by Terri Kraus
The driver of the old blue Chevy Impala had been drunk—more than twice the legal limit in the state of Pennsylvania. They had discovered that during the autopsy.
Elizabeth had died instantly. She didn’t have her seat belt on. She always complained that the seat belt wrinkled her blouse.
A massive collision like that wrenches the internal organs from their moorings.
Emma had died on the way to the hospital.
Jack had suffered a broken ankle. When the car had tipped, he was on the pavement. One open door caught the ankle just so, and had cracked two small bones. He was bruised. He was cut.
He was alive.
They were dead.
It was not my fault.
If he had been more observant, he would have seen that car. He could have swerved. Maybe all his drinking the week before had dulled his reaction time. Who could tell? Maybe if he had never touched alcohol, he would have snapped the wheel quickly and allowed the Chevy to miss them completely.
If only he had been looking.
Jack didn’t cry. He never cried at the cemetery. Too public. Never in public.
Maybe it was my fault. I could have prevented it. I could have done something to save them.
He stared at their names.
It was all my fault.
And then he tapped at his pocket and slowly withdrew the pint bottle of vodka he’d brought with him.
It seemed only fitting, he thought, to do what he was about to do.
Leslie unclenched her fists. She tried to remember what Pastor Blake had said about confronting the demons in her life.
“We all have demons,” he’d said. “Some are big. Some aren’t. And God is ready to help, with His awesome power. But you have to ask for strength. He wants us to ask.”
Dear God, please give me what I don’t have.
“So, you get ready for a fight, Leslie, because I’m bringing it,” Randy all but spat, his face close to hers.
Leslie would not recall until much later, when her blood pressure had returned to normal, and only after Alice told her that she was inside her soon-to-be-restaurant and had witnessed the whole thing, but when Randy finished making his threat, Leslie—all 128 pounds of her—grabbed Randy by the lapels of his jacket and actually hoisted him, for a second or two, right off the ground.
She had read somewhere about a mother who had lifted an entire car after it had fallen on her child. That must have felt like this, she thought to herself, almost detached from the reality of it all.
She dropped him, unceremoniously, but kept hold of his jacket and said in an icy, stone-cold voice, “You try that, Randy, and I will fight you forever.”
Randy’s eyes had widened.
“You can have visitation. You can see her when the judge says you can see her. But—listen to me, Randy—you will never, ever get custody of Ava. Do you hear me? NEVER!”
Leslie looked at his eyes. Where there was once bravado and bluster, where there had always been bullying and intimidation, there was something else. Leslie had never, in their entire marriage, seen it in Randy’s eyes. It was fear.
“You are nothing but a bully. I’m sorry that your wife can’t have children. But don’t think that you’re going to hand Ava to her as some sort of possession that you have to give away. You don’t. You haven’t seen her in all this time and now you come back and try to assert your rights as a father? You’re a big bully, Randy, and I’m not going to tolerate it anymore. DO YOU HEAR ME?!”
Randy nodded.
She let go of his coat, and he shook his arms and patted down the ruffled fabric, as if being hoisted off the ground was a normal occurrence, as if he was used to being manhandled by a woman half his size.
Leslie had nothing else to say, partly because she had shocked herself nearly speechless. She never once imagined that she would stand up to Randy—stand up to him and make him back down. She was not the sort of person who would do that.
But she had done it.
There was a large crack, she realized, in who and what Randy had pretended to be all these years—a big, gaping crack Leslie could now see through. She might even be able to drive a car through it.
Randy couldn’t clamber into his car fast enough. He gunned the engine, rolled down the window, and shouted back at her, “I’ll see you in court!” Then he sped away, his tires screeching at the stop sign at Main Street.
Leslie wondered, as she watched him drive off, if her heartbeat would ever return to normal.
Jack stood and held the bottle in his right hand. He grasped the top with his left and he twisted it slowly, the bottom of the metal top breaking with the smallest grating noise.
Jack unscrewed the bottle top. He could smell the whiff of alcohol, even outdoors, even with a breeze; he could smell it and almost taste it again. It had been his favorite drink at one point, being clear and nearly odorless. He’d assumed that since it didn’t have a telling odor, like whiskey, no one would smell it on his breath. Of course, he was totally wrong. The alcohol, as it burned off, left a sweetly sour smell to the breath of those who indulged. It was like the smell of decay, or decomposition, like the smell of a swamp on a humid day.
He held the open bottle in his hand and slowly dropped to his knees. His hand trembled more than it had ever trembled. The liquid danced in the neck of the bottle.
He looked at the gravestones, refusing to let his vision cloud with tears.
“I can’t bring you back. I know I can’t bring either of you back. I would have changed places with you that day. But I can’t change what happened. I’m sorry. I lost both of you and I am so very, very sorry. My heart breaks every time I think of you and what I have lost.”
He looked at the liquid, wavering in the bottle, anxious to exit, anxious to be inside him, to be doing its work. The tremor in his hand did not stop.
