Mine to Tell Read Online Free PDF Page A

and you’re used to it. Maybe this won’t be as difficult for you to adjust to.”
    I looked around his apartment for the thousandth time, taking in the fixtures that begged for beer and pretzels instead of hot tea and maybe a scone. I sighed. It was Trevor, but somehow it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
    Trevor reached down to his lap and came up with his napkin. He aligned the corners, folding it neatly, as if he were doing a geometry project, and then he laid it near his plate, keeping his eye on it to make sure it stayed symmetrical. I watched it too, afraid to look in his eyes.
    “Anna,” he said slowly, “I think I know what’s wrong. I mean really wrong, not just bad apartments or cold feet.”
    I looked up, ready to hear whatever he had to say, desperate for someone to look down my throat at my heart and tell me what was wrong. My life as a bride was coming at me like a train, and instead of fueling the engine I was throwing onto the tracks everything I could get my hands on.
    He pulled his chair around the small table, next to mine, and took both of my hands in his. “I think it’s that you’re a farm girl,” he said, looking solemnly into my eyes.
    I started, expecting more of a revelation than that. Surely he was kidding. Farm girls fell in love and got married and lived in apartments.
    “I know you love your job here in Cincinnati with the newspaper, but you’re not settled, not feeling at home.”
    I blinked a few times, trying to get what he was saying to sink in. I wallowed the idea around in my head for a minute, tried it on for size, and gave his psychology a chance to fit me, even though I knew it didn’t.
    “That’s why you don’t like any of the apartments we’ve looked at. They’re all too modern.”
    “But the house my father built for us is modern,” I protested, frustrated he was stuck on a surface issue, incapable of seeing any of my hidden, real issues.
    “Think about it, Annabelle. Your new house may have been a different style on the outside, but the inside is like a museum. Old furniture, flowered wallpaper, lace curtains. It isn’t modern. You guys just moved your old house into that new one.”
    I nibbled on my lower lip as I mulled over our house, trying to see it the way he did, since he was convinced I had an architectural or agricultural problem rather than an emotional one. But when I thought back to my home, my farm, my upbringing, it wasn’t my house I saw, and neither was it Isaac’s, where I’d first lived. It was Julianne’s. Try as I might to mentally enter my parents’ front door and look at their furniture, my thoughts raced through snaky grass up to the rickety porch, and stood in front of Julianne’s old wooden door, the door that led to the first Crouse woman who had ruined a marriage.
    “I have to go back,” I said in a gush, surprising both of us.
    “What?” He let go and pulled away.
    “I need to get into Julianne’s house. Remember? I told you that. It’s like a family curse or something, and if I don’t find out why she left, I’ll…”
    “Whoa, what? She left? Who? When? And what does that have to do with us?”
    “Maybe nothing. But maybe everything. You could come with me and help me go through that house.” I leaned toward him and reached for his hands.
    “I’m not going back there to go through that house. That’s silly. You said so yourself. But this does prove one thing, though, and that’s that I’m right. You won’t be happy in a modern house.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. He was trying to look champion of this conversation, but he didn’t. His eyes were too wide, his eyebrows too high.
    “I’ll go back alone then. It’s okay if you don’t, but I have to do this. I should have done it years ago. She wanted me to, I could feel it. It’s not too late. But I can’t get married until I do.”
    “Our wedding’s not for six months. That’s plenty of time, and it won’t take you six months to look