Chapter 3 - The Woman Before Me
Elaine Loren had been twenty-nine when she wrote the first letter.
I knew that because she wrote her age at the top.
Maybe she wanted to remember who she had been.
Maybe she wanted somebody else to.
The handwriting was neat at first.
By the third page, it wasn’t.
Elaine had moved into Stan and Marley’s house temporarily after losing her job and ending an engagement.
Stan had offered her the spare bedroom.
Marley had agreed.
According to Elaine, the arrangement was supposed to last three months.
It lasted eleven weeks.
At first, Marley’s comments sounded painfully familiar.
Her clothes.
Her weight.
Her hair.
Her work.
Elaine repaired farm equipment.
She had learned from their father.
Marley apparently hated that.
One letter quoted her.
“You’d be prettier if you stopped trying so hard to be somebody’s son.”
My stomach tightened.
I looked at Stan.
“You remember this?”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing?”
His face reddened.
“Usually.”
Usually.
One word can carry a lifetime of shame.
I kept reading.
Elaine wrote that every time Marley insulted her, Stan smiled nervously.
Sometimes he laughed.
Sometimes he left the room.
Then Elaine stopped laughing.
Exactly as I had.
The reaction had been immediate.
Marley accused her of creating tension.
Of being humorless.
Of turning Stan against his wife.
Of “punishing everyone with silence.”
I lowered the letter.
“She said the exact same thing about me.”
Stan nodded.
“I know.”
My skin went cold.
“That’s why you gave me the key.”
“No.”
He pointed toward another envelope.
“That’s why.”
Inside was a photograph.
Two young women stood beside a picnic table.
One was unmistakably Marley.
The other had short dark hair, grease on her jeans, and a wrench tucked into her back pocket.
Elaine.
Behind them stood a much younger Stan.
He wasn’t smiling.
On the back, Elaine had written:
Three days before Marley told everyone I threatened her.
I looked up.
“Threatened her?”
Stan stared at the floor.
“That was the story.”
“What really happened?”
“Elaine confronted her.”
“About the jokes?”
“About more than the jokes.”
He pointed toward the notebook.
Elaine had begun recording things.
Dates.
Comments.
Arguments.
Money.
I turned pages.
There were references to Stan’s mother.
Marley had mocked her cooking.
Her clothes.
Her education.
Then Heidi, who had only been a little girl at the time.
Elaine wrote that Marley was beginning to criticize her daughter’s eating.
Too much bread.
Second helping?
A girl should learn discipline.
I thought about Heidi’s plate.
Food cut into tiny pieces.
My chest tightened.
“Stan.”
He knew what I was going to ask.
“I saw it too.”
“And you still—”
“I was a coward.”
There was no defense in his voice.
Only fact.
He leaned forward.
“Jocelyn, people imagine cowardice means running from something dramatic. Sometimes it’s smaller. Sometimes it’s sitting at a dinner table every week and deciding keeping the peace matters more than telling the truth.”
That sentence silenced me.
Because it sounded like Kyle.
And, if I was being fair, it sounded like me too.
I had spent years laughing.
Elaine had finally stopped.
Then Marley escalated.
The notebook described missing belongings.
Phone messages never delivered.
A job interview Elaine nearly missed because Marley had written down the wrong time.
Family members being told Elaine was “unstable.”
Then came the final confrontation.
Elaine had told Stan she was moving out.
She also told him why.
Marley overheard.
That evening, Marley told relatives Elaine had threatened her.
No police.
No official accusation.
Just a story.
A story repeated often enough that people accepted it.
Elaine left.
Stan helped her carry two suitcases to her car.
Then he did something he had regretted for forty-one years.
Nothing.
“Where did she go?” I asked.
“Duluth.”
“You never saw her again?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“1989.”
He swallowed.
“She asked me whether I had told the truth.”
“What did you say?”
Stan looked at me.
“I said I was trying.”
I waited.
He shook his head.
“I wasn’t.”
The basement became painfully quiet.
“Is Elaine alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t spoken in thirty-seven years?”
“No.”
“Why keep the box?”
“Because throwing it away would have meant Marley’s version became the only version.”
Footsteps sounded above us.
Stan went white.
I checked the time.
Marley’s appointment shouldn’t have ended for another thirty minutes.
A door closed upstairs.
Then came Marley’s voice.
“Stan?”
He stood so quickly the chair scraped concrete.
I shoved the letters back into the box.
“Stan?”
Closer.
He whispered, “Take the notebook.”
“What?”
“Take it.”
I slid the notebook beneath my sweater.
The basement door opened.
Marley appeared at the top of the stairs.
Her eyes went first to me.
Then Stan.
Then the green metal box.
She didn’t speak.
For five full seconds, nobody did.
Then she descended.
Slowly.
“You kept it.”
Stan straightened.
“Yes.”
Her face changed.
Not fear now.
Fury.
“You promised me.”
“No,” he said.
His voice shook.
“I told you I threw it away.”
Marley looked at me.
“What did you read?”
I said nothing.
She laughed once.
A brittle sound.
“Of course.”
She came closer.
“Another woman who thinks silence makes her powerful.”
“No,” I said.
“Silence just made it easier to hear you.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You have no idea what Elaine was like.”
“I read her letters.”
“You read one side.”
“Then tell me yours.”
Marley opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
I watched Stan.
He was trembling.
But he stayed beside me.
Marley noticed too.
That seemed to frighten her more than anything.
“Give me the box.”
“No,” Stan said.
She turned toward him.
“What?”
“No.”
The word was quiet.
But forty-one years stood behind it.
Marley stared at her husband.
Then she pointed toward me.
“She is doing exactly what Elaine did.”
Stan’s eyes filled.
“No.”
He looked at Marley.
“She’s doing what I should have done.”
Marley recoiled as if he had slapped the table between them.
I headed for the stairs.
Behind me, she said, “If you take anything from this house, Jocelyn, don’t come back.”
I stopped.
The notebook felt heavy beneath my sweater.
I turned.
“I didn’t come here to steal anything.”
That was true.
Stan had given it to me.
“But I am coming back Sunday.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Why?”
“Because Heidi deserves to hear what happened.”
That was when Marley’s expression changed again.
“You leave Heidi out of this.”
It was too fast.
Too sharp.
And suddenly I knew.
May you like
The forty-one-year-old secret wasn’t the only thing Marley was afraid we might uncover.
---
