My Brother's Crown

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I expected to hear something sweet, something encouraging and kind.

  Instead, her voice was sharp and scolding. “Now you listen here, missy.”

  When I didn’t meet her eyes, Danielle leaned forward and placed both hands squarely on top of the case I was trying to clean.

  “Hey—”

  “Renee,” she barked, cutting me off. “This is serious.”

  I stopped cleaning and stepped back. “What?”

  Looking me deeply in the eye, she spoke succinctly. “Do. Not. Mess. This. Up. Not again.”

  I looked away.

  “Oh, like you don’t know what I’m talking about? Every time you meet a guy who is actually smart enough and cute enough to catch your eye, you end up running him off.”

  “Come on—”

  “Either you’re snarky or condescending or, worst of all, you do the buddy thing, where you act more like a sister than a girlfriend.”

  Ouch. Her words hurt, but we both knew they were true.

  We were quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her tone at last was gentle. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to make you change,” she said softly, “but at least you have to try.” After a beat, she smiled and added in a high-pitched, nasally voice, “Because you’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  As it turned out, Blake’s guy was a grizzled older fellow with a gravelly voice and steely blue eyes who introduced himself as “Ingles”—though whether that was his first name or last, I wasn’t sure. He was wearing a navy uniform with all kinds of things strapped to it, including a Taser, a flashlight that could double as a billy club, and a big, shiny gun. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the sight, but at least I didn’t have a panic attack. Unlike yesterday outside the bank, I was prepared this time.

  Blake instructed Ingles on logistics and procedure while I finished the last of my preparations, and then it was time to retrieve the pamphlet from the study. Only then, however, did I realize I had made one important miscalculation: Between here and there were tons of relatives, even more than before. I explained to Blake that we were going to be waylaid, probably over and over. He thought for a moment and then looked to his buddy.

  “Guess we can do a Swift?”

  “Sure,” he replied, standing up straight and placing a hand just millimeters away from his gun barrel.

  My pulse surged. “What’s a swift?”

  “A Taylor Swift,” Blake explained. “Her tour came through Richmond last month, and Ingles and I were in charge of getting her in and out of the coliseum. We got it down to a science.”

  I blinked, about to ask what on earth they were doing escorting a pop star to her concerts when he added matter-of-factly, “Her legs are insured by our company.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “Anyway, here’s how it works,” Blake continued, taking my elbow. “The two of us flank you real tight and then we walk three across, moving with speed and purpose directly from here to the study in as straight a line as we can muster.”

  “If anyone tries to engage,” Ingles added, “we just pass ’em by. No eye contact, no response. Nothing. Got it?”

  Behind me, Danielle clapped. “Fun, Renee! You’re a rock star.”

  I couldn’t imagine anything I less wanted to be, but the pamphlet was in there and we needed it in here, so I reluctantly agreed. Then we were off.

  By the time we returned, I could barely control myself. As Ingles pulled the door shut behind us, I burst into laughter.

  “Unbelievable,” Blake said, laughing as well, though his cheeks were tinged with pink.

  Ingles merely gave a growl and then marched into the next room.

  “What happened?” Danielle asked, wanting in on the joke.

  As soon as I caught my breath, I replied, “Let’s just say the most rabid of Taylor Swift fans has nothing on Aunt Cissy.”

  “No! Not Aunt Cissy.”

  “Oh, yeah, and she’s in fine form. ‘I will not step aside, young man,’ ” I said in my best imitation. “ ‘I don’t care how big your muscles are. I haven’t seen my great-niece in months and I am going to give her a hug whether you like it or not.’ ”

  Blake gave an exaggerated shudder. “Feels like I’ve stared death in the face… and lost.”

  He was just joking, but his words fell on Danielle and me like ice water.

  Our smiles instantly fading, we both looked away, a familiar, surprising thud hitting me square in the chest. Danielle wasn’t much better. After mumbling a quick, “Excuse me,” she turned and left, going out through the same door she’d come in.

