The Words Between Us, page 29
Linden pointed a finger in my direction. “There! There it is! Just like I said.”
Mr. Rich placed a hand on his son’s forearm. “Okay, okay. Just calm down and let me talk a moment.”
Linden withdrew the accusative finger and leaned back on his half of the seat, his million-dollar foot stretching out past my chair, blocking me in even as I knew he must want me out.
His father looked at me with tired eyes. “Miss Balsam, I’m burdened. I been carrying something around for fifty years that I got to let go of. This camera and those photos have to get back to Nora. Not to the paper, not to a museum or a library. To Nora. Now, I can’t take them. But you could. Are you willing to just look into it? Do a little poking around to see if you’re related like we think you are? And if you are, would you be willing to make contact with her? Kind of ease her into the idea slowly? These photos will stir up a lot of hard memories for an old lady. But I know it in my heart—the Lord laid it on my soul—I need to get these to her.”
One of the most important lessons I learned in my first couple years as a professional journalist was not to get emotionally involved with a story. There was simply too much heartbreaking stuff you had to write about. To let yourself empathize with the boy who was being bullied or the man who had lost his business or the woman whose daughter had been abducted, when there was nothing you could do to help the situation beyond making a voice heard—it was just too heavy a burden to bring home with you every night. So I built up a wall around my heart and stayed within it at all times when it came to work.
But there was something about this man’s eyes, the crooked lines on either side of his mouth suggesting he had found as much to frown at in life as to smile about, that chipped away at that wall.
I tapped my finger on the table. “Why do you have them if she’s the one who took them?”
“She didn’t take them. My uncle did. But he’s gone. They belong to her now.”
“Why?”
“She’s his wife.”
An interracial couple in the 1960s? This was getting interesting. Maybe I could work this into my larger series of articles about the riots and the time surrounding them. It had a great human angle, a larger cultural-historical angle, a connection to a beloved NFL player. I could even frame it as a personal family story if I truly was related. The question was, would I have the time? I still hadn’t been able to crack the protective shield around Judge Sharpe, the white whale of my investigative series, and time was running out.
“Okay, let’s say I am related to her. I still don’t know her and she doesn’t know me, so why would she even listen to me?”
“Miss Balsam, do you believe in God?”
The question caught me off guard. “Yes.”
“Do you believe he works all things together for his glory?”
My parents believed that. My sister did. I had once. Before I’d seen just how chaotic and messed up and out of control the world was. If journalism had taught me anything, it was that we were all just out there flailing and stumbling through a minefield of dangers and predators and dumb blind chance. But it was obvious that Mr. Rich believed God had given him a task—return these items—and that he would get no rest until the task was completed.
Instead of answering his question, I asked one of my own. “Why don’t you just ship it to her?”
“No, that ain’t the way.”
I waited for a logical reason why not, but clearly none was forthcoming.
“Would you just look into it?” he said.
Those beseeching brown eyes tugged a few more bricks out of my wall.
“Sure. I’ll look into it,” I said.
Mr. Rich nodded and slid a business card across the table. I avoided Linden’s sharp gaze as I pocketed the card and squeezed out of my chair.
“It was so nice meeting you,” I said. “Thanks for lunch.”
I walked out into the windy, sun-drenched afternoon, handed a dollar to the homeless guy who paced and mumbled a few yards from the door, and headed down the street to the old Federal Reserve building, which had housed the shrinking Free Press staff since 2014, and where a pile of work awaited me.
I tried to concentrate on the unending march of emails marked urgent in my inbox, including one from my editor—My office, ASAP—but my mind was spinning out all the directions this new story idea could go. This was decidedly inconvenient because I needed to focus.
I’d been stalking Judge Sharpe through his affable and unsuspecting son Vic for months, and I finally felt like a break was imminent. Vic had texted me last night to set up a meeting after he, in his words, “discovered something big I think you’ll be interested to know.” I had to get these photos off my mind for the moment, and the best way to do that was to get the research ball rolling.
I slipped out to the stairwell and pulled up Ancestry.com on my phone. A few minutes and thirty dollars later, I was clicking on little green leaf icons that waved at me from the screen. I found my parents and then began tracing my father’s branch back to the family tree. Grandfather Richard, Great-Uncle Warner, and ping, just like that, a great-aunt born Eleanor Balsam.
I typed a quick text to my sister in L.A.
Hey, long time, no see. Family question: have you ever heard Mom or Dad talk about a great-aunt Eleanor or Nora? Let me know. TX.
I waited a moment for a reply. She was probably with a patient. It was also possible she had no idea who was texting her because it had been at least two years since we last talked. I walked back to my desk, pulled up my piece on a black cop who worked the 1967 riots, and gave it one last read before sending it on its way to my editor. It would join my piece on a white firefighter I’d sent him two days ago. The piece on Judge Sharpe, who’d been a National Guardsman during the riots, would complete the triptych. If I could get it written.
It was 1:14 p.m. If I left in five, I’d have time to freshen up before meeting Vic for coffee at the Renaissance Center Starbucks.
My phone buzzed. My sister.
She’s Dad’s aunt. Why? Is she okay?
Leave it to Grace to immediately worry.
I want to visit her. Do you know where she lives?
I stared at the screen, waiting.
As far as I know, she still lives in the old Lapeer house.
She said it like I should know what it was, like The Old Lapeer House was a thing. Even after all this time, it still irked me that my unplanned birth nine years after my sister’s meant that I so often felt like an outsider in my own family, never quite in on the stories or inside jokes.
Address?
Pause.
Mom may have it.
Great. My parents had been medical missionaries in the Amazon River Basin for the past eight years. It wasn’t as if I could just call them up any time I wanted. Mom called on my birthday and Christmas and any other time they happened to be in a town for supplies, but that wasn’t often.
My phone buzzed again.
Or call Barb. 269-555-7185
I didn’t bother asking who Barb was, especially since it was apparent I should already know. I’d cold-call her no matter what. The prospect of getting my hands on those never-before-seen photos of the riots was too tempting to wait for proper introductions.
I looked at the clock again. If I was going to make it to the RenCen Starbucks on time, I had to leave. Now. I grabbed my purse and my bag from my desk and headed back to the stairwell.
“Liz!”
My editor was the one person in the world who called me Liz.
“I’m out the door, Jack. I’ll stop in when I get back. Three o’clock. Four, tops.”
I pushed through the metal door, put the box of photos out of mind, and got on with my real work: getting the notoriously circumspect Judge Ryan Sharpe to open up about his involvement in the 1967 riots. Because no matter what image he liked to project to the public, my gut told me that beneath the black robe lurked a man who had something to hide.
Erin Bartels is the author of We Hope for Better Things. She grew up in the Bay City, Michigan, area, upon which River City is based, and has spent much of her life waiting on drawbridges. She lives in Lansing, Michigan, with her husband, Zachary, and their son.
Find her online at www.erinbartels.com.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Books by Erin Bartels
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Map of River City, MI
Epigraph
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Acknowledgments
An Excerpt of Erin’s Debut Novel
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
List of Pages
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Erin Bartels, The Words Between Us
