“You know what I’m really looking for?”
“I’m pretty sure that I do. It’s the same thing your friend Rachel came here looking for. You want to know why you weren’t worthy of your mother’s love.”
I just looked at her. Deep in my heart I knew she was right.
“But more important, it’s not what you’re looking for, Jacob. It’s why you’re looking. You’re looking because, deep inside of you, that little boy is still afraid that he’s not lovable. So sometimes he pushes love away. And sometimes he tries to earn that love. But then he resents everyone he tried so hard to get to love him. He has to. Because even that little boy knows that love can’t be earned. The only true love is grace. All else is a counterfeit.
“So let me answer your question, Jacob. Why weren’t you lovable? The answer is something you know but haven’t had the courage to believe. You see, it’s possible to know things and not believe them. The true answer is this: you were lovable. You were a darling, bright-eyed little boy who brightened everyone’s lives. Even your mother’s. You were immensely lovable. You always were and you always will be. And it was that very love you had that made you so vulnerable.”
She looked at me with piercing eyes. “You’re still him, Jacob. You’re still that sweet, bright-eyed little boy. He’s still in you. And he is still loving and vulnerable. Every time I read one of your books, I can feel his sweetness rising up from the pages like groundwater. And it’s not just me. So do millions of others. That’s why they love you. They feel it too. And so they come to you and you fill their cups. But honey, it’s time you forgot about the rest of us and filled yours.”
Suddenly I began to tremble. Then tears began to well up in my eyes. Elyse slid over next to me. She put her arms around me and she too began to cry. “You darling, sweet man. I’m so sorry for your pain. I wish I could have taken it from you. But you’ve carried it long enough. You need to let it go.”
I looked up at her. “Rachel left me. She said she loved me. Then she left me.”
Elyse nodded slowly. “Of course she did. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. It just means she fears love as much as you do. She fears abandonment as much as you do. Why else would she have come back after all these years? She’s trying to answer the same question you are.”
I wiped my eyes. “What do I do now?”
“Love yourself. Respect yourself. And have faith. The older I get, the more I see that things tend to work out. Not always, but usually. Just not in our time.”
I looked at her gratefully and she smiled. “I brought you something.” She reached into her bag and brought out a cellophane package. Brach’s star-shaped chocolates. In spite of my tears, I smiled. “Oh, yes.”
“And I have something else.” She reached back into the bag and brought out a small polished black box. I lifted its lid. On a bed of cotton there was a glossy pin, a ceramic figurine of Batman. It flooded me with emotion. “I remember that.”
“Yes. It was very special to you. I kept it at my house. You’d come over and look at it almost every day.”
“The Batman pin was Nick’s.”
“Yes. He left it for you.”
“There was a Robin pin too.”
“He kept that one so you could always be the Dynamic Duo. Even when he was in Germany.”
I rubbed my finger along the pin. “Such little things could bring such joy.”
She looked at me. “They still do.” She sighed. “So many memories.”
I took her hand. “Thank you.”
She slowly stood, holding on to my arm for balance. “Well, I better let you get on with your life. You’ve got better things to do than listen to the ramblings of an old woman.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
She looked into my eyes. “May I give you some advice?”
“Of course.”
“When Rachel figures things out, don’t punish her. She needs grace. Just like you do.”
I walked her to the door. She looked out. “Oh. It’s snowing again. It’s always good to have snow for Christmas.” She turned back and smiled. “Have a Merry Christmas, Jacob. I’m so glad you finally came home.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-One
December 30, 1986
Dear Diary,
My sweet baby was born the day after Christmas. She was small, six pounds and three ounces. She’s just seventeen inches long. She is so, so beautiful. Her birthday is two days after mine. Christmas will never be the same for me. They took her away from me the same day. Even my breasts are weeping for her. I can’t stop crying. I don’t think I’ll ever see my baby again. How could I? I don’t know where they took my baby. My life is shame. Why don’t I fight for her? Why don’t we fight for what we want?
I wonder if my baby’s new parents will ever tell her about me. I wonder if this pain in my heart will ever go away.
Noel
I took a shower, shaved, and dressed, then took one last walk through the old house. One last lap. There were so many memories. Every room had memories. Far too many to take them all back with me to Coeur d’Alene. It was just as well. Many of them needed to be left here, to die with the house. But not all. There were happy memories too, times of laughter and caring. Times of love and tenderness. I just had to uncover them and give them permission to be. To coexist among the pain. Just as I had to uncover the house from my mother’s hoarding.
