“You’ve changed, you know, Frannie,” said Jonathan after a minute. “Since then. You’re…all grown up, I guess.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” I answered lightly. “‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became an adult, I put away childish things.’ Corinthians.”
His face was in shadow. “I guess I just didn’t realize that when you grew up…I would be one of the childish things you put away.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not blaming you, Frannie—not reproaching you. You, who’ve been so good to me. I just mean to say that…all those years, your love for me was always there. It was something I took for granted. If no one else believed in me—if I didn’t believe in me—you always did. That’s what I mean. I feel like you’ve… outgrown your faith in me.”
What have I outgrown? Nothing! Isn’t that why I have to go, you idiot? The iron armrest of the bench chilled my fingers, but I hung on. “That’s not true,” I said. “I still believe in you. It’s unfair to say I don’t have faith in you anymore.”
“Is it? What does James say about faith without works?” His voice had a new edge.
“That faith without works is dead,” I muttered.
“Bingo. That’s ten points for Bible Girl. I think you’re willing enough for me to depart in peace and be warmed and filled, Frannie, but damned if you’ll have anything to do with me anymore. I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t outgrown your faith in me—maybe I’ve just outgrown deserving it.”
“What’s gotten into you?” I demanded, hating his tone. The mockery in it and the self-mockery. “No matter what you say, you are mad at me. I don’t see what right you have to be angry. You—you should be glad I leave you alone. You once told me not to make an idol of you!”
“All right,” he said. “Maybe I am angry.” He was on his feet again, pacing back and forth like a tiger on a leash. “Not for anything in the past, but for these last few weeks. You wanna explain to me how you would consider it ‘idolatry’ if you talked to me once in a while or—for God’s sake—made eye contact with me? If that’s idolatry, sign me up. I’m finding the world’s a cold and lonely place when you don’t have any worshippers.”
“Stop it, Jonathan. I don’t like to hear you talk like this! You sound like—” Like the Grants at their worst.
He halted in his restless movements, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you don’t like it. I don’t much like it myself. I guess bitterness is one of the more recent character traits I’ve developed.”
“Don’t,” I said again, more gently. Reaching out, I took hold of his hand and pulled him back down on the bench. His pulse was racing. “You’re right. I have been avoiding you, and I’m sorry for it. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and I needed some space.”
When I made to release him, he grabbed my hand again. “Frannie. Please don’t shut me out. Look—if I’ve done something since I came back to piss you off, don’t we have enough history that you could tell me? It’s like you—you have more to say to Tom lately, than me.”
“We’re fine. I’m not angry with you.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing! It’s nothing. Nothing to do with you,” I lied, panicked by his persistence. “You see why I needed space? Why can’t you just leave it at that?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Why not? I promise you—we’re fine. I haven’t lost faith in you, I still—admire you and think you’re the best person I know, but I just—” Inspiration failed me here. I ripped my hand back and wrapped my arms around my stomach because what I really wanted to do was push him away. What did he want from me? And why wouldn’t he drop this? Did he want to fight, to thrash things out, so I would come crawling back again to adore him? The nerve he had, accusing me of forgetting him! I, who never forgot anything. I tightened my grip on my sweatshirt, but it was no use. My own indignation was fighting for expression. The words were just not going to be held inside. “I don’t know what you want from me!” I burst out. “What is this all about? I didn’t ask to have this discussion. Uncle Paul said he wanted me to talk to you about Colorado. Fine. I didn’t want to, but he wanted me to, so here we are. And we could get the stupid discussion over with if you would just come out and say what your problem is!”
I heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. “My problem? How many more ways can I say it? My problem is, I want for one minute to say what’s on my heart and for you to listen.”
“I do listen! I have been listening! What have we been doing for the last ten minutes?”
“You don’t! You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said tonight. You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said since I came back! You haven’t wanted to. You’ve avoided me. And when I corner you, you tell me you don’t want to talk about personal things. What’s the point, if we’re not going to talk about personal things? That’s my ‘problem,’ Frannie. I’m asking you, for the sake of our old—friendship—relationship—whatever the hell it was—I’m asking you to hear me out. Even if what I have to say puts an end to it, once and for all. If the damned thing’s already dead—I might as well have the relief of getting this off my chest.”
Good Lord. “Getting…what off your chest?”
He was on his feet again, and this time he jerked me up beside him. The moonlight bathed us in faint silver. I wondered if my face looked as wild and otherworldly as his.
“This:—” he was panting. “Just this. Damn it all. That… I—love you, Frannie Price. I love you with my whole heart. With all I’ve got. And if you tell me you don’t love me anymore—that you can’t love me like I love you—I don’t know how I’m gonna get over this one.”
He could not be saying what he was saying. Not him. Not to me. Jonathan couldn’t be saying such things to me.
