by Liz Johnson
“If any one of those hunters had found it, they wouldn’t have been disappointed.”
Carl gave a low grunt. “Uh-huh.”
“More jewels than I’ve ever seen in one place. A handful of silver and gold necklaces, diamond pins, ruby rings.”
Shaking his head, Carl let out a long whistle.
“And that’s not the most valuable stuff.” Carl raised his eyebrows, and Ben gave in. “Stock certificates from Coke.”
Carl’s jaw dropped. “From 1929? For the Coca-Cola Company?”
Ben nodded.
“Those are worth a fortune. Millions maybe.”
“I know.”
Clapping him on the back, Carl laughed. “So what’d you do with it? Put it in the bank? Does your girlfriend have it?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” He snapped the words so quickly that even he wondered why he’d been so sharp. Carl assumed they were a couple. Ben only wished it were true.
He took a deep breath and tried to wipe Millie from his thoughts. Carl hadn’t really been asking about his relationship status. Rubbing his hands over his knees, Ben shook his head. “I turned it in to the sheriff.”
“I suppose you would have to. And they’re going to track down the rightful owners?”
Ben shrugged. “I guess so. They’re going to try anyway.”
Carl tapped his toe on the ground, uncrossing and then recrossing his arms. “So do you know whose property it was found on? If it’s not the museum’s, it must belong to someone other than the Dawkins family. Maybe they have a claim to it.”
“I don’t know. And I don’t really care at the moment.”
He couldn’t believe those words had just come out of his mouth. Even if they were true.
The money didn’t matter without Millie. He’d work a dozen jobs to take care of her and Grandma Joy and to repay what his mother had stolen.
But Millie had been right. He couldn’t give back the years. He couldn’t erase the heartache or stress or give them back that time free of worry and fear. He could never make it right. So why should she forgive him?
Carl gave another long, low whistle. “Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, boy. No man alive would give up a treasure like that. Not without a fight. Or not unless he knew he was beaten.”
It didn’t take him even a split second to know the truth. “I’m beaten.”
“What’d she do to you?”
“Nothing.” Oh man. He sounded like a petulant teenager now. He rolled his eyes at himself and leaned back in his chair—the same one Millie had sat in when she’d sprained her ankle. The ankle that had hurt too badly for her to run, so he’d carried her to make sure they were both safe. Which was why he’d arrived at the secret passage out of breath and feeling far too warm. And probably why he’d kissed her like a lunatic.
But being out of breath and overly warm did not explain why he’d enjoyed the kiss so much. Or why he’d thought about a repeat performance every day since. Which was why knowing she didn’t want to be any part of his life ever again made his heart feel like it had gone twelve rounds with a meat tenderizer and lost.
Yep. He’d been beaten.
“I’m going to need more than that,” Carl said.
“More than what? More than ‘nothing’?”
Carl nodded, kindly ignoring what a jerk Ben was being to his own boss.
Ben leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his palms. “What do you need to know? That Millie and her grandmother are broke because of me?”
All pretense of good humor vanished in an instant. “You best start talking. Right now. That girl was sweet as sugar and put a light in your eyes like I’ve never seen. And if you treated her badly, then we’re going to have words.”
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I had.” And then it all spilled out. About his childhood and his mother and how he was trying to pay them all back. And how he had discovered that Grandma Joy had been swindled but wasn’t listed in the court files.
“She’s never going to forgive me. And I can’t blame her. I’ve made her life miserable.”
Carl sniffed, folding his gloved hands in front of him. “Seems like you weren’t really to blame. You were just a kid.”
“Well, it might sound that way to you. Millie doesn’t agree.” Ben sighed into his palms. “And she’s not wrong. I messed up. Badly. I thought I could make up for not doing anything. I didn’t even realize—until I talked with her—just what my actions had cost my mom’s victims.”
“The sin of inaction,” Carl mused.
Ben sat up enough to see Carl’s face. His eyes had taken on a distant look, and there was a pain in the set of his jaw.
“I think maybe we all have regrets. I’ve read enough letters and journals and newspapers from the last two centuries to know. It isn’t a new affliction. People have been struggling with it for years. Good intentions but bad results.”
“Yes. But she can’t see past the results.”
Carl strolled across the room, back to his worktable, his hands moving around the papers in front of him. “Here’s what I know for sure. People have been messing up for centuries, millennia. We’ve been ruining relationships, hurting others, seeking only what’s best for ourselves. It’s human nature. It’s what we do. We’re imperfect people.”
“Is that supposed to be a pep talk?”
Shooting him a scowl, Carl kept going. “But it’s the imperfect—the broken—who need mercy. The perfect don’t need anything. But you and me and the rest of the world, we need mercy. We need forgiveness. Even someone like your mom.”
Oh man. That was a knife to the heart.
He clutched at his chest and tried to take a deep breath. But there was no air.
“You’re more than that, you know.”
Ben tried to look up at Carl, but he couldn’t lift his chin.
“You know that, right? You’re not what your mom did. You’re not the bad choices you may have made. You’re who you are right now, and you’re the next decision you make.”
