Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

eyes and studied the floorboards for a few seconds. Just when I thought she wasn’t going to say anything else, she looked up. This time her eyes didn’t focus on anyone or anything, just stared off into space. But her jaw clenched. “Yes, that is good news, Brother Saul.”
    I held out my hand but the scene with Sheriff Benson replayed itself. She wouldn’t shake it. Feeling foolish, I dropped my hand to my side, wondering if there was a chapter on etiquette in Prophet Solomon’s Gospel. If so, I needed to bone up. Maybe it said to kiss your new sister wife’s cheek and shout, “Glory, Hallelujah!”
    “It’s nice meeting you, Sister Ruby,” I mumbled, trying for timidity.
    Somehow she managed to speak through that clenched jaw. “It’s nice meeting you, Sister Lena.” Then she turned around and stalked back down the hall. I heard the door squeak open, and a second later, a slam.
    Baffled, I looked at Saul for explanation.
    He smiled. “That didn’t go half as bad as I thought it would!”
    Had we been in the same room? “She’s jealous, Saul.”
    “You’re imagining things. ‘Jealous sister wives will never see the jewel-bright halls of the Highest Heaven,’ Solomon writes in the third chapter of the Gospels. Ruby was raised on it, and like all good polygamist women, she believes it.”
    Like I said, men are pretty easy to fool.
    Formal introductions accomplished, he picked up my garbage bag luggage and led me down the hall to my room, next to Ruby’s. After we shut the door behind us, I whispered, “You know, she’s probably going to notice that you and I don’t, well, that we don’t…”
    He whispered back. “In most polygamist families, the wife visits the man in his room, then after the guy has his fun the woman can return to her room. As long as you keep up some kind of pretense about visiting me every now and then, she’ll never guess our guilty secret.” Raising his voice, he added, “I’ll leave you to put your things away, Sister Lena. When you’re through, knock on Sister Ruby’s door and ask her to show you where everything is in the kitchen. I’ll want a nice big breakfast tomorrow.”
    I stared at him. “I told you I don’t cook.”
    “If you can boil water, you’re better than me. Or even Ruby.” He winked, then left, closing the door gently behind him.
    Bare as a monk’s cell, the room held only one narrow bed and a small dresser, with a bright wedding ring quilt providing the only color. Created by Saul’s dead wife? Or proof of Ruby’s handiwork before she had disintegrated into the gray-on-gray creature she’d become?
    Only with difficulty did I refrain from making a break for the front door. But remembering why I was here, I lifted my skirt, took out my .38, and began my usual reconnoiter.
    “Rebecca, I hope some day you realize what I’ve gone through for you,” I whispered, as I scanned the empty closet for a boogeyman. I didn’t want her waking up in the middle of the night for the next fifty years, screaming from nightmares.
    I had nightmares enough for the both of us.

Chapter 8
    Someone banged on the door.
    “Wife! Wife! Time to prepare breakfast!”
    I lay there, trying to make sense of the words.
Wife? Time to prepare breakfast?
This was one crazy dream.
    Then I remembered.
    “Coming,” I muttered, crawling out of bed and staggering to the door. I leaned into the frame and hissed, “I told you, Saul, I don’t cook!”
    “Better act like you’re at least trying,” he hissed back. “Ruby’s already in the kitchen. You don’t want to make her suspicious, do you?”
    “All right, all right.” I wrapped my housecoat around me, unlocked the door, and shouldered the grinning Saul aside as I darted past him into the bathroom. I showered in record time, then returned to my room, where I strapped on my gun and donned a granny dress made from a gray on gray print even drabber than the one I’d worn yesterday. Except for my face and hands, the dress covered me completely, with not so much as a pleat or ruffle to soften its severity. As I braided my hair into a tight plait which made the scar on my forehead stand out in bright relief, I stared at myself in the mirror: The well-dressed sister wife. I looked like puke.
    “Sister Lena!” Saul’s voice. From the kitchen. “The Lord is telling me that you are taking time for vanities.”
    Although I knew he said this for Ruby’s benefit, it still ticked me off, a warning sign. The perfect