“I didn’t know,” he went on feverishly, the words rushing now. “It took me by surprise. I’ve always loved you, of course. As a sister, and dearer to me than anyone in my biological family. Loved you, depended on you, known you were there, like the ground beneath my feet. When Caroline left me in pieces and I just wanted to run to the ends of the earth, I knew it would be okay. I would always have a home to come to because of you. But I didn’t know. I didn’t get it. Those two years in Australia, when you were in my thoughts and I would send you a postcard from time to time, and you would write me those letters—I didn’t know some kind of…invisible alchemy was happening. Those old attachments I felt to you—they got stronger. They changed into some other element. Something even more precious. All I knew was that I was really, really looking forward to seeing you again. I didn’t understand until I came back and walked in the door, and there you were. All grown up. Exactly how I remembered and somehow not at all how I remembered. You were wearing that blue dress and laughing and looking so beautiful, and stupid Tom had his arm around you. That was when it hit me, what had happened, and I finally got it through my thick head that the whole time I was away from you, I was falling in love.”
The cool night air couldn’t account for the run of goosebumps all up and down me. I felt wobbly on my feet, but I couldn’t have moved to save my life.
“Say something, Frannie,” he urged. He gave me a shake. “Anything.”
“I—I’m speechless.”
“Say you think you can love me back.”
Biting my lips, I gave him a wavering smile. “I love you back.”
Jonathan took hold of my elbows and pulled me closer, searching my eyes. “You do? You love me? Here we go again. You love me—like a friend? Or like a—a brother? It’s enough to start with. Or do you mean you might love me like—like I love you?”
“Yes.”
Throwing his arms around me, he swung me off my feet, laughing. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
Around went the world once more, and I shrieked and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Then why?” he demanded. “If you love me, t
hen why have you been so horrible to me since I came back?” He let my feet touch the ground again, but we didn’t let go of each other.
“Because I thought you guessed it and it bothered you. I didn’t want you to have to avoid me.”
“So you avoided me first? Logical,” he teased. “I admit, though, the same game plan ran through my mind, after I tried to tell you I was over Caroline and you crushed me utterly. I thought you knew I wanted to throw myself at your feet and decided you’d better nip that in the bud.”
“No—” I protested, “it was your fault. You told me about your dumb Australian dates, Jonathan, and I thought you were hinting that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“I only mentioned the dumb Australian dates because I didn’t want you to think I was just on the rebound. I wanted you to know I got that out of my system in Australia.”
We laughed foolishly, our foreheads together.
“Good thing I couldn’t stay away,” he murmured. “I don’t have your willpower. Or your self-control. I think you would have been strong enough to avoid me clear out to Colorado.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I answered. Pressed to his chest, I felt my heart beating like it would lift right out of me. If I told him now—if I confessed—my secret would no longer be mine. But I would be free. “Years of practice, Jonathan. Because I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve known you. Not just—as your cousin—but really loved you.”
I watched comprehension dawn on his beloved, familiar face. Disbelief. Wonder. Sorrow. “Oh, Frannie, I don’t know what to say. I’m flattered—thrilled—no one minds hearing that they’ve been loved for years and years. But how hard that must have been for you.”
“It was, but it doesn’t matter now.” It didn’t. I wanted to laugh, to sing. I felt nothing but lightness and perfect joy.
“A struggle—and I must have hurt you so often, without meaning to.”
“You could never mean to, Jonathan. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”
I felt his arms tighten around me and his lips brush my hair. “Frannie. Truly. I don’t deserve you.”
Grinning up at him, I whispered, “Do your best.”
His breath caught, and in his hesitation my own smile faded. His face moved toward mine and mine toward his. And then I shut my eyes.
It was much, much later, and only when it began to drizzle, that we headed for shelter, my spirits returning to earth enough to ask, “What will Uncle Paul think?”
“Dad?” Jonathan laughed. He pulled back my hood to kiss me again. “He’s the one who sicked me on you. Said he’d done all he could, but if I couldn’t close the deal, I was no Beresford. I’d told him I was in love with you almost as soon as I came back—we kids had been making such unsuccessful matches that I thought maybe he should be consulted for once. It turned out he beat me to the idea. Dad said ever since you came home from Loveland and settled everyone down and took such good care of Tom, he had plans to nail you down permanently. If I wouldn’t marry you, he’d make Tom do it, Marcy or no Marcy.”
“Poor Marcy!”
“Yep. Lucky for Marcy I was willing to step into the breach.” He shook me playfully. “This would’ve been settled weeks ago, if you hadn’t suddenly started acting like you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“How managing Uncle Paul is! If I wasn’t so happy, I’d have an evil desire to thwart him, but as it is, it’s even funnier that he played matchmaker. Godfather matchmaker. You don’t think he paid Todd to break up with me, do you?”
“Todd should be grateful he’s alive.”
Hand in hand and trading jokes, like the old, old friends we were, we went inside to rejoin our family.
• • •
What more is there to say? Tom and Marcy were married in May, and Jonathan and I in August. Because Pastor Donald spent every August in Lake Tahoe, he married us at the cabin, on the lawn stretching down to the water, not far from where Julie knocked out Aunt Terri with the car. Funny that, in such a small ceremony, the faces gathered to celebrate with us were much the same as that fateful weekend—right down to Steve and Dave, but with the addition of Uncle Roger and little Jimmy. And the absence of the Grants, of course.
