Mine to Tell Read online

  “Can’t it wait?” I pleaded. He glanced down at me, his eyes changing to another sort of delight, the kind only I could create in him.

  “Wait, yes. But be avoided, no.” He grinned.

  “This time next year we’ll be doing our shopping as a real couple.” I batted my eyes at him.

  “We’re a couple this year. What do you mean?” He ushered me along the sidewalk into the downtown area, past bundled individuals trying to stay warm.

  “You know what I mean.” I planted an ineffective elbow into the thick bulk of his coat. “When we’re a real couple.”

  “Oh, that kind of real couple.” He looked down at me again. “Like a married couple.”

  I nodded. We were both graduating at term and were working at jobs that had agreed to hire us full time as soon as we were done. Everything was falling into place. We’d be a married couple within a year.

  “You can do this Christmas shopping stuff alone then,” he said.

  I stopped. I thought he was kidding until I looked into his face. His oblivious expression said he was stating a fact, one that brought a series of unhappy images to my mind. Me, overloaded with gifts, a wailing child or two hanging from the tails of my stained coat, Trevor at home contentedly watching a ballgame on television. Paul Junior next to him eating up everything we owned. “You don’t mean that, do you?”

  He looked down at me, the placid look vanishing from his face when he saw mine. “Um, of course not,” he said quickly, but he didn’t sound sure. “Not if it’s that important to you,” he added. His arm tightened around my shoulders, buoyed my body upwards, picked up my pace, and tried to lift my spirits.

  As my feet came off the pavement I wondered if marriage was going to be more complicated than I’d thought. Apparently it wasn’t going to be for him, since he thought I would take care of everything.

  “Look, there’s a newsstand,” I said, pointing ahead, brushing away my concern. The vendor beneath the shack of magazines and newspapers was smacking his hands together like a seal and blowing mushrooms of cold air from his mouth. “Come on, we need to get you a newspaper so that poor guy can go home.”

  I slid out of Trevor’s grip and ran ahead to get him a paper.

  “That one,” he said, appearing at my side.

  I looked where he was pointing and saw the one he meant. It wasn’t the newspaper I worked for, but its thick folds of dull white paper promised to contain all the sports stats he would need to keep him happy.

  That’s what was important after all, keeping him happy. It’s what my mother did for my father and what she told me I was supposed to do for Trevor.

  Well, I was doing it.

  I took his free hand and told myself I was doing it because I wanted to, not because of the tiny thought that said I was doing it because I had to.

  Chapter 4

  “A double-minded man is unstable

  in all his ways.”

  Trevor sat across the small Formica-topped table from me. We were sharing a light dinner at his apartment, the silence between us as thick and tough as the pork chop I was trying to chew. I looked away from him, my eyes traveling around his apartment as I worked over the meat. He had graduated college, had a fantastic job, but he still decorated his place as if he lived in a fraternity. My gaze roved over the green sofa on four skinny legs, the cardboard paintings he considered art, the pole lamp in the corner that leaned against the wall because its spring had long since broken, and the myriad of posters of sports teams and heroes taped here and there. It was immature. I didn’t know how he could stand it.

  His eyes were on me. I could feel them. I looked back at him, forcing the chunk of macerated pork down my throat.

  “What do you think about buying a house instead of renting?” he asked me. Our wedding date was looming ahead, and he’d been a responsible fiancé and searched Cincinnati for a suitable apartment for the two of us. We’d looked at dozens and I hadn’t been pleased with any of them, including the one we’d just seen. He waited for me to answer. My thoughts teemed with wrong size, wrong carpeting, wrong neighborhood, wrong price. Something was wrong with every apartment we’d looked at. I wasn’t happy with them. I wasn’t happy with the way things were going or the way I acted. I wasn’t happy, and it made me afraid.

  I looked at him, not sure what to say. He put down his fork and I followed suit. It felt like my insides had turned to ice. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t say anything. I was worried I couldn’t thaw.

