Mine to Tell Read online

  “I want to know how it leaked,” I said. I could hear his silent nod, hear his thoughts churning. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’ll let me know,” he said, but he was asking.

  “Of course. I’ll call you later.” And we hung up.

  It was late in the afternoon, and Jill was at work. I dressed and followed her, determined to find out what had gone wrong.

  Chapter 38

  “You are approaching the battle

  against your enemies today. Do not be fainthearted.

  Do not be afraid, or panic, or tremble before them.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jill said from my side, our steps quick and clipped as we marched out of the newspaper’s office. It was late afternoon, and my head was pounding.

  “No, I should go alone,” I said, not looking at her.

  “Of course you should, but that doesn’t mean you have to,” she persisted. We ducked into my old favorite coffee-and-donut shop, where the coffee was flavored with a slight hint of grease. “Two fat coffees,” Jill said to the person manning the cash register. He grinned. Apparently she’d kept up the habit of ordering his greasy coffee while I’d been gone. He gave us our drinks and we sat at a table near the window.

  “I miss this,” I said, inhaling the aromatic steam above my cup. “I’d forgotten how much until we stepped in here.”

  She grinned. “You’re not ready to come back yet, though,” she said with unexpected insight. I looked up at her.

  “Have you been talking to Kyle about me?” I asked.

  She grinned. “Don’t be so vain. You think if I was talking to him I’d be talking about you?”

  “Well, don’t talk about me.” I gave her a mock warning. Then I turned to gaze out the window at my small piece of Cincinnati. The newspaper’s tall building loomed not far away, other smaller buildings crowding it, people scurrying at their feet. Jill was right. I wasn’t ready to come back.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  About what? I wanted to ask, but it was one of those trite conversation wasters that led to nowhere. The kind Kyle would never do. “About letting the column go AP?” I asked, not even looking at her. “I’m going to talk to my family first. Even though the damage is already done to them, I can’t approve it to go out over AP without their consent.”

  She nodded, and we both took sips of oily coffee. “I hate to say this,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “But there’s a better place to get coffee now.” She glanced sideways at the counter to see if the donut man was listening. “It sprang up after you left. It has real coffee, some flavored, even. And no grease.”

  “That settles it,” I said. “I’m not coming back if you’re abandoning our fat coffee.”

  We relaxed and swirled our cups to watch the oily sheen travel around the surface.

  “If my family’s okay with letting Julianne go public, I still may not be,” I said. “This is too much about me. It’s like I know how she feels, and I’m not certain it’s right for her…or me. Forgive the analogy, but we’re like turtles just barely poking our noses out of our shells, discovering our world and who we are in it. If there’s a huge commotion outside the shell, we’ll never come out.”

  Jill was a good enough friend to tolerate my analogy without an eye roll. She continued to swirl her coffee, and without looking up she asked, “And what about Trevor?”

  I cringed. Speaking of commotion. I had hurt for him for awhile, but now I hurt because of him. “I know what to do about that. Whoever delivered all of those clippings from your paper to the ones in my home community did it spitefully. Who else could it have been? I’ll find him. I’ll confront him. And he won’t be a part of my family ever again.” I was seething. I could no longer blame him for trying to pin me into a relationship I wasn’t ready for, because we were both at fault for that. But for this, this act of cowardly vengeance? This fell to him and him alone. The idea that he’d stoop so low was like a knife, bigger than the one when I’d seen him with the blonde and more painful even than when he’d cursed at me. It was like a part of me turning on myself. We were supposed to have been one. He was to have been a part of me. And now we were nothing, because one part was trying to destroy the other.

  “I wish you’d let me come with you,” Jill said again.

  I shook my head. “It may make me feel better, but it won’t give him the freedom to be himself. You’ll put him on guard and detract from what I really want out of him.”

  “Okay,” she said, settling back in her chair. “But come right back to my apartment as soon as you’re done, all right?”

  “Of course,” I said. We stood and dropped our cups into the trash bin as we exited. Maybe I’d try that other coffee shop sometime. Maybe next time I was here.

  Chapter 39

  “He who covers a transgression seeks love, but

  he who repeats a matter separates intimate friends.”

  “Coming,” Trevor’s voice called from the other side of his closed door as he responded to my knock. The door was flung open, and my face looked directly at his. Our eyes locked, and the calm anticipation drained from his. “I was expecting you,” he said.

  “Can I come in?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to.

  “We can talk here,” he said, not moving.

  “Why did you do it?” I went straight to the point. I wasn’t sure how long I could endure this confrontation. He didn’t look the same. He was handsome still, but those weren’t his eyes, his smile was gone, and the tie that had bound us was broken and ugly.

  He didn’t respond. For a fleeting second the fierceness disappeared from his eyes. It became sickly and weakened, as if he was tired. He was a man of mixed emotions, not just an ogre, but certainly not someone who hadn’t been soiled by the debilitation of unforgiveness. I saw Isaac in him for a moment. Someone whose world hadn’t turned out as he’d planned or arranged. You can’t arrange other people to suit you, and that’s what he’d tried to do. Both of them had. Neither Julianne nor I fit those spots they’d carved out for us. We’d tried, but we just didn’t fit.