  Poor Blake. He had no way of knowing what he’d done wrong, of knowing that that’s exactly what she and I had done when we were just children. We had stared death in the face, and in many ways, we had lost.

  Ignoring his perplexed expression, I forced a smile and held up the pale green case. “We’d better take care of this.”

  I headed for the next room, Blake coming right behind me. Ignoring him, I turned on the UV-safe lights that were directed toward the cabinet and turned off all of the others. As I worked, I heard him ask Ingles if he would give us a minute.

  Without a word, Ingles left, and then Blake and I were alone.

  I managed to avoid his eyes as I handed him the case and retrieved the white cotton gloves. Once the gloves were on, I gestured for him to open it up, but instead he pulled it away, holding it beyond my reach.

  “Blake—”

  “Renee.” His voice was soft and deep, possessing a tenderness that surprised me. “What happened out there just now? I obviously offended you or hurt your feelings in some way, but I don’t know how. And for the second time too. I’m thinking if you could bring me up to speed, maybe I can stop doing whatever it is I keep doing.”

  I sighed, wishing I could tell him, that I could just blurt out the story as if it were no big deal. But it wasn’t that simple.

  Even so, he was a decent fellow, and I felt bad that he thought these odd moments were somehow his fault. I wouldn’t go into everything, but maybe he did deserve at least part of the story.

  “It’s not you, I promise,” I said, forcing my voice to sound calmer than I felt. “I was… I have… My cousins and I, when we were kids, we went through something traumatic. And it left a few scars, that’s all.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Emotional scars, I mean. The kind that make a person overreact to a perfectly innocent comment, like what you said in there about looking death in the eye. You were just joking, and you couldn’t possibly know your words would hit so close to home. It’s not anything you can stop or change. It’s just a problem of ours. Of mine. I appreciate your asking, but please don’t worry about it. Really.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And Wednesday? In the car, outside the bank? What did I say wrong that time? After you practically ran away, I started to ask your grandmother what I’d done to offend you, but she immediately changed the subject, and I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Of course not. She never wanted to talk about it, not even back when it first happened.

  I shrugged. “Well, thanks to the same incident, I’m sort of paranoid about weapons. I happened to see your gun as you were walking past the window, and it startled me. That’s all. I was fine afterward. I just had to calm down a little.” Gesturing toward his hip, I added, “I mean, I’m sure you’re wearing it now and see? I’m okay. It’s all about expectation and not being caught by surprise.”

  “Oh. Huh.” He thought about that for a long moment. “So, if I may ask, what happened to you that was so traumatic? Though if you’d rather not talk about it…”

  I hesitated. “It’s a long story. Basically, my cousins and I were off playing when we happened upon a crime scene, someone who had recently been murdered in cold blood.”

  Blake’s eyes widened again.

  I decided to elaborate just a little. “We’d gone hiking in the woods next door, all the way to an old hunting cabin wh
ere we loved to play. As soon as we walked inside, we saw a man lying on a cot across the room, a big knife buried in his chest, and pools of blood splattered on the wall and pooled all over the floor.”

  Blake sucked in a breath. “How old were you?”

  “Danielle and I were nine. Madeline was eight. Nicole was six.”

  “No wonder it left scars—on all of you, I would imagine.”

  I nodded, wishing I could tell him the rest of the story, the part that had been in a sense even more damaging, the part about how we ran screaming toward home, told our parents, and waited till the police arrived. How by the time we got back to the cabin, the body was gone. In the space of maybe half an hour total, someone had come in and removed the corpse and completely cleaned up the scene. To make matters worse, they had also set things up to look as if our dead body was a pile of blankets, the knife was a stick poking out of them, and the blood was just a puddle of rainwater from one of the leaks in the roof.