  “I guess not,” he said studying me with a frown. “I just thought it would be a wise investment. We’re young, and it would give us a jump on things in the future to own something so soon.”

  “Like what kind of house?” I finally managed to say.

  He looked at me like I was stupid. “What kind of house? A house-house, a nice house, something with a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom. Normal stuff. What the heck do you mean, ‘what kind of house’?”

  I looked at him. His eyes were wide, frustration contorting his good looks. Trevor wasn’t one to lose his temper easily, but I knew where his aggravation was coming from. He’d suffered through our apartment hunting and now his frayed nerves saw that I was promising to be an even worse house hunter. He looked exasperated, but quite honestly, I felt even worse.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just surprised me that you mentioned buying, that’s all.” It was a lie and I knew it. I just didn’t know what the truth was. I didn’t know where my enthusiasm for marriage had gone, why fear and hesitancy had taken its place. I’d criticized every apartment we’d looked at and then hated myself afterwards as I watched Trevor walk sullenly away. The same way he had walked today. I tried to imagine us looking at much larger places, houses with commitments, and I saw unlimited potential for finding something wrong, even if what was wrong had nothing to do with the house.

  Trevor let out a long sigh, and his shoulders sagged. “Look, I think we’re both tense because we’re getting married in six months. Maybe you’ve got cold feet or something. I’ve heard that’s normal before you take the plunge.”

  “Take the plunge?” My hackles rose. He was comparing marrying me to taking a plunge, and that hurt. “If you feel like you’re about to be plunged, maybe you want to reconsider this whole thing!”

  “Look, I don’t see what’s wrong with living here after we’re married,” he said for the thousandth time. “It’s not the Taj Mahal, but it’s roomy and comfortable and you’re used to it. Maybe this won’t be as difficult for you to adjust to.”

  I looked around his apartment for the thousandth time, taking in the fixtures that begged for beer and pretzels instead of hot tea and maybe a scone. I sighed. It was Trevor, but somehow it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

  Trevor reached down to his lap and came up with his napkin. He aligned the corners, folding it neatly, as if he were doing a geometry project, and then he laid it near his plate, keeping his eye on it to make sure it stayed symmetrical. I watched it too, afraid to look in his eyes.

  “Anna,” he said slowly, “I think I know what’s wrong. I mean really wrong, not just bad apartments or cold feet.”

  I looked up, ready to hear whatever he had to say, desperate for someone to look down my throat at my heart and tell me what was wrong. My life as a bride was coming at me like a train, and instead of fueling the engine I was throwing onto the tracks everything I could get my hands on.

  He pulled his chair around the small table, next to mine, and took both of my hands in his. “I think it’s that you’re a farm girl,” he said, looking solemnly into my eyes.

  I started, expecting more of a revelation than that. Surely he was kidding. Farm girls fell in love and got married and lived in apartments.

  “I know you love your job here in Cincinnati with the newspaper, but you’re not settled, not feeling at home.”

  I blinked a few times, trying to get what he was saying to sink in. I wallowed the idea around in my head for a minute, tried it on for
size, and gave his psychology a chance to fit me, even though I knew it didn’t.

  “That’s why you don’t like any of the apartments we’ve looked at. They’re all too modern.”

  “But the house my father built for us is modern,” I protested, frustrated he was stuck on a surface issue, incapable of seeing any of my hidden, real issues.

  “Think about it, Annabelle. Your new house may have been a different style on the outside, but the inside is like a museum. Old furniture, flowered wallpaper, lace curtains. It isn’t modern. You guys just moved your old house into that new one.”

  I nibbled on my lower lip as I mulled over our house, trying to see it the way he did, since he was convinced I had an architectural or agricultural problem rather than an emotional one. But when I thought back to my home, my farm, my upbringing, it wasn’t my house I saw, and neither was it Isaac’s, where I’d first lived. It was Julianne’s. Try as I might to mentally enter my parents’ front door and look at their furniture, my thoughts raced through snaky grass up to the rickety porch, and stood in front of Julianne’s old wooden door, the door that led to the first Crouse woman who had ruined a marriage.

