Mine to Tell Read online

  “Mama, the newspaper wants an article from me, a series of them, about redoing Julianne’s old house.”

  “But you’ll have to tell them who lived in it and why. What will the neighbors think?” She’d pressed one hand against her forehead and the other against her breast. It was clear she was in no state of mind to be reasonable, so I turned from her and looked at my father.

  My father, Paul Crouse, was like his father, my Grandpa Samuel, pensive, careful, and extraordinarily quiet. His head had a permanent white cap, his tan stopping halfway up his forehead where his straw hat always sat when he was outdoors. His head looked like a round red-and-white fishing bobber in still water, barely moving until something forced it.

  “Daddy,” I began, but Paul Junior jumped in, not enough sense to keep from interrupting. I fixed him with a glare as he spilled his opinions all over the table.

  “I say we tear the house down before she embarrasses us. The last thing we need is another woman in the family doing something that makes us look like fools. Why don’t you go on back to Cincinnati and get married? Stay there and do what wives are supposed to do, not come here and pretend you know anything about hammers and nails.” He slammed a forkful of eggs into his mouth and chewed vigorously, his brown eyes on me, his ears attuned for hearty approval from our parents.

  I set my fork on the table, carefully aligning it with the edge of my plate while the fury inside of me burned. I looked up at him, his years of petty competition and disrespect for all women creating a ferocity I could no longer bear. “So it’s not embarrassing for our family when you talk the way you do about Julianne? When you laugh and make jokes about her to everyone? Why is it okay for you to keep the rumors and insults alive and not okay for me to improve her reputation and ours by restoring that house and taking some pride in who we are rather than cutting us off at the knees like you do?”

  Paul Junior gulped, nearly choking on his mouthful of mushy eggs. Silence took over the table as he tried to swallow, every eye on him and the mass he was struggling to get down. My mother’s gasp could be heard from behind her napkin, and my father’s gaze turned cloudy. We stared at Paul Junior, we stared at each other, and we stared at the doorway when the kitchen door opened and Grandpa Samuel stepped into the room.

  Paul Junior heaved upward as he yanked to his feet, one fist slamming his napkin next to his plate. The clatter of his chair flipping backwards echoed in the stillness. “Men know good women from bad. That’s why we have to laugh at some of you. You’re a bad one. You’re just like her. And you’d better not mess up marrying Trevor. He’s my friend!”

  His large finger had pointed at me in front of the piercing fire in his eyes. Then he’d pivoted away like an overly large top, nearly knocking Grandpa Samuel over as he blustered through the door. He’d done this many times before when he thought I was getting something I didn’t deserve. But this time he didn’t look so wrong, I did. I had sided with Julianne, the bane of our existence.

  As I stood in Julianne’s doorway I felt Paul Junior’s condemnation all over again. If I could have spoken to my parents alone, had the chance to explain things better without him there, maybe I wouldn’t feel so much like the bad girl he’d always portrayed me to be. The bad woman they all thought I was. I gazed into the dimness of her main room and drew in a deep breath of stagnant air while repressing the angst this morning’s battle had caused. Julianne had stood here over fifty years ago, stood here feeling maybe much like I did now. Alone, no family to back her. Saying goodbye to the few remnants Isaac had let her keep, looking down a long tunnel of…of what? I didn’t know. But I was certain it hurt.

  In the stillness, Mama’s worries returned to my thoughts. They were like needles in the sore Paul Junior’s dramatic exit had left behind. She’d sat there with eyes too wide and shiny as my father had nodded toward Grandpa Samuel, his way of telling me I had to let Grandpa Samuel know what I intended to do. I’d assumed they had already done that, but as I looked at my grandpa I could see fear heightening, his normally sallow eyes prickling automatically against this thing that had always made him cower. I told him then. I told him with all the optimism and promise I believed, but as I spoke, every word looked like a knife slicing into him, his face whitening as the gashes drained the blood of life right out of him. “Grandpa,” I said, my voice taking on the brittleness of dried leaves. I wanted to take his hand and hold it, but I knew he wouldn’t let me. “I’ll make her house nice. Let me do this for her, for you, for all of us. Let’s be proud instead of ashamed.”

