Authors: Colleen L Donnelly
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to see you,” he said quietly. Quietly, but still it resounded throughout the room like a sharp slap.
Then why are you here?
I wanted to ask him.
Why is he here?
I wanted to ask my mother, but I didn’t. I moved past him and Paul Junior and carried the tray to the table, barely able to breathe. The clink of the silver was sporadic as I dropped the pieces by each plate, large gaps between each ringing tone, enough space for me to hear the stilted conversation between my mother and Trevor and Paul Junior, who’d moved to the kitchen. She was trying to remain neutral. Or at least it sounded like she was. Humoring them, acting as if it was okay this had been sprung on me, and hoping everything would be all right in the end.
She and my father carried in the food, Trevor coming behind with his share of the load, just as he’d always done. It hurt that I wasn’t with them. I was alone, a spectator who was sitting out this part of the game.
“Everyone take a seat,” my mother commanded as she wrung the corner of her apron. We all broke from our awkward stances and began what felt like a rocky game of musical chairs. We fumbled around the table like children too young to understand the rules. I’d always sat next to Trevor, the two of us on one long side of the table, Paul Junior filling the opposite, my parents at the ends. Trevor and I danced, touching the backs of chairs, moving away to others, making gruff apologies as we got in each other’s way.
“Sit over there.” Paul Junior directed me by pointing to the lone chair along one side. Trevor joined him on the opposite, and I took my place at the large open space alone.
We sat, we prayed for the crops and the weather and the meal we were about to eat, and then we passed warm and cold dishes around the table and ate. Ate in silence, while I wondered if we shouldn’t have also prayed about this night of prolonged indigestion, the one each one of us looked as if we wished would end.
“We’re going out,” Paul Junior said, gravy on his chin.
“Wipe your chin,” Mama said, handing him her napkin.
He waved his own at her and swiped it across his face. “Might find us some lady friends.” Paul Junior gave me a haughty look, and I wasn’t quick enough to keep the hurt from mine.
“Paul Junior!” my mother snapped. I glanced at Trevor, hoping his face would be red, ready to tell Paul Junior how silly he was being. But his face wasn’t red at all, it wasn’t even pink. He sat like a stone—cold, empty, and unfeeling.
“It’s okay, Mama.” My voice sounded choked. “It’s okay.” I stood. I couldn’t be here anymore. “Well, I’d better head back to my house. It’s dark and…”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
My heart fluttered. I’d had no idea how much I wanted to hear those words until they were out in the open. I smiled and wheeled around, realizing too late it was my father who’d said them. Not Trevor.
“Not until you all have some dessert,” my mother interjected. She rose from the table, snatching plates from around her. “Give me a hand,” she told me. I drifted around the table, mechanically lifting plates, caught in a lapse of time, trying not to get too near anyone. I was afraid Trevor could hear my heart pounding as I stretched to reach for his dishes. I held my breath, willing my heart to settle down. He leaned away from me as I stretched, as did Paul Junior.
I carried the plates to the kitchen, one foot carefully placed in front of the other. It hurt to have a near-mate turn on me. It was like turning on myself. But what else could be done? The thing my parents were doing? Hang somewhere in the middle no matter who it hurt? What little I’d eaten lay in a sour ball in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t pretend to be what they and Trevor wanted me to be. I couldn’t do anything without my heart and with just my body, as Kyle had so astutely understood. This was their moment, and Trevor’s moment, not mine. It was their choice to be encouraging or not, understanding or not…or in his case, go out to find another lady or not.
I set the plates on the kitchen counter and stepped to my mother, who was busy whacking into a pie. I put a hand on hers and felt cool skin, not certain if it was hers or mine. Jittery tension passed between us, the touch we shared unsteady.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, her voice sharp as she slammed down the slicer and eyed me. “This whole ‘Julianne’s house’ thing you’re doing. If you’d even gotten a phone down there, this could have been avoided. You wouldn’t have been caught by surprise doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”
It was the slap I didn’t need, and I wanted to slap back. I hadn’t been doing things I shouldn’t be doing and neither had Kyle. Fury darkened Mama’s face, fury egged on by the fear that I was doing the thing they’d always known I’d someday do. Hurt boiled up inside me. If I deserved this judgment, if my great-grandmother deserved it, then so be it for both of us. But neither one of us did, so far as I could tell. I put my hand on the countertop and kept my eyes on it as I spoke. “I’m going to pass on dessert. Thank you for the meal.”
