Or, did she give them to him herself, when they spent time together? Maybe Laurel had a place where she left the letters for Myles to claim.
Each letter had a date in the upper right-hand corner, and I arranged them with the most recent letter on top. They were written precisely one week apart, each Sunday. The final one was dated eight days before the murders. It started: “My Dearest Myles,” just like the inscription on the envelope.
Laurel’s handwriting was flowing and really quite beautiful, and she wrote passionately about her concern for Jeremy and that he had barely regained his birth weight in the two months since his birth:
He’s such a sweet child. I hold him on my lap, and he smiles up at me. But I worry. Will he be healthy? Anna helps me. She’s wonderful with children. We sit together in the afternoons, our housework done, dinner filling the air with the scent of the bison roast in the oven, and she helps me nurse, trying to get the baby to latch on and feed the way he should. But the child seems disinterested. Perhaps it is too hard for him. Perhaps I am not a good mother, as much as I pray to be.
Here at home, things are not good between Jacob and me. He seems disinterested in me and does not want to be bothered with his newest son. Perhaps I am a disappointment to him. He dotes on Anna and plays with Benjamin and Sybille, and I wonder if when Jeremy is older Jacob will be as drawn to our child. Some men aren’t as good with babies as they are with children who can run and play, throw a ball. It’s possible that my husband is such a man. I must admit that despite this year of marriage, I don’t know him well. He is a mystery to me in many ways. Those years in Mexico, I think, haunt him. He told me once of the violence he saw in the sect in El Pueblo de Elijah, the thirst for retribution.
My love, I wonder how different my life would be if the prophet hadn’t ordered me to marry Jacob but allowed us to be together as we planned, as we should be. I think of you each day. I feel Jacob’s arms around me, and I wish they were yours. His lips against mine are familiar but not the ones I crave.
If my parents had not commanded me to consent to the prophet’s orders, I would be your wife and Jeremy your son.
I put the letter down on my lap and recalled again how Laurel looked on her deathbed, and my anger built. I thought of those I knew who used religion to control the lives of others and the unfairness of a world where so many have no power and no voice.
Since the letters were written on Sundays, I wondered if perhaps she’d composed them during her afternoon prayer times, when she’d be alone. Once a week, she wrote of her life, brought Myles up to date, and professed her love for him. On page after page, she grieved for the loss of the life they’d planned. Looking down at the pile of letters, something occurred to me. I picked up my cell and called Mueller, still at the log cabin. “Did you go through all of Laurel’s possessions at the ranch?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “What are you looking for?”
“We have Laurel’s letters to Myles. He kept them,” I said. “I’m thinking that somewhere she must have his letters to her. She’d probably have them hidden to make sure that Jacob never found them, but I don’t believe she would have thrown them away.”
The phone quiet, I assumed Mueller was thinking that through, wondering if they might have missed something. “Chief, we’ll head back over there first thing in the morning, once we have daylight, and take another look,” Mueller said. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, maybe we’ll have ideas about where she could have them.”
“How much longer will you be there?” I looked at my watch—it was well after midnight.
“Finishing up,” he said.
I thanked him, hung up and went back to my reading.
A few months before Jeremy’s birth, Laurel wrote of her pregnancy, the feeling of the baby moving within her. “Life, a life I am bringing into the world. I want my child to have a happy one. Happier than I’ve been given. One with