Only then does it hit me that I’d told him I love him too. Last night, I’d conveniently managed to avoid it. This morning, it had just come out, as naturally as if I’ve said it every morning for years. I wasn’t up all night thinking about it, analyzing and strategizing. I just kind of blurted it out. Except that I hadn’t. I’d said it slowly, steadily, confidently, as if I’d known it all along. Do I mean it? I must. I’ve learned in my past two relationships that those revelations don’t come in big, dramatic moments like hollywood would like you to believe. No, they creep in virtually unnoticed. You just look at the person one day and know, the way you know that they have green eyes and light brown hair, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I reach for the pot of freshly brewed coffee. As I finish pouring myself a cup, I feel arms circle around my waist. “Good morning,” he whispers. “Good morning,” I reply, turning my head to see him smiling down at me. “Coffee?” “I’d love some.”
If there is any awkwardness on his part, he hides it well. The ease of being with him both comforts and worries me. This is someone who could hurt me. “How about I cook us some breakfast?” Greg suggests, reaching to refill his cup. “Actually, I’m starving! How can I help?” “Well, what do you have in here?” He peers in the fridge as I’d done twenty minutes before. “I don’t want to just take things from your fridge, in case you need them.” “I have no meal plans that can’t be adjusted, so take whatever you’d like.” I find it endearing that this man had slept in my bed but feels funny going through my fridge. When I laugh and he gives me an inquisitive look, I come clean. “I guess you’re right. Does that mean I’m entitled to anything in your fridge?” “Hmmm, I guess it does.” I kiss him on the lips. I watch as he cooks up two omelets with the comfort of someone who’s been using this kitchen for years. “I was thinking we could scan those letters today,” he says setting our plates on the table.
Chapter 13
We make our way to Greg’s house, where he makes us each another cup of coffee before grabbing the letter from his grandfather’s journal. “I could have honestly laid in bed with you all morning,” he says smiling at me over his mug. “But it’s a good day to get things done, too.” I tease him. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t be doing anything,” he laughs and I swat his arm.
Greg’s scanner turns out to be significantly better than mine, and I’m glad we waited to deal with the letters until we got to his house. We examine them again under the zoom feature. “These definitely look like they were written by a woman,” Greg observes. “But not the same woman,” I finish. He nods. “The signature on yours definitely says AJS.” “Which would be helpful with some context, perhaps, but without it, the possibilities are pretty much endless.” “Right, it’s a start, but not much of one. Perhaps once we get it translated.” He types up a quick email to Della, his colleague, which I am tempted to read over his shoulder, but try to appear to be nonchalantly avoiding. “Ok, we’ll see what she says.” Greg looks thoughtful, almost sad. “Are you ok?” I ask, touching his arm gently. “Yeah, I just really want to get to the bottom of this. It was so important to grandpa. Even after everyone else figured it was a lost cause, he spent the rest of his life trying to figure it out. He never gave up on finding them, or finding out what happened to them. I feel like it was the only thing that he felt was unfinished by the time he passed. He left me everything. This house, all of his memories and collections. It’s the least I could do.”
I don’t know what to say. For me, solving this was a curiosity. Yes, I lived in the Sheffield’s old cottage and now had the connection to Greg, and therefore his grandfather, but it had all started with an unusual lock on a door in my spare room. For Greg, this was a personal mission, a family quest. Why had I not seen it this way before? I suddenly feel foolish, and a little selfish. I take his hand. “We’ll figure this out,” I promise him. I don’t know how, but I know there is no other option. “Grandpa would have loved you. And you would have loved him.” “You miss him don’t you?” “Every day. As an adult, he was my best friend and mentor. I thought it would ease, over time. It’s been seven years, but there are still times I forget he’s gone. I find something that I can’t wait to share with him, only to get to this office and remember it’s mine, not his anymore.”
