Mine to Tell Read online

  Your friend forever,

  Henrietta

  ~*~

  I curled my feet up underneath me and leaned my head on the sofa’s back. “John didn’t go back, did he? She thought he would, and I want him to.” I looked from the ceiling to Kyle, but it was my empty heart I was asking. Where were the heroes who filled those voids? Where were the champions that understood us?

  “I think we’ll find that out,” he said, eyeing me, before he returned the letter to its envelope.

  I watched him until he tucked it underneath the stack. “It breaks my heart to know what mattered to her, and that she never got it.” Her plight felt too much like mine. I didn’t want it that way for either of us. “It makes me despise my great-grandfather for what he did. It wasn’t right.” My voice was rising, my face felt warm. How could someone trap another for their own sake? How could someone be that selfish?

  Kyle pulled out the next letter. I wanted him to agree with me that my great-grandfather was wretched, but he didn’t. He never had.

  “He bought her, you know,” I prodded, my indignation rising. “Like a slave instead of a wife. You can’t love someone who buys you. You can’t love someone who forces you. You can’t love anyone when your heart is broken for another.”

  Kyle looked at me now, studied my face, but I think he was analyzing what I’d said. “To love is a choice,” he said, “but to fall in love is chance.”

  I opened my mouth to retort, but I closed it again. Had I thought I’d fallen in love with Trevor and then done nothing to build on it? Failed to make obedient and loving choices like Crouse women were supposed to? I was making them now, even if they seemed destructive to everyone else. “I have to go. It’s important,” rang in my memory again, Julianne’s voice and mine, both pleading for understanding. Maybe I couldn’t make those choices. Maybe Julianne couldn’t either.

  I squirmed around on the sofa, rearranging so I wasn’t looking directly at Kyle. “What does the next letter say?”

  He opened the next envelope without further discussion and slid the letter out and unfolded it. He glanced up at me and then down at the paper.

  ~*~

  November 13, 1907

  Dear Julianne,

  I have decided to spare you more anguish. My efforts from here to reason with your father have only made matters worse for you, and I fear I’m doing you great harm. I must think of your feelings, your peace of mind with yourself. I know, my dear, you love me. But you have been forced into a situation that threatens your bond to your family and their good. I accept your love as my sufficiency. I’ll let that be enough for me as I offer you the freedom you truly need. Although this is not something I thought I’d ever say, you have my sincerest wish for your happiness as you do as your parents wish. I release you, leaving you with my heart, my well wishes, and my friendship forever.

  Yours always,

  John

  ~*~

  I hadn’t noticed them until Kyle’s voice faded after he’d read John’s name, but tears had filled my eyes. I couldn’t distinguish Kyle’s features, only his movements as he put the letter away. When he finished, the room was silent. The house was silent. I didn’t know what to say about a man who’d broken his own heart to spare the one he loved. Whoever John was, I knew I could have loved him too.

  “Want to go for a walk?” Kyle asked.

  I nodded and struggled to my feet. He held me by the upper arm as I sought blindly for the shoes I’d kicked off at the sofa’s edge. His hand was strong and warm, and I was glad it was there.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I swiped my other sleeve across my eyes and looked up at him.

  “Let’s walk over to Isaac’s old house.” He smiled. I nodded, then let him escort me out the door.

  Chapter 22

  “I put on righteousness and it clothed me.”

  We walked side by side in silence, our feet scraping over gravel as we crossed the ground between Julianne’s house and Isaac’s. There were no boards on his windows and doors like there had been on hers, and even though it had been uninhabited since my family moved out, it had been taken care of, the relic of what a family should be, as opposed to Julianne’s, which was a reminder of what a family wasn’t.

  “You ever been in here?” I asked as we crossed the small patch of weeds to the wide front porch.

  Kyle nodded, blushing a bit.

  “You were a quiet kid, but you certainly got around, didn’t you?” I teased.

  “I wasn’t good with people,” he said. “But I understood them.”

