The Letter Keeper

by Charles Martin

  Gunner stared up at me with that goofy grin he does. I shook my head. “Don’t look at me like that.” He lay down and grunted.

  Ellie raised a finger. Her tone serious. “Dad, this does raise the larger question of why you’d want to.”

  Angel nodded in agreement.

  “Why I’d want to what?”

  “Have a conversation with one of us versus both.”

  I looked at one, then the other. “Wouldn’t you like to be able to have a conversation with me sometimes without the other one there?”

  They shrugged. “No. Not really.”

  “Why?”

  They looked at each other. Then me. The answer obvious. “We’re sisters.”

  Gunner grunted again.

  I scratched my head. “Oh.” I felt like I was swimming in an estrogen lap pool.

  They stood and turned to walk out. Angel again, “We done? I’m way behind.”

  I leaned against the counter and sipped my coffee. This had not gone as I’d intended. I’d never been more confused in my life. “I guess so.”

  They walked out and then down into Angel’s room in the basement, where I heard the door shut—followed by raucous laughter.

  About then it occurred to me that I’d been had.

  When I pushed open the door, they were sitting on the bed. Covering their mouths. Angel was holding her stomach.

  As I leaned against the doorframe, reality started to sink in. “So you two are yanking my chain. Right?”

  Ellie laughed the most beautiful, high-pitched giggle. Angel gave me another stop-sign hand. “I’m about to pee myself.”

  “So do you want me to talk with you one at a time or both together?”

  Angel crossed her legs like an accident was imminent. The two looked at each other, then smiled innocently at me.

  I turned to leave. “I need a manual.”

  Angel got the words out before the laughter. “For what?”

  “You two.”

  Nothing was making sense. I pointed up. “She upstairs?”

  Angel nodded and mimicked someone typing. Having a conversation with Casey meant climbing into the attic, which, at this point, was easier said than done.

  I climbed out of the basement to more raucous laughter. When I reached the ground floor, I was shaking my head. And staring at two more flights. Laughter was all I heard.

  They’d make it. They’d be okay. I, on the other hand . . .

  I grabbed the package from my publisher and climbed to the second floor, caught my breath, and then made the final push up into the attic, where I heard her fingers tapping the keys at the speed of hummingbird wings. Winded, I landed on the balcony and leaned on the railing. She spoke through a smile. “Want me to call someone? Or should I just start chest compressions? I can’t remember . . . is it ten and one or five and two?”

  Chapter 20

  I stepped inside her room and handed her the package from New York.

  She stared at it but didn’t touch it.

  “It won’t bite you.”

  Slowly, she peeled open the padded envelope and held up the promotional copy. In the business, we call it a galley. The cover picture was a close-up of half her face taken as she stood atop the mountain peak behind the Eagle’s Nest. The photographer had focused on a single scar on the left side of her beautiful face as well as the jagged, wind-carved, snowcapped peaks that stretched out behind her. On one side, pain, hardness, and torment untold. On the other, wonder, majesty, rare beauty, and all possibility. It was there, atop that mountain, that she’d first heard the title whispered inside her: The Resurrection of Casey Girl.

  She brushed her fingertips across the cover, sucked in a quick breath, which had been taken away, and finally whispered the last cry of her heart. “I’m so scared . . .” She shook her head and said no more.

  “Of?”

  “Being known.”

  “For?”

  “What I truly am.”

  “Which is?”

  I waited.

  “Used up. Disposable.” She held up the book. “Who could love me after reading this?”

  “If they don’t”—I brushed her hair out of her face—“you don’t want them.”

  My words bounced off her. She spoke while studying the cover. “Is this a mistake?”

  I sat next to her. “There’s a thing that happens when we start to believe the lies about ourselves, and when we think other people believe them too. Those lies become our prison. The bars we see through. They hold us captive. It’s like some giant hand holding our head beneath the surface of the water. Every few minutes it’ll let us up, only to sink us farther the next go-round. A vicious cycle. In my experience, only one thing on planet earth breaks the power of that hand and flings open wide the prison doors.”

