The Space Between Words

by Michele Phoenix

  Mona went on. “Lost finds lost. That much I can stand by. But . . .” She stopped speaking as Grant slung Connor over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and leapt across the creek with him, eliciting a shriek from his nephew. He put him down next to a pile of sticks, and they carried them to their makeshift dam.

  “I think I was talking about myself,” Mona said. “When I warned you about Grant. Fred and I—we were as lost as it gets. I was insecure and scared of taking risks, and he was immature and needing to feel loved. Our combination of lost was doomed to self-destruct. But that doesn’t mean yours is too.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. “You were right, though,” I told her, needing to believe it. There’d been relief in heeding Mona’s warning, in deciding that the wisest course was to maintain a safe distance from Grant. “I’m not just lost. There’s a part of me that’s broken, and . . . broken doesn’t make for good relationships.”

  “You are not broken.”

  “Wounded, then.”

  “Wounds heal.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine being able to live beyond the horror someday while every moment, to some degree, was still steeped in its agony. “Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they can’t.”

  She grasped my upper arms and made eye contact with me. There was nothing belittling on her face. Only concern and determination and something that looked like love.

  “You are strong,” she said, intensity in her voice. “Stronger than you think.”

  I felt tears burning my eyes. “I’m not.”

  “You may not feel like it, but . . . Jessica, you carry within you the strength of those who have loved you best. I’m guessing Patrick was chief among them. You are not broken,” she said with so much conviction that I almost believed her. “You’ve been shaken.”

  I laughed at her choice of words and heard the cynicism in the sound. “You make it sound so benign.”

  “But this isn’t over yet. You’ll find your way back to yourself, Jess, I’m sure of it. And if you and Grant can help each other toward that kind of healing . . .” She smiled. “Sometimes lost needs lost—because lost understands lost. Will you please ignore what I said before? I was projecting my mistakes onto you. And you and Grant—you’re the furthest thing from Fred and me.”

  It took awhile longer for her to release my arms. I couldn’t look at her, so I let my eyes linger on the birds lined up on the phone wire above us, the clouds rolling in from the west, and the knee-high dam made of sticks and rocks now spanning the creek.

  “I promise not to speak of this again,” Mona said. “But I wanted to set the record straight, just in case. What I said before—it was self-centered and misguided.”

  Connor leapt across the creek with a little help from Grant, jabbering about forts and floods and victories. “I’m not in a relationship with your brother,” I said quietly.

  “Just in case,” Mona said again.

  I caught Grant’s eye. He looked suspiciously from me to his sister. She waved and yelled that she was ready to head in.

  “We’ll dismantle the dam and be right there!” he called back.

  Mona and I walked across the field to the B&B together.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “I’M GIVING THIS ONE MORE SHOT, THEN DECLARING that we’ve done our best,” I said to Grant later that evening. We were in the lounge at the bottom of the stairs with our laptops again. Clive had lit a fire in the fireplace and I sat on the floor, leaning back against its hearth, enjoying the warmth.

  Grant hadn’t said much since our return from the creek. I’d caught a couple curious looks as we sat around a table at the local pub for dinner, but Connor and Mona had steered the conversation to trivial things. She was upstairs putting him to bed now, which tended to be a rather long process, and Grant and I had met by unspoken accord to dig a little more into Adeline’s Bible pages.

  “Everything okay with you and Mona?” he asked.

  I paused in my typing for a moment and opted for a simple, mostly true answer. “Yep.”

  He got the message. Pulling his laptop closer, he smirked and said, “All right. Nice chat.”

  I continued to search for various combinations of key words, grouping them together in quotation marks in an attempt to reduce the number of hits. On a whim, I added “Kent UK” to the series of key words I entered into the search bar, remembering that Charles’s family had settled in that county. I scrolled down, expecting again to find nothing pertinent in the results, and saw an entry whose title read: “Sandhurst Baptist Church Reveals Historic Donation.”

