Back in Alber for a little more than a year, Max wondered every day if he’d made the right decision.
Sixteen years living in Salt Lake, he’d built a life. He’d owned a brick bungalow just outside downtown with his wife, Miriam. Their daughter, Brooke, went to a good school. He’d turned his back on his past, done everything he could to put Alber behind him. In Salt Lake, his neighbors and friends were mainstream Mormons: members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, which had renounced polygamy in the 1800s. Those he met were good people who easily accepted him as one of their own. No one asked about his six mothers, dozens of brothers and sisters, or his father, who advised the children every morning to “Be right with God! For the End of Days is upon us!”
Behind a locked door, he kept an arsenal of guns and rifles, enough to supply a small army.
“Crazy old man,” Max muttered.
To be fair, Max had to admit it wasn’t just his father’s teachings. When the world ended, the sect’s leaders preached that the good families in Alber would have to fight off hordes of sinners. In the end, only the virtuous members of Elijah’s People would repopulate the earth.
“The End of Days is upon us, and we need to be judged worthy.” Max pictured his father, one of the church elders, his disheveled stark-white hair and his wrinkled face snarled into a twisted frown. The old man raised an index finger, pointed at the sky and proclaimed, “On the day of reckoning, God will take retribution and condemn the sinners to hell.” When the old man prophesized a date on which the world as they knew it would end, Max, nerves on edge, had waited for the sky to open, to see God descend on a glowing cloud surrounded by the great prophets.
“We weren’t worthy!” his father had shouted, when the appointed day passed without earthquakes, floods, or hurricanes. “God has found us lacking in faith and fortitude!”
After each predicted Day of Atonement came and went, his father hibernated in seclusion. When he emerged, wild-eyed and scruffy, he whispered of revelations and announced the date of a new day of reckoning. Again, Max nervously waited for what felt inevitable but never came.
Despite it all, Max was devoted to his father, and he believed the old man loved him, right up until the day Max became one of the lost boys, the young men forced out of Alber to change the ratio of men to women and free up the town’s girls to be married off as second, third, fourth, even sixteenth wives.
Looking back, Max realized that he probably should have seen it coming.
On Max’s seventeenth birthday, a town elder called his father and informed him that Max had to leave Alber. At home that night, the sister-wives all avoided him and Max saw his mother crying, but first thing the following morning, she threw his clothes into a duffel bag. The old man drove Max to St. George, took him to the center of town, handed him two hundred dollars, kissed him on the cheek, and left. Max stood, clutching the money in his hand, while he watched his father drive away. Nowhere to go. No one to help him.
Years passed. He returned to Alber only once, for his father’s funeral.
Good riddance, Max thought.
Would he have returned without the accident? Miriam dead. And Brooke. Dear little Brooke. What happened to them was his fault, he judged, and it ate away at him every waking moment. Guilt stalked him at every turn.
After the accident, the practicalities of life had overwhelmed him. Brooke’s doctor and hospital bills overflowed in each day’s mail. Tortured by crushing regret, Max knew he’d made mistakes. He’d lost his job and their security. Sheriff Virgil Holmes’s call had saved him.
“I’ve got a big county to police, and it includes a handful of these polygamous towns,” the sheriff told him that day on the phone. “Listen, Anderson, I hear you grew up in Alber, and that you were a hotshot cop in Salt Lake, a lead investigator. I know you’ve hit tough times, but I’m willing to give you a chance to turn it around.”
“Sheriff, I can explain what happened with my job in Salt Lake. I’m a good cop. I—”
“No need. Just sign on and come help me,” the sheriff had said. “I need a chief deputy who can head up investigations, and I need someone like you who can talk to these polygamous folks. Someone who speaks their language.”
It was more than Max could have asked for: a good salary, health insurance and a means to support Brooke. He couldn’t undo all that had happened, but this, perhaps, could enable him to repair some of the damage.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t been easy to start over.
Alber had always been clannish and that hadn’t changed. Max had history with the people, but not the kind that opened doors—this case was a vivid example of that. He’d spent most of the day investigating and no one would talk to him about the note. He couldn’t even find out if it was real or a sick hoax.
I better tell Sheriff Holmes that Clara’s coming, Max thought.
The sheriff should have been home with his family on a Saturday evening, but earlier Max had heard a familiar voice in the building. When Max peeked in the sheriff’s open office door, he had his phone propped up to his ear and was slipping files into his briefcase.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready,” Sheriff Holmes said. “I’m getting everything together right now. I’ll work on it tomorrow.”
The sheriff gave Max a nod.
“You know, I think this is going to work. The whole area’s excited about it,” the sheriff told whoever was on the phone. “Sure, I’m in. No problem. Got the money set aside for