  “Don’t ever contact my family again,” I said, and I whirled away, tears rising from deep within my gut.

  “Wait,” he called.

  I didn’t wait. I ran. I hurried to the stairway, not wanting to be trapped in the hall waiting for a slow elevator. I flew through the stairwell door as I heard a slam behind me. I hurtled down the stairs, listening, but no door opened above me, no footsteps followed me. He’d slammed his own door and stayed on the other side. He hadn’t come after me.

  Chapter 40

  “For the despairing man there should be

  kindness from his friend.”

  I visited my grandfather before I did anyone else when I returned home. I didn’t want to argue with him or even try to persuade him how wronged we’d all been by Isaac more than by Julianne. I just wanted to be with him, let him talk or just sit in silence if that’s what he chose, just touch him again if he’d let me.

  He seemed more bent when he opened the door. Worn and tired. He looked at me for a moment, letting things register…how he felt about me, about what I was doing, about how I should be treated.

  “Come in,” he finally said, looking down as he moved aside. I stepped into his kitchen as he closed the door, and waited until he nodded at the table. We each took a seat opposite the other, condiments and accoutrements nearer his end where he usually sat, while my end, where my deceased grandmother used to sit, was vacant, the place where a woman much like my mother had been. One who’d worn herself out trying to be good.

  “I wanted to see you,” I said, not giving way to apologies, defenses, or clichés that worked as ice breakers. He’d touched me once when he’d defended the house I was now living in. I was hoping it had been for reasons better than proving he wasn’t a bastard child. It had to be.

  He nodded. He studied the table between us.

  “Grandpa,” I began, but I stopped w
hen he looked up.

  “I didn’t want you to open up that house,” he said dryly, his voice cracking.

  He was the one who had left it there intact, defended it, had never been quite as embittered as Simon. I looked at him, knowing there were silly arguments that I wouldn’t say. They would start the disagreement I didn’t want to have. We didn’t need to argue. We needed to agree. I waited and said nothing.

  “This wasn’t the right time.”

  “There’s a right time?” I asked.

  “Would have been,” he said.

  “Grandpa, you need to tell me what you mean. No one’s ever said anything good about your mother or that house. How can there be a right time to open it up?”

  He ran his hands over his face, the dry skin of his palms raking over the stubble of white whiskers. He looked exasperated, worn from being lost for too long. “Maybe there never would have been. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “I’ve started it now, Grandpa. I’m sorry if it’s the wrong time, but maybe it will turn out to be right.” I stood and walked to his side. This time I put my hand on his shoulder. “She was okay, Grandpa. We’ve nothing to be ashamed of, because I don’t think she did anything that warrants it.”

  He sat there letting my words and my touch go into him, his face softening, his eyes like those of a little boy who remembered a loving touch.

  “There are things you don’t know,” he finally said, his words watery as he looked away.

  “You could tell me,” I offered. I stopped myself from squeezing his shoulder and begging him.

  “Not now.” He kept his head turned as he focused across the room.

  “It’s okay, Grandpa. I’ll see you later.” I lifted my hand from his shoulder, knowing the touch he was fighting would remain. Julianne was with him, too. Maybe he was why I had to open her house. For her son, the second man she’d ever loved. I opened the kitchen door while my grandpa continued to stare at the far wall. I closed it behind me as I left.

  Chapter 41

  “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children,

  on the third and fourth generations.”

  He no longer touches me. I’m relieved in many ways, but because of this loss he feels toward me, his anger has increased. Are men so passionate that their expression of it must be so strong? Can’t they reason within themselves and find an avenue of less intensity? Can’t they reason with each other, or their wives, or with God, and find some less volatile release?

  I’m sorry for Isaac, but I cannot make his choices for him. I made my own. Even when passion ruled my heart, I chose. I chose to be gentle. I chose to allow myself time to hurt, to grieve, believing that was a way to heal.

  In his fury, Isaac still shouts to me from the pulpit. No longer am I afraid of his words. I’ve faced my guilt and given up my shame. Now I see the truth and understand forgiveness. I went forward one Sunday after one of his fiery sermons. No one had ever gone forward before. He was shocked, as was the congregation. But I went forward to settle my errors, seek forgiveness, find cleansing and a right heart.

  He summoned an elder to the front with the wave of a hand as I knelt before the altar. The elder shuffled forward and knelt beside me, and I felt his hand on my back. He said nothing. I was already praying, whispering my regret, spilling out my pain, exchanging my sorrow for what I hoped would be relief. I don’t know where Isaac was. Embarrassed, maybe, that a pastor’s wife would suddenly repent, making her life and his look like a mockery.

  I finished praying. I’d confessed my adulterous attitude, my wrong attitude toward my husband. The elder stood and slowly moved away. I could hear the congregation slip out, silence hanging heavy in the small sanctuary. I was alone, on my knees. Not really alone, though. Not any more.

