“That’s true enough,” she said, chuckling. “You know, I guess I always thought that once I passed that threshold of the age of thirty, I would be past all this stuff. Apparently I’m forever going to be muddling through.”
“If that’s true, then we really have a lot in common,” I laughed. “I’m sure I’ll be right there with you.”
Meg stepped out onto the porch then, as Hannah and I were giggling, and she remarked that it was good to see us laughing together. I told Hannah goodbye, and she actually smiled and waved as we pulled away from the house, so it seemed that we had made some progress. As the car took me closer to Cole, I found myself dreading the fact that we were leaving Philadelphia. I was ready to be back in our own house, but now that I knew I had these family members, it felt a little sad to be leaving so soon.
We pulled into the driveway at Meg’s, and walked together into the house, chatting easily. As soon as we walked in the door, we were met by Bill, who couldn’t hide the fact that he was ecstatic.
“Wow, you two missed an awesome game,” he told us excitedly. “I guess if you like a pitcher’s game it wasn’t so great, but what a high-scoring game. Twelve to five, Phillies took it. It was a doozy, wasn’t it Cole?”
“Yeah, it was something,” he muttered, decidedly less enthusiastic than Bill. “We better get going, Cam, so we don’t miss our flight.”
I quickly gave Meg an awkward hug and told her goodbye, while Cole and Bill shook hands, and then we made our way outside. He asked what the books were, and I explained them to him as we pulled out of the driveway. When he stopped talking and just stared out the windshield, I turned to face him and studied him for a minute. Normally he would smile after I gazed at him for a few seconds, but this time he kept looking straight ahead, and I could tell he was avoiding meeting my eyes. Thinking that it must be my lucky day, I just continued to study his handsome face, since he wasn’t going to scold me for it. Eventually, something very unexpected happened – he started to blush a little. My gorgeous husband, who I stared at unabashedly in an almost constant manner, was actually getting uncomfortable under my scrutiny. Unable to help myself, I giggled a little.
“Stop staring at me,” he requested.
“Sorry, can’t do that,” I answered. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he insisted, still not looking at me.
“Did something happen at the game?”
“Nothing remarkable.”
“Are you mad because the Phillies won, and I’m going to think your Jedi mind tricks didn’t work?”
“That would be ridiculous,” he said as his neck turned slightly red.
“That’s it!” I laughed. “Are you really that worried about your Star Wars street cred? Don’t worry – I won’t tell anyone.”
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“The Phillies have proven to be your storm troopers.”
“Why did I ever force you to watch Star Wars?”
“You’re regretting it now, I’m sure,” I teased. “Was your traitorous act worth it, though?”
“I’m sure it won’t be worth it after all the ribbing I’m going to get from you.”
“I won’t be too rough on you,” I assured him. “You’re being hard enough on yourself.” He turned to look at me then, allowing a smile to spread across his face.
“Beautiful woman,” he whispered. “I think I might take you home with me.”
“I think I might let you,” I told him with a wink.
Chapter Nine
Monday morning after Cole left for work, I found myself settling down with the first of the journals and simply reading. Most of the information contained within the pages had made its way to the book, but the notes on the margin from my great-grandmother had not. In those notes were simple instructions regarding what to print and what to change, and I found them fascinating.
It was a day in early spring when I arrived late to school, the bottom of my dress in tatters and mud caked on the side of my face. Johnny Williams had decided that I was acting a little too proudly for his taste when I passed him that morning, so he paced himself behind me for a little while before finding a spot to his liking. Grabbing me by the back of the neck, he forced me behind a vegetable stand with the intention of making me eat dirt. He shoved my face to the ground three times, but when he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he finally stood up and spat at me.
“Why won’t you fight back?” he asked angrily. “You’re a coward just like your old man.”
I swallowed hard, because he couldn’t have been farther from the truth. My father wasn’t a coward – he was the bravest man I knew. He took the insults and the prejudice with his head held high, never letting it bother him.
“This will pass,” he always insisted, “and then they’ll see that we are true Americans.”
That’s all my father ever wanted to be – an American. He loved the idea of being free, and he wanted no other identity. He was even willing to allow people to trample on him to try to prove his loyalty, just as Johnny Williams was doing to me. I had to remain strong, for Father’s sake more than my own.
That’s why I didn’t answer Johnny’s insults that morning. I was afraid if I spoke that I would say something to disgrace my father, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. When he grabbed a rock, though, I was afraid he would throw it at me like the boys had done before. Scared, I leapt to my feet and took off running, catching the bottom of my dress against a nail and ripping it straight through.
I would sew the dress that evening, after my parents thought I had gone to bed, so no one would know what happened. The other events of the day would also go unmentioned, since there were no visible marks on my body and I had long since removed the dirt from my face.
My heart wasn’t quite so easy to scrub clean.
In the margin with that passage were a few simple words:
Change the name Johnny Williams – his mother is still alive, and it will only do her harm to know her son did these things.
It wasn’t simply being free my father loved, as much as belonging to something bigger than himself. He believed in his country.