  “I have to go back,” I said in a gush, surprising both of us.

  “What?” He let go and pulled away.

  “I need to get into Julianne’s house. Remember? I told you that. It’s like a family curse or something, and if I don’t find out why she left, I’ll…”

  “Whoa, what? She left? Who? When? And what does that have to do with us?”

  “Maybe nothing. But maybe everything. You could come with me and help me go through that house.” I leaned toward him and reached for his hands.

  “I’m not going back there to go through that house. That’s silly. You said so yourself. But this does prove one thing, though, and that’s that I’m right. You won’t be happy in a modern house.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. He was trying to look champion of this conversation, but he didn’t. His eyes were too wide, his eyebrows too high.

  “I’ll go back alone then. It’s okay if you don’t, but I have to do this. I should have done it years ago. She wanted me to, I could feel it. It’s not too late. But I can’t get married until I do.”

  “Our wedding’s not for six months. That’s plenty of time, and it won’t take you six months to look at that itty-bitty house. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll go with you. We’ll spend a weekend there and you can get this out of your system, whatever it is.” He straightened in his chair. His voice was a bit high and his eyes looked like he’d just been slapped.

  “No, you don’t have to. I asked you before and you didn’t want to, and that’s okay.” I grabbed his hands this time and tried to pull him close, but he wouldn’t budge. “Trev,” I said, squeezing his hands. “This doesn’t mean we’re splitting up.” It felt like a lie, though I didn’t mean it that way, and it looked like one on his face. I didn’t want to hurt him, even though something in me had already quit my newspaper job, packed my few belongings, and was driving as fast as possible to our old farm…to Julianne’s old house…to see what was there so I’d know what was wrong with me.

  “It sounds like that’s what you mean.” His voice cracked with the pain exploding so violently inside him. His face looked like it would shatter from the impact.

  “No, no, no.” I wanted to sound sincere. “But…” I looked at him. “I have to go. It’s important.” I stopped. Those words rang like a far-off echo in my mind.

  I let go of his hands and listened. I’d heard them before, somewhere. It was Mama’s voice that had said them, but it was Julianne who had written them…written them to Isaac when she left. My eyes grew wide as that message spanned three generations. “But she came back…” I muttered.

  “Huh?” Trevor asked, his eyes glassy.

  “I mean I’m not breaking us up,” I said, tugging at my lower lip with my teeth.

  Tears filled his eyes and he looked away. “Promise?” he asked the wall to his right. “Promise we’re not breaking up?”

  “Yes,” I said, to make it true. “I promise.”

  Chapter 5

  “The exile will be long, build houses and

  live in them and plant gardens and eat their produce.”

  I set the last box in the back of my car and straightened. Trevor was standing back from me and the car as he watched me close the trunk on my belongings.

  “When I was small I wouldn’t let my great-uncle Simon tear down Julianne’s house. It was like an ant trying to stop a road crew, this little screaming kid hanging onto his leg. He tried to kick me aside. What I wanted didn’t mean anything.” I looked at Trevor’s face. I was trying to explain things to him that I didn’t fully understand myself. Giving him a crash course in why I had to go and why Julianne’s house meant something to me.

  Trevor looked aside as if he were talking to the car next to mine. “So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he go ahead and tear it down?” There was a bitter tone in his question and defensiveness in his stance. Defensiveness that wondered why this ant had to get its way when it was so tiny, so insignificant.

  “My grandpa stopped him,” I said, stepping to the side so I could look into his eyes. “He stood up for me. And he stood up for Julianne, too. For one moment it was like he heard her, and he stood up to his brother and let his heart make a choice.” I remembered my grandpa’s trembling hand as I reached out and touched Trevor’s sleeve with my fingertips. “You’ll come visit?”

