Mine to Tell Read online

  Disappointed, I set them aside and moved on to the funeral notice, picking it up gently, dusting it off to see the name. Oliver William Carmichael. I gasped. He died in January of 1917.

  The stage and the world will never be the same. He gave life and meaning to one-dimensional characters trapped on a page, and heart and love to those of us trapped in our own lives.

  The dried flowers strewn across the shelf below caught my eye. Were they from him? From his funeral? Was Julianne nothing more than a woman who despised her marriage and found excitement from an actor? Or with an actor for two short weeks? Or maybe a woman who’d found escape in the situations portrayed on the stage?

  I let his funeral notice drop to my lap. I didn’t think so. I couldn’t believe she was a woman who’d gone away for a brief fling. It was too prosaic, and I was convinced she was a more complex persona than that. I wouldn’t let Julianne be ordinary enough to throw herself or her life away on a meaningless affair. Whatever her motivation for leaving, I wanted it to have purpose.

  As I reached for the small tray of items, I heard a noise downstairs. I stopped and prayed it wasn’t Paul Junior. I turned off my light and slid silently to the trap door that hung open. I listened. Soft footsteps made their way up the stairs. Definitely not Paul Junior, but their quietness made me even more afraid. Wishing I’d closed the trap door behind me, I waited and listened, holding my breath as I mentally mapped each advancing step.

  The feet stopped at the top of the stairs. I willed them to go to Julianne’s room so I could either slip down out of the attic or pull the trap door shut and hide. But they didn’t. They turned my direction and came into the empty room.

  I pulled my head back from the opening and waited. A shadow crept across the floor and then a man came into view.

  “Are you up there, Annabelle?” The voice was soft, and when he looked up his blue eyes penetrated the darkness where I crouched hidden.

  “Kyle?” I stretched my head over the edge.

  He looked embarrassed as he nodded.

  “How did you… Why are you…” I didn’t know what to ask.

  “You’ve done more to the house.”

  I slid closer to the edge and looked down at him. “Yes, I have. But why are you…”

  “Did you find something up there?” he asked.

  I didn’t know whether to answer him or not. I had no idea why he cared, and besides, what if he told Paul Junior what I was doing, so they could both make fun of me? I gazed down at him into eyes that told me he wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t the type of person Paul Junior chose for a friend. Trevor was. A deep loneliness wrenched my heart as in my mind I could hear Trevor and my brother laughing. I looked down at Kyle. He wasn’t like them. He truly wanted to know what I’d found. Tears came to my eyes. Why hadn’t it been Trevor who’d asked this instead of a neighbor man?

  “I found some papers,” I answered, trying to keep the hurt from my voice. “But I don’t know why it would matter to you.”

  “Can I come up?”

  I hesitated. I pulled back from the opening and used my sleeves to wipe the tears from my eyes.

  “I don’t have to,” he said from below. “I just thought you might like some company.”

  No one else wanted to share Julianne with me. Everyone else was either afraid, angry, or indifferent. I leaned forward just enough to see his blue eyes as he gazed upward.

  “You really want to see what’s up here?” I asked.

  He nodded. I nodded in return and unrolled the ladder, my thoughts a jumble. “If you’re careful it will hold you,” I said as steadily as I could.

  “I don’t need it.” And as if he weighed nothing Kyle stretched up and latched onto the edge of the trap door’s frame and pulled himself through the hole. Landing lightly beside me, he crouched and rested on his knees. I turned on the light and we looked at each other and then around the room. A long moment of awkward silence took over as Kyle knelt beside me. Julianne’s private alcove was like my heart, secrets hidden away for my eyes only, until this moment when I’d unexpectedly let someone else in. I suddenly felt exposed. It was Trevor who was supposed to be here beside me as I revealed these secrets, not a man I’d only casually known.

  As if he sensed my rising panic Kyle settled onto the floorboards, untucking his legs from a crouched position into something more relaxed. Just looking at him I felt my tension ebb.

