The Bishop's Wife Read Free

with it. We lived in a city that had once been known for the state prison at the point of the mountain and was now known for the Mormon temple that had just been built. But it seemed that the Mormon plan of happiness with a perfect family full of forgiveness hadn’t worked out as well for Carrie Helm.

CHAPTER 2
    Cheri Tate’s second daughter was to be married the next day at the church. Kurt would be there to officiate, but Cheri needed support. She was Relief Society president, and very good at that job. Give her a list and she checked off every item on it. She was in charge of making sure the bishop knew about the practical needs of all the women of the ward. No one who had a baby or was in the hospital ever went without a week’s worth of hot homemade meals delivered by the Relief Society sisters, all coordinated by Cheri Tate.
    Her children were younger than mine, and I had married later in life, so I suspected I was nearly fifteen years older than she was. That made me feel a little maternal toward her. I could see her flaws, but I could also see her attempts to grow. She wasn’t a listener and she had no sympathy for whining, but at least she was not a hypocrite. She wasn’t whining about her daughter’s wedding. She was just doing what had to be done.
    The wedding colors were gold and silver, which I thought was a little over the top, but I had seen worse. I went early in the morning to help with the decorations. The wedding and reception would both be held in what was called the “cultural hall,” but it looked more like a gym than anything else. It had hardwood floors and was polished every year so that now the polish was as thick as the wooditself. It was also painted with basketball lines underneath all the polish, and there were hoops overhead.
    The cultural hall was behind the chapel in the standardized, streamlined church design that allowed three different wards to share the same building for Sunday and weekday meetings. Around those two central large rooms were hallways that led to a ring of smaller classrooms and the offices for the bishopric, Stake Presidency, and High Council. There was also a kitchen—only to be used for warming up food, since no one in the ward had a state food preparation license—on the side of the building, so it could be ventilated easily if something burned.
    I found Cheri in that kitchen, with her daughter, Perdita, who was wearing jeans and an old T-shirt. Obviously she hadn’t headed off yet to have her hair and makeup done at a salon.
    â€œHow can I help?” I asked.
    â€œOh, Sister Wallheim! I’m so glad you’re here. The gazebo isn’t set up yet, but the pieces are in the gym,” said Cheri. “Do you think you can manage it? I asked my husband to come, but he can’t get here until four and we’ll only have two hours until the wedding then.”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do,” I said.
    There would be no elaborate dinner, nor even a luncheon for this. The reception was after the wedding itself, starting at seven, just as it had stated on the original invitations.
    Perdita, who was eighteen, and her fiancé, Jonathan, had been dating steadily since they were sixteen, despite Cheri’s lectures. The Mormon church’s rules on dating were clear. No dating at all before sixteen, and no steady dating until after a mission. But apparently Perdita always said she was going on group dates (which she was) and promised her mother that she and Jonathan weren’t going to have sex before they married. Cheri thought that meant they’d wait until after Jonathan went on a mission, but Perdita and Jonathan had declared they were too much in love to wait for two years.
    They might still have been married in the temple without Jonathan going on a mission. But when it came to their premarital and temple recommend interview, it turned out that Perdita and Jonathan had come so close to having