  He looked like someone whose heart had stopped, like a mummy instead of a man. I felt my parents’ eyes on me like Trevor’s had been, casting doubts I didn’t want. Doubts that weren’t mine and would destroy me, just like they had destroyed Julianne.

  “It’s like a boil, Grandpa.” I spoke louder. “If it just sits there and festers, it’s going to kill us. Let’s break it open so we can heal.” I wanted to say it was killing me, killing this only chance for a great husband they thought I had. I also wanted to tell them it wasn’t just Julianne’s house. It really was her, just as they feared. It was who she was, what she’d left behind, that I wanted to uncover, the truth about her that might redeem her, redeem them, redeem women from men like my brother.

  Grandpa Samuel turned toward my father, the two of them saying something without speaking. They hurt, they thought this was going to hurt them more, and they didn’t know what to do now that their fears had become a reality in the form of their daughter and granddaughter.

  “No one who reads the newspaper articles will know where this house is or who we are.” I interrupted their silent conversation, leaning forward so they would listen to me, the edge of the table pressed into my ribs. “No one here will ever read them, not even you. My editor promised to keep the stories anonymous and only printed in Cincinnati. It will be okay, Grandpa. It will be good for us.” As I looked at them my heart pounded in my ears, creating a voice that sounded like Trevor’s, like my mother’s, telling me I was wrong.

  Grandpa Samuel had turned at the mention of an article, an invisible nod, a resigned burden of despair in his movement. No one said anything after he was gone. Mama looked at me with a face too white, while my father finished his breakfast. Then I had gathered my things and driven to Julianne’s house.

  I set the image of my grandfather’s back aside, right next to my guilt, as I stepped into the main room of Julianne’s home, the wood floor creaking beneath my feet. It was hard to see in the dull light with Simon’s boards still covering the windows. As my eyes adjusted, I looked around at what the room contained, what had been left behind when she’d gone, sitting just as she last saw it before she closed the door. A sofa sat to my right along one wall, a rocking chair at a right angle to its far end, a small table cornered between them with a basket of thread and sewing items on its top. Cobwebs strung them together, their tiny strands laden by beads of dust, blankets of the fine powder muting the colors in the room. A daybed ran along the opposite wall, with a thin quilt across its top and two embroidered pillows at one end. There was a stove near the back of this room, a wood-burning stove, a small desk with a straight-back chair at it, and a simple set of narrow steps to the upper floor, plain boards making up those and the fragile railing that lined them.

  I cleared more cobwebs from a doorway to my left and entered her kitchen, which had nothing more than a washstand, a bucket, and a small wooden table with one chair. I ran my finger along the table’s top, leaving a line in the dust. She must have cooked in the main house and either eaten there with Isaac and the boys or brought her food back here to eat alone. It looked sad. It was punishment. It was what Isaac had wanted.

  I went to the back of the main room and made my way up the stairs, pausing to test each step to be sure it held, knowing the splintery rail couldn’t save me if I fell. When I reached the upper floor, I saw two closed doors to two rooms that faced each other, between them the tiny landing I was on. I carefully op
ened the door to one room and then the other, bracing myself for the screech of old hinges protesting my intrusion. But each door swung surprisingly smoothly, so I looked into each room, then chose the one with furniture in it. I stepped in, studied her bed with its flat pillow and patchwork quilt, a chest of drawers with a small mirror on its top, and her trunk. I walked across the braided rug in the middle of the room and looked out the window. It looked away—away over fields and pastures, away from the house Isaac lived in, the one she’d lived in with him. She could have chosen the other room as her bedroom and seen the house, seen the boys playing outdoors, seen what had been hers. But she hadn’t. She’d chosen this room, and her view was far away, somewhere else, maybe the direction she’d gone when she disappeared. The other room, the one she didn’t choose, was empty, offering only one thing, a view of her old life.

  Chapter 7

  “A friend loves at all times,

  and a brother is born for adversity.”