  She nodded, whispering, “The truth?”

  “And until you speak it with your mouth, out loud, you’re bound.” I eyed the book. “Casey, you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. To endure what you did and not only live to tell about it but actually tell it. Your story will set not only you free but countless girls like you who believe the same lies. Every tearstained, horrific, and blood-bought page will save lives. Literally rip prison doors off their hinges.” I hefted the book and brushed the cover with my hand. “This isn’t just a book. It’s a rescue mission. You and your beautiful and unconquered words will personally walk down into hell, loose the shackles, and walk others out into the sun.”

  She shook her head and looked away. As if the thought were too good to be true.

  I continued, “Think like your enemy a second.”

  “What?”

  “If you were your enemy, would you want this to be published?”

  Her face revealed she’d never had this thought. I continued, “If I were your enemy, I wouldn’t want the world to know this. I’d want to keep it hidden. Want you to keep your mouth shut. Want to make you afraid that no one ever will or could love you after they’d read it. But truth is, I could never make you as afraid of me as I would be of your words. So I vote we hack off your enemy and publish this thing in as many countries as we can.”

  Her response was quick and unrehearsed, which meant honest. “You promise to watch over me?”

  This was the second time she’d asked.

  “Yes.”

  When she looked up, the tears were real. As was the tremble in her lip. “I don’t ever want to go back to—”

  I stopped her. “You’re not. Ever.”

  She leaned into me, laying her head on my shoulder. “You think there’s really a guy out there who, after reading all this, would ever want what’s left of me?”

  “I think the entire male race would be crazy not to.”

  She palmed away the tears and tried to smile. “I’m not sure who’s more crazy, you or me, for hoping you’re right.”

  “If I were your enemy, there is one thing I’d want more than anything else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Casey’s walk out of hell would take longer than most. And while I could rescue her body, her heart might take a while. “If I could render you hopeless, kill your desires, and destroy your dreams, I could crush you—which would allow me to continue doing what I want to do, when I want, to whomever I wanted.”

  She bit her lip and the anger flashed. Which was a good sign.

  Footsteps sounded as Angel and Ellie climbed the steps, hopped on the bed, and wrapped their collective arms around her.

  Casey looked at me. “What if they laugh?” She laid her hand flat across the pages. “At me?”

  I nodded. “It’s a risk we take.”

  Her head tilted sideways. “We?”

  “Us writers.”

  The revelation surprised her. “Is that what I am?”

  “Truth is, you’re a better writer than me.” I knelt, eye level, and waited until she made eye contact. Then I told them a story I’d never told anyone. When I finished, she held the book in her hand, afraid
to open it. After a moment, she lifted the cover and peeked inside, afraid to look but wanting to.

  She asked, “Did you?”

  Halfway through writing her manuscript, as the weight of telling her story became real to her, Casey had asked me, “Will you write the foreword?”

  “Me or David Bishop?”

  She’d smiled. “What’s the difference?”

  Writers, many of whom spend a lot of time alone behind screens, just need to know they’re not alone. So I agreed.

  Angel and Ellie had not known I’d agreed to do so. They leaned closer, eyes wide as Casey flipped to the page, saw my words in print for the first time, and held back a sob. Maybe then she knew I was in it with her. “Read it to me?”

  Chapter 21

  The Resurrection of Casey Girl

  Foreword

  Years ago, I was working in Italy. I’d heard of Michelangelo’s David but never seen him. So I bought a ticket and walked down a long hallway lined with what look like half-finished sculptures. Huge square chunks of veined marble with forms of people being released. Works he never finished. I thought, What a shame. A waste. Then I turned a corner, and there he was. Towering. Perfection. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever looked at a piece of stone that took my breath away. No matter how long I sat and stared, I could not understand how human hands did that. How did Michelangelo know David was in there? Hidden in the rock. Spotless. No blemish. Just waiting for the sculptor’s hands to fling wide the prison doors.