He turned his wrist, ever so slightly, his arm extended, and the clear liquid, the giver of warmth, began to spill and splash on the dying grass.
“I can’t bring you back,” Jack said, his voice only a raspy whisper. “But I can live a life that is worth something. I could throw away what little I have, but that would be of no honor to you. I can make something of what I have—as a testament to both of you—as a sacrifice to you.”
He waited. There was the faint sound of traffic, carried by the slight breeze.
“This is my sacrifice.”
He dropped the bottle, now empty, and raised his head to the sky. “God, I know You probably can’t hear me after all I’ve done … but I need You.”
There, on his knees, he bowed his head. “Please hear me. Please help me. Please let my life be a testament to these two.”
And Jack remained where he was, for a long time, until his knees grew stiff and cold.
He stood up. He picked up the empty bottle. He walked back to his truck. He started the engine and began to drive home, to his life, begun anew once again.
Amelia Westland
Lyndora
Butler County, Pennsylvania
March 8, 1885
Mr. Middelstadt—Samuel—has proposed marriage to me. He did not bend on knee as is imagined in stage plays and theatrical performances, but sat beside me in his carriage and took my hands and said it would be a good thing for the two of us to be so united, that it would bring him great pleasure. He has needs only a wife can meet, and he offers such a fine existence, with a good house, stability and money and prestige.
It was scarcely unexpected, owing to his most attentive behavior, his generosity toward me, with lovely gifts and a delightful courtship, but is nearly overwhelming for a poor orphan girl from a tiny farm in Butler County.
I must pray and ponder my decision. I am fond of Samuel. If my answer to his proposal is yes, then I must bid Julian and his pa
ssionate kisses farewell. Yet Julian has not offered me an honest relationship nor a solid future. Perhaps our passion is amplified in the illicitness of it all, with my willing complicity.
Yet, despite the shortcomings of Julian and what he proposes, it is such a temptation. The life he offers is one of uncertainty, yet letting him go is unimaginable. His eyes devour me and I am swept away with ardent desire by his words of love. Pray, what do I do? Follow my heart or choose the safe and proper path?
Or do I remain steadfast, singular, stay as a teacher, inhabiting the life God has given me to lead and such gifts with which to serve Him?
How I wish that God had provided some sort of tablet, visible to His children, on which He would scribe His will or desires. But alas, there is no such thing.
(I have read what I have written and have come to the realization that I must hide this diary, for if anyone were to find these words, other than myself, I might be scandalized. I shall endeavor for this to remain hidden from human eyes forever.)
Call unto me, and I will answer thee,
and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
—Jeremiah 33:3
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JACK WENT BACK TO WORK the following Monday, not sad, but sober, and determined to stay that way. He made no proclamations, no fancy speeches, to friends or to Earl or to Leslie.
Jack had disappointed too many people in the past.
For a long time, people had excused him. “It was such a tragedy,” they’d say. “I can’t blame him for wanting to forget.”
But after all the missed court dates, after failing to complete assignments, the dropped cases, after becoming abusive at work—people had had enough, had given him enough sympathy. He had driven drunk. He had gotten arrested several times, and had shouted and thrown punches. His parents had provided bail money. He had borrowed mortgage payments. He had acted inappropriately with other men’s wives. He had wrecked two more expensive cars, those times all his fault. He had lost good friends and had made new ones—new friends who hastened his descent.
Jack had found it easy to slide downhill. And in the careening downward, he had hurt everyone who tried to slow his slide.
He hadn’t wanted to stop.
But now he did.
He saw himself standing in front of two doors: one leading to life, and one leading to destruction. He desperately wanted to choose life.
This morning he stood in the rear of Frank and Alice’s, staring at another door, the massive door, the valuable antique door, the beautifully carved wooden door with hidden hinges and two hardened deadbolts.
He had called in a locksmith, who had spent only a few minutes looking at both locks before making his recommendation.
“Tear the door down,” he’d said bluntly.
“You can’t open an old lock?” Jack had asked. “Your Web site said, ‘We can open any lock.’”
The locksmith had gathered up his tools, slowly slipping them back into a black leather satchel. “Oh, these locks aren’t that hard to break. Both are good ones, but not terribly sophisticated, compared to today’s models.”
“Then why can’t you open them?”
The locksmith had motioned Jack to come closer. He’d pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and had focused it on the keyholes, first the bottom one, and then the top.
“What am I looking at?” Jack had asked.
“You’re looking at the work of a person who really wanted to keep people out of this space. See that sort of puttylike stuff?”
“Yes. I saw that before. I thought it might be … just old putty.”
“It’s not. Someone used a torch, probably an acetylene torch. I think they had them back then, or some sort of hot welding equipment. Anyhow, they welded the keyholes shut. I don’t think Houdini could get these open. So … my advice to you—tear the door down. Although it is a very pretty door.”
Jack had ignored the door for several days, but felt drawn to it, as if there were some sort of wonderful secret behind it. Alice had suggested leaving it just as it is. “Some hidden treasure perhaps? Our customers will love the mystery. It could be like a carnival sideshow,” she’d said.