  Kyle Herbert, the good local boy who was looking for a respectable wife, according to my mother, had always been quiet when we were growing up. So quiet I had completely forgotten he existed until Mama mentioned him. And I’d completely forgotten what he looked like until he stood in my doorway, uneasy and nearly invisible behind the girth of my brother. But it was him, and somehow I knew it without a reintroduction. His hair was straight, thick, and brown, hanging over his forehead in much the same style he’d worn it as a boy. He was tall and slender, almost too thin, his face actually nice, something I’d never noticed when we were growing up. I grimaced at the timing, conscious of how filthy I was, a bandana holding my hair back from my sweaty forehead, a few cuts and scrapes on my arms, and a scowl on my face because I knew Paul Junior was only here to taunt me.

  “Whatcha doooo-win?” Paul Junior sang from the doorway.

  I was glad Julianne’s main room was neat and tidy as Paul Junior and Kyle eyed it. The boards were off and the sun shone brightly through the wavy, aged glass of the windows I had carefully scrubbed inside and out. The old lace curtains looked as delicate as white strands of sugar, each hand cleaned and tied back with pieces of cloth I’d found in her sewing basket. “I was just praying God would send someone along to help,” I sassed at my brother, pointing to the bucket of soapy water at my feet.

  “Here, I gotta match in my pocket. That oughta help.” Paul Junior laughed and he turned to see if Kyle was laughing too, but he wasn’t. He was looking around my brother’s beefy form into the main room where I stood, something warm and harmless about the way he observed Julianne’s home.

  “Come in,” I said, my eyes only on Kyle, hoping my brother would take the hint and leave. Even though they were together I could see that this unobtrusive boy I’d known so long ago hadn’t grown up into an overbearing lummox like my brother. Kyle was two years older than me and a year younger than my brother, that middle place that helped keep him invisible to us until today. “It’s nice to see you after all these years. Bet you’ve never been in here, have you?” I swept my arm around the room, gesturing wide because under his scrutiny, for some reason, I wasn’t ashamed.

  He didn’t reply. He looked at me like the answer was there but he couldn’t say it.

  “Come on in,” my brother waved him inside as he strode heavily into the room.

  I always walked softly in Julianne’s house. I gave it reverence and respect, as if it were my great-grandmother herself I was intruding upon. Kyle followed Paul Junior, but he stepped lightly, like me, ducking a bit as if there were angels fluttering above his head.

  “This is it,” Paul Junior announced. “Not much to see, is there?” He looked back at Kyle, who didn’t seem to have heard him.

  Kyle’s eyes were blue. I’d never noticed them when we were kids. A remarkable blue for such an unremarkable boy. Their gaze floated around the room, covering every inch of it from ceiling to floor, a look of wonder on his face.

  “So you’ve stayed around here all these years,” I said stupidly from behind him. He stopped gazing around the room and his eyes drifted back slowly until they rested on me. I felt my cheeks burn. “You want to see the rest of the house?” I asked awkwardly, hoping he’d say yes even though it wasn’t completely cleaned. He nodded and followed me from the room, my brother thundering behind us with his heavy shoes.

  “She was a floozy,” my brother said as we moved to the kitchen.

  “She was not!” I wheeled around, his callous remark and my irritation bursting the calm Kyle had brought with him. “We don’t know that.”

  “Of course she was,” my brother taunted, as if we were still kids. “Everybody knows it.”

  “Paul Junior, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was livid, my fists clenched in defense, and if Julianne had owned something heavy I would have picked it up and flung it at him.

  “Our great-grandfather wouldn’t have made her move out if she wasn’t,” he chided me.

  Kyle’s brown hair was a nice medium shade, and his skin fair. I looked at him. His cheeks burned red, showing clearly against the light palette of his complexion that he was embarrassed by the things Paul Junior was saying.