  Only one other time in my life have I felt this way. And the source of that awe you now hold in your hands.

  From the moment we’re born, life chips away at us. With every hammer stroke, we watch in horror as the pieces that once made us fall to the ground. Soon we stand amid the rubble. The fragments. The shards and slivers. And we think to ourselves, I need that. I can’t leave that here. It was once a part of me. I’m no longer whole. I’ll never make it without it. So we spend much of our time chasing or collecting the pieces that break off, those that are stolen, or the ones we leave behind. Pretty soon, the pieces we carry are more than our hands can hold, so we throw a bag over our shoulder and stuff it full. Eventually a backpack. Before long, we’re reduced to vagabonds scouring the earth. Tormented by the fear that we’re incomplete, never whole until we find every single piece. Soon our pack is bigger than us and we’re bent over, inching along. A beast of burden walking under the crushing. Focused on what’s missing rather than what’s revealed.

  But every now and then, one brave soul comes along and risks what the fearful won’t and never will. Despite the possibility of open rejection, abandonment, criticism, mockery, laughter, and shame, she lifts her pack off her shoulder, empties it before the world, and lets strangers sift through the pieces. Holding each by hand. Gemologists studying her imperfections under a magnifier. Every piece a word spoken.

  When Michelangelo freed David from the cold marble cell that held him, the ground below the scaffolding was littered with pieces. Pieces that once made up the rock but not David. We know this because when finished, Michelangelo didn’t sweep all those discards into a pile only to hang them in a pack on David’s back. Why would he free him only to curse him through all eternity with carrying the marble walls of his own prison?

  For reasons none of us understand, Casey has suffered the pain of the hammer and chisel, which makes her uniquely and singularly qualified to show the rest of us that we’re better off without all that deadweight. That despite the scars on the surface, there’s something beautiful, perfect, and without blemish just inches below.

  Her majestic, powerful, soul-cleansing, pain-riddled, and triumphant words woven through a tapestry of sweat-soaked and tearstained pages are a masterful mosaic made up of all the broken pieces that mirror the whole. Stand too close and see only jagged rocks. But back up . . . and a giant killer emerges.

  Casey Girl.

  Writers are not like other people. We are the piece-keepers. We gather and guard. Holding fast throughout all eternity the discarded pieces that whisper the majesty and wonder of what is. What was. And the ever-elusive and exceedingly dangerous truth: what could be. We alone carry and share them. Carving pieces into letters that make up the words that heal us. And once they are carved, whether by hammer, chisel, or damp velvet cloth, we spill them selflessly across the earth’s table, where they walk the hurting from broken to not. From unable to breathe to laughing. From sickness of the soul to tears dripping off the corners of a smile. From lost to known and accepted in the knowing. This is the matchless and immeasurable power of our words. That’s what we do. We wander the earth. We unearth David. We slay giants. For we alone are the keepers of the letters that set us free.

  —David Bishop

  I closed the book.

  Casey tucked her knees into her chest and laid her head on Angel’s lap, rocking back and forth, her eyes staring ten thousand miles behind us. In the entirety of my life, I’d never heard anyone cry like that. I’d like to think what I heard was a cleansing. Niagara washing her from the inside out. And while I wanted to reach in and hold her, I knew better. I could not ease her pain. So I stood and watched her shake and heard an almost inhuman sound emit from the pit of her stomach. Something was loosed. Something I couldn’t see. A shackle she’d been carrying but wasn’t any longer.

  Chapter 22

  I made it to the Eagle’s Nest in good time. My body was healing and most of my strength had returned. I was starting to feel more like me. That did not mean I wasn’t breathing hard. I was. But my lungs were letting me push my body, and I was starting to put on muscle and take off fat. Gunner stood next to me. Not breathing hard. He looked at me like we’d just taken a walk in the park. Evidence that he, too, had healed.

