Mine to Tell (25 page)

~*~

I didn’t ask again. I couldn’t ask for a casual trip to Chicago after John’s letter. I’d had no intention of seeing or bothering him or his wife when I went, but now, after his letter, everything had changed. Old passions reignited, and my bond to him and Henrietta was resurrected. Casual mending could no longer be. And Isaac, he would need time to calm himself after my first request. If not for John’s angst, I would have been waiting patiently for Isaac to reconsider, even though I knew he never would. He never forgave me my first request, just like he never forgave me for the other offenses he attributed to me. This time I asked for nothing. I went about my business, but more hurriedly, more determined, grasping into the air for guesses at what John wanted to tell me, clambering through time, wanting to know.

Isaac never drew wide circles around me anymore, he closed in tightly, maintaining the rigid knot he’d already drawn. “And what is it you’re thinking?” would ring through the air each time he drew near and leaned toward me.

“Nothing,” I told him, avoiding his gaze.

“You still want to go to Chicago?” he asked, his words pointed like spears. “I’ll go with you, then. We can leave the boys with your parents.”

“No,” I said, too quickly, and I looked up from the floor I’d been scrubbing. “I mean, no thank you. We shouldn’t go. The boys have projects at school. We can’t.” I returned to the floor, dredging the rag across the wood, scouring away anything obvious I didn’t want to be seen.

“Look at me,” he demanded. I drew up to my haunches, sat back and met his gaze, determined to hide everything he was probing for. “We’ll go.”

“No,” I said, unflinching. I could barely think of going myself. It was too risky. But if he were to go with me, all of his imagined fears would come true. He’d be crushed, and the disaster would spread to the boys, to my family, to the immaculate reputation everyone around here prized.

His fuzzy eyebrows raised higher than they’d ever been, his eyes widened as he stared at me, as if I were on fire in front of him. I waited and watched, watched the war in his eyes as he struggled with how much he hated me while searching for the most painful reply. I knew what he wanted to say, at least I thought I did. I just didn’t think he’d say it with his hand.

~*~

“My God!” I said as Kyle finished reading. “He hit her!”

Kyle nodded, the pain in his eyes mirroring my shock.

“Is that why she left?” I asked, not expecting an answer. I didn’t look at Kyle, relieved at his silence while I thought through this myself. But then I heard him, his soft voice carrying across my hotel room as he began to read again.

~*~

Now I drew the circles. I gave my husband a wide berth. Not only did I avoid him physically, but I also stopped looking at him, and refused to think of him. Wider and farther steps and thoughts divorced from the work I did for him kept me far away. As far as I could get, but he began to hunt me down, find me. He narrowed the gap every chance he had, closing in on me, stern but invisibly enjoying the tremor and repulsion he saw on my face as he moved in close. I drew away, never facing him, never caring to. Never giving him the chance to reach me, either, keeping away from the length of his arm, his long boney fingers.

“Come here,” he called often. It was for nothing, always just a taunting, asking me to do something he could do himself or that I would have done anyway. He enjoyed my discomfort, liked arousing my uneasiness in any way he could. I always came, but I stayed back, kept my eyes to myself, subservience not my reason but disgust, instead. I came, and I did as he bid. And then I walked away under the glare of his spiteful satisfaction.

“Women are to respect their husbands,” he said to me at night in our room.

“Husbands are to love their wives,” I flashed at him, frustration in my words and eyes. I could feel heat swarm throughout me, years of emptiness screaming for relief.

I saw his arm flinch, his hand twitch, I knew he wanted to slap me again, but he didn’t. He stayed where he was across the room, the lamplight like fire in his eyes.

“I have obediently been your wife, even against my will. You bought me, you didn’t love me. You stole my youth, my chance to love, and saddled me with your unforgiving heart. But I’ve stood by you, asking only one favor, and that was the chance to visit Henrietta to mend our hurts. You denied me that trip, and I’ll not ask again. I will continue to provide what you paid for. That is the respect I offer you as your wife.”

The fiery eyes that spoke of the fury of hell from a pulpit turned into Satanic blazes across the room. It was more than his disappointment in me that condemned me. It was something deeper, more hidden, something as old as he was.