  I knew I would have gained a lot if I’d taken the time to get to know Kyle as a boy. He was a treasure, and what he’d shared with me now as an adult left me hungry for more.

  We stepped up to the door and tried the knob. It was locked, which we both already knew. Kyle waved his arm, motioning me around to the back. I grinned and followed him. We came to a small window I assumed he could open, but he didn’t. Instead, he gripped the frame around it and hoisted himself up until he was standing on its lower sill. He clung to the wall with his fingers and toes like a spider.

  “What in the world are you doing?” I laughed from the ground. “I hope you don’t expect me to do that to get in this house.”

  He grinned down at me, his brown hair falling over his forehead. With one hand he reached upward while he clung precariously with his other. His long fingers snaked over the wood siding until they reached a small hole I would never have noticed. His fingers slipped inside and came out with something long and silver. He let go with his other hand and dropped to the ground beside me.

  “What’s that?” I asked. He held up a skeleton key, twisting it in front of me.

  “How the heck…”

  He grinned and led me to the back door, where he let us in.

  “That’s not how you got in as a kid, is it?” I asked. “You would have been too short to reach that.”

  “I had to keep moving it over the years, after your family moved out,” he said, as if I should have figured that out. I shook my head and followed him in.

  I knew this house well, since I’d lived here when I was little. But even at that, it seemed it was Kyle who was more at home here than I was. He walked directly to the largest room on the lower level and stood next to an old hutch that had been left to decay.

  “This was our living room,” I said, standing near him and spinning slowly around in a circle, seeing this house as a prison now instead of a place I used to call home. It used to feel safe and cozy, with its floral wallpaper and wide painted molding along the ceiling and floor. But now, now that I was older and understood the complications of relationships, I saw it as the prison Julianne had come to until she’d been evicted and sent to one that was worse.

  “I kind of hope she had an affair,” I said aloud. It was defiance. I wanted Isaac to hear me from his grave.

  “No, you don’t,” Kyle corrected me. “No one wants that. Betrayal is painful.”

  I glared at him as he left the hutch and began to walk around the house. I followed. He wasn’t going to argue with me, and I was inwardly glad he wouldn’t. Hating Isaac or hating Trevor wasn’t letting Julianne’s story unfold. I was here to learn, learn about her and learn about myself. But I was still angry, and my anger was justified. It would just have to run its course.

  We traveled through each room and, as we did, I saw the house as it must have been long before my time. Instead of Paul Junior and me squabbling, I could hear little boys’ voices chatting and laughing as they raced across the bare wooden floors. Their voices rang in the void like children’s do, oblivious to the problems the adults faced, invisible turmoil no farther away than their parents’ worn forms. I could see Isaac, stern with his furrowed brow, at the head of the table, eating his food without conversing, Julianne at the far end picking at hers, saying nothing, not even looking up.

  Was that how it had been? Had it been intolerable for her? Torture? Did she cry herself to sleep every night as soon
as he began to snore?

  “Makes you wonder how Isaac felt here, doesn’t it?” Kyle’s words shocked me.

  I sputtered. “It’s Julianne I wonder about. I already know how he felt.”

  Kyle shook his head. “You don’t know. He did something wrong, he did something unfair to a young woman, but you don’t know how he felt.” He looked down at me. “He may not have even realized what he’d done, at the time. Men don’t sometimes.”

  “That doesn’t excuse them,” I snapped. Kyle’s look told me he saw my anger simmering beneath the surface. “I’m really furious,” I confessed. “It’s Trevor’s ignorance and stubbornness that fuels my fire, not just Isaac’s.”

  Kyle nodded.

  I took a long, slow breath. “You can’t blame me.”

  “Because sometimes people marry for purely selfish reasons?”

  “No, because Trevor would,” I replied.

  “But he doesn’t understand that,” Kyle said, his face truly earnest.