  He shuffled. He looked down, and his toe dug in and twisted tiny particles of gravel into the pavement. He was uncomfortable, and I was sorry I made him feel that way. “Yeah, of course I will.” He looked at me, his face distorted. “You think you’ll be better soon, so we can go ahead with our plans?”

  I dropped my arm and drew in a deep breath. “Probably,” I said. “It’ll be okay.” My voice dwindled away. I was assuring him when I wasn’t sure at all. I was trying to please him, make everything right for him when maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know—I wouldn’t know until I was there, in her house, and touching her things.

  Trevor didn’t relax, but he was toying with the thread of hope I’d tossed out.

  “I’m really not breaking us up,” I swore. “You were wise enough to see something was wrong, and I want to fix it. This is the only way I can.” Through the pain on his face I could see he wanted to believe me. It was then that I knew it was time to go. I had to get away before I lied my way right into staying instead of moving back home into Julianne’s house and fixing it up like I’d told everyone I was going to do.

  Edith, my boss at the newspaper, had been surprised at my announcement, but she liked me and agreed to buy articles from me about the renovation project if I could turn it into a human interest story. Their photographer, Jill, who’d become my best friend, told me she’d be glad to add pictures to the story anytime I wanted. I’d used her enthusiasm and my editor’s promise to print the story as leverage when I broke the news to my parents. They reacted like Trevor when I’d told them I was coming home to open Julianne’s house. I was a villain, a bad person, a woman destined for ruin, who cared little about her family. My newspaper’s support gave no credibility to what I said I planned to do. My mother argued and said I couldn’t do it. Everyone may have been right about my renovation skills, but it was restoring Julianne that frightened them, just as it did me.

  I reached up and hugged Trevor, wrapped my arms around him, and gave him a few moments to hug back. He did. And he held on when I was ready to let go. “See you soon, Trev,” I whispered in his ear. He let go then, and I climbed into my car and drove away.

  ****

  It was late in the day when I reached home. I was going to spend the night in my old childhood bedroom at my parents’ house and try to avoid all the questions about whether the wedding was postponed, the caterer cancelled, the flowers put on hold, and all of the other important details a possibly delayed wedding entailed. Trevor was their leverage like the newspap
er article was mine, pawns in a war over Julianne’s house and the associated shame that went with it. This was going to be traumatic for my family. Not just because I was opening the Pandora’s Box of family sins they’d despised all these years, but also because of Trevor. They would fret over him, side with him, and probably take it better if I’d stayed in Cincinnati and he had moved here.

  In the morning I would move into Julianne’s house. Tomorrow was the day I would tear down the last barrier between me and my great-grandmother, the one I believed she had wanted torn down all these years. And hopefully with it would come down the barrier between me and Trevor, the Crouse women and the world, the Crouse women and themselves.

  Chapter 6

  “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!

  I would fly away and be at rest.”

  The door to Julianne’s house swung open, arthritic in its movement, sluggish after all these years of no one passing through. I stood at the threshold with a hammer in my hand, boxes and suitcases stacked behind me, and at my feet the old planks that had separated this house from the world. I took a deep breath and listened, waited for her voice in the musty quiet, the audible sound of an older woman welcoming me finally into her world as she heralded me in.

  In the tomblike stillness I heard a voice. Not hers, but Grandpa Samuel’s. The one he had kept to himself when he’d found out what I was planning to do this morning. His silence was loud in my heart, the agony on his face as he’d turned away more distinct than the arguments my mother had made.

  “You can’t do this. It’s wrong,” Mama had exclaimed before Grandpa Samuel appeared, her voice high and unattractive. I was ambushed at the breakfast table by my mother and father, and Paul Junior who was still living at home, pretending he’d actually take over the family farm someday. I focused on my parents and prayed Paul Junior would miraculously stay quiet and not degrade this into one of his sibling rivalry clashes.