  I was standing at the railing, Colorado stretched out before me, rehearsing my lines when Bones appeared over my shoulder. I’d not heard him coming. He said, “Trying to get your nerve up?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You afraid she’ll say no?”

  “No. I just . . . Summer’s had a hard go. She deserves the fairy tale—to be asked rightly. By a knight who can speak in complete sentences and not bungle the words or drool down his chin.”

  He stood staring, finally acknowledging what stared back at us. “Peaceful.”

  “Like the pain and the hurt can’t climb this high.”

  He reached in his jacket pocket and retrieved an envelope. Then studied me a minute. “I know you have questions. Doubts even. Why I didn’t tell you about Marie.” He weighed his head side to side. “Were I you, I’d doubt me too.” He handed me the letter. “I don’t have your gift with words, but now that you’re healthy, I’ve attempted to explain. Give you the backstory.” A shrug. “I’m not sure anything justifies my reasons . . . but there they are.”

  We stood a moment, breathing the cool air. Then he turned, walked to the stairs that descended to the trail, and turned. “It’s been killing me for fourteen years. I’d rather it not kill me any longer.” He paused, choosing his words. “I don’t want to go through the rest of our lives with this standing between us.” He pointed to the letter. “I’m asking you to forgive me. And to do so . . . you’ll need that.”

  He descended the stairs and began picking his way down the rocks like a cat. Ten years my senior and stronger than any thirty-year-old I’d ever met.

  I turned the letter in my hands, the piercing in my chest returning. When I looked down again, Bones had become a speck in the distance. The letter felt heavy. I knew he meant well and part of me wanted to read it, but the pain in my chest would not let me. Not now. Too soon. I needed space. Time. While my body was healing, portions of my heart felt raw. So I slipped it in my pocket and stared out across the world and back into memory.

  The next morning Summer clicked on my light at 5 a.m. for my ascent up the mountain of pain—and found me dressed. But not in running shoes. She rubbed her eyes. “You okay?”

  I was wearing dress jeans, a
black leather jacket, and a fitted light blue shirt with a collar, which Angel had told me was “in my color wheel.” Whatever that is. I stood. “We leave in forty minutes.”

  “We?”

  A nod.

  She smiled. Evidently liking the mystery. “Where are ‘we’ going?”

  “Telling you that will ruin the surprise.”

  She pressed a finger to her lips and considered me. A look of confusion. “Who dressed you?”

  “Me.”

  A laugh. “Not in this lifetime.”

  I relented. “Angel.”

  “Figures.”

  She ran her fingers through my hair. “Did you actually put product in your hair?”

  “Well, Angel said . . .”

  She sniffed my neck where I’d sprayed the cologne Angel and Ellie had bought me and walked out laughing.

  My voice followed her. “You don’t like it?”

  Ninety minutes later, we stepped into the plane where our chef had prepared her favorite: eggs Benedict. She put one hand on her hip and raised the opposite eyebrow. “What do you want?”

  I laughed.

  We landed in New York City two and a half hours later, where a car drove us to her apartment to pick up what few items she’d left behind. Some memorabilia, show prints, and her tap shoes. She wanted those most of all. Under a brisk fall day, we walked Central Park, ate lunch at a café, and sipped a cappuccino while watching the polar bears frolic through the glass of the park pool. Every few minutes I’d notice her studying me out of the corner of her eye. She did not like not being in control of our schedule. Around one o’clock, the driver returned us to the airport. Thinking our adventure over, she let down her guard and said, “Thank you for this. It was very thoughtful.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Two hours later, we landed again, and when she exited the plane into a balmy seventy-eight-degree afternoon, she turned with suspicion. “This doesn’t feel like Colorado.”

  “That’s because it’s not.”

  She looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Where are we?”