I stood at the door of my mother’s room and looked at her bed. I thought of the times I rubbed her feet or scratched her arms and face with the pencil with the toothpicks. She needed grace too. She needed to be left here too.
I took the posters down from the walls of my bedroom and was rolling them up when there was another knock. I walked out and opened the door. Standing on my porch was Rachel.
For a moment I just looked at her. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks streaked with tears. In spite of her pain, my heart wanted to fire back at her with all the hurt she had filled it with. I remembered Elyse’s words. Grace.
I took a deep breath. “Do you want to come in?”
Without speaking, she nodded and stepped inside. I gestured to the couch, and she sat down. I sat down across from her. She looked at me anxiously.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I wanted to see you.”
“You rejected me. Twice.”
She looked down, and I could see tears falling from her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“You said you wanted him.”
She wiped her face, then looked up. “You knew the truth.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
She looked at me, new pain evident on her face. Then she said, “She came.”
“Who came?”
“My mother.”
I let the words settle. “Is that why you’re here? Because Noel told you to come see me?”
“No. I’m here because of something she said to me.”
“And what was that?”
“She said, ‘Don’t make the same mistake I made all those years ago. I let other people write my life story.’ ” She looked at me vulnerably. “I wanted to see if you could love me again. Like you did. And we could change our story.”
I looked at her cautiously. “Change it to what?”
She swallowed. “A romance.”
“A romance?”
“Yes, like what you said. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl . . .” She hesitated. “Boy gets girl back.”
I looked at her for a moment, then said, “It’s a bit formulaic.”
“I don’t care.”
“And the happily ever after?”
“There has to be a happily ever after,” she said. “There’s always a happily ever after when the girl finds her true love.”
I looked at her for a moment, then a broad smile crossed my face. “I can write that. But only if you’ll help me.”
A smile crossed her face as tears fell down her cheeks. Then she jumped into my arms. “Yes. For the re
st of my life, yes.”
EPILOGUE
January 11, 1987
Dear Diary,
I’m preparing to go home. My parents have come to see me. They’re cold. They did not see my baby. They wouldn’t even speak of her. I’m afraid. I’m afraid for my little one. I’m afraid for little Jacob. I wish I could take him with me. It wouldn’t be possible. I can’t even bring this diary with me. It’s “evidence” of a past that everyone has troubled themselves to hide. I can’t bring myself to throw this diary away, so I’ll just leave it in my bedroom. Maybe it will serve some purpose someday. To my little baby girl: Somehow, if you ever read this, know that I’m sorry for letting you down. To my little Jacob: Know that I will never forget you. And I will never stop loving you. I’ll visit you in your dreams.
Noel
I would have liked a redux on that USA Today Holiday Roundup interview I did in Chicago. This time I would have much different answers. I’d tell the reporter that Christmas wasn’t spent alone drinking eggnog and watching recorded games of college football.
At the last minute I flew everyone up to celebrate Christmas at my home in Coeur d’Alene. By “everyone” I mean the nine of us: Noel and Kevin; my father (yes, he got on a plane) and Gretchen; Tyson, Candace, and their son, Teonae; and Rachel and me. I had invited Elyse as well, but she had obligations with her own family.
There were a lot of stories, a lot of laughter, and a lot of tears. It was a grand celebration of auld lang syne.
There was also a lot of caroling as I played my piano for them. I’d had the piano tuned. It was perfect but I wasn’t. It had been a while since I’d played the old songs. No one cared. Even out of tune, Christmas carols have a way of sounding sweet. One song I got right was “Greensleeves.” Or the Christmas version of it, “What Child Is This?” Noel and Rachel held each other and cried.
Noel was genuinely happy. You could see it in her eyes. You could feel it in her embraces. I was glad. She deserved happiness. After I’d left her home that day, she had told her husband everything. But she did it right. It wasn’t a confessional and she wasn’t seeking amnesty. It was a reclamation of her authentic self. She was finally claiming her life as her own and standing in the light and power of that truth. No wonder she was filled with such joy.