  I couldn’t tell Blake about that, which was something I’d learned the hard way. I just couldn’t bear that inevitable moment when I laid it all out for someone new and saw a flicker of doubt in response, a millisecond of maybe it really was just a blanket and a stick and a puddle. Whenever that happened, I’d feel as betrayed as I had that day, when the police and our parents decided we’d merely been the victims of our own overactive imaginations. Some of our male cousins had even dubbed us the “Liar Choir,” a nickname the four of us found infuriating.

  I’d spent the past nineteen years trying to understand what happened out there in the woods, nineteen years knowing that what we saw was real, and knowing the adults who were supposed to be our advocates did not believe us. Eventually, they grew so tired of our histrionics that they even made us stop talking about it.

  The biggest concession I’d ever gotten from anyone had come from a counselor I saw in college. “I believe that you believe that’s what you saw,” she’d told me. It wasn’t enough, and I didn’t go back.

  Now, Blake was looking at me expectantly, and I could tell he knew there was more that I wasn’t saying. But he didn’t press, much to my relief. Instead, he simply gave a nod and told me, “Okay. Well thanks for explaining. I appreciate it. And, hey, you have my number. If something concerns or frightens you, feel free to text or call, okay?”

  I simply nodded my head, unable to speak.

  Then he held the case toward me and gave me a warm, encouraging smile, his signal that our talk was over and we could get on with the business at hand.

  Oddly, now that he knew at least part of the truth, I felt better. Lighter, somehow. Maybe it was because he was so big and muscular, but being with him made me feel safe—despite the gun at his hip.

  Returning his smile, I took the case, opened it up, and turned my attention to the pamphlet inside. I pulled it out and cradled it gingerly in my gloved hands. Blake opened the back of the display cabinet for me, and I gently slid the Persecution Pamphlet inside, laying it atop the slanted linen-wrapped prop box the way Dr. Underwood had shown me. It took some trial and error to get the pamphlet in just the right spot at just the right angle, even with Blake’s assistance, but I was satisfied at last. Stepping back, I gestured for him to take it from there, and then I watched as he closed the back, bolted it shut, and activated the cabinet’s alarm.

  When he was finished, we took a final walk around both rooms. Blake put away the ladder and got Ingles back at his post while I tucked the case and the gloves into a cubby behind one of the fabric panels. Once we were all set, Blake checked his watch.

  “Well, look at us,” he said with a grin. “Ready for the masses with a good ten minutes to spare.”

  To my relief, the setup I’d been responsible for worked out great, with family members filing in to watch the film, continuing on to see the actual pamphlet, and then exiting from there. I’d known many of them would enjoy the experience, but what I hadn’t anticipated was the word of mouth that would ripple through the crowd whenever a new group emerged from the rooms. By early afternoon, I’d had so many more requests from people who hadn’t signed up in the first place and were now regretting it that I had to add on an additional hour and a half of viewing slots.

  The rest of the reunion seemed to be flowing along well too, with folks chatting and laughing everywhere, as usual. When I wasn’t busy with my mini museum, I was mostly hanging out with my first cousins—minus Nicole, who still hadn’t shown up. Now and then during the day, whenever I saw Blake, I would feel a surprising surge of electricity deep in my chest. Eventually, I had to admit the truth. I found him intriguing and appealing, and I really would like to get to know him better.

  At one point Danielle had to put in her time as a helper in the children’s craft area, leaving Maddee and me to wander around alone. We played one round of horseshoes and then decided it was too hot and headed for the much cooler solarium inside the main house. That was where all the family displays were set up, starting with the “What’s New?” section, where people could put any Talbot-related photos or facts or documents they had managed to unearth since the last reunion. Some of these folks were hard-core genealogists, and this gave them the opportunity to display the fruits of their labors each year. Though I had great respect for our family’s history, I’d never really gotten into tracing my roots beyond the limits of an ancestry app on my phone, so I always appreciated that they were willing to share.

