Mine to Tell Read online

  He smiled this time. I saw it as he bent over the rolls to open them. I scurried from the kitchen, leaving behind the homey noises he made getting out plates and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  I wondered what Julianne’s little kitchen thought when I returned and saw Kyle sitting at one side of her small table, two cups, two plates, and two rolls set out in front of him. Had a man ever joined her here like he was joining me? He looked comfortable, and he made the room seem comfortable. I walked to the opposite side of the table and took my seat. We ate and drank in silence, our common goal binding us together and keeping the awkwardness at bay.

  “Why do you suppose she chose a Bible to write her tale in?” I finally asked. “I mean, she was hiding it, that’s clear, but why in a Bible? If she went to all the trouble to do this one letter at a time, in an unlikely book, under a false floor, in an attic, then I have to wonder if she really wanted anyone to know what she had to say.” I ran the tip of my finger around the rim of my cup. “She could have created some code no one would ever break, instead. Or said nothing at all.”

  Kyle finished his roll and looked up at me, as he thought about what I’d said. “You write. You put your thoughts on a page. It seems she may have too,” he said. “We won’t know until we begin if what she did was part of her story or not.”

  He was right. I closed my mouth before I wound myself up into a dither that I had no grounds for yet. “Disappointed” didn’t touch how I felt, but neither did “thrilled.” Did she write? What if she didn’t? I’d been so excited all night, hoping Julianne’s secrets were close. But now I worried they were far away and her gone with them. I looked at Kyle. I was glad he was here. “Let’s get started.”

  I gave him the sofa so he could be comfortable while he read. I took a straight chair with a tray across my lap for a hard surface to write on. Kyle opened Julianne’s Bible in a reverent way. We looked at each other; then he bent over the first page and began to read the letters to me, one at a time.

  The intensity of our work obliterated time, letter after letter, fitting together into words that were not yet strung into clauses, sentences, or thoughts. I watched for phrases like “In the beginning” or “I’m sorry it happened this way,” but they weren’t there. Instead I saw “closed doors” and “Chicago” and “Henrietta and John.” I wanted to stop and cut the never-ending stream of letters into words and find out who Henrietta and John were, learn about closed doors, and find out if Chicago was where she’d gone. But I plunged onward through the tedious task of deciphering as many letters as we could so that when we finally fragmented the chain into meaningful phrases I’d see her clearly and know how she’d begun.

  It wasn’t until my stomach growled that we both looked up, dizzied from our concentration. Kyle had one finger on the letter where we’d stopped. “Want to finish this page and then stop for lunch?” he asked. I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. We’d worked five hours with only a brief break. I stretched and nodded just as the door flew open. My brother’s bulk filled the doorway and his voice filled my house.

  “Hey, seen Kyle? His bicycle’s out here.”

  Paul Junior looked away from me and saw Kyle sitting on my sofa, his finger in Julianne’s Bible.

  “What the heck are you doing, sitting here all comfortable like that?” he asked, looking baffled, then annoyed. “My sister’s engaged, you know,” he bellowed across the room.

  I stood, setting my tray and papers on the seat of the chair. “Of course he knows,” I informed Paul Junior, not really sure if Kyle knew or not. I’d thought of Trevor often enough, but I’d never said his name. It would have been like shouting during a poetry reading, too brash for the mood Kyle and Julianne brought with them. I heard Kyle stand and pass behind me, then he appeared near Paul Junior, uncertainty on his face as he looked at me. “Kyle and I are just…” I stopped. It wasn’t just Julianne I wanted to defend, it was Kyle also. I didn’t know how to rush to his rescue without telling Paul Junior what we were doing. He despised my fascination with Julianne, and he’d never let Kyle live it down that he was transcribing her secrets from a Bible. “We were just discussing the history of this house and our farms,” I lied.

  Kyle looked back at me. “Time for me to go,” he said, now looking at Paul Junior. “See you later.”