With the email sent, all we can do was wait. I want to ask him about the rest of his grandfather’s journal, but I don’t want to push it. My phone buzzes in my pocket, a text from Grace. “Hi stranger, you guys still coming to family dinner on Saturday? Remind Greg too.” I feel guilty. I haven’t even thought to text Grace in the last few days. “I’ll be there, and I’ll remind Greg.” “Grace wants to remind you about dinner on Saturday,” I turn to Greg. “She texted you to tell me?” he laughs. “Not exactly, she texted to remind me, and said to remind you too.” I smile. Greg nods, “Come to think of it, the last number she had for me was probably my parents’ landline. We just always ran into each other in town.”
Once again, I feel the sensation of being a newcomer. In fairness, I am. But I’ve assimilated so quickly that I sometimes forget that they all go way back. It isn’t jealousy, not really, just like I am on the outside looking in. They all grew up here, local businesses passing down from one generation of the family to the next, and I am the big city girl, more or less, just moving into town. While I never won any popularity contests at home, I always managed to be part of the group. Here, I’m not. Despite being the new kid in town, I already feel at home. I enjoy the quieter, more personal feel of the small town, the fact that the people running the bakery and the market already recognize me. I enjoy running into familiar faces on the street, and the fact that I can just walk right up to Billy’s door unannounced and be warmly welcomed. In short, it feels a bit like an extended family. But how do they view me? I wonder. Being a writer and a psychologist often has its pitfalls. People constantly think you’re turning them into a character into your latest work, or analyzing their every move. Truth be told, I’ve never based a character on someone I knew, at least not consciously.
“While we’re here, do you want to look at grandpa’s journal some more?” Greg breaks into my thoughts. Since he’s brought it up, I can’t resist. We head up to the attic, the stairs creaking beneath our feet every step of the way. There is something comforting about being up there, surrounded by the memories, old photos, and family keepsakes. It’s like stepping back in time for a few moments, walking alongside his grandfather and those he knew.
Greg has cleaned, or at least organized, since I was last up here. I see a faded armchair chair that must have been hiding under boxes, and Greg motions for me to sit down. He sits next to me on the arm of the overstuffed recliner. It reminds me of the kind my grandparents had in their house when I was seven or eight years old. I sink back into it, as I remember doing then. Greg hands me the journal, bookmarked to the page where we’d left off. “You don’t want to read it first? In case there’s something private in there?” “It’s his journal - it’s all private,” he grins. “Hen, he’s been dead for seven years. Anything in here is old news, and I’d share it with you anyways. Besides, you read faster than I do.” Always practical. “Ok.”
I start to read and am rewarded almost immediately. “Julienne and the girls are gone,” it reads. I look at the date on the entry. February 25th. The day before the letter was sent to him. If Julienne disappeared the day before he received a letter in French - a letter so important that he kept it until the day he died - it was a hell of a coincidence. I look at Greg, trying to guess his thoughts. He is still staring intently at the journal, either lost in contemplation or focused on reading the rest of the entry. I continue on…
“I hadn’t seen her in about five days, which was unusual so I went over to check on her. I knocked a few times and got no response. She rarely left the house, and she almost always told me when she did. If it was just for a few minutes - to run and grab milk or bread, perhaps - she’d let Lil
watch the younger girls. If it was anything more than that, Ed or I would stay with them. I had a bad feeling. I was about to try the back entrance when I remembered she’d locked the staircase from inside. Besides, if they were there, I didn’t want to scare the girls - they were already afraid of monsters in the stairwell, or so she said.