  I clicked on the link, and the first few lines I read were:

  Pastor Ken Slater of Sandhurst Baptist Church revealed this week that a donation made to the parish in 1972 will be offered for public viewing in the sanctuary on Rye Road, Sandhurst, Kent. The single page, torn from an historic edition of a French Bible, arrived in Sandhurst in what might best be described as an intriguing manner.

  Grant must have sensed the excitement. His eyes were on me when I looked up. “Found something?”

  I couldn’t speak, so I nodded instead. Grant was sitting on the floor beside me in an instant.

  “Whoa,” he said after reading the first lines of the article. He moved closer and continued to read aloud.

  Pastor Slater invites curious minds in Sandhurst and beyond to join the congregation at a social on May 7, 2002, during which the entirety of the Huguenot Bible page’s known history will be revealed. It’s a tale that extends back in time to England’s great wave of religious refugees. Light snacks and refreshments to follow in the annex. All are welcome.

  We sat motionless and silent for a while, rereading the short blurb on my screen. I could hear Grant taking the kind of loud breaths that had signaled deep concentration since the beginning of our search. They came more quickly this evening, the adrenaline of discovery likely heightening his senses as it had mine.

  Grant finally retrieved the laptop he’d left on the couch and sat back down next to me, typing furiously. He brought up Google Maps and entered “Sandhurst Kent UK” into the search bar. We watched the map appear, its red marker on a spot directly south of us. He clicked Directions and entered our B&B’s town of Burham into the second space, then waited for a route to appear.

  “Less than an hour,” he said. “Wait.”

  The suppressed excitement in his voice got my attention. I leaned closer as he zoomed in on the map and pointed at a town not far from Sandhurst. “Isn’t that where Charles’s son lived, according to his testament?”

  “Hawkhurst . . .” I racked my mind, visualizing the notes I’d taken. “Yes. Grant, yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.”

  I hurried upstairs to my bedroom and found the notepad I’d used at the Rochester museum. I dropped it on the floor next to Grant when I returned to the sitting room, standing over him with my arms spread wide. “Hawkhurst.”

  He laughed and I sat back down, trying not to let our discovery get my hopes up too high. I retrieved my laptop and clicked on the link to Sandhurst Baptist Church in the announcement I’d found. The church’s home page opened, and I scrolled down.

  “There’s a ‘Contact Us’ link.”

  There was something so carefree and joyful in Grant’s eyes when I looked up at him that I felt my hope buoyed by sheer proximity.

  “It may not be from Charles’s or Julie’s pages.” I had to say it.

  “But it could be.”

  “It could be.”

  “Well, write them a note!” Grant said when I’d just stared at him for a while. “If that Pastor Slater is still there, he may be willing to give us an encore performance of the story.” He smiled again, so broadly that dimples I’d never noticed before appeared high in his cheeks.

  “What if he isn’t there? Or if they’ve sent the page to a museum or something? This article was written in 2002 . . .”

  “We won’t know until we ask.”

  I clicked on the link and composed a
short note explaining who we were, that we were in Burham for a couple more days, and that we had some interest in the page from a French Bible that had been mentioned in the local paper on May 7, 2002.

  “Should I say more than that?” I asked Grant. “Something about the pages we have or Adeline’s story?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s wait and see what he answers.”

  I clicked Send, and we sat without moving for a bit longer. That we may have found another connection to Adeline—and maybe Julie—was dumbfounding.

  I kept the laptop in my bedroom so I could check my emails first thing when I woke up. I hadn’t anticipated the sleeplessness that had me checking for new messages at regular intervals throughout the night. The answer from the pastor of Sandhurst Baptist Church landed in my inbox around six the next morning.

  Dear Jessica,

  We still have the Bible page displayed in the church. You’re welcome to visit, but it is a long way from Burham. If you’d rather I email you the information I’ve gathered, I’d be happy to do so.

  Kind regards,

  Ken Slater

  Grant must have spent the night as I had. I found him in the sitting room when I came down an hour or so before our scheduled breakfast time, nursing a large mug of coffee, his eyes a little bleary.