  “If you think Mom and Dad are upset about what you’re doing, you should hear what everyone else is saying.” Paul Junior’s words cut like razors. Everyone else’s opinions might sting me, but they would crush my parents and Grandpa Samuel. I thought again of my grandpa’s faraway gaze, lost love meshed with fear, the day his hand had rested on my shoulder as I pleaded for this house as a child. I reminded myself that what I was doing might alleviate his angst. It was Paul Junior’s buffoonery that would make it worse.

  “Just forget it,” I muttered, withdrawing my fuel from Paul Junior’s fire. “I’ll handle things.” I still wanted to thrash him with something, but I turned to Kyle instead. He was looking around the room, the pink fading from his cheeks as Paul Junior and I quieted down.

  There was nothing to see in the kitchen, or so it seemed to me, but Kyle looked everywhere, studied every inch, looking at or for something I couldn’t see. The table glistened now, and I was proud, the walls and floors free of dust and unwanted webs. It smelled good in here. It smelled like pine cleaner in the barrenness, a barrenness Kyle didn’t seem to notice.

  “Want to see the upstairs?” I asked when he finished.

  “Naw,” Paul Junior bellowed. “You guys go ahead. I’ll see you outside when you’re finished, Kyle.” And he strode out of the house, his loud footsteps finally going away.

  “Come on,” I said to Kyle, relieved my brother was gone.

  The two of us climbed the narrow steps, me in front, praying they wouldn’t collapse under our weight. At the top of the stairs he stepped around me and went immediately toward Julianne’s room. It was as if he knew instinctively where her life had been, leaving the empty room behind.

  I stood aside as Kyle entered and studied her scanty decor. I left him alone in his survey, let him take it all in as I studied him, took in his gracefulness, his genuineness, the serenity compacted into his slender form. He walked my way, our eyes meeting in mute communication.

  “I haven’t stayed the night here yet,” I answered the question in his eyes. I nodded at the bare bed. Its linens and the rug that had been in the middle of the floor were at my parents’, where I’d been washing them. “I thought when I came here I’d move right in, but it has taken me longer than I imagined to make it ready.” I looked around the room as if my gaze was enough to prove there had been much to do.

  I wanted everything to be perfect when I spent my first night here. I wanted it the way she’d left it, so I could feel what she did in this stark house that was softened by her homey touches. I looked back at Kyle, wishing I could explain that.

  “You’re like your great-grandmother,” he said, surprising me. “Restoring something takes greater strength and care than to change it.”

  My mouth dropped open as he stepped past me toward the empty room. My feet were rooted t
o the floor as I heard him open its door and step inside. I hadn’t cleaned that room yet. There was no furniture in there to clean, but there was dust, and I sputtered as I turned, oddly embarrassed in front of a young man I’d forgotten existed.

  “I haven’t done anything in here yet,” I said as I tumbled through the doorway. Kyle ignored me, or he didn’t hear. He walked across the room and looked through the window that faced Isaac’s old house. “I’ll have it clean soon. Sorry about the dust,” I continued. Kyle stepped away from the window and looked straight up. I stopped defending myself and followed his gaze. Above his head I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. A door in the ceiling, a trap door, more than large enough for a person to fit through, hinged and latched at opposite sides.

  “My goodness,” I exclaimed, coming to stand next to him beneath the door. “How did you think to look up there?”

  He glanced down at me, his blue eyes like melted sky. “I just did,” he said.

  His voice was like everything else about him, quiet, deep, reverential. We stared at each other for a long moment, one of those moments that should have been awkward, but strangely it wasn’t.

  “I should go. Thank you. You’ll be comfortable here.” He turned and I followed. He took us down the steps and to the front door.

  “You’ll come back?” I asked suddenly, surprising myself.

  He turned and looked at me, his eyes in deep thought. “I just did.” He smiled. It was brief but it nearly knocked me over. Had he smiled that way when we were children?

  “Then please do it again,” I murmured as he left. I closed the door behind him and turned to gaze around Julianne’s pristine living room.

  “Is it good enough for you?” I asked aloud. She didn’t answer, but Kyle’s words did. I was like her and I would be comfortable here. I’d retrieve her bedding from my parents’ laundry room. Tonight would be my first night in Julianne’s house.