Without looking up, I left. I didn’t want to see her face. I was sure it had the “you’re doing a Julianne” look, and that was something I didn’t want to see.
Chapter 20
“Gladness and joy are taken away from the fruitful field; in the vineyards also there will be
no cries of joy or jubilant shouting.”
“Come in,” I said to Kyle. He stood at my door, that old uncertain look on his face, my recently trampled soul understanding. “It’s okay. No one’s here.” He stepped past me and handed me a book as he did.
“What’s this?” I asked, turning it over as I closed the door behind him. “Lost Love Letters, Tales of Unrequited Love” was embossed on the front cover. I looked at him.
“Thought you might find them interesting,” he said, without explaining if it was my plight or Julianne’s that made him think I should read it. I flipped the book open and perused the names and titles of men and women from long ago until now, their sad soliloquies bunched into tight words below each one.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.
“I saw your fiancé last night,” he said.
“Ex-fiancé,” I corrected him.
“Only in word and deed,” he modified my correction. I frowned. “He agrees in word that he’s an ex, and he wasn’t behaving like anyone’s fiancé, but his heart is still bound to you.”
I suddenly felt very cold. The book turned to ice in my hands. Tearing two souls apart was like being disemboweled. I didn’t want to know what Trevor had done to violate our past bond, and even less I wanted to know that he still cared while he did it. I couldn’t bear to imagine anguish on his face while he flirted with another. That wasn’t the happy man I’d dated and loved. That was some monster who’d taken his place after I hurt him.
My pain was visible. I could feel it, naked in front of Kyle, so I turned away from him to the table and stared dumbly at my typewritten notes. My chest felt tight, too tight to breathe, and for a moment it was too much effort to try.
Trevor still cared. But Trevor was moving on.
My hands trembled as I lifted the notes. Without looking at him, I gave them to Kyle and sat down by myself to let him read of John’s visit to Julianne’s and the agony it brought the two of them. He settled in and began to read. I glanced up as he bent over the pages. Kyle’s face was like a mirror as he perused Julianne’s tragedy. Even if I hadn’t already read it myself, I would have known what happened just by seeing it reflected in his expression.
“Kyle, have you ever loved someone?” I asked, surprising myself.
He finished reading before he looked up, not even flinching at the abruptness of my question. “Not yet,” he said, “not like I want to, anyway.” His eyes unashamedly held mine. I’d never said something so personal to him before, never ventured beyond his reticent exterior.
“Have you?” he asked, surprising me even more than I’d surprised myself.
I sputtered. “Why of course! I was engaged, I loved…” My voice crescendoed until his gaze stopped me cold, that mirror of a face no longer reflecting Julianne’s pain. As he stared at me I saw my heartache in his expression, my yearning, my unrequited desires. I stared dumbfounded as my unfulfilled passions resounded back to me like an echo.
“Not yet,” I said in the emptiness. “Not
really
loved. Or been loved.”
He nodded. “You behave like someone’s fiancée, but your heart isn’t fully bound. It hasn’t found its home yet.”
I bit my lower lip until it hurt, but said nothing. Faking love was worse than breaking love. I hadn’t meant to fake love. I hadn’t wanted to, or else I wouldn’t be here. I hadn’t understood that before, but I did now. If I’d married Trevor I would have ruined him, ruined the marriage, or ruined myself. Probably all three.
“There are some letters that come after this,” Kyle said, waving my pages back at me.
Numbly I stood and walked to the stack of Julianne’s envelopes and brought them to the sofa. I dropped down on my end while Kyle sat on the other. “You read them,” I said, my energy gone.
He took them, picked up the top letter, and opened it to read.
Chapter 21
“Draw me after you and let us run together.”