  “You need to get out of here too,” Paul Junior told me. “Trevor’s been calling the house, and you need to call him back about some shindig going on in Cincinnati.” He turned to Kyle. “Trevor’s her fiancé.”

  “Okay, Paul,” I said testily, picking up the Bible and my papers. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Kyle slipped out the door before I could say anything to him. I wanted to thank him and ask when he’d be back…or if he’d be back…but Paul Junior stood in the doorway like a bull, daring me to pass.

  “I’ll be just a minute. Let me put these things away first.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Paul Junior sounded angry.

  “Just what I said he was,” I snapped. “It’s none of your business anyway.”

  “Trevor’s like a part of our family. You’d better not mess that up.”

  I carried the Bible and papers upstairs, trying not to stomp, knowing Paul Junior would take my defensiveness as guilt. So would I. I was defending a man I had no relationship with, and finding the one I was supposed to have one with a sudden inconvenience. When I came back downstairs I found Paul Junior snooping around as if looking for clues to incriminate me and Kyle.

  “Let’s go,” I said as calmly as I could. He gave me a hard stare as I led him out the door and locked it behind me.

  Chapter 12

  “The more they called them,

  the more they went from them.”

  “Yes, of course I’ll come. I understand it’s important to you.”

  The words I’d promised Trevor on the phone at my parents’ house rang in my ears as I knocked on his apartment door. I’d said them because Paul Junior had stood over me when I returned Trevor’s call after he found Kyle in my house. My mother, too, stood in the background, looking worried as I tried to have a private conversation with Trevor. “You have to come,” Trevor had insisted. “All of our friends will be there, and we’ll have a great time.” There was no room for me amongst all those who were perched around me listening, so I’d said yes, I’d come.

  I raised my hand to knock again just as the door swung open, a surprised Trevor holding the knob. “Why’d you knock?” he asked, frowning. “Why didn’t you just use your key?”

  I shrugged. “It felt funny,” I said, realizing how wrong that was to say.

  “You’re my fiancée. How can it feel funny?” He looked alarmed.

  “Can I come in?” I was alarmed, too. I needed to pull myself together. Smile, look at Trevor’s handsome face and be thrilled like I used to be, like I was supposed to be and still trying to be.

  “Of course, but you don’t have to ask.” He was perturbed, an edge in his voice cropping his words short. I sighed to myself. This wasn’t beginning right.

  “So,” I said as lightly as I could when he’d closed the door behind me, “this should be fun, right? All your friends back in town at the same time.”

  He stared at me, then nodded slowly. I smiled, wishing I hadn’t come. Wishing I’d had time to finish Julianne’s story before I was coaxed…no forced…back to this world. The smile worked. He stepped to me and wrapped his arms around me, nuzzling his face into my hair.

  “It’s good to have you back here,” he said. “I really miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” I answered, my cheek flat against his chest, my eyes staring across the room at a poster of Cincinnati’s baseball team. I did miss him but not in the way he thought. Even when he was near I still missed him, missed him in the lonely place he should be in my soul. I wished again I had finished Julianne’s story. There just hadn’t been time.

  “When we’re married we won’t have to worry about missing each other
,” he said over my head. “We’ll just go on with living. We won’t need to think about each other.”

  I frowned. He couldn’t see it, but he must have felt it. Or maybe it was because I didn’t reply that he took me by the shoulders and held me out where he could see me.

  “Right?” he asked.

  “Well…”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Now I wonder who that could be,” he said, a teasing look in his eye. “My fiancée wouldn’t knock, and she’s right here. Or would she?”

  I rolled my eyes as he went to the door, opening it to bass and treble merriment, his friends bursting in, afire with plans for the evening. I looked at them, a smile on my face. They surrounded me with welcoming noises, letting me know they’d noticed I’d been gone.

  More knocks, more voices, and soon Trevor’s apartment was brimming with excitement, friends ready for this big evening out I’d agreed to join. I felt like a kite again on a windy day, blustery breezes yanking me here and there, commotion all around me. We went out, I went with them; we ate, I ate with them; we danced, I danced with them. They went, I went. They pushed because Trevor could no longer pull. My line to him was broken, and this wasn’t the way we could fix it.

