“Did I overstep, sweetheart?”
She shook her head. “Why are you so good to me?”
“Am I not supposed to be? I thought a man treasured that which was most precious to him.”
I think I love this man, Genevieve thought, staring up at him through a haze of tears. How was he everything she had hoped and dreamed of all those long years ago? “Will you open it?” she croaked, handing him the key.
He took it and knelt on the rug to turn the key in the lock.
Genevieve sank to the floor by his side, and because of his steady presence found the courage to open the lid.
Pushing aside layers of tissue and sachets to keep the contents fresh, Genevieve peered into the trunk, recognizing the jewelry box she had been given as a child—not that she had had many jewels, but it had been a convenient place to keep her trinkets and a few necklaces and bracelets that she’d owned. And below that was the lovely cedar box that had been her mother’s. Her father had given it to her upon her mother’s passing, but she’d always kept the contents separate. The next layer consisted of clothing—her favorites, though now sadly out of date, and other personal belongings. A few pieces of embroidery, stitched for Genevieve’s one-day trousseau. A shawl she remembered had been her mother’s. And then below that?—
“Oh,” Genevieve whispered. “Books.” She lifted them out. They were all her father’s works—her personal copies, worn and thumbed, but a few appeared new. She looked closer.
The Adventures of Dunstan, an Anglo-Saxon Boy.Bold Amice, Wise Amice.The Dragon of Langsey Isle.The Chapel at Canterbury, Or, In the Days of King Harold.
They were all attributed as Mr. Anglesy’s Stories for Children.
“I know these stories,” she whispered, thumbing throughBold Amice, Wise Amice. “He told them to me at night, but after Mother died, he never made them into novels…but he finished them? They’re children’s books?” She turned to the dedication pages.
For Jenny, be brave and bold and never give up.
For Jenny, nowhere in the wide world is too far to come home.
For Jenny, you are my most precious work.
For Jenny, for no other reason than I love you.
Genevieve covered her face with her hands and just breathed.He did not hate me. He did not resent me.
Kendrick pressed a handkerchief into her hand.
After sniffing into the handkerchief, she stacked the books carefully. She looked around for her favorite,Wynnflaed’s Knight.As she picked it up, she saw the edge of an envelope sticking out above the pages.
The book fell open to the place where the envelope lay. Inscribed in her father’s scholar handwriting that she would know anywhere, it read, “Jenny.”
Oh, God, she thought.
Everything she had begged for. Everything she feared.
Kendrick’s arm wrapped around her shoulders as she, with horribly shaking hands, freed the sheets of paper from the envelope.
My dearest, best beloved, only daughter Jenny,
It is hard to believe I have not laid eyes on you for nearly nineteen years. The year turns colder, and my chest once again battles every cough and sniffle the winter provokes. I ask the Lord for what I have requested every Christmas—that I will see you again—but I write this letter to leave with Hetty and Arthur in case the Lord in His wisdom allows me to see your mother again first.
People have tried to tell me you eloped with some man, or left for parts unknown, or worse—been shamed somehow and do not want to return. I have never believed them. You had opportunities to marry—I would not have minded, Jenny—but you insisted on staying and running the house. You believed I needed looking after. You always wanted to look after people, Jenny. I never believed you would have left without a word. I cling to the belief that something kept you from coming home. You knew that there was nothing you could do that would have ever made me turn you away.
I look to Anglo-Saxon quotes for the familiar comfort they have always afforded me, but they had no hope in death. “Unknown to them was the Wielder of Glory, High King of the World,” as the Beowulf poet says. And maybe that is why I have loved them so—they see so imperfectly through a glass darkly, but we who have hope can see the glimmer of what is more, both in their tales, as the Beowulf poet draws out, and in our own stories.
I will admit to the temptation of Job, when his so-called friends told him to curse God and die. But what will that profit me? Then I am like the Geats, who believed death was the end, that only men’s glory and great deeds would endure after one surrendered to the dark.
No, I will not. God has shown Himself to be ever present in my grief. He brought your friend Hetty to keep house for me, and I felt pleased I could help her support her family, and she reminded me of you. And then I found kinship with Arthur, a Methodist and another scholar at heart, and he began taking dinner with me for company—and to flirt with Hetty. Blessings in the midst of sorrow.
No, I will not be cursing God. I increasingly turn to His words in these years. And what I lean on as the years have crept forward is that no word from God will ever fail. And has He not said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die”?
Whether you have departed this life—or if one day I will see you again in the land of the living—or if you will read this letter after I am gone, I hold to this. Whether you have gone before me to see your mother, or whether I will meet her before you—I believe that no word from God will ever fail.
