Christmas in Bethel

Chapter Thirty

In times like these, the height of our previous joy is revealed by the sudden depth of our misery.

Beth Stilton’s Diary

The next days passed quickly. I followed Lee online through Montgomery, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Dayton, Indianapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, then ending in Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston. Texas. I called Pauline to let her know that I’d be missing book club on the eighth. She was excited to hear where I was.

“So you’re shacking up with him now?”

“I’m just watching the house while he’s gone on book tour.”

“Sure you are, you little coquette,” she said. “I’ll let the Babes know. And darling, you’ve got this.” I loved the woman.

The morning of the fourteenth, I woke as giddy as a child on Christmas morning. Lee called me around eight.

“I’m coming home.”

“I’m counting the seconds. What time?”

“I land at five seventeen at Gateway.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’ve got to run. I’ll see you soon.”

My heart was doing the monkey dance. (Whatever that is.) My author was finally coming home. Despite his multitude of eccentricities, I had, for the most part, enjoyed the time I had with Marc. I couldn’t help but wonder where he would be without Lee, but I also saw him as his staunchest defender and most loyal ally.

As it was our last day alone, I wanted to talk to him about the book he had loaned me, East of Eden. I had finished it just a few days earlier. Like the first book, it was a story of two men, but in this case they were two brothers, an allegory of Cain and Abel. There was serious tension between the two. I wondered what part of that story he connected with.

I wanted to return it, because I was nervous holding his first edition. Out of curiosity I had looked up its value and priced it at more than six thousand dollars.

I got the book from my room to return to him, then walked to the foot of the stairs and called him. “Marc.”

Nothing. I never knew if he was home. I called for him again but still no reply. I decided just to leave the book at the top of the stairway, but then leaving the valuable book on the ground didn’t feel right. What if he stepped on it?

I admit now that curiosity played a part. I wondered what the inner sanctum looked like. I had seen him come from the door at the top of the stairway carrying papers, so I assumed it was his office. I looked both ways, then opened the door. I couldn’t believe what was inside.

The room was as out of place in the home’s motif as a doughnut stand at a WeightWatchers conference. Where the rest of the home was uniformly traditional Cape Cod design, this room looked like it had been plucked from a Victorian mansion. The room was dark, and its only ambient light came from a ceiling-mounted stained-glass window.

To my left was a Victorian-style mahogany parlor settee with tufted red wine velvet, and to my right was a small table with a display case of pewter Civil War figurines.

The ceiling was the same dark wood as the walls and was elegantly coffered, rendering the room contrary to the rest of the house: dark, enclosed, and cozy. Two brass-and-alabaster light fixtures hung from the ceiling, giving the room its primary light.

The wall opposite the entrance had a marble-fronted fireplace with a dark rosewood mantel and tile hearth, with large brass andirons. A flickering fire was burning in the box.

Above the mantel were two, dim electric sconces that flanked a large, gilded-frame oil painting of a woman’s portrait, which, from her contemporary dress, I guessed to be Marc’s wife.

The side walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with brass rails and rolling ladders on each side. In the center of the room was a kidney-shaped wooden writing desk with an inlaid gilded-leather writing pad and ball-and-claw feet. There was a laptop computer on the desk surrounded by papers.

Most peculiar were the hoarder-like stacks of paper around the room that climbed upward from the floor like parchment stalagmites. One stack rose more than four feet.

I walked closer to examine one of the paper columns. The stacks were composed of handwritten book manuscripts neatly, if precariously, stacked on top of each other. The writing was beautiful calligraphy. I knew it wasn’t Lee’s scrawl. I lifted the top sheet of the nearest column. In beautiful lettering were the words

Jacob’s Ladder

A Novel

There were myriad marks and scratches on the manuscripts, entire sections written in the elegant calligraphy. My heart began to beat faster. I went to another one of the stacks and lifted the top page.

My Brother’s Keeper

A Novel

“No,” I said to myself. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. These were handwritten manuscripts, nine stacks in all. I set the book I’d brought on the desk, then examined the stack closest to it. There, on top of the pile, were the words I feared most to see. It was what I didn’t want to see.

Bethel

Erased, but still etched in the paper, were the words:

Marcus Lee Heller

A sickness rose in my gut as tears welled up in my eyes. “It can’t be.” Just then Marc walked into the room, holding a mug of beer, completely oblivious to my presence. He froze when he saw me, his face looking as shaken as if he’d walked in on a crime in progress.

“What are you doing in here?”

My heart stopped. “I was bringing your book back. I wanted to talk to you about it.”

His eyes revealed his panic. “You can’t be in here.”

“I called for you. I was…” I held a page in my trembling hand. “What are these?”

“You need to leave.”

“Did you write these books?” Tears began to fall down my cheeks. “Tell me you didn’t write these books.”

He just looked back at me.

I stepped toward him. “You wrote all of these books, didn’t you?”

His eyes revealed what I didn’t want to believe.

“You need to leave now,” he said. “You need to go home.”

“Not until I see him. I need to hear it from his own mouth.”

“You need to hear what?” he asked, his voice hardening.

“That he lied to me.”

“Is that going to make you feel better?”

“No,” I said softly. “Nothing will do that.”