by Terri Kraus
Alice kept hold of Leslie’s hand and pulled her toward the front of the building, to her laptop computer. On the screen was a picture of Leslie’s empty safe—only it was a picture of a more dinged and dented example of the Diebold Banker’s Safe. Leslie’s safe was pristine, showroom quality by comparison.
Alice hit the mouse and the page scrolled up. The copy under the last picture of the safe read: Extremely Rare.
In smaller print below, it said:
One of the few known surviving models of the Diebold Banker’s Safe in existence. Paint: Good Condition. Company decal: 75% Intact. No Combination. Pick-up price: $5,700. Firm. Delivery available, quotes on request.
Leslie stared at the computer screen, then at Alice.
“You, my dear, have a very expensive, old, empty safe in your back room.”
Jack hired three finish carpenters for three weeks to finish up Alice and Frank’s job. Jack could do built-in furniture like they had requested—window seats and the like—but he was not set up to do cabinetmaking. The three brothers were between jobs and were excellent finish carpenters with a shop nearby. They agreed to work for less than they normally charged. In those three weeks, Alice and Frank’s place was transformed from a bare shell with interesting architectural details into a whimsical and fascinating bistro/bookstore/café with perfectly fascinating architectural details, some exposed bare brick walls, some plastered walls in rich colors, exposed beams, quirky little nooks, wonderful natural light during the day, and a plethora of odd lamps, track lights, spots, and recessed lighting, mixing old and new, hip and traditional, funky and … not funky.
Alice had selected an explosion of colors for the interior—greens, the color of moss or spring leaves on some walls, and an eggplant shade on others, with accents of a red the color of Mexico. The palette was an unexpected combination of colors—contrasting yet unified, like music of different strains, all melding together into perfect harmony.
At least that’s what Alice said.
If Jack didn’t understand it completely, he didn’t let on. But he always claimed that he was just the simple carpenter and would do anything the customer wanted.
Alice used the same abandon in selecting the fabric for the chairs and sofas and window seats—a quirky but pleasing mix of vintage French prints.
In the back corner, Jack installed a small but very serviceable kitchen. Two bathrooms, per code, were just beyond that, and a small storage area lay behind the kitchen. A very sleek, European refrigerated display case had been imported from France, or Italy, or some place that wasn’t America.
Jack said he didn’t like foreign things as a rule, except for french fries and French cars, but he really liked the display case.
“It looks like a Ferrari,” he said.
Stock began to arrive: books, handmade jewelry and luxurious scarves, accessories from the Adamses’ buying trip in Paris, a mix of art objects from Alice and Frank’s house—contemporary, vintage, and antique—and all manner of fascinating things, from very small and affordable to very large and expensive. When Leslie saw the array of things for sale, and how Alice and Frank’s was coming together, she was amazed. She could see that the very artistic Alice knew what she was doing. The woman obviously had a flair for the unique, and a real sense of how to merchandise it.
The one thing that Jack had not yet completed was the removal of the wonderfully old and supremely heavy Diebold Banker’s Safe from the storage room.
To Leslie’s absolute amazement, the safe sold within five days of her posting it on the Antiquesafes.com Web site, for only a few hundred dollars less than the eight thousand she was asking for it.
The buyer had contracted with a local firm to have it moved. And now the five burly men were there, with a floor lift jack, sheets of plywood to protect the floor, prebuilt inclines for steps and curbs, and a large truck with a heavy-duty, reinforced-lift tail gate.
They spent an hour preparing for the move, laying down the plywood, figuring out which ramps were needed, measuring doorways and steps.
Leslie came down to watch the move. She had already received a check for half the sale amount, and the movers were to bring the second payment—a cashier’s check—when they moved the safe out of her building and to its new home.
Disappointed as she was for not finding treasure, the safe was a rare stroke of good fortune in her life, she told herself.
If Randy does go to court over custody, I can fight him now.
Two of the burly movers carefully threaded the floor lift along the plywood path. They gently maneuvered the lift under the safe and started pumping the handle, gradually bringing the weight off the floor.
“No more than an inch,” one of them called out. “More than that can tip it over if it gets wobbly.”
Jack was in the storage room as they maneuvered it, watching their work. He wasn’t concerned about anything specific. He simply wanted to see how they accomplished moving such a huge and heavy object.
The arms of the lift caught the underside of the safe, and a few seconds later, after resting on that one spot of real estate for almost a century, the safe was airborne—an inch or two off the base. Both men grabbed the handle, released the brake, and began to strain at the weight. The safe seemed to groan, wobbled a fraction, and moved forward.
As it came away from the wall, everyone heard it: a shuffling, sliding sound. And as the safe moved farther away from the wall, something fell, with a papery thump to the floor—released, as it were, from being held captive behind the safe for an unknown term.
“What’s that?” Jack asked, knowing that no one had the answer.
He waited until the safe was out of the room to retrieve the object. It was dusty, for certain, and held closed with a moss green ribbon, tied around it—not as a decorative wrapping, or ornament, but simply securing the pages closed. As soon as he picked it up, he knew what it was.
