Christmas in Bethel

Chapter Thirty-One

It is time for me to leave. I should have waited to unpack my emotional suitcase.

Beth Stilton’s Diary

My feelings had done a complete flip-flop since the morning, and my unbridled excitement to see Lee had turned to crushing dread. Lee’s words to me, “You can trust me,” echoed in a mocking refrain. I’d been living a fiction. The man I loved was a fiction too. The worst part was, I didn’t know who I had fallen in love with. I’d loved the words, but they were Marc’s. And I wasn’t in love with Marc.

I packed my car, then waited in my room for Lee’s return. Marc picked him up from the airport. I assumed that Marc would tell him what happened, but in his typical, enigmatic form, he hadn’t said anything other than I didn’t want to pick him up.

I heard the door open and Lee’s footsteps in the hall as he walked directly to my room. He knocked once on my door, then opened it. I was sitting on my bed next to my suitcase. His face was tight with distress as he looked back and forth from the suitcase to me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going home.”

“You don’t have a home.”’

“Then I’m just leaving.”

His expression grew even more perplexed. “This morning you were practically giddy that I was coming home. What’s going on?”

“I found out the truth. You didn’t write those books.”

He gazed at me as the reality sunk in, then he lightly groaned. “That.”

“Yes, that.”

“Marc told you?”

“I discovered it on my own.”

He exhaled loudly. “I need to explain.”

“What’s there to explain? You stole your brother’s books. You stole his words.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“No, it is. You said I could trust you.”

“You still can. Just let me explain.”

I crossed my arms across my chest. “Okay. Explain why you lied to me.”

“After Marc’s wife died, he broke down. After all we had been through growing up, he had miraculously found his match, and they started to build a life with a hope of happiness. Then he lost the only woman he had ever loved.

“He just gave up. He stopped going to work, he stopped paying his bills. It was as if he had stopped living as well. He was deep in debt, and now he had his wife’s college debt and massive medical bills. His creditors took everything.

“At the time, I was barely making it myself, living in a basement apartment in West End, when Marc called me from a pay phone and said he was homeless. I brought him home. On top of everything else, I was now paying for him too. He still wouldn’t work. He started drinking and stopped leaving the house, except to buy booze.

“The bills were piling up and my payments were getting later and later. One day, out of frustration, I asked him what he did all day. He went his room and brought out a stack of papers and dropped it on the table. He said, ‘I wrote a book.’ Then he went back into his room.

“His manuscript was completely handwritten. As I went through it I noticed tearstains on some of the pages. That’s how he was trying to deal with his grief. He was writing it out.

“The book he wrote was called Bethel. I started reading it and couldn’t believe what he’d written. I was a literature major. I knew good writing. And this was nothing short of genius. I stayed up all night and read it.

“The next morning, I told him that he needed to publish it. He flatly refused. He didn’t want anyone to read it.

“But we were desperate. It was just a matter of time before the world I was propping up was going to fall in on us. So, without him knowing, I got one of our interns at work to type up the manuscript, then I started calling agents. Of course, no one would talk to me.

“Then, call it fate, but on one of the last phone numbers I had, I got a hit. A junior agent working late answered the phone. It was Laurie. She asked me to email her the book, and she called the next day. The first words out of her mouth were, ‘This may be the most brilliant work to ever come across my desk.’?”

“Does Laurie know you didn’t write the book?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Then she’s part of it.”

“What’s ‘it’?”

“The charade.”

He ignored my dig. “Laurie sent me a representation contract from her agency. I was excited. I thought Marc would be excited. I took the contract to him to sign. I wasn’t trying to take his book or his money, I was trying to help him get back on his feet. But he didn’t see it that way. He was angry that I had shared his story. He tore up the contract and walked out of the house.

“The next day he came back and apologized. He’d written a letter gifting me all the rights to the book. But on one condition. That he was never, in any way, to be attached to it. That was the deal. I would have to claim it as my own. It was his idea. Not mine.

“Laurie sent out the book. There was a lot of buzz. Seven publishers wanted it. It ended up going into an auction. The high bid was two million dollars for a two-book deal. It saved us. It saved my brother. Everything just snowballed from there.”

“You said it was your book.”

“It is my book. He gave it to me.”

“I don’t care whose book it is legally. I care that you lied to me.”

“I never lied to you.”

“You lied to me in the worst way possible. I told you that I fell in love with your words. But they weren’t yours. You knew they weren’t yours. And you never told me.”

“I never said they were my words.”

“You never said they weren’t.”

He breathed out slowly. “No, I didn’t.”

The room fell into silence. For what seemed an eternity we just sat there. Then I noticed the tears in his eyes.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone your secret.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said. “Please, don’t leave. I love you.”

Even though my heart was breaking, I turned the pain into anger. I said, “I thought I was in love with you. But I guess I was in love with someone else the whole time.”

I took my suitcase and walked out of the house.

Lee didn’t follow me. As I got to my car I looked up and saw Marc looking out at me from his second-story window. His face was emotionless. I got into my car and drove off. I started crying again as soon as I left the property.