“May I help you?” she asked kindly.
“You’re Noel Ellis?”
“Ellis was my maiden name,” she said with a guarded smile. “And you are?”
I reached out my hand, my eyes locked on hers. “My name is Jacob Christian Churcher.”
She responded as if electricity had shot through me and shocked her. She dropped my hand. She looked afraid.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Do I know you?”
I glanced over at the plumber, then back at her. I pitied her that even now she felt that she had to live her life as a lie. “Actually, you probably don’t remember me,” I lied for her sake. “But you were briefly friends with my parents. I just wanted to tell you that my mother, Ruth Churcher, passed away.”
She swallowed. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “And your father?”
“He’s still alive,” I said. “He’s doing well.”
“Well, give him my condolences, please.”
“Of course.” For a moment I just looked at her. I was certain that she knew who I was. And I was pretty sure that she knew that I knew that she knew who I was. So there we were, playing out a charade like actors on a front-porch stage with a one-plumber audience fueling the sham. I suddenly detested the man.
“All right,” I finally said. “That’s all I wanted to say. By the way, you should know something about that baby girl who was born in my parents’ house. They named her Rachel. She’s a good woman with a good heart. Just like her mother. Her mother would be proud of her.” I looked into her eyes. “I just thought you might want to know that.”
Her eyes welled up. The plumber looked at me like I was speaking Chinese, but Noel was clearly fighting her emotions, which still escaped in tears.
“Have a good day.”
Noel wiped her eyes. “Good-bye,” she said softly.
I was turning to go when suddenly something clicked inside me. Something angry and strong. Something unwilling to let the evil of the past win. I turned back around.
“Noel.”
She looked intently into my eyes. “Yes?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of a lovely young woman who held me when my world was falling apart. She was the one woman who loved a scared little boy even when her own world was crashing down around her. That woman in my dreams held me in the dark when I was afraid. She kept me company when I was alone. And she loved me when I believed that I was unlovable.”
My eyes suddenly welled up. “She was the best woman I have ever known. And I don’t care if the world made her live a lie, but the truth of who she is is far too great to be put down by its shame and deceit. I love that woman with all my heart. And I told myself that if I ever saw her again, she would know that.”
I lifted the diary. “This is yours, Noel. It belongs to you, not them. Not to the lie. You wrote in here that you would rather live an honest life than an admired one. You deserve both. It’s your life, not theirs. It’s your right to claim it.” I offered her the book. “It’s time to let go of the shame and walk free. The truth will set you free.”
The moment was frozen. The plumber was utterly dumbstruck. But I saw something light in her eyes. Maybe it was courage. Maybe it was indignation. Maybe it was just exhaustion, but she reached down and took the diary. Her diary. Then she looked back up at me and said, “My dear, darling Jacob. My sweet Jacob.” Tears fell down her face. “You have no idea how much I’ve worried about you.” She moved forward and threw her arms around me. She cried for several minutes. Then, when she could speak, she said, “Please, Jacob. Rachel was here. Can you help me find my baby?”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Eight
December 10, 1986
Dear Diary,
Around me people are counting down the days until Christmas. I’m counting down the days until I give birth. Last night, Mr. Churcher, Jacob, and I watched A Christmas Carol on television. The one with George C. Scott. I feel like the young Ebenezer Scrooge, sent away to boarding school. My parents haven’t reached out to me once. They’re religious but not godly. Their religion is nothing more than an idol of their own making, an image. A façade. I used to be afraid that they wouldn’t let me come back home. Now I have no desire to ever live under the same roof with them again.
Noel
Noel and I talked openly for the next hour. Kevin came and went, baffled by what was happening and totally clueless as to how to respond. I told her about how I had come down from Coeur d’Alene after my mother’s death and found Rachel or, more correctly, how she had found me.
Noel said that she had driven by the old house a few times. She even saw my mother once but didn’t wave. She doubted that my mother would have even known who she was. As we talked she clutched the diary like an actor holding her Oscar. “I can’t believe it came back,” she said.
Finally I told her that I needed to go. “Rachel lives in southern Utah. In Ivins.”
“I know Ivins,” she said. “It’s near St. George.”
I nodded. “I can write her address down for you.”
Noel turned to her husband. “Kevin, go get me a notepad from the kitchen.”
“Sure.” He stumbled off.
With Kevin gone, she looked a little more relaxed. “Thank you for not giving up on me. It is so good to see you. And Rachel.” She shook her head. “I’d drive down to see her tonight but . . .” She paused and glanced back. “I think my husband and I have a lot to talk about.”
“I’m sure you do. How will that go?”
“I don’t know how it will go with him, but I know it’s what I want.” She looked into my eyes. “No, it’s what I need. There comes a time when carrying the secret becomes more painful than the truth it’s hiding. That’s where I am. I just needed a reason to open up.”
