Ancient Deceptions

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Idaho Falls, Idaho

Bethany Gooding dug through to the bottom of the wooden toy box that her father had built for his five daughters some years ago. She was the last of the girls still living at home, and the toy box was now hers alone. At age twenty-one, she no longer kept toys in it, of course, but it was a fine chest to store books, papers, family photos, and…

She grasped a small locking steel box. She took it over to her bed, found the key in the nightstand, and unlocked it. Three thousand dollars lay inside, money that she’d managed to save while working at the Brigham Young University-Idaho library and living at home.

Home was a wooden, clapboard-sided building with two stories and an attic that had been used as an oversized bedroom when all ten children lived there. But now, her three oldest sisters and two oldest brothers were married and lived nearby. Another brother had moved to Salt Lake City, one was doing mission work in Indiana, and her youngest brother was still home. And then there was her sister, Rachel. No one knew where she was.

Bethany was tired of listening to her parents constantly preach to her about how she was living her life all wrong. They warned that if she kept on the way she was, like Rachel, she would be lost to the family.

They always used the word “lost,” but Bethany wasn’t certain if Rachel was really lost, had been shunned by the community, or if—God-forbid—she was dead.

A couple of years earlier, Rachel Gooding had left her large Mormon family and their farm in eastern Idaho near the Utah border and, to everyone’s amazement, had traveled to Oxford University—“The” Oxford University, in England. She had received a full fellowship to work on a doctorate in the field of archeology. Their entire small community had been shocked, worried, and inordinately proud that one of their own was so intelligent as to be lured far from home. It was a wonderful opportunity for her, and her parents weren’t about to stand in her way.

While Rachel was away, however, something changed her.

Bethany was four years younger than Rachel, and Rachel was the sister she had always looked up to. She found Rachel’s life far more exciting than that of their older sisters who seemed content to live on their farms, raise children, and spend hours every Sunday at church, then cooking and eating with the family. Growing food on the farm, preserving what their families needed, selling some, and finding new recipes seemed to occupy their every waking hour. Bethany found that beyond dull and wanted much, much more in her life.

Rachel had broken away. Bethany hoped to do the same.

The university was close enough to the family farm that she could return home every night to sleep. But she was so desperate to go off on her own, to find excitement, she even considered serving as a missionary. After all, Latter-day Saints (the term the community used for themselves since they were told not to use “Mormon”) encouraged young women to serve in a mission for eighteen months to spread word of their faith. Young men were expected to go on a mission if at all possible, but young women weren’t pushed to do so. Bethany went as far as an interview but was told she “needed to ponder on the church’s basic tenets” for a while and try again later.

But then, last summer, after Rachel’s first year at Oxford ended, she came home for a visit. With her was her roommate, a Welsh woman named Ceinwen Davies. The family had been surprised that Rachel’s roommate was already in her thirties and quite worldly. After only a few days on the farm, the two women drove to Salmon, Idaho, the town closest to the area where, some years earlier, Rachel had gone on a class field trip and she, her fellow Boise State students and teachers, all ended up lost in the mountains.

None of the family understood why Rachel wanted to return there. And even more baffling, after Rachel and Ceinwen came back to the farm, they immediately left to go to, of all places, Japan.

Bethany remembered hearing her parents wonder where they had gone so wrong in raising Rachel that she preferred running all over the world instead of coming home, getting married, and living a proper life.

And, as if Rachel going away wasn’t bad enough, her parents got a call from Ceinwen telling them Rachel had met a “wonderful” man in Japan, fell in love, and was staying there with him. She added that Rachel expected that her parents wouldn’t approve, and had asked Ceinwen to let them know she was all right.

Bethany’s parents had accepted the story, but she hadn’t. She and Rachel had been close, and she couldn’t believe Rachel wouldn’t phone or at least text her to talk about the man she’d fallen in love with. Something had to be wrong.

Bethany contacted Oxford University to see if they had any information on Rachel’s whereabouts, but they refused to divulge anything.

Then, something miraculous happened. Oxford sent all of Rachel’s belongings from her dorm room back home. Even though her father had ordered them burned, their mother had—and this was the miracle—defied him and stacked the boxes in the cellar where she kept her preserves. As encouraged by the church, her mother kept at least a year’s worth of food in storage.

One night, Bethany waited until everyone was asleep and went down to the cellar to go through Rachel’s boxes. She was frankly shocked at how little she found of a personal nature. It was as if Rachel had done nothing but study and write reports while in England. No wonder she got an A or A+ in every class. Bethany was both impressed and appalled.

But then she discovered her mother had also stored Rachel’s belongings from her time at Boise State. Bethany doubted they would be of interest, but took a look anyway.

Bethany’s parents had convinced her that Rachel had been in no real danger when she was lost in the Idaho wilderness. They also had sworn everyone was fine and she shouldn’t worry. But the newspaper articles Rachel had kept told a vastly different story.

The newspapers also wrote about Dr. Michael Rempart, an archeologist who apparently once had had his own TV show. Bethany couldn’t imagine anyone watching such a thing, but she did remember Rachel saying the archeologist who had helped rescue her and the other students was the reason she wanted to study archeology.

Bethany returned to her room, turned on her laptop, and began searching for Michael Rempart. She learned he had recently spent a lot of time in Asia and had a couple of strange cases coming out of China and Mongolia. She wondered if he was somehow involved in Rachel’s sudden urge to visit Japan. It was the only thing that made sense to her.

Despite hours of searching, she could come up with no location, phone number, or even an email address for Dr. Michael Rempart. But she wasn’t about to give up. She had to know more.