Setting the book aside, I took a deep breath. These journals were certainly going to make my job easy, but I wished I could have spoken to my grandmother about this. It did seem a little unfair that I found out about this right as the person who could actually talk to me about it lost the ability to do so.
Still, now that I knew that the writer of this book was Isabel Camden, it shouldn’t have been too difficult to uncover information about her mother and her grandfather. In fact, I decided I was going to do that very thing, so I drove myself to the library.
The fact that Lily had the day off only made me a little sad, because I honestly had every intention of working that time, rather than goofing around. Finding information on Isabel Camden was fairly easy, and from there it wasn’t too difficult to find her mother and grandfather: Mary Albright Riley and John Albright. So, my great-grandmother was Mary rather than Etta, but the story was hers regardless, and mine by novel-writing association. (And genetics, if I wanted to be technical about it, although that still felt very strange to acknowledge.)
Interestingly, when I went back through the census records, the information in the book was further validated. In the 1910 census, their names were Johann and Mariela Albrecht, so they must have changed them, just as the book indicated when Henrietta became Etta.
“Wow,” I whispered to myself, feeling like I had uncovered something, even though I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
Unexpectedly, I began to wrestle with the facts in my heart just a bit. When I wrote my novels, I didn’t usually stop to think about how the books could impact what people thought of the historical figures. The facts were out there, after all, for anyone who bothered researching them. I naturally added flourishes and emotions, but I didn’t change the truth as I perceived it.
In this case, though, I could easily unearth the
true story of Mariela Albrecht, the little German-American girl who actually encountered the discrimination, or I could continue to let her hide behind the mask of Etta Rose. The parties couldn’t be hurt now, because everyone involved was gone. Still, if they went to such great pains to hide their involvement, shouldn’t I respect their wishes? They were my own flesh and blood, after all.
For some reason, a vision of Hannah flashed before my eyes, her green eyes piercing into me, and I shuddered a bit. That brought to mind another individual I didn’t want to disappoint – the kind elderly man who requested that I call him Grandpa. My heart swelled a bit just thinking about him, and I fought back a hint of emotion that threatened to rise in my throat.
Mariela’s story had belonged to her and to her parents, and then it was entrusted to Isabel. Now the story was mine – not only to tell, but also to protect. Charlie…Grandpa…had given me that task when he entrusted the journals into my care.
After consulting my heart, continuing to keep the tale under the covering of Etta’s shroud of secrecy seemed the best route, so ultimately I decided to continue to research as though Etta were a distant person and not my own great-grandmother. Nevertheless, on my way back home, I felt like I needed to tell someone or I would burst. I knew I should call my brother and tell him what I found out over the weekend, but he would be at work. Instead, I decided to head over to the bed and breakfast to give Rosalie the scoop.
Bounding up the front steps, I almost knocked on the door, but then I remembered her rebuking me the last time I had done that, so I simply pushed it open. The scent of fresh-baked cookies met me, and since no one was in sight, I made my way over to the kitchen and took a peek at the baking sheet sitting on the stove.
“Rosalie, I’m eating a cookie!” I yelled. I knew she wouldn’t have heard me if she had been upstairs or outside, but I purposely didn’t expend any energy looking for her, just in case the cookies were for her guests. (Very sneaky, I know, but they looked very soft and they were still warm, so I didn’t care.) I picked up a gooey mound of sugary dough and chocolate chips and took a little bite, closing my eyes in delight. When I heard footsteps coming around the corner, my eyes flew open and I half-hid the cookie behind my back, feeling a little guilty. When the footstep culprit emerged around the corner of the hall, though, that stupid cookie was all but forgotten.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Rita, who was carrying a stack of peacock-colored towels as though she belonged in that house.
“Baking cookies,” she stated simply as she paused in front of me, nodding at the oven. “Go ahead – take as many as you like.” Suddenly the cookie in my hand didn’t seem so appealing, so I slowly and deliberately placed it on the counter while Rita looked on without a word. I knew those were Rosalie’s upstairs towels – I had laundered them enough myself to know them by sight, but the thought of Rita carrying them around infuriated me.
“Why do you have the towels?” I stammered, unable to form a coherent thought.
“Oh, I just thought I would help Rosalie out a bit,” she told me. “She’s cleaning upstairs.”
“You’re staying upstairs,” I managed to surmise as she continued to stare at me, seemingly clueless to why I might be upset.
“No, I’m staying in the spare bedroom,” she answered innocently, pointing toward the back of the house and the bedroom I occupied for all those weeks. Feeling my mouth gape open, I turned on my heel, marched across the house, and started up the steps, aware that my footsteps were making quite a racket, but not caring. When I emerged into the upstairs hallway, Rosalie met me with a startled look.
“Hi, honey,” she remarked with a big smile on her face, but as soon as she recognized that look in my eyes, she tilted her head to the side. “Did your trip not go well?”
“How could you?” I blurted, shaking my head as I backed toward the stairs, finding the angry words too difficult to process. Turning, I started my descent.
“Camdyn…” I heard behind me, but I kept walking, passing Rita at the foot of the stairs. When I threw the front door open, I didn’t care that it slammed shut behind me. I was almost to my car by the time Rosalie made it out of the house, and I had already opened the driver’s side door when she yelled at me.