“How can I be who I want to be if Millie can’t ever forgive me?” Ben asked.
Carl huffed like he was getting frustrated. “Millie’s forgiveness doesn’t define you. God’s forgiveness takes care of that.”
Had he been defined by God’s mercy or his mother’s scandal? Had he been characterized by grace or by making it right on his own?
Well, now he knew. He could never make it right. There was nothing he could do that would be good enough to wipe it away. There were consequences for his actions.
But there could be forgiveness too.
“Why’s it so important to you what Millie thinks of you?”
Ben threw his hands up and groaned. “Because I’m in love with her. I think I am anyway. I never have been before, but when I’m with Millie, I see a different future. It’s not about my past. It’s about what we could be—together.”
Carl nodded like he found the response satisfactory. “And what is it that she wants?”
“To never see me again?” He managed to quirk the corner of his mouth and let out a half chuckle, half groan.
“Or . . . to know who she is?”
“How’d you know about that?”
Carl shrugged. “She doesn’t seem the kind to be consumed by money, so when you said her great-grandmother had been at the Chateau, I figured there was more to her story than all that treasure hunting. So I did a little digging.”
Ben pushed himself out of his chair, marching to the worktable and forcing Carl to look at him. “What did you find?”
“Oh, this and that.”
Pressing his hand to the tabletop, Ben leaned in closer.
Carl chuckled. “Only that Ruth Holiday was married.”
“Right. To Henry Jefferson.”
Carl’s lips twisted with a Cheshire grin. “To someone else. Before Henry.”
“And I kissed him. A lot!” Millie flung her arm across her face. Somehow
admitting to the last was so much worse than everything else that she’d just told her grandma. Worse than not knowing where her grandma was going to move. Worse than discovering Ben was the son of the woman who had made their lives miserable. Worse than throwing away the treasure in a fit of anger.
The only thing worse was that she really wanted to kiss him again.
Not that she’d admitted that to Grandma Joy. She had no intention of ever doing such a thing. She’d never tell another soul for the rest of her life.
And maybe by then she’d have stopped thinking about Ben altogether.
Dreamer.
Oh, knock it off. That’s what readers did. They dreamed. She dreamed. And if she wanted to dream that she’d someday forget Ben, then she was going to do it.
From her favorite chair, Grandma Joy rocked forward to reach for her hand, and Millie rolled to her side. Lying on her grandma’s bed, she was nearly eye to eye with the woman who had raised her.
Gnarled fingers moved to her hair and combed through the strands over and over again. For a second Millie was once again a child. Comforted and cared for. She wasn’t the one in charge, and she certainly wasn’t responsible for someone she couldn’t support.
“I’m sorry,” Millie said.
“Whatever for?”
Her stomach swooped, and tears burned at the back of her eyes. Millie had lost her again.
But then her grandma continued. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You couldn’t have known Ben’s role in his mother’s scheme. And you couldn’t have known who his mother is.”
“But now I’ve given away any chance—”
Suddenly her purse vibrated on the tile floor. It rattled and shook her keys. But she didn’t get up to answer her phone.
Grandma Joy gave her a hard look that traveled to the bag and back. “Going to get that?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You know that every single one of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done. All of us. We bear the image of our Maker. Even Ben.”
Millie stiffened, and perhaps her grandma could feel her trying to pull away. Her hand grew heavier, keeping her in place.
“And we’re surely more than the worst thing someone in our family has done.”
“But . . . but his mother is the reason we’re in this situation. Because of her, I can’t afford to take care of you. And Ben was complicit in all of it.”
“My dear, he was a child. And there is so much more to life than money.”
“But she stole those years from us.”
“She stole no such thing. That’s life. The struggle and scraping. The figuring out how to find joy in the midst of pain. That’s the good stuff.” Grandma Joy took a deep breath and closed her eyes, rocking back and forth for a long second. “For as long as the good Lord has us here on earth, that’s what we’ll keep doing. Can you find happiness, my sweet girl?”
Millie shook her head, not sure she could give the Sunday school answer.
“Losing the money means so much to you. And not being a Devereaux?”
She sat up then, pulling her hand out of her grandmother’s grasp, leaning against the wall, and looking her in the eye. “Do you really think I only care about money? I’m doing all of this to care for you. I just want you to be safe and taken care of.” Suddenly her grandmother’s form swam before her eyes, her dear face wrinkling with concern.
“Honey, you know that money is never going to be enough.”
She looked toward the ceiling in an attempt to keep the burning in her eyes from turning into a full-on flood. It was easy for Grandma Joy to say that money wasn’t important. She didn’t have any idea how much it would cost to put her in a new home. Or how hard Millie had worked to make sure they had all they needed.
“I wish it was that easy, Grandma.”
A gentle pat on her hand followed a low hum. “Oh, I never said anything about it being easy. There were times when your grandfather and I thought we’d have to sell the house and every acre we had. But it was never about how many nickels were in our savings account.”