“Was it your fault she died?” I whispered, a tremor beginning in the depths of me and working its way out. “Your wife. Was it heartless cruelty that destroyed her, too?” I thought of the boys and the uncertainty in their eyes, the demands I felt and maybe she had felt, too. I stumbled forward at the vehemence in his face, without even thinking, plowing my way toward the door, scrambling to escape this man who was my husband.

“You’ll go nowhere,” he hissed, his breath hot against my face as he reached the door before me and slammed his hand against it to hold it closed. I looked into his haggard face, a million mysteries etched into the crevices by bitterness. He advanced on me, quickly, forcefully. I ducked, tried to slip around him to get to the door, but he was ready, and he knocked me to the floor. He was on top of me, and even in his older age his desperation was strength enough to pin me.

“I’ve cost no one their life,” he breathed in my face. “Never. She was a good woman who worked hard for us. Too hard, and it took her.”

I gazed into eyes too far from the lamplight to glitter, but moisture rimmed them, and they glistened with regret. I stopped fighting him, lay there and said nothing, just let him breathe. A warm spot of moisture dropped from his eye and hit my cheek. It ran down the side of my face until it became lost in my hair.

“I know why you did this to me,” I said. “It was wrong, but I understand why now.”

He leaned upward and slowly drew himself to his haunches above me, one knee on each side of me. He looked even older, his grief and the faraway light casting ugly shadows across his face.

“I needed a woman,” he said, his voice gruff, coarse. “And the boys needed a mother. You looked good, so I took you. Loaned your parents money and got you as the payoff.”

“You can’t buy your way out of grief,” I whispered.

He didn’t move. He looked across the room, refusing to cede his position above me, afraid to relinquish it for fear his sorrow would come crashing down on him and I’d escape.

“I’ve never been your woman,” I dared to say from beneath him. “She was, but I’ve barely been a woman here at all, let alone yours. You’ve brought ruin on both of us by what you’ve done.”

The fire returned to his eyes as they turned and bore down on me. “I know whose woman you’ve been all these years. His, that city fellow’s. That’s whose woman you’ve been.”

“You knew that when you forced this marriage. You think I could just turn off that love and care for you when you gave me nothing to care for? No more than you could turn your grief into love for me. You got what you paid for and what you paid me with. Nothing.” I was up on my elbows now, staring into his face.

He rose, got to his feet, and stood over me. As our eyes remained locked, he suddenly bent down, and with one arm he yanked me to my feet. He pushed me backwards onto the bed in one quick movement, his eyes violent, his breath short and hot. This was his kind of love, his way of healing, his way of using me to undo his hurt. I felt nothing then. Not his breath, not his whiskered mouth, not his clawing hands, not the night air against my skin as my skirts disappeared. I felt nothing, not inside and not out. Even after he was done.

Chapter 46

“When my heart was embittered and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant,

I was like a beast.”

Kyle and I knocked at the door where John’s son supposedly lived. We looked at each other, wondering what we were going to say if he opened it. He could be insane, he could be hateful, he could be unbelieving and our story unbelievable. He could be someone else completely, and we’d be lost.

The door opened to a narrow gap and an elderly eye peered out. “Yes?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Are you Mrs. Baxter?” Kyle asked. The eye nodded. “We’re here looking for Mr. Alex Baxter, son of John Baxter. Is this the right family?”

The eye moved from Kyle to me and then back again. The door closed, and Kyle and I stared at each other, my mouth dropping in surprise. He put a hand on my arm.

“Wait. Don’t jump to any conclusions yet.”

We could hear voices inside, high, whiney voices like elderly people often get, the two of them discussing the strangers at the door. I looked at Kyle and smiled a little, a hopeful smile as we waited.

The door opened again, and this time it was an elderly man looking at us, his head tipped slightly to the side. “Who are you looking for?”

Kyle smiled and repeated his explanation.

“Why? What do you need to find me for? If it’s about owing you something, you can forget it. I don’t have a dime. Fixed income, that’s what we’re on.”

“We’re tracing her great-grandmother,” Kyle said, nodding toward me. “Julianne Crouse. She used to be best friends with John and Henrietta Baxter. We’re just looking for clues about missing parts of her life.”