“Stop this minute!” she demanded, and I spun to face her, her reddish-brown hair fanning out a bit around her face where a few tendrils had drifted loose from her ponytail.
“You betrayed me,” I breathed. “How can you tell me that I’m family to you, and then allow Rita in your house? You might as well have stabbed me in the back.” Afraid that I might burst into tears, I stared at her resolutely.
“I’m trying to protect you,” she clarified, folding her arms across her chest. “I know having your mother here isn’t going to be easy for you, but wouldn’t you rather her be here where I could keep an eye on her than living with that Jerry, having half the town talking about you?”
“I don’t care about half the town,” I said with emotion, swiping angrily at the moisture in my eyes. “I care about you.”
“I care about you, too, Camdyn, and don’t you start that with me,” she ordered. “I don’t regularly invite half-worthless people to share my home, but I’d do it for you, so don’t you tell me I don’t care about you.”
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I don’t even know what to say to you right now.”
“Then don’t say anything,” she told me, “but don’t you go running out of here half-cocked thinking I don’t have your best interests at heart. I love you enough to put up with that crazy, fake accent, Italian-speaking woman just so you don’t reap the effects of her actions, so you think before you accuse me of something.” With tears brimming over her eyelashes, she spun around and walked back into the house. Taking a deep breath, I simply slid into the seat of my car, started the ignition, and drove away.
-§-
To say that I spent my afternoon in a funk was an understatement, but I tried desperately to shake it off before Cole came home. This time I absolutely hadn’t done anything wrong, that I was sure of, but I still didn’t want him asking me if I needed counseling again. I didn’t really – a one-way ticket to Antarctica for a certain someone would have been just what the doctor ordered. With that not seeming to be a viable option, I settled for three scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream and then walked back to the old cemetery in the backyard to see if my ancestor Willa could give me any advice. After all, I’d had some personal revelations there in the past that had served me well.
This time, Willa was silent, which shouldn’t have surprised me too much, because most of the time dead people don’t talk. If she had answered me, I would have probably peed my pants, and that might have made not appearing crazy even more difficult.
“You okay?” Cole asked when he walked up behind me, and I was quick to turn toward him with a smile.
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He sat beside me on the bench and stared intently at me with those brown eyes, daring me to get lost in them.
“Because Pop is currently chewing on your shoe, and you don’t seem to care,” he laughed. I dropped my gaze to where I had slipped my shoes off beneath me, and I brushed Pop away, eyeing that drool-covered silver ballet flat.
“Gross,” I whispered, chuckling under my breath.
“Come on,” he said, “I’ll carry you back to the house.”
“My knight in shining armor.”
“No, I just don’t want to hear you complain about that shoe the whole way there. Hop on,” he told me as he turned around, and I did as he asked. “Wow, you feel pretty heavy. Almost like you ate mint chocolate chip ice cream or something.”
“That’s mean!” I exclaimed. “What, did you see the bowl in the sink?”
“No, worse,” he laughed. “You forgot to put it back in the freezer. It was everywhere.”
“Did you have to clean it up?” I asked stupidly.
“No, I just left it there,” he muttered
. “Of course I cleaned it up, crazy. It had me worried. If you were that distracted, I figured you were having some kind of breakdown.”
“I’m not having a breakdown every time I do something stupid.” I leaned my face over his neck, still unable to see his face. “Besides, I’m finished with that. I’m a pillar of strength now.”
“Uh huh,” he said, shaking his head.
Somehow he managed to carry me all the way back to the house without even seeming winded, which amazed me. I had seen him lift weights, so I knew he was used to a lot more weight than he was carrying with me, but it was still a little shocking nonetheless. When we were on the back deck, he dropped me to the ground and patted me on the backside.
“I guess I should think about fixing dinner,” I told him, and he clutched at his heart and took a step back.
“That’s my payment for carrying you all the way to the house?” he teased. “You want to kill me? Why don’t we go over to Aunt Rosalie’s? I’m sure she’s probably missing you.” Steeling myself, I made sure I didn’t have a visual reaction to his words.
“No, I don’t want to go anywhere,” I insisted.
“Okay,” he sighed, leaning against the house. “Maybe we can just have some popcorn and watch a movie?”
“That sounds perfect,” I admitted, opening the back door and walking inside. He prepared himself for an argument over which movie to watch, but I told him he could choose, at which point he informed me that I was a pretty perfect wife. As soon as he uttered those words, I thought that a perfect wife would have made dinner and not let the ice cream melt all over the counter, but I kept that to myself. Instead, I just settled for the gallant act of allowing him to watch a James Bond film.
Cole let me relax against him on the couch, which seemed like a wonderful ending to the day I’d had, even though I was not paying a bit of attention to his movie. My mind was preoccupied with thinking about Rita and Rosalie, but Cole didn’t seem to notice. He just kept eating his popcorn with his warm arm stretched around me, allowing me to stew in my thoughts.
A Reason to Forget (The Camdyn Series Book 3) Page 12