  “He answered,” I said, sitting next to him on the couch and showing him the response from Pastor Slater.

  “Want him to just send the information by email?” he asked.

  I didn’t give it a moment of thought. “No—I want to go see for myself.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Leave after breakfast?”

  I loved the look of adventure on his face. “If this page in Sandhurst is connected to the ones we have . . .”

  “Adeline would be pleased,” I agreed.

  “Imagine two sets finding their way back to each other . . .”

  I wrestled with myself, wanting to tell him what had been occupying my mind for much of the night, but unwilling to give space to the emotions. “Patrick would love this,” I finally whispered.

  Grant looked at me but said nothing.

  “He’d have left last night—probably would have started yelling at us to get ready and shoving all our belongings into the car the moment we found that article about Sandhurst.” I laughed. Then the enormity of missing him cloaked my levity with loss. “He’d have loved this,” I said again, as if the words could make him more present.

  “What was he like?” Grant asked, sincerity in his voice. “If you’re okay talking about it.”

  It struck me at that moment that I wanted Grant to know him. They’d have probably become friends if they’d met, Patrick drawn to Grant’s no-nonsense practicality and Grant entertained—and likely annoyed—by Patrick’s indefatigable gumption.

  “He was . . .” I searched for the right word. “He was luminous,” I finally said. “Witty, adventurous, intuitive.” I glanced at Grant, gratified that he seemed to be listening. “He’d get these inklings—these ridiculous notions would cross his mind—and he’d somehow will them into becoming a reality. His store. His art studies in Paris. He loved beauty,” I said, and realized the sentence encapsulated his spirit. “Creating it, finding it, sharing it . . .” I let my voice trail off as Patrick’s face drifted to the foreground of my mind, his energy and optimism a nearly palpable force. “He was obstinate too. And sometimes so blunt that he made people angry, but . . . he was luminous.”

  I could see Grant measuring his next words. “And you two were . . . ?” He gave me an awkward smile and hunched a shoulder, almost apologetic in his attempt to be considerate.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised by what he was hinting at. “We were friends. Just friends.”

  “I figured, but . . . just wanted to be clear.”

  After a few moments of silence, I said, “People were always making assumptions about us, and I get why they did. There was something between us that just . . . clicked. He dragged me out of the restrictions of being responsible and measured at all times and . . .” I laughed. “And I think I dragged him kicking and screaming toward a reluctant sort of restraint.”

  “So this trip,” Grant said, kindness in his tone. “This hunt for Adeline’s survivors. It’s actually more like Patrick than like you?”

  “I guess his impulsive streak was contagious.”

  Grant’s smile turned compassionate. “I guess it was.”

  I glanced at him and shook my head, trying to clear it of the seeds of anger. “Death is so . . .” I searched for the right word. “Final. It’s just so final. I keep having these reflexes. Wanting to tell him about the cathedral yesterday and the food and . . . all of this,” I said, pointing to the laptop where Pastor Slater’s email was still displayed, then to the exquisitely decorated room that would have sent Patrick into creative overdrive. “But . . . death is just so final.”

  “It is.”

  The tears I’d been stifling pushed past my reserves. I covered my mouth with my hand and tried to steady myself, but my shoulders shook with restrained sobs.

  Grant seemed to hesitate for a moment, then moved closer. He took my free hand in an awkward gesture and held it in both of his. “I’m sorry,” he said. They were simple words, but they soothed the jagged edges of Patrick’s absence.

  When I could breathe again, I let my head fall back against the tall backrest of the Victorian couch and whispered, “I miss him.”

  Grant nodded but didn’t speak. I leaned forward to swipe at new tears, pulling my hand from Grant’s grasp. Then I looked at him, hoping he’d understand, and whispered despite the caution tugging at my conscience, “I’m just so scared that we’re not going to find anything. I hear Patrick in my head telling me to keep hunting—to keep following the journal, the Bible pages, the . . .” I swallowed hard against a sob. “But I’m terrified that I’m going to miss what I’m supposed to find.”