  ****

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Trevor whispered to me on his couch in the wee hours of the morning. He’d had a wonderful night out, and I was glad. He was smiling and relaxed as we sat slumped next to each other. I let his head droop onto my shoulder as he talked softly. “Not much longer and I won’t have to say that to you.” His voice trailed off to a whisper. “Because you’ll always be here.” The last words faded and his breathing became even, steady, a man catching up after a night of friends and frivolity, his head a heavy weight on my shoulder.

  Chapter 13

  “Strength and dignity are her clothing

  and she smiles at the future.”

  I decided to work alone on Julianne’s Bible after my trip to Cincinnati to see Trevor. The only satisfying moments had been when I visited my old newspaper and saw my best friend Jill, and handed my editor, Edith, the articles I’d written so far. She’d smiled at me, one of those happy-to-see-you smiles riddled with curiosity as to what I’d become now that I’d left her professional nest.

  “I think you’ll like them so far,” I nodded at the papers in her hand, feeling a bit like a mother leaving her child in someone else’s care for the first time. Edith did what every mother fears and merely nodded, detached, no heart ties yet to your progeny, the flesh-of-your-flesh she was taking charge of. She handed them off to one of her assistant editors so we could chat about me, about Julianne’s house, the newspaper, and of course about her. But it was Julianne that stuck with Edith as we talked. I could see her interest was piqued, the way an editor’s inner detector sniffs out a good story, as I spilled highlights of what I’d written for her so far. It was about more than just sweat and incompetency as a young woman tackled an abandoned house to make it livable again. My mother was right. I couldn’t tell the story without introducing the sole woman who’d lived there two generations ago, the prison the house was meant to be, and the true treasure I was searching for as I put life back into her home again. When Edith’s assistant editor had brushed past the office door later with Julianne’s life waving in her hand like a green flag that said “Go,” I relaxed. It would be okay. Julianne was in good hands, and so was I. At least that part of my life was.

  Home again, I retrieved Julianne’s Bible and my notes from upstairs and hurried them down to the sofa. Curling up with them and a mug of hot coffee, I inhaled deeply, taking in the essence of who she was and what I’d been waiting for days to do.

  I began where I left off, with the long strand of letters Kyle had read to me a few days before, and broke them into more words, clustered them into phrases and then sentences, hoping to make more sense of what she was saying than I’d seen before. It was clear she had chosen her letters in a straightforward way, not something complicated, and not jibberish or the mixed code I was afraid it would be. It was just tedious, even for a journalist who lived by relayed tales and language; it was a story that was slow to unfold.

  As more of the words became segregated, I saw they truly didn’t begin the way I thought a story should. Julianne began mid thought, mid sorrow, mid frustration.

  “Genesis is for beginnings, but this marked my end.”

  What marked her end? I double-checked the Bible against the letters I had written down, to make sure Kyle had begun in the right place. He had. This was where Julianne started her tale.

  I skipped down to another paragraph until I saw Henrietta’s name.

  “I’d never shared so much with friends, never known Henrietta the way I came to know her then.”

  So Henrietta was Julianne’s friend, and something happened that drew them closer. Farther down I saw John’s name and read about him too.

  “The first time I saw him, or at least the first time I recall him, we were but children. He was Henrietta’s older brother, a playmate, one who was kind and patient with us but who still kept to his governing role as the elder and wiser. This time when I saw him he was more.”

  John. Henrietta. I’d never heard these names before. Who were they, and when did they appear in my great-grandmother’s life? My coffee was as cold as the clues in Julianne’s story. I laid my papers down and got up to make more coffee. Something was missing. Maybe there was another book somewhere.

