Authors: Colleen L Donnelly
“Please wait here. Someone will be here shortly to assist you.” And the man was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
Kyle had only enough time to give me a questioning look before the door to our room was thrown open and Edith and Jill buzzed in.
“Thank God you made it in time,” Edith gushed. “If you hadn’t come, we would have had to send everyone home.”
I’d warned Kyle about Edith, and I glanced up to pass him a knowing look, but he was smiling at Jill.
“Here’s the agenda,” Edith went on, snapping the two of us to attention. She briefed us as to the structure of the ceremony, where we should stand, where we should focus when we made our acceptance speeches, which side of the stage we should exit toward. I’d stopped hearing her instructions after the word “speeches.”
“I don’t make public talks,” I reminded her.
“Yes you do,” she said, stuffing sheets of paper into Kyle’s and my hands. “Just say these things if you freeze up.”
“I can’t stand in front of everyone and read something I didn’t write. This is an award for my journalism. How wrong would that be?”
Edith stepped close. “This is the highest award you can be given here, so surely you can think of something to say.”
Kyle took the paper from my hands. “We’ll be fine,” he said smoothly, and he handed both sheets back to Edith.
After that we were caught in another whirlwind, this one of hurrying and waiting, dark hallways and blinding lights, increasing anticipation and the strain of too many things to say in a too-short period of time. There was applause, there was laughter, there were cameras and questions, Kyle’s voice at my side, our parents in the front row…and Trevor. His face jumped out from the blur of color, and it stayed with me like a photographic flash as Kyle escorted me away from the microphones, an award gripped in my other arm.
Jill rushed at us, squealing, nearly knocking us over as her arms enveloped Kyle, then wrapped around me. There were other people, people I didn’t know, asking us questions, seeking permissions, begging for a chance at a piece of our future plans. I tried to hold onto Kyle’s arm, but the surge was too great. He kept getting pulled away, until all I had left was a fingerhold on his sleeve.
Edith appeared, and she wrested the trophy from my other arm, saving it from the crush of the crowd and my frenzy of distraction. I mouthed a thank-you to her as she whisked it away to safety. I’d lost track of Kyle, both of my hands now free. I could see his head nearby, above the crowd, fielding questions just as I was. As I turned to the blur of faces and questions and cameras, I saw him again. His face was there, distinct in the crowd—not Kyle’s, but Trevor’s.
No matter where I looked or who I spoke to, his image stayed in my mind, steady, observant, and proud. I talked, answered questions, and was slowly peeled from the onslaught and led to the safety of a private room. The door closed behind me with Jill, Edith, and Kyle nearby, all of us exhausted, in shock, and dazed. We looked at each other and broke into unexpected laughter, nervous tension and exhaustion releasing itself in a burst of uncontrolled energy.
“What’s that?” Jill asked as she caught her breath. I was wiping tears from my eyes with one hand and realized I had a full bunch of roses clasped in my other arm.
“I don’t know,” I answered, dumbfounded.
Kyle cleared his throat and came to my rescue, extracting a card from the depths of green and blood red. “Here,” he said, handing it to me.
Everyone was quiet as I turned the card over and read:
“ ‘It ever has been since time began,
And ever will be, till time lose breath,
That love is a mood—no more—to a man,
And love to a woman is life or death.’
Insight stolen from Ella Wheeler Wilcox by Trevor Howard. A lesson I hope it’s not too late to learn.”
Chapter 56
“And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write.’ ”
The wind whipped at us as we stood in Chicago’s Forest Lawn Cemetery looking at Julianne’s grave. I read her birth date, her time of death, and did the math. She died at the age of fifty-six, John’s grave not far away, he dying at the age of fifty-eight. I wasn’t surprised my grandfather had never mentioned her grave, since she’d chosen to be buried where her heart lay instead of next to his father. My grandfather was very much like her, something he’d learn by the time he finished reading my book—her book, actually—her story.
He’d given me letters and a small cross of Julianne’s. He said the cross was left dangling by a chain on her front door when he’d found she’d gone for the second time. He didn’t understand it, but I did, and I was glad he’d kept it. It was another clue, although, like all of her others, you had to have ears to hear and eyes to see to understand it. The letters were part of what she’d promised in her second parting note, the rest being the story I’d discovered. She’d probably sent others to Simon and Levi, but I’d never know. These were enough. They were to her son, and I’d read them privately with Kyle, the two of us sitting in Julianne’s house, putting the epilogue on her story.
She told Samuel she was traveling with an old friend. Postmarks to her letters verified that. She signed her letters as Julianne Crouse, which told me she and John didn’t have a second wedding ceremony, the first one being good enough. She never explained herself to Samuel, never made excuses or apologies. She only shared of life and living, showing him the channel to freedom, leaving him a clue to her story if he wished to find it. That was Julianne’s key. A person had to want to. They had to choose. No one should choose for them.
Jill and Kyle stood behind me, looking on silently as I stared at the grave of my great-grandmother.
“I thought as much,” I said, over the whistling wind, without turning. “I wanted there to be something on her tombstone about her story, but there isn’t.”
No one said anything, so I turned and looked at Jill and Kyle, their fingers entwined, their arms and shoulders pressed close together. I smiled at them, and they smiled in return.
“It could have even said, ‘Broken hearts love best’ and I would have been happy,” I continued. “It’s such a disservice that her stone’s so unremarkable, clueless to how much of a legacy she left behind.”
A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I turned to Trevor at my other side. He’d changed. He’d grown wiser, his eyes full of character, his love genuine. Julianne was right, broken hearts did love best, as long as they mended right and someone was there to forgive them. I’d asked him how he’d gone from angry to humble, and he said when he saw me with Kyle he understood. Kyle and I had a relationship, not just a companionship, not just two people using each other to fill a gap or meet a need. Trevor said his eyes were opened at that moment, and eventually something deeper and richer came to be.
He hadn’t asked me to marry him again. This time he’d asked if he could marry me, a distinction that healed the scars that remained on the hurts we’d both vowed to forgive. He held in his other hand a glass box full of dried flowers, sitting on top of a book.
I smiled and took the book from him first. The cover was a rich photo of Julianne’s house in front of a background photo of Isaac’s house. The scene and the colors couldn’t have said more. I held it up for Jill to see.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and she smiled. “You did a wonderful job on this.”
Kyle’s fingers slipped from Jill’s, and his arm elevated to her shoulders to pull her close, not the loose grip of friendship like he’d given me, but a romantic one, a clasp of the deeper parts of the heart.
“You too,” I said, waving the book at both of them. I laid it on Julianne’s grave and stood above it:
Mine To Tell—One Woman’s Redemption Story
.
I turned back to Trevor and took the box of dried flowers. All four of us huddled together as I opened the lid to the dried flowers from Julianne’s attic. “Spread your fragrance,” I said. “Spread your story.” I tipped the box and let the flowers fall onto the book, the wind capturing them and lifting them up to scatter them across the grass and stones.
We watched her ending, knowing it was a beginning, grateful for the story that was mine to tell.
A word about the author...
Colleen Donnelly lives in the rural Midwest, letting her culture and background speak to her about relationships and their moral dilemmas. Often surfacing in her stories and novels is the shifting line drawn between right and wrong by people who assume the role of God.
Colleen has worked in the academic environment for years, enjoying the vast diversity and intellectually stimulating qualities of students and professionals alike. With career activities steeped heavily in the sciences, her fictional world provides a pleasant contrast to the rest of her time.
You can connect with Colleen at her blog:
http://colleenldonnelly.wordpress.com/
by email:
or on Facebook under:
Colleen L Donnelly.
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