  I bit my lip and strove for composure as Grant pulled me into his chest, rested his chin on the top of my head, and held me there.

  For the first time in a long while, I felt anchored. I sat immobile, letting the tears run down my neck, unwilling to break Grant’s hold by shifting enough to wipe them away. My body softened into his as tension seeped out of my shoulders.

  “We’re not finished yet,” he said after several minutes of silence.

  I pulled away—reluctantly—and reached for a box of tissues sitting on the end table beside the armchair. “But we don’t know if we’ll find anything. If that page in Sandhurst doesn’t belong to the same Bible . . .”

  “We’ll keep hunting,” he said.

  “Why?” I finally voiced the question that had been lingering just out of reach in my mind. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Going off on a wild-goose chase with a woman I didn’t know two months ago, dragging a sister and a five-year-old nephew along?” He grinned.

  I bit my lip. “Yeah—that.”

  He leaned back into the corner of the couch and crossed his arms, his eyes on me but his thoughts clearly elsewhere. “I guess I get the sense that there’s something more to this, that maybe the box was supposed to find me too.”

  I caught myself smiling. “That sounds a little mystical for a trucks-and-hammers kind of guy.”

  “And then there’s you,” he said, serious.

  Panic fluttered in my stomach. I tried to disarm it with humor. “The woman you nearly committed to an asylum three days after she arrived in Balazuc.”

  It took him a while to answer. I fiddled with the fringe of a pillow I’d pulled onto my lap and hoped he’d let the topic slide.

  “Mona gave me the same warning she gave you,” he finally stated.

  Silence stretched taut again. Then Grant said, “I think she suspects there may be more to this collaboration than a shared curiosity about the Baillard family.”

  “She’s a sister,” I said, hoping my tone was light and airy. “Seeing romantic pitfalls around eve
ry corner is part of the job description, right?” I suddenly regretted the vulnerability that had enabled this conversation. “I assured Mona that her concerns were absolutely unfounded,” I said when Grant didn’t respond, my flippant tone jarring on the heels of our more serious conversation.

  He sat for a moment without saying anything, then nodded imperceptibly and pushed off the couch. “I’ll go tell her we’re driving to Sandhurst.”

  He went upstairs to our rooms.

  TWENTY-SIX

  WE WERE ON THE ROAD BY TEN, OUR GPS SET FOR SANDHURST, our minds preoccupied with what we’d find when we got there. Sandhurst Baptist Church was a couple miles out of town, its red brick and hedgerows blending into the fields and woods surrounding it. We pulled into its gravel parking lot with a few minutes to spare before our scheduled rendezvous with Pastor Slater.

  As Connor had finally fallen asleep after whining most of the way there, Grant cracked the back windows so we could leave him where he was.

  We passed through a wrought iron gate and went around the end of a hedgerow to access the graveyard that nearly circled the church. Then we wandered slowly among the tombstones, some so old and worn that only a trace of their engraving remained.

  The crunch of car tires on gravel alerted us to the pastor’s arrival.

  “I’ll come to you!” he called over the shrubbery separating us from the parking lot. He looked to be about sixty years old, his gray beard and hair cropped short. He’d worn a slate-colored suit to meet us, and his bright-yellow tie spoke of a cheerfulness that hadn’t translated in our email exchange.

  “Have you been waiting long?” he asked as he reached us, extending a hand to Mona and to me, then to Grant.

  “Lovely to meet you, Pastor Slater,” Mona said. “We got here a bit early—I hope you don’t mind that we wandered into the graveyard.”

  “Not at all!” he answered, his voice deep and resonant, his accent soft and somehow welcoming. “And I’m Ken, by the way. No need for formalities. You must be Jessica, then?”

  “That’s me,” I said, putting up my hand like a schoolgirl, my poise a bit rattled by the excitement of seeing the page donated to the church. “This is Grant and his sister, Mona.” I pointed to our car. “Connor is still sleeping in the backseat.”