What You Said to Me

by Olivia Newport

  Tisha looked up. “That’s the end. Missouri and Fidelity really left. Decorah stayed.”

  Joanna cleared her throat softly. “Obviously, the journals should be yours.”

  Jillian took the journal again, holding the old brown leather by the edges.

  “But how did the journals survive?” Tisha asked, looking at the image on her phone again. “Georgina said she made sure no one would ever write in them. I thought she destroyed the journal her page came from.”

  “That’s a great question.” Jillian opened the back of the journal again, inspecting the tear. “Wait, there’s something here. Jo, turn on that lamp.”

  “What is it?” Tisha asked.

  They huddled over the volume in brighter light.

  “There are pencil markings inside the back cover,” Jillian said. “So faint with age! Let’s see.

  “Papa, why did you go? I’ve always missed you. I could never let Mama burn all that was left of you. Love always, your little Decorah Runner.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Nolan said.

  “But Grandma Ora said Decorah was such a grumpy person,” Tisha said.

  “At least in this one moment, she wasn’t.”

  “It’s almost enough to give a person hope.” Tisha closed the journal with a hush and held it against her chest.

  Jillian met her eyes and nodded.

  “I want to read them all, start to finish,” Tisha said. “But then I might give them to the Heritage Society so people in this town can see that my family were not all a bunch of cranks.”

  “That would be your choice to make,” Nolan said. “You’d be in control.”

  “What I want to control right now is whether to buy a brown journal or a black journal.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I’LL JUST BE A LITTLE LATE, the text said. NEED TO DO SOMETHING.

  Jillian settled in with a third cup of coffee and tried not to guess what Tisha’s words meant. Instead, she decided to straighten up the dining room table.

  Again.

  Her dad was probably dying to throw one of his impromptu dinner parties, the kind where he didn’t decide until two o’clock in the afternoon what the menu would be and assigned Jillian to round up the guests. But as soon as she got the table cleared of one stage of the St. Louis files, another phase of the project took over. When Tisha bolted for the trail the day before, she hadn’t made any effort to tidy her workspace. Certainly it had been an eventful day. Nolan and Jillian both had put in a long evening of work, trying to catch up on hours of neglect during the day, though it had been nearly impossible to concentrate on anything after finding those journals. Jillian hadn’t even looked at any of the scans Tisha had done while she was in a funk of disappointment, to see if they were right.

  For now Jillian abandoned the straightening effort, beyond separating the files she knew Tisha hadn’t touched. She’d have to let Tisha tell her what was what among the papers spread out around the scanner.

  When she arrived. A little late.

  Whatever that meant.

  Jillian took her coffee to her office, checked her email, answered a phone call, starred the items on her to-do list to prioritize for the day, and carried her empty mug to the sink to rinse it out.

  Forty minutes.

  Jillian resisted the urge to make another cup of coffee, but she gave in to the temptation to wander out to the front porch and glance down the street for a flash of spinning green. Her vigilance was rewarded. Now she wished she had a beverage in her hands so she could casually drop into the wicker rocker or the swing and pretend she was simply taking a break. Making a show of admiring the mountain view sufficed.

  Tisha parked her bike. “Did you think I wasn’t coming?”

  “Not at all. You said a little late. So I did a few other things.”

  “Is Nolan home?”

  “He’s in Denver on Wednesdays.”

  “I forgot.” Tisha took a canvas bag off the handlebars and ascended the stairs. “I wanted to finish something so you could read it. I started my diary.”

  “Diaries are supposed to be private.”

  “I know. And mine will be too, after this. But you guys have seen plenty of my family’s dirty laundry in the last couple of weeks, so nothing I write will shock you. I think you might actually like this.” Tisha handed the new brown leather diary to Jillian and sat on the top step.

  “Are you sure you want me to read this?”

  “Yes. But please don’t make me read it to you, and don’t even think about reading it out loud. I don’t want to hear how stupid it sounds.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? Stop placating me. It might sound stupid. It also felt, I don’t know, real, to write it. I guess Nolan would say I was in control of something. My own words. My own thoughts. Anyway, you read—silently—and I’m just going to sit here.”

  “It would be my honor.” Jillian opened the journal.

  Dear Missouri and Fidelity.

  You are long ago and far away, as they say. Did they say that when you were around? I don’t suppose you could have imagined me and my pink hair and the way I run around with my legs showing. And I mean practically all of my legs. Maybe you can. Maybe you had rebellious granddaughters like me, who did whatever they had to do to stay cool in the summer. I hear it can be pretty hot and humid in Tennessee. We don’t know the meaning of humid around here. I guess you know that.