Kevin lumbered back out carrying a steno pad and a pen. “Here you go,” he said, handing them to his wife.
“Thank you.” She handed them to me. I checked my phone for Rachel’s address and wrote it out on the pad. “I hope you can read that,” I said, handing back the pad. “For a writer, my handwriting is horrific.”
“It’s fine,” she said. She smiled. “The last time I saw you, you were scribbling then too. You always had trouble coloring inside the lines.”
“Some things never change,” I said.
We hugged. Her embrace felt wonderful. Better than a dream. “Thank you,” I said.
“No. Thank you. I love you.”
I just looked at her and smiled. “I know. I really know. I love you too.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Nine
December 17, 1986
Dear Diary,
Today is my baby’s due date. I can’t believe she hasn’t come yet. The doctor said that she was waiting for Christmas. I told him that being born on Christmas wasn’t anything great. He laughed and said I should have thought about that last March. The shame returned. It always returns. I should have thought about a lot of things last March. I told him that I wasn’t really thinking about Christmas back then. The truth was, I was only thinking about how much I wanted someone to love me.
Noel
The night I returned from Phoenix, I had looked up where Rachel said she lived. Ivins, Utah, is a bedroom community northwest of St. George, the fourth-largest city in Utah. The Ivins area was once populated by the Paiute Indians and was originally named Santa Clara Bench, but the residents later rejected that name and came up with Ivins after a Mormon apostle named Anthony Ivins, who said that he didn’t object to their using his name as long as they spelled it right.
Ivins’s climate, like St. George’s, is typical of the desert southwest and significantly warmer than the rest of the state.
I took the St. George off-ramp at about a quarter to ten and drove west in the darkness toward Ivins, arriving just a few minutes past the hour. To me the landscape loo
ked more like Sedona than Salt Lake. It took me just twenty minutes to find Rachel’s home.
As she had told me, the home was older than those around it and, not surprisingly, more conservative in design and landscaping. It was one floor with a tan stucco exterior. The yard was all gravel rock and surrounded by a red cinder-block fence on both sides.
Even though it was only a little past ten, the house was dark, the only illumination being a single porch light and the ankle-high solar lights lining the walkway. I could see inside the house through a large picture window that had neither blinds nor curtains. Fortunately, Rachel’s car was parked in the driveway.
I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. Twice. The second time I knocked, a hall light turned on. Then I heard footsteps shuffle up to the door. There was a short pause, followed by the sliding of a dead bolt. Then two more lights came on over the porch and the door opened to reveal an elderly man in a thick, umber terry-cloth robe. He was shorter than me, bald, with wire-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of a sizable beak, and dark, bushy eyebrows that seemed as wild as an overgrown bush. All he needed was a pitchfork and he could stand in for the old man in American Gothic.
He pointedly glanced down at his watch, then said gruffly, “What do you need?”
“I’m here to see Rachel.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Rachel’s.”
He didn’t flinch. “Rachel’s already in bed.”
“Sorry, I’m from Coeur d’Alene. It’s an hour earlier there.”
He didn’t find my insight amusing.
“Sir, I just drove down from Salt Lake to see your daughter.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to drive back.”
“I thought she was exaggerating,” I muttered to myself.
“Excuse me?”
Just then I heard Rachel’s voice. “Dad, who is it?”
He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. I shrugged. “Sorry. Looks like I woke the baby.”
Rachel walked up behind him. She froze when she saw me.
“He says he knows you,” the old man said.
“He’s a friend.”
I looked at her.
“This is Jacob,” she said softly.
“The guy?”
I looked at her. “The guy?”
“I need to talk to him,” she said.
He looked at me with disdain, then said beneath his breath, “ ‘As the dog returns to his vomit.’ ”
I looked him in the eyes. “Did you just call me a dog and your daughter vomit?”
Again, not amused. He turned and shuffled away.
I turned to Rachel. “The guy?”
“What are you doing here, Jacob?”
“The question is, what are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“You live here, or you’re incarcerated here?”
She didn’t answer.
“I saw your mother,” I said.
Anger crossed her face. “So did I. She didn’t know me.”
“I know, she told me. She was sorry. It broke her heart.”
“Yeah? Well, it broke my heart too. Do you know what it feels like to have your own mother reject you?”
“Yes. Actually, I do.”
She paused. Then she said more softly, “At least my warden of a father isn’t throwing me away like I was disposable.”
“She was a scared teenager, Rachel. Tell me that life hasn’t ever made you do something you didn’t want to.”
She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “What do you want, Jacob?”
“You know what I want.”
“And that is?”
“You left without saying good-bye.”
“I said good-bye in the note.”
“Now that’s where I’m confused, because I write things all the time that people twist and manipulate, but when I tell someone that I love them more than anyone I’ve ever known and that I don’t think my fiancé—”
“I’m engaged, Jacob.”