  After that came my favorite display of all, the Talbot family tree. Printed on a massive sheet of vinyl that covered an entire wall, the original version of the huge sign had been created years before I was born and was updated—with new spouses, new babies, new information about previous generations—by hand, written in a neat print with a permanent marker, each year. The design featured the faint image of a tree in the background, its trunk running nearly from ceiling to floor, its widest limbs stretching almost the full span of the wall. In the foreground was the biggest, most fully constructed name chart I had ever seen, one that had grown bigger with each passing year.

  I started, as always, by finding my own name, which sat just under my parents and alongside my brothers. Seeing it there always made me feel so connected to the extended Talbot family.

  Except now it struck me for the first time how little space I took up compared to my siblings. I had one nameplate total: Renee Michelle Talbot. No spouse. No children. My two brothers, on the other hand, took up seven spaces between them. Seven.

  To my one.

  Refusing to dwell on that thought, I turned my attention to the top of the tree, to the man we considered the founding father of the family, Emmanuel Talbot. He’d been the first male Talbot to come to America, in the early 1700s, though I seemed to recall hearing that one or two of his sisters preceded him. Emmanuel’s mother was Catherine Gillet Talbot, the one who had written the journal. Ever since I’d read her story in her own words four years ago, I’d felt a sense of kinship with the woman—and, by extension, her son.

  “This thing is just about full,” Maddee said, pointing to the bottom.

  Taking a look, I realized she was right. There was room for just a few more names, and then this lovely family tree was going to be out of space.

  “Not that they’ll ever need any room for my sake,” she added, an odd sadness in her voice.

  I glanced at her, confused for a moment, and then it came to me.

  Of course. The old baby hunger, an affliction Madee had suffered forever. I’d never really understood until a few years ago when I held my first nephew in my arms and gazed into his precious face. A sudden, sharp longing for a child of my own startled me in its intensity. In the three years since, the feeling would reemerge now and then, such as when I helped out in the church nursery or shopped for a Mother’s Day card or rocked my niece or nephews to sleep.

  Then again, I knew I had nothing on Maddee. A born mother, she reportedly tended to her classmates’ needs when she was still in kindergarten. By age twelve, she’d alrea
dy chosen the names for her future children—all six of them. By seventeen, she’d started sewing baby clothes and tucking them away for the future.

  “God is the one who gave you all your mommy instincts,” I said. “I’m sure He has something wonderful in mind for you.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I’m ready now. It’s terrible, Renee. Sometimes I think I should just marry the next man I see.”

  As if on cue, a male voice called out to us. “Hey, Talbot, there you are. Got a minute?”

  We turned to see Blake striding toward us across the solarium.

  My heart sank. This was perfect. Not only had the inevitable moment arrived when he was to meet the most beautiful of my young and eligible cousins, but he couldn’t have been given a better setup if he’d tried.

  “Sure,” I said, my voice strained as I made the introductions. He and Maddee greeted each other, but then he simply took me by the elbow and asked if he could borrow me for a minute.

  “No problem,” Maddee replied. “She’s all yours.”

  Ignoring her bemused smile, I allowed Blake to lead me into the dining room.

  “Your Aunt Cissy is looking for you,” he said softly once we’d come to a stop, “to ask if she can sing the National Anthem at the ceremony tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing, so I decided to give you a heads up.”

  I groaned. “Oh, that would be a bad thing, a very bad thing. Thanks for the warning.”

  He smiled. “Want me to head her off at the pass?”

  I thought for a moment. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll just tell her the only way we could fit it in would be to cancel somebody’s speech, but that I wouldn’t feel right doing that on such short notice.”

  “Ah, that should work,” he said, eyeing me shrewdly. “See? That’s why I like you, Renee. You’re not just book smart, you’re people smart too.”

  With that, he turned and headed for the door, leaving me to watch him go.

  His words stayed with me the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. They were still on my mind once the day’s events finally came to an end. Even after Blake was gone for the night and I rounded up my cousins and we set to work dismantling as much of the mini museum as we could—taking down the fabric panels and putting away the chairs and the screen—five words kept ringing around in my head.