Chapter 16
The bed sagged as Jacob rolled over beside me, flopping his arm across my waist. Streaks of early morning sun sliced the room in a haze.
Although my body ached with exhaustion, my mind raced, recalling the strange conversation I’d eavesdropped on yesterday.
I pushed to sit up, but Jacob’s arm weighed me down.
“Shh, don’t get up just yet, my Hazel,” he slurred.
My body tensed beneath his touch, unsure of what it wanted.
“It’s morning already and there’s many chores to be done.”
His fingers stroked down my side and over my bottom. I exhaled as quietly as I could. No desire stoked awake. Seeds of fear rooted inside me. Mine. I was Jacob’s for this life and throughout eternity. This should be safety and real love.
But Elijah …
Memory and longing flooded through me as Jacob continued his exploration of my skin.
The thought of Elijah’s hands on me stirred my heart and body.
The imagined feel of his weight pressed against me, his kisses and hands trailing down my skin flushed heat through me—along with the heart-tearing memory of his rejection.
Once more, I hummed with the need to express these feelings by pouring them into music. I’d been doing my best to suppress it, but it’d only grown stronger.
“Jacob?” I asked tentatively, rolling onto my back.
His fingers danced around the buttons on my nightdress. “Yes?” His mimicking, slow tone must’ve been playful teasing of my timidness.
“I was only wondering if you’ve had a chance to look for my piano?”
He un-threaded and re-threaded my top button as if debating his answer. Fear choked me. Was it too late to take the question back? I must’ve come off as too demanding.
“Not yet, my dearest,” he said at last. “The mine has been quite busy of late, and most of my time in town is taken up by meetings with Elder Crowther and other men.”
“Right, yes, of course.” I almost wished he would undo the buttons and take me just so I could show my compliance, that I wasn’t a burden. “I understand completely.”
“Soon,” he whispered, resuming his exploration of my thighs beneath the sheets.
But I didn’t react. Why did his delay in retrieving a piano hurt me so?
Our marriage could still only be counted in weeks; it wasn’t as if he’d been promising for years.
Selfish, that’s what I was. The Devil clawed my lungs, threatening panic.
I was fine, this was fine, everything was fine, I repeated again and again in my head.
My husband was an important man. Besides, he’d been using his extra time in town to hand-deliver my letters as he promised.
Jacob’s hands stopped their wandering and he sighed. “Now what are you thinking?”
I almost didn’t answer. Hadn’t I already asked enough this morning?
“I was wondering if my letter last week got delivered,” I said quietly.
“Yes, I left it with your father. He said he would write back soon. I think he’s rather busy with the newspaper right now.”
Another trip, another time he returned empty-handed.
“This is the fifth letter with no response.”
“I wouldn’t worry so much about them, Hazel. If there was any true urgency, they would contact you.”
I waited for a sense of relief to sink in, but none came. “It’s been so long and I’ve heard nothing. How could they not want to write me?”
“To be honest, my dear, it’s not unusual.”
My ribs cracked with the weight of such a thought. “It’s not?”
“You’re no longer part of their family. You’re part of mine. I’m your priesthood leader now, not your father. I’m sure they think of you often, but you’re not theirs anymore.” His fingers stopped on my neck, almost too tight.
It wasn’t fair. Right. Kind. His words were true, but why did they have to be? If plural marriage was the only way to find happiness, then why did I never feel content? Why did it seem that every desire and thought of my own was wrong?
As if he could sense my bitter thoughts, Jacob went on in a softer tone. “But I care about you, Hazel. I’m your family now. And I can’t say I dislike having you all to myself.”
His lips brushed against mine in a rough kiss.
As his weight dropped over me, I let the kiss grow. He was my husband. I loved him. But a static fizzed in the air around us, bubbling and frothing with frustration to match my own. The walls creaked like they heard my questions, my pain.
The nib of my pen tapped against the surface of my vanity as I stared at my sealed letter addressed to Ammon.
It felt like an act of defiance after my conversation with Jacob this morning, but I needed to make one more effort to reach out to my family.