“Then what?” Millie threw up her hands. “How can we survive without enough money?” She hated how petulant she sounded, but her grandma was off on another fantasy. Maybe her memories were lucid, but her problem-solving skills left something to be desired.
Grandma Joy patted her hand. “You’re looking for money to be your provider.”
Millie began to nod, and her grandma cut her off quickly. “Money isn’t what provides for you. Money is a tool. God—” She paused and looked hard at her granddaughter. “God is the one who provides. Let him take care of you.”
The tears began to leak in earnest then, rolling to her chin and dropping to the front of her shirt. “It’s not that easy. How can I trust him when he’s taken everything from you? What that woman didn’t steal, God has. What’s to say he won’t take everything from me?”
“And what if he does? Will you fault him for that?”
Honestly? Probably, yes.
“Who am I to question God’s ways?” Grandma Joy’s smile was filled with concern but as radiant as ever.
Millie wanted to punch a wall. “But he took your memories.” As sure as Ben’s mother had stolen Grandma Joy’s retirement, God had left her a mere shell of the woman she had been.
“Oh, he didn’t take my memories.”
Millie let out a low snort. Easy to say but contrary to every piece of evidence.
“Sometimes they may not be easy for me to retrieve, but that doesn’t make them any less mine. The experiences—those years raising your dad with my Zeke, then a chance to raise a little girl like I’d always wanted, all those years farming and serving my community and my church—those are my story. And even if I can’t remember them, God hasn’t stolen them. Every little face I taught in Sunday school. Every woman I brought a care package to after she gave birth. And every time I look at your face, I’m reminded that my story lives on in all of you. God used me then, and maybe he’ll use me now. No check or dollar amount can take that from me. No matter if I forget, I know there are those who remember that I was there during a hard time or brought a measure of comfort in a difficult season or helped to raise a young woman who can change the world.”
Millie’s chest ached, and she’d entirely given up on trying to stem the flow of tears.
Could it be true? Could all that her grandmother said be true? Maybe a person’s story wasn’t like a book that became useless after the pages were too worn to read. It wasn’t about how much that person could remember. It was about how many lives they had touched. It was about making a difference in the little ways.
“Sometimes I can’t remember his face—your grandfather’s. And sometimes it is so clear that I think he might be sitting on the bed next to me.”
“Oh, Grandma.”
“No, no, dear.” Her grandma patted her arm. “It’s not sad. I love thinking that he’s right by my side. Even if I’m mistaken, I know that we were together. I know we shared a life that mattered. Even when I can’t remember the details, I’m sure of that. Because even the hard times are manageable when you have someone to share the pain with.”
“You have me. I’m right here.”
With a laugh and a sigh, Grandma Joy shook her head. “I do love you, my sweet girl. But you need more than me. You need someone to lean on, someone to lean on you. Life is so much sweeter when you’re not in it alone. Why do you think God gave Eve to Adam?”
“But she betrayed him.” She spit the words out much more vehemently than she’d planned, the story far too close to the one she was currently living.
“Oh, Adam didn’t need any help finding sin. He needed someone to be with him after the garden. He needed someone who understood everything he’d lost and could walk by his side anyway.”
Someone who could understand loss. Ben had lost his parents. Not exactly like she had, but the result was the same—a life of trying to pick up the pieces all alone. A life of failing to make
good out of the pain of the past.
She hiccupped on a restrained sob as another rush of tears covered her cheeks, and she pressed her forehead to her grandma’s hand. Had she missed out on her chance to be with someone who could truly understand? Someone who not only cared about her but also cared for her?
“But even if he cares for me, how can I forgive him?” She couldn’t. It wasn’t that simple.
Grandma Joy’s eyes turned sad. “All of us are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. All of us. Your dad is more than running off and leaving you behind. Because in his selfishness he gave me a gift—you. And that handsome young man of yours is more than failing to turn in his mother.”
“You sure about that?”
“What is he?”
“What do you mean?” Millie rubbed her head, trying to push away the pain behind her eyes. “He’s a history professor and a security guard and an archivist.”
“So, a hard worker?” Grandma Joy looked rather smug, and Millie wanted to contradict her, but she couldn’t. He was a hard worker. “And what did he do when you told him you’d been hiding your real reasons for looking for the treasure?”
Millie scowled. She hadn’t told Grandma Joy that so she would use it as ammunition. “I suppose he forgave me.”
“Not only did he forgive you, he did it quickly. On the spot.”
“Yes. And he’s loyal. And he works at a library.”
Grandma Joy’s smile turned even more smug. “He likes books, does he?”
“Well, not novels so much. But yes.”
This was not good. Grandma Joy was making far too much sense, and Millie didn’t want sense. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to hang on to a grudge. She didn’t want to put herself out there and risk being hurt again. Because she knew how badly it could hurt. Because she was just protecting herself. Because . . .
Because you’re an idiot.
Yeah, she deserved that.
“I don’t know what to do. It’s too late.” Her heart had been shattered, and it was too late to put the pieces back together again.
“Oh my, no. It’s never too late for love. It’s never too late for forgiveness. Tell him how you feel.”