In later years, after he retired, Uncle Paul was obligated to remodel the cabin and add on to accommodate his grandchildren, much as he once remodeled the house to accommodate me. There were eight in all: Rachel’s Jimmy; Tom and Marcy’s two girls Ashley and Megan; Julie and Steve’s twins Zach and Emily; and then our three, Nora Marie, Jensen Paul and Ellen Beverly. When all of us were together it was pandemonium, and Tom got his father to admit that the grandkids did far more property damage than Tom ever had with Steve and Dave.
My dear Uncle Paul continued his secret generosity. By laundering money through my hands, he arranged for Robbie to have tutoring in Colorado and sponsored both Robbie and Jamie at Christian camps every summer. He also flew Jonathan and me out to Loveland once a year, when we were juggling finances and later infants and just scraping by on a youth pastor’s salary. My children never believed our stories that their grandfather had once been strict and frightening, so thoroughly did they have him wrapped around their little fingers. And when Jonathan accepted a call as a senior pastor far away in Washington State, Uncle Paul could only give his reluctant blessing after purchasing another “vacation” condo for himself and Aunt Marie not a quarter mile from the church.
Having a sibling in full-time ministry tempted Tom, Rachel, Julie, and their families to darken the door of a church once more. At first we would see them the few times a year that Jonathan preached in the main service, but by the time their own children came along we caught hints that they went rather more often. They were still never much for talking about it, but it was enough to know something was there—again, or for the very first time.
As for Caroline Grant, she was not entirely off in her prophecies. Rob Newman rose to be a congressman and then political talking head, making frequent appearances on news shows where people shouted at and over each other. The two of them appeared once in a news magazine, in the background of a presidential candidate’s photo. They might have been blurry, but there was no mistaking her dark eyes and tiny figure and those black curls.
And her brother? Of Eric Grant we heard not a whisper. But one time, when I was picking up Nora from her first sleepaway camp at Woodleaf, another parent raised a hand to me across the bobbing heads of two dozen fifth-graders. Nora was shouting and waving her hand-whittled cross and eighteen Jesus bracelets in leather, hemp, beads, and embroidery floss at me, so that when I finally got clear of it all to look again, the man was gone, leaving only a vague impression of dark hair and trim build.
But after Nora finished hugging her five new best friends and vowing to call and write, and after we hauled her sleeping bag and duffel and craft collection to the van, I found a note on the windshield.
“One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
“What is it?” asked my oldest.
“Philippians,” I said. Folding the note, I tucked it in my pocket. I would show it to Jonathan later. “And a message. Hop in.”
“Who’s the message from?” Her blue eyes—her father’s eyes—met mine in the rear view mirror.
I waited for her seatbelt to click before starting the engine. “Just someone your father and I used to know. Did you happen to meet a girl with the last name Grant this week?”
“Uh-huh. Sophie Grant. She was really good at volleyball. But what’s the note say?”
“Oh—the person wanted to answer a question we had about him years ago. About whether our hope was justified.”
As a knowing ten-year-old, Nora was not going to ask me to explain difficult words. She would look them up later on her own and fake it in the meantime. “And was it, Mom? Was your hope justified?”
I pulled onto LaPorte Road, fli
pping down the visor against the bright sunlight. “You know, Nora, it looks like—when all was said and done—the answer is Yes.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Heartfelt thanks to all who encourage me in the writing life: my critique group, the folks at Gorham Printing, the University Book Store Bellevue and Mill Creek staff, gracious book party and book club hosts, and my dear readers.
Carol Miller, I appreciate you letting me borrow one anecdote from your childhood. No harm done, to Frannie or to you, right? Ha ha.
As ever, my family has supported and encouraged me, and my husband Scott makes these fictional forays possible. I’m so spoiled.
And finally…
I bet Jane Austen never imagined the truckloads of spin-offs and fan fiction her six novels would spawn. In its small way, I put The Beresfords in the latter category. Austen described Emma Woodhouse as a “heroine whom no-one but myself will much like,” yet, as the centuries pass, far more abuse has actually been heaped on poor Fanny Price of Mansfield Park. No one has patience for retiring young ladies who nevertheless live according to their convictions, I suppose. Fanny—this one’s for you.
ALSO BY CHRISTINA DUDLEY
Mourning Becomes Cassandra
The Littlest Doubts
Everliving
Mia and the Magic Cupcakes
Praise for Christina Dudley’s Works
Mourning Becomes Cassandra
“A fun and highly recommended read that should not be overlooked.”
— Midwest Book Review
“Heartbreaking...and at times hilarious.”
— LoveWebRadio.com
July 2009 Book of the Month
“Mourning Becomes Cassandra has some of the most well-developed
characters of any contemporary novel.”
The Beresfords Page 34