  Sitting down with my fresh cup of coffee, I took a deep breath and skipped to the New Testament. Maybe she really did do something convoluted and began there after all. Painstakingly I tackled the transcription in Matthew on my own, realizing how much help Kyle had been. It was going to take me forever to do this without him, but I couldn’t ask him for help. Not yet. I was too raw, too unsettled after my visit to see Trevor, too unsure what it was that I wanted. Too afraid of what I was going to find out as I learned more about Julianne.

  The day drifted by one step at a time, one letter at a time, one word. I slowly compiled a long strand of letters from the New Testament and then broke them into words. Looking at them made me want to give up. Strange, rootless segments of a tale on the page, thoughts and events that I didn’t understand. Julianne didn’t begin her story with the New Testament. There had to be something more.

  Before the sun dropped low in the sky I dragged myself back up into her attic. There had to be another book, another Bible, something that started with “In the beginning.” Pulling my light on its cord up through the hole, I illuminated the cranny like it had never been lit before. I forced my eyes to travel painstakingly slowly around the room, searching for what I must have missed. When I accepted there was nothing, I scooted to one side and began moving floor boards, determined to find what else had to be there. Straddling mislaid boards like a crab, I slid each one aside, creating enough of a gap to allow my arm to stretch into it, the darkness between the rafters frightening as I ran my hand in as far as it would go. Board after board, I moved them, straddled their gaps, and clawed through the darkness until dust formed a sheen of gray sweat on my skin. Leaning over the last section, I heard a knock at the door. I held still. After a few minutes it came again. Dang, I muttered, frustrated and annoyed.

  I took the light with me and dropped to the empty bedroom’s floor, then went downstairs. I noticed through my windows it was dusky outside. I’d been up in the attic longer than I’d thought. Unlocking and opening the door, I was surprised to see Kyle as it edged toward me.

  “Kyle! You rode your bicycle out here this late?”

  “Drove my car.” He stood there, awkward, looking as if he’d be just as happy to leave as to come inside.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  He nodded and stepped around me. It was then I noticed the bundle in his hands, a small package he kept close to his body as he glanced around my living area.

  “You have something?” I asked.

  He tapped the
bundle nervously. “Mind if we sit?”

  I nodded and dropped onto one end of the sofa, and he nestled down at the far end. He looked everywhere but at me, his angst creating a misty dew across his skin.

  “Kyle, what’s wrong?”

  It was then he finally looked at me and unwrapped the bundle he held on his lap. When its wrapping fell to the side, I could see a stack of letters. Old letters, by the look of them. My gaze drifted to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, without looking up, and he handed them to me.

  I took the stack from his hand, long yellowed envelopes with Julianne’s name and address on the outside. Most of the top few were from her under her maiden name and addressed to her family. The rest were to her, those being from Henrietta Baxter.

  “They’re in order,” Kyle said, looking down at his hands. “If you read the top one, you’re reading the first letter.”

  “Kyle…” I began.

  “They’re your great-grandmother’s.” His voice strained. “I took them when I was a boy.”

  I shot him a look, so full of astonishment he cowered and looked ashamed. “How did you get them? Where were they?”

  He glanced upward, and I guessed.

  “In the attic?”

  He nodded.

  “And that’s how you knew about the trap door. But you…”

  “I know,” he nodded again, his lips set in a straight line. “No one ever came to this house except you. I saw you here sometimes, but you never went in. You just stood outside the gate and looked at it. I kept waiting.” Then he looked at me, a small frown on his face. “Why didn’t you ever come in, Annabelle? Why’d you just stand outside all those years?”

  My heart nearly stopped when I saw the look on his face. “I did once,” I said quietly, “almost.” I felt my face redden. Now I was the one who was ashamed. It was my great-grandmother and I was the one with a connection to her, yet I’d never ventured as far as her door until I was older. And even then, that’s where I stopped. At her door. Until now. But Kyle… I looked at him, realizing that his seizure of Julianne’s property wasn’t thievery. It was that strange kinship he had, that enviable intensity that made him bridge the gap I was supposed to have bridged. He had touched Julianne first, worn a path through the grass around her house while I stayed beyond the fence. I’d been angry at myself before, but now I was purely ashamed.