  “Whose side are you on?” I demanded, sounding like I’d slipped back into junior high. “I mean, he doesn’t even like you. He blames you for something you haven’t even done. For something that’s his own fault.”

  “On a bit of circumstantial evidence…”

  “Just like Isaac,” I finished for him with a heavy sigh. “Just like my family did. And still does.” I looked around where we stood, Julianne’s emptiness and mine, too poignant. “I’m done here. Let’s go.”

  “One more thing,” Kyle said, and he took my hand. I froze at this overture of closeness, returning to him all the warmth of a mummy as he laced his fingers through mine. “Come with me.”

  He led me up the stairs, an ornate staircase leading to a much larger second level. The stairs were wide enough for us to walk side by side, his fingers still wrapped through mine. When we got to the top, he let go, acting as though he thought nothing of whether he’d held my hand or not, mine still warm from his touch.

  “Over here,” he said, nodding toward a closed door. I followed him to it and watched him turn the knob. He pushed the door open, and I stared into a small room. It had been storage when we lived here, a room I never paid any attention to. But maybe it had been a bedroom at one time, for one of the boys, back when Isaac lived here.

  Kyle stepped inside and I followed. I looked around—gabled ceiling, one window at the end, barely enough room to maneuver.

  “What’s this about?” I asked. Kyle strolled over to the window and looked out. I followed and gazed across the grass and gravel we’d just walked over. “That’s Julianne’s house,” I said, surprised at the view. “It’s impossible, but this makes it seem so close we could almost touch it.”

  Kyle looked down at me, his stare prodding me like a goad.

  “This has something to do with Isaac. That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?” I gave him a hard stare. “Well, you’re wrong. It doesn’t. At least it doesn’t matter. This was probably one of the boy’s rooms, or a storage room like it was for us.” I whirled away from the window.

  Kyle let me whirl. He didn’t try to stop me. Instead he walked over to a small cabinet, a washstand that had been left behind by us, or so I thought. Maybe it had been here before us and merely existed with us until we moved on. I watched him open its front door and reach clear into the back. Then he came out with an old, small set of field glasses.

  “Opera glasses?” I asked as he handed them to me. He laughed. I walked to the window and looked through them, adjusting them to my eyes and focusing on the nearest object, Julianne’s house. For such old and primitive binoculars, they were very effective. If her house had seemed close before, it was at my fingertips now. I roved the glasses over the exterior, then focused on the windows, finding myself looking inside, seeing into the kitchen, the empty bedroom, seeing into her world until I saw her…or at least it seemed like I did…bent over the Bible Isaac had given her, just the way I bent over it now.

  “One of the boys’, right?” I choked, dropping the binoculars from my eyes. “This room, it belonged to one of them, right?” My voice strained as I kept my eyes on Julianne’s window. Nothing was there, no one. It was what Isaac maybe saw then and it was what I, her great-granddaughter, was doing now. That’s all.

  Kyle leaned over and reached again into the small cabinet and came out with what looked like an ashtray. He handed it to me. The inside of it was tarnished, rough and burnt.

  “A pipe, too?” I asked as a joke. He smiled and bent down. “Don’t bother,” I said quickly. “I get it now.”

  I drew up my courage to face the window again, and I stared at Julianne’s house, the image still seared into my mind. It was of her, just like everything in there was her, and she was trying to tell her tale. If Isaac had listened, even from this window with his tiny opera glasses and pipe, I wouldn’t be here now. I tried to think about what he must have felt as he sat here enveloped in a cloud of smoke, watching his second wife’s house. What did he think? Did he forgive? Or was he just hurt and angry, like my great-uncles Simon and Levi? Julianne hadn’t said anything really horrible about Isaac, so... My blood ran thick and cold. So maybe… What if… What if everyone was right about her? What if she had…

  “Please tell me this was one of the boys’ rooms,” I pleaded through my reflection in the warped pane. If Isaac was hurt I didn’t want it to be her fault, I wanted it to be his. He’d done a bad thing to her. And if she did something wrong in return, then let them have reached some peace about it. Let this be a boy’s room, not a place where an old man brooded and blamed my great-grandmother forever.