I called Teddy at the station to ask him to come take a look. The force has been a mess since the chief disappeared. They can’t get organized to search for him properly. James might have been an SOB, but he was a good officer. I don’t really trust anyone but Teddy anymore. When he arrived, he came to the same conclusion I had - the house was empty. Even with all of the knocking, I didn’t hear Jasper barking. We got a warrant to enter - easy enough, since nobody at the station was paying much attention to anything. Half of their things were gone. They were gone. Jasper was gone. Everything was neat and orderly. It actually looked like she’d cleaned. The lock on the upstairs door was fully intact. If there is a key, it’s well-hidden. We searched everywhere and found nothing. The windows were locked from the inside with no sign of a breakin. They have simply vanished. Millie agrees. She thinks they’re safe, and she has great instinct. I brought her to the house to take a look - I needed to know what she thought, though I’m not sure why. It was too much on my own, perhaps. She had liked Johanna - they’d been friends even - and she’d been saddened by her disappearance, though she kept it in. It’s easy for me to forget that the loss of James and Johanna is her loss too. She’d met Julienne and the girls a few times, and they’d gotten along well. I have to find them. I think Teddy is on my side, so at least I have some help this time. He always had a soft spot for Jul. I tried Ed’s apartment earlier and got no response. I’ll try again later, but I don’t have a good feeling.”
We finish reading within moments of each other, and for a minute - it feels like twenty - stand in complete silence. “Holy crap,” Greg is the first one to speak. “There are so many questions in there. And so much information.” I say, putting to words what he was unable to. He just nods. “I think I need another cup of coffee for this,” I add, staring into the bottom of my empty mug. “I think I need a Knob on the rocks for this,” Greg replies, finally showing a hint of a smile. “Sit,” I gesture, getting up slowly from the all too comfortable recliner and grabbing his mug. I smile at him, thinking again what a good looking man he is, and wondering what he is doing with the likes of me. “Thanks,” he mumbles. “Mind if I use your notebook? I need to organize some thoughts.” “Be my guest.”
I descend the stairs, breathing in the musty odor that stirs up each time we move about the attic. I return a few minutes later to find Greg writing determinedly. “I know you were kidding about the Knob, but I thought our coffee needed a bit of a boost and found some Bailey’s in the fridge. I hope you don’t mind.” “You’re an angel. Seriously.” I marvel once again at my confidence with him. It’s unlike me to just open a man’s fridge and help myself unless we’ve been together quite a while. I rather liked this new boldness in myself, and just as importantly, Greg seems to like it too.
“What are you writing?” I ask, peering over his shoulder as I take the spot on the recliner arm that he previously occupied. “Letters of undying love to you,” he teases, looking up at me. “Actually, it’s a list of questions and facts. There’s so much going on in this entry.” I look at my notebook where he’d been writing: Grandma knew Johanna - that was a surprise, though I’m not sure why. It makes sense really. If the men were off working, why wouldn’t the wives spend time together. And surely, they met at social functions. Suddenly a thought pops into my head. “Greg, did your grandfather ever tell your dad about any of this?” “If he did, dad never mentioned it. This isn’t really his thing. He’s more of a typical guy, I guess you’d say. Alex inherited that. They like nothing better than working on the house, watching sports, and drinking beer. All of the love of history that my grandpa had skipped a generation and went straight to me. Although…” I look at him, waiting. “My Aunt Molly has a bit of it in her. She’s out in Oregon, and we don’t talk that much - she and my dad aren’t super close either. But if grandpa told either of his kids, it would have been her. And she’s the older of the two, so she was born closer to when this all happened. Would be worth giving her a call…”
I let him stir it around in his mind a bit, and look back at the list: Teddy? Still alive? No break in, no crime. Disappeared 2/20-2/25. Note on 2/26 - Julienne. Sharpe? He is thinking along the same lines I am - is there anyone still alive that might know what happened. “They left on their own. Nobody cleans the house, packs neatly, and locks the windows from the inside while they’re being attacked.” “No, they don’t. She knew she was leaving and she lied to him.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “She didn’t lock the back door because the girls were afraid of monsters. She did it because she knew she was leaving. Maybe she wanted to assure that nobody could get in the house. Maybe she was hiding something. But she did it for her, not for them.” He sounds almost insulted, and I understand why. She’d worried his grandfather, lied to him, knowing the truth all along.” “So the entrance being walled up - coincidence?” “I don’t know, that is odd. But if it was done recently, maybe Linda didn’t like the chance of entry into Gerri’s room from the outside. Even with the lock.” Another good point. Someone who really wanted to get in could probably have broken the lock, and Linda was a single mother with a young child.
