. Mitch is wealthy,
but big, gruff, intimidating, and in a position where he has to
deny people things they want. He’s also not nearly as attractive as
Greg. The stake president’s a decent guy trying to do his job, but
he’s as snowed by Greg as everybody else because he only sees one
side of him. Any action Mitch takes against him will be seen as
somewhat sour grapes because of Greg’s popularity and Mitch’s
relative unpopularity.”

She nodded. “Add to that the fact that Mitch
has fired his share of members from the Steelworks. He has a
built-in non-fan base. You know he didn’t rehire anybody from the
old J.I. human resources department, right? Greg was one of
them.”

I stared at her. “He was?”

“Yes, before he went to work for Shane. He
was the employee benefits administrator.”

I sure as hell hadn’t known
that
.
“You know
why
they didn’t rehire anyone from human
resources?”

“No. Nobody does.”

“There were thefts coming out of that
department and the people who engineered the consolidation didn’t
know who to trust. They still don’t know who the guilty party was.
Or if there were more than one.”

We looked at each other, and I could almost
hear our tumblers clicking into place at the same time.

“Mitch and Greg have never liked each
other,” Prissy mused. “I think there’s some ancient history there
nobody knows about. Even then, it didn’t stop them from working
together to get the ward’s business done. But then...”

“But then?”

“In November. Mitch released Greg from being
Young Men’s president. That was a shocker. People are still mad at
him over it. I swear, I thought they were going to crucify
him.”

“I’ll do it,” I said abruptly.

When I got to work the next morning, I found
a slip of paper tucked into my purse, with a good baker’s dozen
names on it.

* * * * *

The Nuclear
Family Unit

February 25, 2011

I knew this dinner would be a nightmare,
with two sets of adult children who’d come from completely
different backgrounds and had completely different worldviews. Even
the imminent apostate Trevor was taken aback by Clarissa’s snobbery
about his family’s lifestyle.

Gordon’s Super Dad personality had kicked in
the minute he met Mitch’s daughters, and he set about casting the
same magic spell over Lisette and Geneviève that he had over his
own daughters. They hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

It had seemed so easy when it was just me
and Mitch.

I wanted to grab his hand and run away from
here, out of his house, to Las Vegas or, or, or anywhere we could
get married alone and I could fall in bed with him and...cry.

Nigel glanced at me and raised one eyebrow,
an order for me to curb Clarissa’s tongue, but I looked away,
unable to do anything. I was humiliated to the bottom of my soul,
embarrassed for her, and Gordon and me, for rearing such a
not-very-nice person.

Mitch seemed to take it in stride
(surprising me), but then Clarissa didn’t dare direct anything at
him. I was surprised she’d be so rude within his hearing, but on
reflection, I could see that having her sisters present made her
more daring.

“Our husbands couldn’t come,” a pregnant
Lisette explained in the middle of the chaos of meeting. “Mine is
helping his dad with some projects, and Geneviève’s is working all
weekend.”

Once all the introductions had been made, we
stood around a bit awkwardly. Lisette gave me a little glance, then
led the way to the kitchen. What she saw, I didn’t know, but it was
enough for her to step into the role of hostess—

Oh.
My
role.

I
was supposed to have done that.

Mitch and I were the last in the
processional. “Cassandra,” he murmured. “Look at me.” I did. Oh,
that magnificent face, serene, slightly amused. “It’ll be okay. I
promise.”

“You can’t make a promise like that,” I
whispered.

His mouth twitched. “Direct revelation.”

I smiled against my will and lightly slapped
his chest.

By the time we all settled around the
kitchen table to eat the chili and cornbread—

“Poor people food,” Clarissa murmured.
“Well. I guess I know who made dinner.”

Geneviève sucked in a breath. Olivia would
have snickered but caught Paige’s glare. Nigel’s jaw clenched and
Trevor stared down at his bowl, holding his spoon in a death grip.
Lisette and Gordon, neither of whom had heard, continued to trade
wisecracks. Helene bit her lip. Mitch dropped his arm around my
shoulder and pulled me close to his side.

“We need to bless the food,” Trevor said
suddenly, his head popping up.

I thought my heart would plop out into my
bowl.

“Trevor,” Mitch drawled, a warning in his
voice at whatever prank the kid had decided to pull.

“Sure, I’ll do it, Dad, no problem. Thanks
for asking.”