  “Could have been,” Kyle interrupted my angst. “The large room downstairs on the opposite side of the house may have been Isaac and Julianne’s bedroom. There are two big ones up here, too, though, and then this smaller one, so it’s hard to say what this was. Except a place to think and ponder.”

  What Kyle suggested was more than plausible. My parents had used the large downstairs bedroom, while Paul Junior and I took the two upstairs. Just like Isaac and Julianne, except there were three children in their family, not just two. Surely this small room belonged to one of those boys and no one watched her as she told her story next door, in the empty house Isaac put her in.

  Kyle moved closer. Close enough I could feel him, feel his warmth, his companionship, as we stared across the empty space between the two houses.

  “Annabelle,” he said quietly, “your grandfather may have lived over there with your great-grandmother.”

  “No,” I corrected him, wheeling his direction. “She lived there alone. My grandfather was here when she left for good, so I’m certain he lived here with Isaac.”

  “He was born after she moved into that house.”

  The insinuation behind what Kyle was saying stole through my body like a deadly poison. Mama had said the same thing. My great-uncle Simon, too. I couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t believe this.

  He looked away, back out the window at her house. He didn’t have to say anything more. It was in the silence. It was on his face. It was in this room.

  “I know she had that baby around nine months after she ran off,” I admitted aloud. “Mama told me that.” I said it like a concession, but it was really a dare, a challenge to what everyone insinuated. But I trusted Kyle. He knew people. He understood people, just as he’d said.

  Where had she gone those two weeks? What had she done? Who had she seen? And why? And why didn’t my family know for sure and put an end to all of this? Wouldn’t my grandfather know? Was this the reason for the distance in his eyes? The reason he’d barely spoken to me since I’d reopened her house? My mind reeled with thoughts and answers I didn’t want to face, my emotions spiraling down a dizzying path.

  Kyle took my hand and pulled me away from the window. I followed, too numb to think for myself. It was getting dusky by the time he climbed up the back wall of the house and tucked the skeleton key into its hiding place. He dropped lightly down beside me but
didn’t move. He just stood there looking at me.

  “We don’t know what happened yet. Don’t jump to conclusions. Just let her tell us her story.”

  I was too exhausted to be infuriated at him for making me face the worst and then passing it off as idle gossip. I nodded. This time I took his hand as we turned away from Isaac’s house. No matter what he’d just put me through, I was glad for Kyle, thankful for his intuitiveness, his gentleness, his honesty, and his presence. He left me at my door and pulled his bicycle from a nearby bush where Paul Junior wouldn’t have spotted it. I watched him pedal away in the twilight. It swallowed him quickly, his thin form vanishing into its grayness.

  “Thank you, Kyle,” I whispered. And then I went inside.

  Chapter 23

  “Then all women will give honor to their husbands, great and small.”

  The ceremony was brief, the wedding small, only attended by family and a few friends. My mother cried, my father was solemn. I said nothing other than “I do” when asked. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. My tears were gone, finally dried up. I refused to think where John might be as I stood there promising my life to another. I couldn’t even think of Henrietta, for fear she’d say I’d betrayed them, frolicking with them so gaily and then denying them by never returning.

  I heard Isaac’s voice beside me as he made his vow, throaty, manly, perfect for a preacher, frightening for me. He didn’t touch me when it was finished. I was thankful for that, not ready to feel his skin against mine. It would feel so different from the only other touch I’d known, one that was full and warm, alive and young.

  The men shook Isaac’s hand as his two boys stood warily in the background, eyeing us, looking as uncertain as I felt. They stared, their expressions unreadable, the younger one’s eyes more inquisitive. I smiled at him, happy for his presence, hoping he was someone in this family I could love. His name was Levi. I continued to watch him and smile.