The next June, Rachel and I had everyone back up to Coeur d’Alene for our wedding at a beautiful resort on the lake. This time Elyse came. And Laurie, of course. All my favorite people in one place. Two months after our honeymoon in Bali, I sent Noel and Rachel off to Paris while I started on my next book. I called it The Noel Diary.
I sent my ladies to Paris because I thought it might be a good place for them to get to know each other better. Hemingway went there for inspiration; I figured what better place for them to start writing their own story?
That next year I even found peace with my mother. I realized that, in a twisted way, I had held on to my pain as a way to punish my mother—a woman I hadn’t seen in decades. It’s like they say, holding on to anger is like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. I was ready to let go of my pain and live. The next Mother’s Day I took flowers to her grave. I knelt down and kissed her stone and thanked her for life. We chain ourselves to those we don’t forgive. For the first time in my life I was truly free. I also poured a bottle of root beer on Charles’s grave. He loved the stuff.
I ended up going back to Utah twice that year. Both times to cemeteries. First to see my mother’s grave, then for Elyse’s funeral. She suffered a stroke in October and passed away. Her family invited me to speak at her funeral. I was grateful for the honor. Nick, her nephew, was there. It was amazing to see him again. Somehow still felt like we were friends. As sad as I was at her passing, I am filled with unspeakable gratitude that she was still there when I came back home. Maybe God is in the details.
I don’t have the dreams anymore. I miss them sometimes, but it seems more for nostalgia’s sake than anything else. I don’t need them. I have Rachel to hold me at night. She’s all the love I need. And when I wake up in the morning, she’s still there.
Other than in my continued production of books, my life has changed in quantum leaps. Quantum leaps. It’s funny how often in my writing I use metaphors from physics to describe people or situations: gravity, black holes, magnetism. Perhaps, in the end, life is just a matter of physics. Life is, after all, Newton’s first law of motion—the law of inertia. The law states that an object in motion stays in motion in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
That’s the way we live our lives. We speed on, happily or not, in the same direction until we collide into something that alters our destination. Sometimes that collision hurts, sometimes it doesn’t, but if we’re lucky, love is that unbalanced force. Love. There is no greater force in the universe. Now if we’ll only learn to stop getting out of its way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank and acknowledge those who have journeyed alongside me with this book: Jonathan Karp, Carolyn Reidy, and the entire Simon & Schuster family. Thank you to my editor, Christine Pride, for great insight as well as remarkable patience and continual forbearance. Also, thank you to my agent, Laurie Liss, who was and is always there for me and my family. Thank you to my bestselling author daughter, Jenna Evans Welch (Love & Gelato) for her counsel and help with this book. It’s every parent’s dream to see their children rise higher than themselves, and Jenna is well on her way. I’d like to acknowledge my staff and friends, Diane Glad, Heather McVey, Barry Evans, Fran Platt, Camille Shosted, and Karen Christoffersen, for their help in sharing my books with the world.
The Noel Diary draws more from my own life than perhaps anything I’ve ever written. I have my own Noel. I am grateful to her and for all those who have helped to heal my emotional cuts and bruises, especially my courageous wife and friend, Keri.
Again, thank you to my readers. Without you, it’s just paper and ink.
Get into the holiday spirit with all of these heartwarming stories from Richard Paul Evans!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
©TRACEY EVANS
Richard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box and the Michael Vey series. Each of his more than thirty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than thirty million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, four Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award, and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, not far from their five children and two grandchildren. You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RPEfans or read his blog at www.richardpaulevans.com.
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ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS
The Mistletoe Collection
The Mistletoe Secret
The Mistletoe Promise
The Mistletoe Inn
The Walk Series
The Walk
Miles to Go
The Road to Grace
A Step of Faith
Walking on
Water
The Broken Road
The Four Doors
A Winter Dream
Lost December
Promise Me
The Christmas List
Grace
The Gift
Finding Noel
The Sunflower
A Perfect Day
The Last Promise
The Christmas Box Miracle
The Carousel
The Looking Glass
The Locket
The Letter
Timepiece
The Christmas Box
For Children and Young Adults
The Dance
The Christmas Candle
The Spyglass
The Tower
The Light of Christmas
Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25
Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen
Michael Vey 3: Battle of the Ampere
Michael Vey 4: Hunt for Jade Dragon
Michael Vey 5: Storm of Lightning
Michael Vey 6: Fall of Hades
Michael Vey 7: The Final Spark
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