  I moved the light aside so he had more room to maneuver. “Here’s what I’ve found.” I avoided his glance and made a vague gesture toward the shelves. I readjusted the light so it shone better on the items and then scooted aside.

  He didn’t move. He didn’t touch the light and he didn’t grab at Julianne’s treasures like anyone else would have. He ran his eyes over each shelf and each item, one at a time, just like I had.

  His care caused me to relax even more. “These are playbills,” I said, pointing toward them. He nodded but said nothing, so I went on, telling him the names of the theatres and a few of the plays. I omitted the names of the actor and actress I’d found. I didn’t know why Kyle was here or why I had even let him, but I didn’t want him to notice Oliver’s name on every playbill and think of Julianne the way everyone else did. I couldn’t stand for him to paint her red. If he did, he’d be painting me red too, painting me into relationships that turned me into something I wasn’t, turned me into the next generation of Crouse women who were either too loose or too rigid for real love. I didn’t want to be either.

  He looked at me, his face void of judgment, only curiosity in his gaze. I moved on and showed him the fan. I held it up but he didn’t take it, so I tipped it in his direction, offering him the chance to open it and see what I’d seen inside. He took it and settled back farther on the floorboards, inspecting the fan carefully with his eyes. Then his hands drew it open, his long graceful fingers gentle, like sunlight coaxing open a flower. I watched his face instead of the fan as it unfolded, his features illuminated from within, a glow of enchantment lighting his eyes.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” I asked. It wasn’t just lovely, it was much more than that. It was alive. It spoke. I just didn’t know what it was saying. But having someone here beside me…even Kyle…made the possibility of knowing much more promising.

  He closed the fan, the glow staying with him as he handed it back to me. “It’s her,” he said.

  I started. “What do you mean, ‘It’s her’?”

  He gazed at me and then looked around the attic enclave. “Her.”

  I could hear the two of us breathing, in and out in the small space, the fan between us, Julianne around us, his thoughts amazingly like mine, but more so.

  “Really her?” I asked, but I didn’t need him to answer. The woman in the small painting on the fan had hair too dark for Julianne, almost brown instead of blonde. But Kyle was right, it was still her. I could feel it. I’d felt it before but hadn’t believed it. Now I knew, and it took him to show me. Anger threaded its way into my movements as I put the fan back on the shelf. It suddenly didn’t matter so much that I had someone here who shared my intrigue with Julianne, or that they didn’t come to chide or condemn her. What mattered was that he was nearer her than I was. Kyle was more intuitive, more aware, more comfortable in this house than I had ever been.

  I paused before I pointed to the postcards, wanting to decide who it was I was most upset with. My family for accepting this shame? Trevor for not being here, for never being where I needed him to be? Kyle for understanding my great-grandmother better than I did and for being everything I wanted Trevor or my family to be…or myself to be? I looked at him. That was it. This was my family’s problem, not his, and I should have been in this house years ago unraveling this shroud of shame I’d been expected to wear. I was upset at me, not Kyle.

  “Here are some postcards.” I gestured loosely toward the stack, unable to look at him. He eyed the top card from where he sat. I reached over and took the pile and handed it to him. “I don’t kn
ow who wrote them.”

  He lifted each card gently, looked at the back, and returned it to the stack. He handed them to me and I put them back on the shelf. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to or not, my shame at not discovering these things years ago still heavy in my mind. We were both quiet, me in my self-chastisement and him in his thoughts. I looked up and saw it then in his eyes, the thing he wasn’t going to say.

  “I don’t know who wrote them,” I said again, irritating myself even more.

  “Not yet,” he answered but his eyes were on the shelves, not me. “Or maybe you don’t need to.”

  The way he said it relieved me rather than infuriated me. His eyes made me think he knew more than he shared, but he wasn’t here to keep Julianne away from me, he was taking me down this path with him. It wasn’t his fault I was years behind, it was mine. I picked up the funeral notice and held it for him to see.

