Free Mine to Tell by Colleen L Donnelly

and waved my hand across everything else. I wasn’t watching Julianne’s things, I was watching Kyle. I wanted his opinion now, his sense of things that I somehow lacked. His eyes played across the flowers, the tray, and its contents. He studied each one as if nothing was insignificant, each piece telling a part of her story.
    “What do you see?” I asked.
    His eyes were soft when they turned to me, contemplative, unraveled secrets swirling in their blue.
    “There’s more?” he asked. It sounded as if he was asking, “Where is the rest?” instead.
    My jaw tightened as I ground my teeth together. I looked away from the boards which lay above the tin containing Julianne’s Bible.
    “What makes you think there’s more?” I asked. Her Bible was sacred. It was personal, and I didn’t know if I could share it with him. If he’d been Trevor I would have dragged it out and forced it on him, hoping he’d see me as well as my great-grandmother. It wasn’t like that with Kyle. He was here because he wanted to be. I didn’t have to force or coerce him, he already just was, and he accepted me as the same.
    “I just feel like there is,” he said. Our eyes met and my heart pounded in the silence. I could lie and keep Julianne and her hidden secret to myself. He’d let me. He’d never push, he only invited. I looked down at the boards where her Bible was hidden and knew I was going to trust him. Trust myself and Julianne to this unusual man.
    I slid over to the boards and moved them aside, exposing the discolored tin box beneath. I lifted it from its tomb and laid it on the floor between us. Kyle watched, his expression telling me nothing. I lifted the top of the tin and set it aside. We both stared down at the Bible. He looked up at me and I wrapped my fingers around its edges and pulled it out.
    “I’ve looked at it only a little,” I said as I held it on my lap. “I’ve been waiting to get back up here and go through it carefully.” My voice cracked as I thought of Trevor and the disappointment he’d left behind after his visit. Kyle said nothing. I could feel him beside me, the invisibility he’d had as a child palpable in his nearness. How was it I’d always looked through him before, when there was clearly substance in his quiet manner? I lifted the front cover and turned a few pages. The dedication page had her name on it, a date below it that was near the time she’d probably moved into this house, and an inscription that said, “Read this diligently in order to find your repentance and hopefully salvage your salvation.” Isaac Jacob Crouse was scratched below the harsh sentiment, the giver of the book, his signature sharp and spiked, just like the notes tucked in the family Bible at my parents’ house.
    We looked at each other, the hostility behind the gift and the inscription stinging in the alcove. I scooted over next to Kyle and opened its pages, letting him see along with me. He leaned close and bore down on each page as I flitted through the Old and New Testaments.
    There were no treasures hidden within its pages as I’d hoped, no locks of hair, old letters, or postcards. I went from front to back and then from back to front. Sighing, I closed it and ran my hand over its dry leather cover.
    “She’s there,” Kyle said. “That’s where she is.”
    I looked up to see where he was looking, my heart racing, terrified of some manifestation like the path around her house I’d seen ages ago. He was gazing down into my lap, his eyes on the Bible.
    “What?” I asked. “Here?” I lifted the Bible. He nodded.
    “Her story’s in there,” he said. “That’s where she told it.”
    I opened it again, wondering what I’d missed, too excited to ask him how he knew I was looking for something from her whether in a story or not. I pinched a thickness of pages between my fingers and fanned through them quickly, looking for a letter or something to fall out.
    “Slower,” he said and brought the