Chapter Sixteen I Do Not Want to Be Set Free #3
"Caleb Graham, Mother," she said, laughing despite herself at the absurdity of needing prompting for her own husband's name.
"Yes, I'm so very happy — I couldn't possibly be happier, unless you and Jeff were here too, and—" she hesitated slightly over the still-new word, "—and Caleb says we're coming up tomorrow to see you and explain everything properly.
Don't worry a bit if Gregory turns up before then — just have Jeff tell him I've been sent for, or something of the sort, and don't listen to a word he says.
What — he already came? And hasn't been back since?
Oh, thank goodness. He's dreadful, Mother, you have no idea what I've escaped.
Caleb is good, and kind, and — you want to speak to him?
Of course, here he is. Good-bye, Mother, until tomorrow — promise me you won't worry. "
Graham took the receiver.
"Mother — I'm taking very good care of her, exactly as I promised, and we'll come up tomorrow for a visit. Yes, I'll look after her well. She means everything to me — the best thing that's ever happened in my life."
Whatever blessing traveled back down the line brought a warmth to his whole face that Calie had never seen there before.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "I'll try every day to make sure you're glad you said that."
“Listen, may I speak to Jeff again? … Jeff, do you know where the marriage license is? You forgot to give it to the minister, so it never got sent in? All right—please hold onto it so Calie and I can take care of it tomorrow.
Wait—my name is signed on it? Who picked up the license? You did? Well, that makes everything much easier. We’ll just explain it was a mistake.”
?
When the receiver finally settled back into its cradle, they returned to simply looking at each other, as though they'd been parted a very long while instead of minutes.
It seemed, somehow, that their happiness might run deeper than most married couples ever managed, since all their courting still lay ahead of them, waiting to be discovered one ordinary, wonderful day at a time.
There was so much left to tell each other — and tell again, since half of everything had only been half-explained the first time through — hopes traded, small opinions compared and found, again and again, delightfully alike.
They wandered the apartment together, Graham showing her his favorite books and pictures, touching only lightly on plans for whatever came next.
The apartment would do well enough, Graham said, until they found a proper house — his chest swelling at the thought of a real home at last, with someone worth building it for.
Later, in the soft dusk before Henry came to light the lamps, before either of them had noticed dinner creeping up on them, Calie told him the whole horror of the last three months, and the uglier shadows behind it — told it with her face pressed to his shoulder, his arms tight around her through every hard revelation.
They turned over, together, what should be done about Gregory Hostetler.
And Graham, in turn, told her the full story of his own strange journey, from the moment the Director had summoned him into that office to the moment he'd stood beside her at the altar and been married without ever meaning to be — every comic, exasperating, tender detail, the white dog and the small brave newsboy included.
The strangest part of the whole telling was that he never once mentioned Judy Bristol's imagined presence on that first train ride, and never even noticed the omission himself.
Calie laughed over the dog and declared they simply had to adopt him properly; she cried over the newsboy and made Graham promise a visit to New York to see the boy mended and looked after for good — and it was in the middle of these plans that Graham learned, almost as an aside, that his new wife possessed a considerable fortune entirely her own.
This information troubled him a good deal more than the blackmail scheme itself had, until Calie spent the better part of an hour laughing him gently out of his wounded independence, reminding him that a man's worth was never measured by his bank balance, and that her fortune had always been the least interesting thing about her own life, kept firmly in the background where it belonged.
Graham found himself already dreading the trip to New York and the reckoning it would bring with Calie's mother and brother — Calie's own heart had somehow recognized and trusted his before the facts ever caught up to explain why, but would her family manage the same leap of faith?
Together they worked out how best to tell the story, which led naturally to Graham producing a stack of old letters and official papers worth showing as proof of who he truly was — and with every fresh glimpse into his past, Calie's face shone brighter, certain now beyond any doubt that whatever strange road had brought her here, it had brought her somewhere very good indeed.
Ruth 1:16 rose in her mind unbidden as she watched him sort through the old letters — words she'd loved since childhood, spoken once by a woman choosing loyalty over safety: "Whither thou goest, I will go...
thy people shall be my people." The quiet loneliness that had shadowed his whole young manhood seemed, in this one long golden afternoon, to have broken open at last into exactly the companionship he'd never known he needed — and they sat together in the fading light, reading their own shared joy in each other's eyes, entering slowly into the beautiful, ordinary miracle of finally, truly knowing one another.