Frank wanted the door saved. “If we break it, we pay for it—and that old door has to be worth several thousand dollars. I say leave it. Alice will love you for it. She adores mysteries.”
Mike Reidmiller had stopped in one afternoon, and when Frank again suggested that it might indeed be some loot from the treasures of Diamond Jim Brady, one of Butler’s most flamboyant and rich philanthropists and investors, Mike had gotten excited.
“He loved diamonds,” Mike had said. “I did a paper on him in high school. They said he had more than two million dollars’ worth of diamonds when he died. In today’s money, that would be like fifty million dollars. And after his death, they only found a few of his diamonds—a couple of rings and stickpins. The rest of it—all those diamonds—vanished. This building is the right age. He died in 1912, I think. They looked in all the banks in town and didn’t find a thing. Maybe that’s what’s back there.”
Jack had dismissed that as implausible … but the idea had begun to grow on him.
Maybe there are diamonds there. Maybe he had his workers lock up his valuables, thinking he would be back to claim them. Maybe the room is stacked high with diamonds.
Then he’d dismissed it all again, attributing it to false hope and wishful thinking.
But standing in front of the door, locked tight like it was, made opening it all that much more tantalizing to Jack.
There has to be a way to do it that doesn’t involve major construction.
Getting into that space would be easy, if you didn’t mind a little demolition. Jack knew he could cut through the thick four-by-four timbers, the two of them guarding each side of the door. But he might have to add extra bracing and supports for the wall, since the interior wall, he determined, was load-bearing. He could cut a narrow opening beside the timbers, cut just one of two studs, and squeeze through. That would not be difficult, but no one wanted to pay for the demolition and the repair work. And what made that option more complicated was that on one side of the door, there was electrical service. On the other side of the door, was plumbing—one of the main waste water pipes for the building. That meant rerouting either or both, neither offering an easy, inexpensive job.
So now Jack simply stood and stared.
What if I make small cuts … here … on this wall and on the opposite wall inside the storage room … just big enough for my hand to get through? Those holes could be patched easily. Then I could reach around with a pry bar and lift out the hinge pins. If they aren’t painted over. If I can get leverage on them. If they haven’t a locked bottom ring. If I can twist just so and work without seeing what I’m working on.
He rubbed the side of his face with his hand.
A lot of ifs and maybes.
He put his hand on his tool belt.
Kind of like my life so far.
He was off the clock now, so staring and thinking were not draining anyone’s bank account. He walked over to the wall, put his palm against it, and pressed. No give, no slack. He moved six inches farther. He pressed again. There was a slight sway. No stud. Finding studs with electronic stud-finders was made difficult because of all the lath and small nails used in the era of construction of the building.
Today builders like me would simply install wallboard sheets—plaster between two sheets of thick paper covering—in four-feet-by-eight-feet lengths. Back then, builders would nail in thousands of strips of wood, called lath, at right angles to the studs, and apply wet plaster over the lath. Tedious work, solid construction, hidden studs.
Jack got a very long screwdriver from his tool kit. He placed the tip of it on the wall and pounded. It easily pene
trated the plaster, nicked a lath strip, and was soon against the opposite wall in the storage room. Jack pushed harder and the screwdriver went through easily. He pulled it out halfway and maneuvered it around. There were no obstructions in the space between the walls.
If he figured right, six inches to the right of the hole that he just made would be where the door hinge would be.
Tomorrow, I’ll bring my hole saw. If I can’t get to the hinges, then there’s only one hole to repair.
“Pastor Blake, I need a lawyer.”
Leslie sat in her usual chair in the pastor’s office, her hands folded, a brown cardigan sweater over her shoulders, her purse at her feet. Sunlight was streaming in through the golden stained-glass windows, casting diamond-shaped patterns on the floor. She could hear a train rumble past on the tracks in the valley below.
She had just recounted the episode with her ex-husband to the pastor, trying to make her manhandling of Randy seem less dramatic that it was.
“I only sort of picked him up.”
Pastor Blake let out a chuckle. “But you stood up for yourself, Leslie. That’s huge. That’s a big step. And no panic?”
She shook her head no. “Some hyperventilating afterward. But everything else—all my typical symptoms—stayed away.”
Now Leslie returned to her real worry concerning that incident. “He’ll get a lawyer. He is good friends with several attorneys. He called them ambulance chasers. I thought they were mean-spirited, but they won most of their cases. He’ll get one of them to represent him. Probably for free. They all went to school together. And if he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it.”
“But he has no legal basis to seek custody, does he?” Pastor Blake asked, obviously knowing that Randy did not.
“No. But … there is my past. You know, with my medical issues. My emotional issues. The panic attacks happened all the time when we were still married. He could make a case just on that, I’m sure. I read about these things all the time. Judges do crazy things. And he’s very well known. He grew up in the town of Greensburg and his father was some sort of long-term councilman. He has friends all over.”