“—I don’t think my fiancé really likes me—”
“I was drunk.”
“Sometimes it takes a little alcohol to be honest.”
“I’m engaged.”
“Engaged or not, I know the truth. So do you. You don’t want to be with him. You want to be with me. And I want to be with you.”
She started crying.
“Am I wrong?”
She just kept crying. When she could speak, she said, “What I want doesn’t matter.”
I looked at her in astonishment. “Then what does?”
“Doing what’s right.”
“And marrying someone you don’t want to marry is right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, honey,” I said gently. “I love you. I’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”
Again she didn’t answer. Finally, I said, “All right. Answer me this, and I’ll leave you alone. If you hadn’t already told him yes three years ago, would you still answer yes now?”
She just looked at me. After a long silence I said, “There’s your answer.”
“I didn’t answer.”
“If you have to think about whether you want to marry someone after being engaged for three years, you have your answer.”
Her eyes again filled with tears. “I made a commitment.”
“No, you made a commitment to make a commitment.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“No, it’s not. If you were married, I wouldn’t be standing here, and you know it. You know I would respect that.”
She started crying harder.
“Rachel . . .”
Suddenly she shouted, “Yes!”
I looked at her. “What?”
“Yes. I would still say yes to him.”
She looked as surprised by what she’d said as I was. I was breathless. She might as well have hit me in the stomach with a Louisville Slugger. After a moment I exhaled slowly. “Okay,” I said softly. “Okay.” The pain of her rejection jolted my entire body. It was like I was that child again, standing by the side of the road with my suitcase. I wanted to vomit.
Rachel looked at me, trembling. “Jacob . . .”
I couldn’t look at her. I was unable to speak.
“Jacob.”
I looked up at her slowly. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
I turned and slowly walked back to my car. Rachel was still standing in the doorway wiping her eyes as I backed out of the driveway.
In spite of the hour, I drove all the way back to Salt Lake City. When I got back to my mother’s house, it was almost three in the morning.
CHAPTER
Thirty
December 24, 1986
Dear Diary,
Today is my birthday. I turn eighteen today. No one here knows. Those who do know—my parents and Peter—don’t care. I told little Jacob. Only Jacob. He smiled. It’s Christmas Eve. I read tonight about Mary. The story is different to me this year, because I’m also with child. I’m also about to give birth among strangers. And they too will take my child from me. I’m not comparing myself with her—I’m too much a sinner. I’m comparing my pain. I hurt so much. And this home I’m in, my sweet Jacob—what will become of him? Mrs. Churcher is not well. She doesn’t come out of her room anymore except at night. She’s grown so thin. I don’t know who will take care of Jacob now. I’m praying that his father will be what his son needs, because Ruth is gone. Maybe I shouldn’t judge her. But I too am losing my baby—though my baby will still be out there, with someone else watching her grow up.
Noel
DECEMBER 21
I woke with the sun streaming in through my bedroom window, striping my face with light. I had gone to sleep in my bed. My childhood bed. It was appropriate. I hurt then too.
I realized that I had woken because someone was knocking at the door. I just lay there for a while. Then, when the pounding didn’t stop, I got u
p, pulled on my pants and shirt, and walked barefoot out to the front room and opened the door.
Elyse stood on the porch, shivering a little in the cold. She held a small brown sack. I must have looked as bad as I felt because she studied me with obvious concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just got up.”
“I read you writers keep strange hours. It’s past noon.”
“It was a long night.” I rubbed my eyes. “I got in around three.”
“From Arizona?”
“No. Ivins.” I looked at her. “Do you want to come in?”
“Please.”
She walked inside, panning the room as she did. “It looks nice in here.”
“Thanks.” I motioned to the couch. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you.” She sat down on one end of the couch. I sat down in the middle.
“I was glad to see your car here this morning. I was afraid you’d gone home and I would never see you again.”
“I’m leaving this afternoon. But I wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.”
“That makes me glad.” She looked around. “You really transformed this place. It hasn’t looked like this for twenty-something years.” She looked back at me. “Did you find your father?”
“Yes.”
“How did that go?”
“It went well. It was like you said it would be.”
“I’m glad for that too.” She looked at me. “But you look sad.”
“Not everything worked out.”
“The girl?”
I raked my hand back through my hair. “Yes.”
She nodded. “It’s always the girl, isn’t it? But then, that’s what you write about.”
“I would never write this story. But it doesn’t matter. That’s not why I came back.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, then asked, “Why did you come back, Jacob?”
I took a deep breath. “I still don’t know. I was looking for answers.”
“Answers to what?”
I couldn’t answer her. She looked at me for a moment, then said, “You’ll never find the answer to what you’re really looking for.”