  “Oliver,” he said as if he knew the actor.

  “You know him? I mean you’ve heard of him?”

  “He was an actor.”

  I blushed. Surely Kyle had noticed Oliver’s name on the top playbill and realized I had kept the connection to myself. Our eyes met. There was no question in his, no accusation, just an understanding that alleviated my guilt.

  I set the funeral notice back on the shelf and waved my hand across everything else. I wasn’t watching Julianne’s things, I was watching Kyle. I wanted his opinion now, his sense of things that I somehow lacked. His eyes played across the flowers, the tray, and its contents. He studied each one as if nothing was insignificant, each piece telling a part of her story.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  His eyes were soft when they turned to me, contemplative, unraveled secrets swirling in their blue.

  “There’s more?” he asked. It sounded as if he was asking, “Where is the rest?” instead.

  My jaw tightened as I ground my teeth together. I looked away from the boards which lay above the tin containing Julianne’s Bible.

  “What makes you think there’s more?” I asked. Her Bible was sacred. It was personal, and I didn’t know if I could share it with him. If he’d been Trevor I would have dragged it out and forced it on him, hoping he’d see me as well as my great-grandmother. It wasn’t like that with Kyle. He was here because he wanted to be. I didn’t have to force or coerce him, he already just was, and he accepted me as the same.

  “I just feel like there is,” he said. Our eyes met and my heart pounded in the silence. I could lie and keep Julianne and her hidden secret to myself. He’d let me. He’d never push, he only invited. I looked down at the boards where her Bible was hidden and knew I was going to trust him. Trust myself and Julianne to this unusual man.

  I slid over to the boards and moved them aside, exposing the discolored tin box beneath. I lifted it from its tomb and laid it on the floor between us. Kyle watched, his expression telling me nothing. I lifted the top of the tin and set it aside. We both stared down at the Bible. He looked up at me and I wrapped my fingers around its edges and pulled it out.

  “I’ve looked at it only a little,” I said as I held it on my lap. “I’ve been waiting to get back up here and go through it carefully.” My voice cracked as I thought of Trevor and the disappointment he’d left behind after his visit. Kyle said nothing. I could feel him beside me, the invisibility he’d had as a child palpable in his nearness. How was it I’d always looked through him before, when there was clearly substance in his quiet manner? I lifted the front cover and turned a few pages. The dedication page had her name on it, a date below it that was near the time she’d probably moved into this house, and an inscription that said, “Read this diligently in order to find your repentance and hopefully salvage your salvation.” Isaac Jacob Crouse was scratched below the harsh sentiment, the giver of the book, his signature sharp and spiked, just like the notes tucked in the family Bible at my parents’ house.

  We looked at each other, the hostility behind the gift and the inscription stinging in the alcove. I scooted over next to Kyle and opened its pages, letting him see along with me. He leaned close and bore down on each page as I flitted through the Old and New Testaments.

  There were no treasures hidden within its pages as I’d hoped, no locks of hair, old letters, or postcards. I went from front to back and then from back to front. Sighing, I closed it and ran my hand over its dry leather cover.

  “She’s there,” Kyle said. “That’s where she is.”

  I looked up to see where he was looking, my heart racing, terrified of some manifestation like the path around her house I’d seen ages ago. He was gazing down into my lap, his eyes on the Bible.

  “What?” I asked. “Here?” I lifted the Bible. He nodded.

  “Her story’s in there,” he said. “That’s where she told it.”

  I opened it again, wondering what I’d missed, too excited to ask him how he knew I was looking for something from her whether in a story or not. I pinched a thickness of pages between my fingers and fanned through them quickly, looking for a letter or something to fall out.

  “Slower,” he said and brought the light closer as he leaned down where he could see.

  I stopped fanning the pages and thumbed through them instead. I saw nothing, but Kyle was intent on each one.

  “Do you see it?” he asked.