Greg’s phone buzzes, and he read the text out loud: “Check your email.” She has his cell number too? It must have shown on my face. “I told her to text me if she had any questions and gave her my number. Easier to keep checking my email.” “Good thinking,” I try to sound nonchalant, but clearly don’t succeed. “Hen, sweetheart, she’s married with three kids, and trust me, she doesn’t hold a candle to you. Besides, who’s ex of five years texts her weekly,” he pokes my stomach jokingly. He has a point - I have no right to be upset about a coworker of his, when I still talk to Brent frequently. “Ok, ok,” I concede the point. He opens the email, and we fall silent.
“First letter, Hennie’s,” it says, followed by the translation. “May whoever finds this letter take good care of my house. I finally came back, after all this time, and my granddaughter has grown up here, as I was supposed to. This house was once a home full of laughter - the laughter of my sisters and I, until tragedy struck. I’ve been blessed with just one child; she has no siblings for her to run and play with. Please, fill this house with love once again. Someday, I hope you find the key to the lock. I cannot bear to tell our story, but somebody should. - AJS”.
“Something very important is behind that door, Greg.” “That letter was intentionally left in that book for the right person to find.” “How did she know the right person would find it?” “Easy, the wrong person wouldn’t go through the trouble of opening it and having it translated.” He’s right, once again. “My sisters. Before tragedy struck. Greg….” “It’s one of the girls,” he finishes my thought. “So they were still alive. Or at least she was. It has to be Annaleigh. The first and last initials fit.” “But she said her granddaughter was raised in the house. Surely, Billy or someone would have known.” “Not necessarily. It was, what, fifty or sixty years later? She would look completely different, could have changed her name. Most of the people here weren’t alive when it happened, and any that are would have been children then, and very old now. How old would she be?” “She was eight in 1926. If she’s still alive, she’d be 96 now. Let’s see the translation on your letter,” I continue on. Perhaps it will answer some more questions.
“Dearest George, I’m sorry I had to lie to you, to leave without telling you, but we had to. Nobody back here could know, not even you. The girls and I are safe. We will be ok. He is with us too. And Jasper. I hope you can read my French ok. You were learning so well, I am so proud. Someday, we will go home, and you can come visit and speak to us in French. I cannot tell you where we are now. I’
ll write if I can. Please don’t tell anyone. Here is the key. Please keep it safe. I cannot have it on me, in case they find me. Do not use it unless I write again and ask you to. Just hold on to it for safekeeping. Please, for me. Thank you for everything.”
Greg’s eyes are tearing up. This is so deeply emotional for him. “The key. To the lock - it must be. He had it all along, and never used it. If he did, it is the one thing he kept from me. He didn’t even tell me on his deathbed.” I put my arm around him. “Greg, your grandfather was, from everything you have told me, a man of honor. She trusted him with something she’d trust no one else with, and asked him, begged him, not to say a word. He kept that secret for over seventy years, and never told a soul. It tore him apart what happened to them, and maybe he would have found out if he’d opened that door, but he didn’t’. He didn’t even allow himself to know. Instead, he let it eat away at him, and he did it to keep his promise to her. That’s incredible.”
He leans his head against my shoulder, and I tighten my arm around him. “You’re right. It’s just such a shock. He could have gotten to the bottom of everything, and he didn’t. He waited all these years hoping they’d come back, or that he’d hear from her to use the key.” “So the question is, where is the key now?” “It must be here. He didn’t throw anything away,” he gestures to the whole of the attic. Suddenly, he jumps up. “He did tell me! “He told me and I didn’t even know it.” He hurries down the attic stairs in the direction of his bedroom.
Johanna's Secret Page 18