  I was up all night imagining you. I found the diaries you left behind when you escaped. They were in the Brandt Building all this time. Can you believe it? Escaped. I don’t think there’s really a better word for it. I could politely say you moved or you followed your dream or you made life choices. But I read the diaries, so I know the real reasons you made the life choices to go far away from this place.

  I also know Decorah stayed here, because she’s the reason I’m here. Well, not the whole reason. A few other people made life choices too that had something to do with why I’m here, but a lot of it has to do with Decorah and Georgina staying here. The funniest part is that your dad (may he rest in peace) chose this place, but your mom and your sister were the two people who wanted to be in Canyon Mines the least. That’s according to what they said. But they never left. So I’m not sure what I believe about that. Couldn’t they sell the store and the house, once times were better, and find a place in Denver again? Maybe not Denver. That could be embarrassing for someone like Georgina, I suppose. Everyone would know she’d been banished from her big society house. But what about Chicago? Or San Francisco? Or lots of places where people wouldn’t know they’d once been wealthier?

  Maybe as mad as Georgina was at what Clifford did, and it seems like she was really, really steamed for a really, really long time, she couldn’t leave him here alone. That’s my theory. Missouri, what you wrote about how Loren carried your father’s broken body up out of the mine and brought him home wrecked me. Straight up wrecked me. I have to say, I was sobbing half the night. True fact. That scene is straight out of a movie. But I’m very experienced with the truth that you can be very mad at someone, even a lot of the time, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love the person.

  And maybe if Georgina couldn’t leave, then neither could Decorah. Leaving them here alone, without any of their children, was just too big a thought to bear. I honestly think that’s a possibility. And where would she go, because we’re talking truth here, aren’t we? It’s not like the two of you gave her an open invitation. She was half of what you were escaping.

  (I have to say, you three have very strange names. I wish somebody had explained that in the journals. Although these days, people are named things like Dakota and Apple and North, so who am I to say?)

  I guess an important thing to say here is that Decorah became my grandma’s grandma. I don’t know if she even ever told you she had a family. Did you stay in touch at all? She married Axel Emery. It would have been nice if they’d been
happy. Maybe things would have turned out differently down the line. Their number two daughter, Darlene, married Dudley Winfield, but he didn’t stick around long. I guess you’d say Dudley was a dud! Darlene’s daughter, Ora, married Micah Crowder. She really loved him, but he died very young. Her daughter Peggy (Margaret, if you’re formal) didn’t bother tying the knot. (Maybe after the family track record, she didn’t see the point, but I think she could be wrong on that question.) Peggy just had Brittany, who discovered I was on the way before she discovered she’d made a mistake with the guy. I’m not going to do that.

  So here I am. The women in our family who stayed in Canyon Mines don’t have a great track record with men. Or happiness. I’m kind of getting a better grip on why. I’m thinking I might like to hold out for the right guy and give marriage a try, if I ever get myself straightened out. That comes first.

  I’m not going to be like the Brandt women I know. I’m telling you that here and now. Despite learning really well how to keep a grudge, I am facing facts about why some things happen, why some things do actually matter, and that I don’t have to give up on absolutely everything.

  Because now I know Clifford is in my family tree. Nobody’s perfect, but he seems like he was very sincere. And kind. And generous. And hardworking. And spiritual. And somebody I would like to know and can be proud to be related to. And I don’t say that very often. True fact. Ask anybody who knows me.

  And Loren seems like a cool dude too. He stood by you and you stood by him, Missouri. And his heart was big enough for Fidelity. Not every man takes in pieces of his wife’s crazy family.

  Fidelity, you were so brave! Everybody had an idea what you should do, as if coloring inside the lines would solve everything. But you weren’t a color-inside-the-lines person any more than I am. You were a be-happy person!

  And you know what? That’s what I want to be. A be-happy person. True fact. Not a pretend-to-be-happy person, not a look-happy person, but a person who is actually happy.

  I don’t have a great start. True fact. (I have to stop writing that, because I don’t want to scratch stuff out the first time I write in a diary.) But that doesn’t mean I’m stuck where I’ve always been or where the women in my family have been. Not sleeping a single minute last night was worth it if I can just hang on to that one thing. I’m not stuck. And I will be happy.

  So Missouri and Fidelity, thanks for the journal. I am here. And I am going to be fine.

  Letitia (Brandt) Crowder

  P.S. The Brandt Building is so cool now. You would love it. Not only did I find your journal there, but I bought my journal there.

  Jillian sniffed. She’d been meaning for weeks to bring a fresh box of tissues out to the little end table on the porch.

  “You’re not crying,” Tisha said. “Tell me you’re not crying.”