I had to know if what he said was true. Were they truly so uninterested in me now that I’d married?
Did I ever cross their mind or at least their prayers?
Is this what happened to women once they married—swallowed up in their husband until they meant nothing to anyone outside of him?
But of course, I hadn’t asked Ammon any of that directly.
I simply inquired about his sweetheart and the state of the apple trees out back he worked so hard to care for.
I avoided any mentions of the unseen pianist or the strangeness of the manor.
How does one put such madness onto paper?
Instead, I silently pleaded between the lines for any grasp of where I stood with the family and how their life went on without me.
I placed the letter to the side and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. There was one last one I needed to write. One I’d held off for too long. One that threatened to rip the flesh from my body and strip me into nothing but chattering bones.
Elijah.
I couldn’t keep pretending that he was allowed to live in my mind as he once did—the young man who carved the darkest desires inside me. Now he had to be relegated to an entombed piece of my past. The words of this letter would seal off the cavities he’d whittled into me.
Elijah didn’t want me, I reminded myself. So why could I not banish him completely? Anger and longing seethed together. I worried I would never want to be rid of him.
At last, I dipped my pen and began. The ink bled into my skin as I wrote of my misery at his actions, at my decision to marry and follow God’s command. Part of me hoped each word would cut through Elijah, yet another wished there was a way to offer my pain for his.
My heart begged for relief. I needed to purge myself of all memories of him.
Do you remember the time Aunt Emma threatened me with a paddle for taking a sweet from little Ammon, and you took the blame and punishment for my actions?
You shouldn’t have. I don’t know if I ever thanked you.
Or the time Sally made fun of my penmanship at school and I climbed up a tree to cry?
You sat on the bottom branch and listened to my sobs for hours to just be with me.
I think that was the moment I loved you.
A tear splotched onto the page. And then another. This was a death by a thousand cuts.
You used to tell me we could go anywhere in the world together.
That we’d see the jungles of Africa and the crashing waves of the Sandwich Islands.
You used to listen to my stories of places I’d imagined in my head and promise you’d find such a world for me to explore.
When did you stop sharing those visions with me?
You never mocked my questions or my panics. You always told me to trust myself more. I wish I still had you here to remind me of that. You told me we were going to share everything together, only the two of us, and no one else.
Once the words started, they didn’t stop. My pen moved quicker across the page, turning my sentences almost illegible.
You used to make so angry too. I recall the time you insisted that you knew the correct quotation of scripture and I didn’t.
I wanted to push you off a pew and give you a swift kick for good measure.
(I was correct, by the way. I looked it up after Sunday school.) Or the time you led me to believe there was a monster in the back field.
I’ve still never forgiven you for that fright when you jumped from the bushes.
Or the time you danced with Lucille all night when you were supposed to be my partner.
Or the way you stared at me the entire night from across the dance hall like I was a flame you couldn’t stop coming to even though you swore you were infatuated with Lucille and her pretty face.
But later as we walked home you admitted my face was the last thing you saw when you fell asleep at night. You’re still the last one I see.
And now I must remove you from my mind completely. As if I could. As if I could simply bury away all the ways you annoyed me, adored me, angered me, absolved me. As if I could cleanse my soul of the parts of me that belong to you and be done with it. As if I could ever stop loving you.
I tossed the pen across the vanity and buried my face in my hands as it rolled off the edge and tumbled to the floor. My words didn’t eradicate my wicked desires as I hoped or provide any solace. My grief didn’t subside. The past didn’t change.
I would never send this letter. I should burn it.
Wiping my tears from my cheeks, I walked to the fireplace and dropped the unaddressed letter onto the charred logs.
But I didn’t bend to light it. Burning it would be like burning a piece of me—our memories, our future.
It was all too final. I dropped to my knees, the soot biting at my nose, and placed the folded letter beneath the top log.
Perhaps one day I’d be brave enough to light it, to truly extract him from me and be a perfect wife.
But for now, Elijah stayed as he’d always been—tucked away in the fleshy tables of my heart.