“Don’t know of any Julianne Crouse,” the man said, furrowing his brow as if he was sorting through old names and faces.

“But you’re John Baxter’s son. If you don’t mind, could we come in and talk to you?” I asked. “There may be something you know that would help us find out about my great-grandmother.”

The man eyed us, wavering between good neighbor and good sense. I reached into my purse and pulled out the letter Henrietta had written to my great-grandmother, the one hoping Julianne could come to Chicago and visit when she was seventeen. I handed it to him. He took it, the envelope quivering in his elderly touch. Bracing the door with one foot, he opened the envelope and read it carefully, a curious look growing in his eye. He returned the letter to its envelope, looked at the addresses and names on the outside, then stepped aside to wave us in with an arm. “Get some tea, Mildred.”

A small, frail woman stood off to the side, the owner of the eye. She nodded at us as we entered, and then disappeared.

“Come on in here and sit,” he said, and he shuffled us to a cozy living room.

We took seats, and his wife brought out a tray of tea things. We made small talk while we went through the paraphernalia on the tray, each of us steeping a cup that seemed to take forever. I wanted to know about Julianne and John. I didn’t care about tea.

At the instant we settled back with our cups, I began to talk, stirring the tea I didn’t want. “Your father and his sister were childhood friends of my great-grandmother,” I reiterated. “My family only knows so much about her, and we’re looking for the rest. I’d hoped you might know something…” My voice trailed off, wanting them to pick up my line of thought, tell me they did know something…or nothing…whichever would dispel the rumors that Julianne may have run off with someone…John, in particular.

Alex looked up at me. “Well, not sure we can be much help. What is it you want to know?”

I set my teacup on their coffee table, and Kyle followed suit. “My great-grandmother came to visit your father and his sister after that letter I showed you. She stayed for quite awhile but then came back home, to our area, and married. I… We…” I glanced at Kyle, suddenly uncertain what to say next.

“We’re not sure where she went after she was widowed,” Kyle inserted. “She moved away, or she may have traveled. Since she had been friends with your family, we thought we’d see if she came up here.”

“Did you find any of Henrietta’s family to talk to?” Alex asked.

“I found information about John first,” I said quickly, trying to keep my face from turning red. “And I traced him to you, to your childhood home, and then to here. Do you have any pictures of your family?” I added quickly.

The elderly couple looked at each other, and then Mildred stood as if by some nonverbal decision they’d reached, and she disappeared. Kyle and I exchanged a look, both of us seeing the invisible something in them, a discomfort we’d created and that I was sorry for. No one said a thing until Mildred came back, a large photo album in her arms.

“Take it to the table,” Alex commanded from his chair. We all moved to the dining room and settled around the table as Mildred pulled open the cover of the book.

Two hours passed in what seemed like only a few minutes as Mildred and Alex took Kyle and me back through time, showing us pictures of John, Henrietta, Ellen, John’s other boy, and people we had no idea existed. There were none of my great-grandmother, and when we were finished, I dropped back into my chair, my mind a haze of faces, numbers, dates, disappointment, and relief.

“And so did that help you any?” Alex asked.

I shook my head. “Only to satisfy me,” I said, sadness settling over me. “It’s just so nice to see pieces of Julianne’s life, even if she wasn’t here.”

“You have any pictures of her?” Alex asked, surprising me.

“I do, actually.” I had forgotten I’d taken her photo from the album hidden under my parents’ bed. I pulled it from my purse and handed it to him, Mildred moving around the table to peer over his shoulder.

They frowned for a long time, their eyes riveted on the old photo. Alex swallowed and laid the photo down. Mildred glanced at me as she moved back to her seat.

“I didn’t know her name,” Alex said.

I froze. It was the way he said it, the distance he built between himself and the photo as he stared at it. Kyle and I looked at each other, panic racing through my mind. I had been worried we’d wasted a trip up here, and suddenly I was worried we hadn’t. Kyle saw the family shame chasing around in my thoughts, and the blue in his eyes tried to calm me, told me to relax, listen to the story as it was supposed to be told, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.