Posted by:
donbagley
(
)
Date: April 29, 2020 12:46PM
Roger and Trisha Funles were seated in their regular pew at the back of the chapel. Trisha hated sacrament meeting, but knew better than to say so. She’d been conditioned by thirty years of marriage to Roger. You didn’t go negative on the church. It was his identity. Roger was a High Priest first and everything else second. Trisha knew that his first love was really money, but she couldn’t say that either. Their marriage lived or died on secrecy.
They’d spent decades convincing Trisha’s mother, Donna, that their children were rotten, so that the kids wouldn’t be named in her will. Mom had money, and Roger had said that it would be a shame for it to end up in irresponsible hands. Trisha felt a little odd about conspiring against her own children, but Roger had a habit of getting his way. When she’d withheld sex from him, he’d pushed her off the bed with his feet at her back. She’d felt the sharp slap of his hand on her face as well. The kids were adults now anyway, and they ought to be able to fend for themselves.
An eight-year-old boy named Mikey approached Roger. “Brother Funles?” he said, “Are you having dinner with us again?” Roger told the boy he’d talk to him later. “What did he mean,” Trisha asked Roger, “about having dinner?” Roger explained that he had been mentoring the boy, because Mikey had no father. Trisha knew Mikey’s mother from Relief Society meetings. The woman was divorced and very attractive. Roger had never mentioned having dinner with her and her son. “What do you mean by mentoring?” Trisha wanted to know.
“I’ve given the boy some attention and encouragement,” said Roger. “A child needs someone to look after his interests. Mikey doesn’t have a man in his life since his father lost his testimony and failed in his marriage.” Trisha didn’t like the thought of Roger sitting at the dinner table with Mikey’s young mother, but there were limits to what she could complain about. And those limits were strictly enforced.