Mine to Tell (8 page)

“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 side.

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.

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.