October 25, 1907
My dearest Julianne,
My brother’s heart is broken—No, it’s crushed. He refuses to eat, he won’t talk, he only works, and even that is done forcibly. What happened when he was there? It must be awful. Can’t something be done? Can’t you come to Chicago? I beg you to. Break from whatever holds you and fly here, save yourself and save him. I will pay for your fare, just tell me you’ll come.
Your friend forever,
Henrietta
~*~
I curled my feet up underneath me and leaned my head on the sofa’s back. “John didn’t go back, did he? She thought he would, and I want him to.” I looked from the ceiling to Kyle, but it was my empty heart I was asking. Where were the heroes who filled those voids? Where were the champions that understood us?
“I think we’ll find that out,” he said, eyeing me, before he returned the letter to its envelope.
I watched him until he tucked it underneath the stack. “It breaks my heart to know what mattered to her, and that she never got it.” Her plight felt too much like mine. I didn’t want it that way for either of us. “It makes me despise my great-grandfather for what he did. It wasn’t right.” My voice was rising, my face felt warm. How could someone trap another for their own sake? How could someone be that selfish?
Kyle pulled out the next letter. I wanted him to agree with me that my great-grandfather was wretched, but he didn’t. He never had.
“He bought her, you know,” I prodded, my indignation rising. “Like a slave instead of a wife. You can’t love someone who buys you. You can’t love someone who forces you. You can’t love anyone when your heart is broken for another.”
Kyle looked at me now, studied my face, but I think he was analyzing what I’d said. “To love is a choice,” he said, “but to fall in love is chance.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but I closed it again. Had I thought I’d fallen in love with Trevor and then done nothing to build on it? Failed to make obedient and loving choices like Crouse women were supposed to? I was making them now, even if they seemed destructive to everyone else.
“I have to go. It’s important,”
rang in my memory again, Julianne’s voice and mine, both pleading for understanding. Maybe I couldn’t make those choices. Maybe Julianne couldn’t either.
I squirmed around on the sofa, rearranging so I wasn’t looking directly at Kyle. “What does the next letter say?”
He opened the next envelope without further discussion and slid the letter out and unfolded it. He glanced up at me and then down at the paper.
~*~
November 13, 1907
Dear Julianne,
I have decided to spare you more anguish. My efforts from here to reason with your father have only made matters worse for you, and I fear I’m doing you great harm. I must think of your feelings, your peace of mind with yourself. I know, my dear, you love me. But you have been forced into a situation that threatens your bond to your family and their good. I accept your love as my sufficiency. I’ll let that be enough for me as I offer you the freedom you truly need. Although this is not something I thought I’d ever say, you have my sincerest wish for your happiness as you do as your parents wish. I release you, leaving you with my heart, my well wishes, and my friendship forever.
Yours always,
John
~*~
I hadn’t noticed them until Kyle’s voice faded after he’d read John’s name, but tears had filled my eyes. I couldn’t distinguish Kyle’s features, only his movements as he put the letter away. When he finished, the room was silent. The house was silent. I didn’t know what to say about a man who’d broken his own heart to spare the one he loved. Whoever John was, I knew I could have loved him too.
“Want to go for a walk?” Kyle asked.
I nodded and struggled to my feet. He held me by the upper arm as I sought blindly for the shoes I’d kicked off at the sofa’s edge. His hand was strong and warm, and I was glad it was there.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I swiped my other sleeve across my eyes and looked up at him.
“Let’s walk over to Isaac’s old house.” He smiled. I nodded, then let him escort me out the door.
Chapter 22
“I put on righteousness and it clothed me.”
We walked side by side in silence, our feet scraping over gravel as we crossed the ground between Julianne’s house and Isaac’s. There were no boards on his windows and doors like there had been on hers, and even though it had been uninhabited since my family moved out, it had been taken care of, the relic of what a family should be, as opposed to Julianne’s, which was a reminder of what a family wasn’t.
“You ever been in here?” I asked as we crossed the small patch of weeds to the wide front porch.
Kyle nodded, blushing a bit.
“You were a quiet kid, but you certainly got around, didn’t you?” I teased.
“I wasn’t good with people,” he said. “But I understood them.”
I knew I would have gained a lot if I’d taken the time to get to know Kyle as a boy. He was a treasure, and what he’d shared with me now as an adult left me hungry for more.