There was no other object, no other book, with the same sort of heft, or feel, or tactile sense.
It was a Bible.
Jack carried it out, tenderly, like he was carrying a wounded puppy, and presented it to Leslie.
Alice hurried over. “Another eBay item?” She laughed. “There is no one else I know who can get rich from an empty storage room.”
“I don’t know,” Leslie said, running her hand over the dusty cover. “It’s an old Bible.”
Alice looked a bit disappointed. “I don’t think they sell well. I mean old Bibles. Maybe they do. I could check. We could sell it in the store, if you wanted. Or display it. Wouldn’t that be a nifty conversation piece?”
Leslie hardly heard anything Alice had said. There was something about this book, something about the ribbon, something about how it felt in her hands. It wasn’t just a Bible. She was sure of that—even before she undid the green ribbon, tied tightly around the book, in both directions, like a present, but not a present.
This was well used. This was someone’s Bible.
She stared at the thick book.
At the back, between the back cover and the last page, there was a thicket of loose pages, just a bit larger than the pages of the Bible, as if someone had stored them in there for safe keeping. The edges of those loose pages were worn, torn in a few spots. Leslie could see that even before she opened the book.
She untied the ribbon and carefully pulled it off as a puff of dust was released into the air, and held it in her left hand. She opened the Bible to the first page, and next to the inside of the front cover she found an old photographic image, the paper a buttery color, the ink a sepia tone. It was the portrait of a man and a woman, dressed as bride and groom.
Leslie gingerly turned one more page.
At the top, in ornate, gilded letters, with scrolls and filigrees spreading out like unchecked ivy in a garden was written:
Dedication.
Underneath that were the words:
Presented to _______ on the occasion of _________:
In black ink filling in the lines that had faded to umber, were the handwritten words, in a most precise writing style: Presented to Amelia Grace Westland Middelstadt, on the occasion of our Wedding. 10 June, 1886.
Leslie looked at the words again. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
She reached out and touched her fingertip to the name, as if trying to feel the vibrations made when it was first transcribed. She traced her finger down the page to the date.
Alice and Jack looked at her, watched her move her hand, as if in slow motion.
“What is it?” Alice asked, “What? Is it a famous person? I can’t see.”
Leslie shook her head no. “No. No one famous. It’s just—”
“Just what?” Alice asked. “What?”
Leslie touched the name again. “This was my great-great-great grandmother’s Bible. Amelia Grace Westland. Her married name was Middelstadt. It belonged to her.”
Alice and Jack both were astonished—not to Leslie’s level perhaps, but very surprised and incredulous.
“That’s why I bought this building,” Leslie murmured. “That’s why I was drawn to it. It had to be. It was because of this Bible.”
Leslie took the old Bible upstairs, to her kitchen table, to be with the precious pages by herself. Leslie was not one to believe in apparitions, or in being guided or led by spirits, but this was one situation where she had to wonder.
This is why I am here. This is why I own this building. Gramma Mellie wanted me to have this.
She looked again at the dedication page. She wondered if Amelia’s husband had written these words, or if he had paid someone to draft the letters with a calligrapher’s flourish. From what Amelia had written in her own hand, she assumed the latter.
She looked again at the photographic portrait, presumably of her great-great-great grandparents on their wedding day. Amelia was twenty-three when she had married. She was beautiful and serene in her white dress and veil. Her husband, Samuel, looked back at Leslie in his morning coat, a kind smile touching his lips. A Bible—especially a fine copy like this one with leather binding and gilded pages—would have been a substantial purchase. A man would not buy an expensive Bible like this for his wife on a whim or if money was tight and resources limited.
She turned to the back page of the Bible.
She had been right. There was a small thicket of hand-written pages, pages torn out of some other book and placed in this Bible for some reason—to safeguard? To hide? To be kept from other’s eyes?
Leslie removed the stack of pages. It didn’t appear that they were in order, for the rough edges of the torn side didn’t line up. They must have been, at one time, rearranged, shuffled.
Yet the handwriting was so familiar. It was Amelia’s hand, Leslie could be sure of that. The penmanship matched the pages in the diary on Leslie’s nightstand that she had read so many times.
She looked up at the clock. School would soon be out. She didn’t want to rush this experience. She wanted to take her time, to savor what she had found, and not consume it like some fast-food meal.
She tapped the diary pages back in order, slipped them back in the Bible, and placed the treasured book on top of the refrigerator—not sure why, exactly, except that space was empty and might be the last place a Bible thief would investigate.
She grabbed her coat, her keys, her cell phone, just in case, and headed for Ava’s school.
“I know it hasn’t been that long, Leslie,” Mike said as the two of them watched Ava and Trevor race around the playground, their breath coming out in little vapor clouds. “I know you said a year. I know all that.”
Leslie knew what Mike was going to ask. He had hinted at it during every conversation they had had since their initial discussion. Normally, in the past, before everything that had happened to Leslie had happened, she might have found Mike’s sort of persistence annoying, or upsetting, or an adequate reason to say “no.” But now that Leslie was older, and less secure—financially and in other ways—than she had ever been in her life, she didn’t find Mike’s dogged pursuit aggravating or annoying in the least. In fact, it was flattering, even a bit endearing.