  “Who, me?” Jillian sniffed again. “Letitia Crowder, you are going to be fine.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “I was considering finding out what it would take to color my dark hair pink,” Jillian said.

  “I know the answer.” Tisha smiled slyly. “Courage. Pure stubborn courage.”

  “In that case, I’ve come to the right person for advice.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is about finding that place where you understand you belong and know acceptance. God created us to belong—ultimately to Him but also to one another in the process.

  I think one reason genealogy is fascinating to many people is a sense of connection. Even if we don’t know these people from generations past or because our family trees have wonky branches somewhere, we can stand beneath them, the way we stand under towering oaks or cedars or pines and appreciate that they’re much older than we are and connect us to something significant outside the small part of the world we’ve experienced.

  And somehow we belong among those branches.

  When we meet someone whose last name is the same as our mother’s maiden name, we perk up. Who knows? Maybe we’re distantly related. Or we say, “My father’s family came from that area,” because who knows? Maybe there’s a connection.

  Given the population of any state or of the United States or the world, the odds of randomly meeting someone who is your mother’s distant cousin or knew your father’s family are remote, yet we always think it would be remarkable if it happened.

  We seek connection and belonging.

  We are free agents. On one hand, we choose more than we realize. Who to be friends with. Whether to go to college and where. Whether to move to another area for employment or stay close to family. Whether to buy, sell, or build a house, run for the school board, volunteer with a community group, learn to perform stand-up comedy, date, marry, or a hundred other decisions that shape our lives.

  On the other hand, some experiences and circumstances shape our lives whether we choose them or not. Whether we grow up in want. Whether we experience trauma or serious illness. Whether we benefit from or struggle against racial and economic biases. Whether we had an adult or a friend who cared at critical times in our lives. Whether we had a decent third-grade teacher! Often social, financial, educational, and relational forces shape us in unseen ways and influence the possibilities available to us at the moments when we are ripe to make choices for better or for worse.

  One of the best choices we all can learn to make is what we do with our words. The unseen consequences shed not only in our lives but into the buds and branches still forming on the family tree. Perhaps this is the most important choice of all.

  As usual, the historical portion of this story is a blend of fact and fiction. The Brandts are a fictional family, but I have endeavored to render the world in which they lived in the summer of 1893 faithfully. Several western states, Colorado in particular, rose up in ways in which their economies depended on the natural resources available in the wide expanse of their miles. Colorado had great stores of silver, and the US government was buying vast quantities as fast as they could be unearthed, while the national currency was backed by both silver and gold. Once the movement to move to a single gold standard, more popular in the East, won out, the collapse of silver mining magnified for Colorado the effects of the economic recession that settled on the entire country in 1893.

  Horace Tabor is a historical figure who lived a colorful life with two marriages, became wealthy by gambling audaciously on mining in various parts of Colorado, and was also philanthropic. When silver collapsed, Tabor lost his financial empire virtually overnight, resorting to low-wage menial labor for a few years before being appointed postmaster for the city of Denver the year before his death. He never recovered his wealth. The nature of Clifford Brandt’s work for Tabor in this story is purely fictional.

  The social services crisis portrayed in Denver in the summer of 1893, along with the mob scene culminating in the murder of Daniel Arata, were real. I drew information for these scenes from newspaper accounts and scholarly research. Denver’s proximity to the mountains meant that at the time the industry failed, thousands of men did, in fact, abruptly need assistance—overwhelming the largely faith-based social services network in place operated by two large churches which was already providing a variety of services. Once word got out that Denver was organizing to help miners, even more men from other parts of the state headed for the capital as well.

  As I read through the available literature, it struck me that the city made some good decisions—like providing temporary jobs and temporary shelter for some men—and some well-intentioned but dubious decisions—like putting homeless men on rafts to float down the river and be someone else’s problem when the money was running out. But this mix of decision quality is often true in times of regional and national crises.

  Crises also occur when we don’t make the best decisions with our words. We see them happen on social media all the time, but the truth is that most of us hear moments that make us wince even in the circles of our real-life family and friends. Sometimes these thoughtless
words come out of our own mouths, if we’re honest.

  I want to express particular thanks to my friend Jack, who read my story about stolen children, In the Cradle Lies, and shared the story of twins Maclovia and Ernestine in his family tree. It’s a saga, beginning in the 1930s, of one baby taken with no memory of her first family and the loved ones left with a gaping hole who sought her for generations—because of a longing for connection and belonging.

  My hope is that What You Said to Me will help all of us understand the power of words. We know what they feel like when we receive them, and because of that we will choose to give the best of ourselves in the words we speak to one another and create space for others to connect and belong.

  Olivia Newport

  May 2020