  I stopped and let the Bible fall open, staring at the page.

  “No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”

  He pointed. “Look closely. Right there.”

  Nothing was there, nothing between the pages, nothing to see but verses and numbers. His hand moved nearer to the page and his finger lighted on a verse, a word, a letter. I looked and then I saw it, a tiny penciled line beneath the letter. Not just one, but lots of them, scattered throughout the page. Individual letters with tiny, faint underlines. I looked up at Kyle.

  “You think...”

  He nodded. He took the Bible from my hands and I let him. He worked forward carefully page by page from the one we’d been on. He stopped and then moved backward. I sat anxiously at his side as he studied the pages, wondering if I would have ever noticed them on my own…or with Trevor…especially if a ballgame was about to begin or Paul Junior was below, bellowing for Trevor to come outside. I looked up from the pages to Kyle.

  His eyes, that wonderful blue, were whirling over the verses and chapters, a passion in them I’d never have guessed him capable of. He looked up suddenly and caught me staring at him. We both blushed and looked away, back down at Julianne.

  “Each book in the Bible is a separate story, maybe a chapter of her life.” He looked at me again. I nodded. “You’d have to write each letter down that she’s underlined and break them into words and sentences, then collect them into her thoughts.”

  I nodded again, my heart rate picking up.

  “I’ll help,” he offered carefully.

  “Why did you think she’d leave a story? And why are you interested in helping me?” I asked, my earlier irritation returning. It wasn’t supposed to be Kyle sitting here beside me, it was supposed to be Trevor. And it wasn’t supposed to be the neighbor boy with the inner intuitiveness, it was supposed to be me.

  He looked down at his fingers and turned them over to study their underside. “It’s more than interest,” he said. “I understand what you’re doing.”

  “You do?” I asked, but I knew that he did. I could tell. I just didn’t understand it. Before he could answer me, I spoke up again. “Why? Or how?”

  “This is important. It had to be here,” he said. “Why else would this house still be standing?”

  “It’s been waiting,” I muttered. “She’s been waiting.”

  “So was I.” He looked at me with a meaningful gaze that didn’t fully answer my question, but it was enough that I knew the discussion was closed. I could unravel my great-grandmother’s history and my future, but maybe never unravel this complicated man at my si
de.

  I put the Bible back in its box and replaced the lid. Taking it with me, I climbed down through the trap door and into the empty bedroom. Kyle followed. We stood in the quiet space, staring at each other.

  “You read the letters out loud and I’ll write them down,” I said.

  I’d only seen Kyle smile once, and this time he didn’t. It was more like relief that washed over his face, and it was as close to a smile as I was probably going to get.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yes, come early. We’ll work all day.”

  That near smile flickered again behind his blue eyes. Then he turned and walked downstairs. I heard his footsteps go across the main room, heard the door open and then close behind him.

  I ran to Julianne’s bedroom, where I could see the road better, and I watched Kyle mount a bicycle and pedal away. As his thin form became smaller, I stopped watching him and looked at the landscape, the view Julianne had chosen over her family home as I hugged the tin box to my chest. The road twisted away out of sight, dropping behind a hill with a small woods covering it.

  Did she choose this because of its beauty, or because it went somewhere? Somewhere away from Isaac? And somewhere to somebody else?

  Chapter 11

  “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet

  and a light unto my path.”

  I was barely awake when Kyle showed up at my front door, my hair still knotted in the previous night’s tangles. I opened the door with a mug of steaming coffee in my hand and saw him standing there with two homemade rolls wrapped in plastic.

  I wanted to screech You’re early! but I composed myself and said, “We’ll share,” instead. I lifted my cup and did my best to appear unruffled.

  He stepped inside and we went to the kitchen.

  “But before we share I have to change,” I said, glancing down at the T-shirt and sweat pants I’d worn to bed. “You can help yourself to coffee while I do,” I nodded toward the pot as I backed from the room.