Forbidden Faith

The screen door rattled in its frame, same as it did every Tuesday night, and I froze with my hand on the latch. Through the mesh I could see her silhouette against the porch light, that navy skirt, the name tag catching a glint. Sister Larsen. Six weeks in the field and she still stood like she was waiting for permission to exist.

"You're late," I said, pushing the door open.

"Your wife invited us for dinner. I'm not late. You're hiding."

She had this way of saying things plain, no cushion on it. I stepped back and she walked past me into the house, close enough that I caught the smell of her shampoo, something cheap and floral from the dollar store on Main. My wife Bethany was in the kitchen, and I heard her laugh at something Elder Whitmore said, that high nervous laugh she used with company.

"Brother Paulsen," Sister Larsen said, quiet, just for me. "You didn't answer my question."

"What question."

"Yesterday. At the church. I asked if you were okay, and you walked away like I'd asked you to rob a bank."

The dining room smelled like pot roast and the candles Bethany insisted on lighting even for missionaries, even on a Tuesday. Elder Whitmore was nineteen, a farm kid from Idaho with a handshake that could crack walnuts, and he was telling Bethany about his family's alfalfa yield while she nodded like it was the most fascinating thing she'd heard all year. I sat down across from Sister Larsen because that was where the seating chart put me, and she folded her hands on the table and looked at me with those eyes, brown and steady, and I felt the room get smaller.

"Will you offer the blessing, Brother Paulsen?" Bethany asked.

I bowed my head. I said the words. I blessed the food and the hands that prepared it and asked for the Spirit to be in this home, and my voice didn't shake, which surprised me. When I opened my eyes Sister Larsen was watching me the way you watch a dog you're not sure about.

Dinner went the way dinners went. Whitmore ate like he'd been fasting for a month. Bethany asked about the work, and Sister Larsen said they'd had three doors slammed that afternoon and one man who invited them in just to tell them their church was a cult, and she said it with a smile that had nothing behind it. I pushed my food around my plate and thought about the parking lot behind the stake center, the way she'd looked at me there.

After the meal Bethany sent me to walk them out. It was a chore she assigned like any other, take out the trash, walk the missionaries to their car, and I did it because that's what you did. Whitmore got in the driver's seat and started the engine, and Sister Larsen stood by the passenger door with her hand on the frame.

"You have a beautiful family," she said.

"Thank you."

"Does it help? Saying the right things?"

The porch light hummed. Somewhere down the block a dog was barking at nothing.

"I don't know what you're asking me," I said.

"Yes you do." She got in the car and pulled the door shut, and Whitmore backed out of the driveway, and I stood there until the taillights disappeared around the corner. Then I went inside and helped Bethany with the dishes and kissed my kids goodnight and lay in bed next to my wife, staring at the ceiling, listening to her breathe.

I met her three days later at the park by the river. I told Bethany I had a meeting with the bishop. I don't know why I said that. The bishop wasn't expecting me. I parked my truck in the lot by the boat ramp and walked down the trail to the bench where the old men feed the ducks, and she was already there, sitting with her hands in her lap, no companion, no tag on her chest.

"You took it off," I said.

"I'm not on duty."

"That's not what I meant."

She looked up at me. The river moved behind her, brown and slow, carrying sticks and foam. "Sit down, Jacob."

I sat. We didn't touch. That's the part people never believe, that it started with two people sitting on a bench a foot apart, not looking at each other. She told me about her father, who was a bishop back in Provo, and how she'd been called on a mission because it was expected, and how she'd prayed every night for a testimony and gotten nothing back but silence. I told her about the years I'd spent as elders quorum president, the hours of service, the temple recommend interviews, the way I'd started to feel like a man playing a role in a play he didn't remember auditioning for.

"I can't stop thinking about you," she said. Flat. No drama in it.

"You shouldn't say that."

"I know."

We sat there until the sun went behind the hills and the ducks paddled off to wherever ducks go. Then she stood up and brushed the grass off her skirt and said she had to get back before her companion noticed she was gone. I watched her walk up the trail, that navy skirt, those sensible shoes, and I knew I was in trouble in a way I hadn't been in twenty years.

That night I told Bethany the meeting ran long. She was folding laundry on the bed, matching socks, and she said that's fine, honey, and didn't look up. I stood in the doorway and watched her and felt something I couldn't name, not guilt exactly, more like the floor shifting under a house you've lived in your whole life.

The next Sunday I sat in the back of the chapel during sacrament and watched Sister Larsen pass the tray down the row. When it came to me I took a piece of bread and put it in my mouth and it tasted like nothing. She caught my eye for half a second, and in that half second I saw the whole thing laid out, the lies, the meetings in the park, the slow erosion of everything I'd built, and I didn't look away. That's the moment I'd point to if anyone ever asked. Not the bench. Not the parking lot. A piece of bread and a look that lasted less than a breath.

After the meeting Bethany asked if I wanted to stay for the potluck. I said I had a headache. I drove home alone and sat in the driveway with the engine off and my hands on the wheel, and I thought about the word covenant, what it meant, what it cost, and whether a man could break one and still be the man he thought he was. I didn't have an answer. I still don't.