Not every woman is so desired, or so wanted.
“My father always said that if you know that you want something, then you should go after it. Simple as that, he said,” Mike explained, blowing on his hands in the chilly prewinter air. He hadn’t worn gloves, which, for Mike, was an unusual occurrence.
He noticed her looking. “I can’t find them. I had them yesterday. You saw me with them when we talked after school. But now they have vanished. I looked everywhere.”
Leslie knew what the next line was, and she smiled to herself when he delivered it, without any hint of self-consciousness.
“I guess I really need a woman to help me keep track of things.”
She noted that he didn’t say that he needed a woman to keep track of things—but that he needed her help to help him become more responsible. She wondered if that was a very deliberate choice of words, or only accidental.
Looking at Mike’s hopeful expression, much like a puppy’s expression as it looks at a not-yet-opened box of Milk-Bones, Leslie figured that Mike was just being Mike.
And would being with Mike be so bad?
He had a lovely home, a nice son, and a good job, as an operations manager at Herr-Voss, a firm that made coil-processing equipment. Leslie had no real idea of what that was, or what they produced, but Mike said he enjoyed the work. “It’s like a big puzzle sometimes,” he had said. “The people are nice. I really like working with them. And it’s got a great pension plan. You can never be too prepared for the future.” That was more than a lot of people could say, Leslie thought.
Leslie and Mike had gone out together several more times, for dinner and a movie, had gone for ice cream and coffee with Ava and Trevor in tow on a couple of occasions, and Mike had stopped by, without Trevor, at Leslie’s apartment often. Leslie would have admitted the arrangement looked a lot like two people who were dating.
Mike was not aggressive in the “intimacy department,” as he once called it. “I can take my time. Don’t get me wrong—I like it and all that—but I know that waiting is the proper thing to do. That’s what my church, and the Bible, teaches, and I can go along with that.”
Even as he said that, even as he stated that he respected waiting, Leslie imagined that if she had been more willing, so would Mike.
Kisses were shared, hugging happened often. Mike was patient and kind, and Leslie allowed herself to feel closer to him, especially in regards to the future “intimacy department.” If she waited for sparks and fireworks, she wondered, would she be waiting forever?
Now, this afternoon, he brought the subject up once again—the subject of him and her and her eventual decision. But this time it was a bit more direct than in the past, a bit more forward.
“So … I know you’re waiting. I know that. But do you think you can give me a hint? Do you feel any different now than before?”
Leslie reached out with her gloved hand and placed it on his forearm. He looked at her hand and then back to her face, as if this might be some sort of new sign, a signal he was trying his best to interpret.
“Mike, I want to tell you. I want to give you an answer. But the truth of the matter is that I can’t. I’m just not ready. I think I’m closer—a lot closer than I was before.”
Mike patted her hand. “That’s okay. You take your time. I keep asking … well … because I want to be with you and I keep hoping your answer will be yes. We should be together. That’s the way I feel.”
“I know, Mike. I know that. A little more time. That’s all.”
He placed his hand over hers, and squeezed a little. “I’ll keep asking, you know that. I want to be with you.”
They untangled their hands.
“I know, Mike. I know you do.”
And she waited and looked at him, carefully, wondering if waiting for, and wanting, a spark—or even a small fireworks display—was just out of the question.
Amelia Westland Middelstadt
Butler, Pennsylvania
Thanksgiving Day 1891
As I pause this day to recount my blessings, I look back on my life and see the hand of God. It has not, of course, been, as I would have imagined as a young precocious farm girl of thirteen in Glade Mills when I commenced recording my thoughts in this dear book. There have been dark days when, despite the great material provision God has wrought, despair threatened to cloud my heart. Nor have I always been as thankful as I should that it has all come about in the way that it has. But God has demonstrated His great faithfulness despite my selfish ways and has lifted me up when my soul was most downcast. I am most undeserving of His grace and mercy.
He has blessed me with a kind and generous husband, of even temperament and upstanding character. I confess, with deep sadness, that I have not always been liberal in my expressions of affection toward him. But his patience knows no bounds, and for that I am grateful.
God has twice blessed me with children—first, my two darling stepdaughters, and then, my precious daughter Ellen, some three years ago, and then my delightful son Seth, whose first year of life we celebrated just one month previous, both strong and healthy and remarkable indeed. After my first travail, it was thought by the doctor that it would never again be possible; however, God in His mercy has looked upon me with favor and has seen fit to grant me a son. How unexpected and wonderful! My lying in with Seth was not as difficult as such I experienced with Ellen. Though Samuel had not voiced his feelings, it was most apparent to me that he was desirous of a male child to carry on the Middelstadt name. He takes much joy in Seth and Ellen both, and I fear they are in danger of becoming exceedingly spoiled, for he is most indulgent of them, as he is with the older girls, who take great pleasure in their stepsiblings as well. Catherine is now with child. It brings me great joy to think of the two of us as mothers together, and our children, should God will, as close as cousins.