Mine to Tell Read Online Free PDF

at that itty-bitty house. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll go with you. We’ll spend a weekend there and you can get this out of your system, whatever it is.” He straightened in his chair. His voice was a bit high and his eyes looked like he’d just been slapped.
    “No, you don’t have to. I asked you before and you didn’t want to, and that’s okay.” I grabbed his hands this time and tried to pull him close, but he wouldn’t budge. “Trev,” I said, squeezing his hands. “This doesn’t mean we’re splitting up.” It felt like a lie, though I didn’t mean it that way, and it looked like one on his face. I didn’t want to hurt him, even though something in me had already quit my newspaper job, packed my few belongings, and was driving as fast as possible to our old farm…to Julianne’s old house…to see what was there so I’d know what was wrong with me.
    “It sounds like that’s what you mean.” His voice cracked with the pain exploding so violently inside him. His face looked like it would shatter from the impact.
    “No, no, no.” I wanted to sound sincere. “But…” I looked at him. “I have to go. It’s important.” I stopped. Those words rang like a far-off echo in my mind.
    I let go of his hands and listened. I’d heard them before, somewhere. It was Mama’s voice that had said them, but it was Julianne who had written them…written them to Isaac when she left. My eyes grew wide as that message spanned three generations. “But she came back…” I muttered.
    “Huh?” Trevor asked, his eyes glassy.
    “I mean I’m not breaking us up,” I said, tugging at my lower lip with my teeth.
    Tears filled his eyes and he looked away. “Promise?” he asked the wall to his right. “Promise we’re not breaking up?”
    “Yes,” I said, to make it true. “I promise.”

Chapter 5
    “The exile will be long, build houses and
    live in them and plant gardens and eat their produce.”
    I set the last box in the back of my car and straightened. Trevor was standing back from me and the car as he watched me close the trunk on my belongings.
    “When I was small I wouldn’t let my great-uncle Simon tear down Julianne’s house. It was like an ant trying to stop a road crew, this little screaming kid hanging onto his leg. He tried to kick me aside. What I wanted didn’t mean anything.” I looked at Trevor’s face. I was trying to explain things to him that I didn’t fully understand myself. Giving him a crash course in why I had to go and why Julianne’s house meant something to me.
    Trevor looked aside as if he were talking to the car next to mine. “So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he go ahead and tear it down?” There was a bitter tone in his question and defensiveness in his stance. Defensiveness that wondered why this ant had to get its way when it was so tiny, so insignificant.
    “My grandpa stopped him,” I said, stepping to the side so I could look into his eyes. “He stood up for me. And he stood up for Julianne, too. For one moment it was like he heard her, and he stood up to his brother and let his heart make a choice.” I remembered my grandpa’s trembling hand as I reached out and touched Trevor’s sleeve with my fingertips. “You’ll come visit?”
    He shuffled. He looked down, and his toe dug in and twisted tiny particles of gravel into the pavement. He was uncomfortable, and I was sorry I made him feel that way. “Yeah, of course I will.” He looked at me, his face distorted. “You think you’ll be better soon, so we can go ahead with our plans?”
    I dropped my arm and drew in a deep breath. “Probably,” I said. “It’ll be okay.” My voice dwindled away. I was assuring him when I wasn’t sure at all. I was trying to please him, make everything right for him when maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know—I wouldn’t know until I was there, in her house, and touching her things.
    Trevor didn’t relax, but he was toying with the thread of hope I’d