  ~*~

  “That’s why she used the Bible,” I said, confounded. “She wasn’t making a mockery of Isaac’s giving it to her when he demanded she repent. She wasn’t mocking him at all.” I marveled at the brilliance, the miracle of a woman healed. Kyle looked equally bemused as he sat at the opposite end of my sofa, the two of us going over the decoding he’d done while I was away. “It makes the question all the more intriguing now,” I finally said, breaking into our silence. “Why would a woman leave who’d found relief with God? Certainly not for something scandalous.”

  Kyle didn’t readily agree. He wasn’t judgmental, either. He just sat there allowing Julianne to tell her own story the way she wanted to, ready to accept her for whatever path she took as she found her way.

  “You’re right,” I said, understanding his silence. I felt a tremendous weight lift off me. I wasn’t responsible for her. No one was, except she and the Redeemer she’d found. I was overwhelmed with a glimpse of the freedom she must have felt, the freedom to suffer, to make mistakes, to hurt, to defend herself, to say she needed help, and to finally step forward without the burden to have to please anymore. She was free to walk or fall, and whatever she did, her value would remain the same.

  “Tell me about John and Chicago,” Kyle said. I hadn’t done that yet. I’d returned home and visited my grandfather. Then I’d settled myself for the rest of the day, torn over my grandfather and Julianne, wondering if the agony I saw in him had looked the same in her. Then I’d gone to my parents the next day and told them it was Trevor who’d exposed Julianne, not me or the newspaper. It hurt me to say that, because it was a knife to their hearts. They’d loved him and taken him in as their own, and now he’d betrayed them in a most brutal way. I didn’t tell them I’d told him to stay away. It seemed wrong, once I saw the hurt on their faces. I couldn’t feed that hurt. They would end up like him, like Isaac, if I did, and I didn’t want that. This was their choice, not mine, and now I wished I had left it that way.

  “John married a woman named Ellen shortly after he’d written my great-grandmother that he was going to marry,” I said to Kyle. “I saw the church they were married in and learned the names of their two boys who were baptized there.”

  Kyle was attentive, a glimmer in his eye that said he could imagine vividly everything I was telling him. Seeing that, I slowed down and elaborated about the church, the feel of the antiquated sanctuary, describing just how I thought it must have looked, felt, and smelled the day John married.

  “And I saw the home they lived in,” I added next, my voice reflecting the awe I’d felt at such closeness to John. “It’s still standing, still in use, in fact, and charming. Large, especially for their day. An elderly woman lives there now. I thought she was deaf or maybe uncognitive when I first told her who I was, but when I said John’s name she came to life, brought me inside, and told me the rest of what I know.”

  A normal person would have scooted to the edge of his seat at this point, waved his arms frantically to draw out the rest of the story. But Kyle just sat there, no urgency at all. It was as if he already knew what I was going to say and he was letting me spill this whole tale for my sake, not his. I cocked my head and gave him a narrow look. He grinned.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “That woman’s not part of John’s family, but she showed me their names on her deed. Those old deeds are like history books. They tell a story rather than just list a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo.” Mumbo and jumbo weren’t words I normally used. I was a journalist, after all, and we didn’t allow ourselves the leisure of using words that were non-specific, lazy ways of avoiding detail. I reddened.

  “So you read the deed?” he asked.

  “It was amazing. I skimmed the history before John’s name appeared. It told when he bought the house and a bit about the government at the time, who was who. But that wasn’t the amazing part.” I wondered how I had managed to keep this to myself for so long. The shock over my family’s trauma, Julianne’s exposure, my grandfather’s agony, and Trevor’s cruel betrayal had effectively sidetracked me. “What surprised me was the next section of the deed. The people who took the house after John and Ellen. Apparently John wasn’t involved in the sale, onl
y Ellen, and because of that the document said she had no rights without him.”

  “It didn’t say he died,” Kyle stated, rubbing his chin, and I figured he was asking.

  I shook my head. “No, it didn’t. He just wasn’t involved, so maybe he did die. She left after the house switched owners, and I don’t know where she went. It happened quite a few years after they’d moved there, so the kids would have been older, maybe even leaving home by then.”

  Kyle leaned back on my sofa and thought. I let him, wondering what was going through his mind, what pieces of the puzzle he was correctly deducing in that uncanny way of his.

  “I found one of his sons,” I said eventually, “and that’s who I was planning to see when I left for Cincinnati instead. I don’t know that he would even have spoken to me, but I was going to try.”

  “When did the house sell?” Kyle asked.

  “March 1917,” I said.

  He stood and walked across the room to my desk, where Julianne’s letters were stacked. He picked up the next one in sequence and looked at the date.

  “July 1915,” he said, waving it my direction. He carried it to the sofa and sat down again. “It’s important. Even though it’s before their house sold.”

  “Read it,” I said.

  Chapter 42

  “The way is broad that leads to destruction…

  the way is narrow that leads to life.”

  July 14, 1915

  Dear Julianne,

  I found your name amongst some things John had tucked away in his desk. I’ve always known, without knowing, sensing you nearby even though you weren’t. I’m Ellen, by the way, I’m John’s wife.

  We’ve been married for seven years, and not one of them has been without you. He’s never said your name, never mentioned you or any other woman, but I’ve always known his heart was somewhere else. And now I know it’s with you. I knew it the second I saw your name, and it was confirmed when I read your letters.