I stayed at the kitchen table long after Denise left.
The funeral folder remained in front of me.
Paul’s handwriting was visible through the thin paper where one page had folded over another.
I did not touch it.
For the first time in days, nobody needed a decision from me. There was no form requiring a signature, no relative asking where to send flowers, no funeral director waiting for a hymn selection. The refrigerator hummed. Rainwater ticked from the gutter outside.
The silence should have been peaceful.
Instead, it felt like a question.
I kept seeing Paul’s navy coat.
The memory had become irritatingly specific. His hand disappearing into the pocket. The way his face relaxed when he found what he was looking for. The strange answer when I asked what it was.
Something I’m taking care of.
I pushed away from the table.
The garage smelled like damp concrete, old oil, and the pine cleaner Paul used whenever he became convinced the floor needed washing.
His truck sat where it had been since the last time he drove.
Dust had begun collecting on the hood.
I stopped beside the driver’s door.
For twenty-six years, that truck had been background noise in my life.
Paul complained about fuel prices while filling it. He kept emergency blankets behind the seat but regularly forgot grocery bags. He had driven Rachel to school in it, hauled lumber in it, brought home a ridiculous oversized grill in it, and once slept inside it after insisting he could finish a road trip without a hotel.
Now opening the door felt intimate.
The cab smelled faintly of coffee, vinyl, and Paul’s peppermint candy.
I gripped the steering wheel before sitting down.
That nearly undid me again.
His hands had worn a pale smooth patch into the leather at the top.
I rested my thumb there.
“Where did you put it?” I whispered.
No answer came.
I searched the obvious places first.
Center console.
Glove box.
Under the seats.
A collection of ordinary things accumulated beside me: receipts, two screwdrivers, three dried-out pens, an unopened pack of gum, a tire gauge, napkins from restaurants that no longer existed, and seven peppermint wrappers.
No Bible.
Of course not.
Evelyn had taken it.
I leaned back against the seat and stared toward the garage wall.
Paul had written something in his instructions about personal property.
I had assumed he feared Evelyn would remove objects for sentimental reasons.
Now I wondered whether he knew she was searching for something specific.
The Bible.
Or something inside it.
I returned to the house and opened the funeral folder.
Paul’s handwritten notes contained dates but no explanation of the Bible.
One entry caught my eye.
Brown Bible – check Luke 12.
I stared.
That line had meant nothing at the funeral.
Now my pulse quickened.
Luke 12.
A chapter.
Or perhaps a hiding place.
I knew almost nothing about biblical numbering beyond what years of weddings and funerals had taught me.
Paul knew even less.
He was not a man who quoted scripture from memory.
If he wrote a chapter reference in a list of practical instructions, it almost certainly was not theological.
My phone was already in my hand before I consciously decided to call.
Grant answered on the second ring.
“Diane?”
“Where is your mother?”
He paused.
“At home, I think.”
“What happened after I left?”
Another pause.
“She read the letter.”
I closed my eyes.
“And?”
“She wouldn’t show it to me.”
“What did she do?”
“Sat there for a long time.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
His voice sounded tired.
“She cried.”
I said nothing.
Grant continued.
“I’ve never seen her cry like that.”
Whatever satisfaction I might have expected did not come.
Grief had taken too many forms already.
“What did the letter say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“Of course I asked.”
“And?”
“She told me to mind my own business.”
That sounded more like Evelyn.
I leaned against the counter.
“Grant, she took Paul’s Bible from my garage.”
“I know.”
“I need it back.”
“I’ll get it.”
“No. I want to know whether she still has it.”
“Why?”
I looked down at Paul’s note.
“Because Paul left a reference to something inside it.”
Silence.
“What kind of reference?”
“Luke twelve.”
Grant inhaled.
“I remember that.”
I straightened.
“Remember what?”
“Paul mentioning it.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Maybe fifteen years.”
The number startled me.
“Why would he mention Luke twelve to you?”
Grant hesitated.
“We were helping Dad clean out the old workshop after he died.”
Paul and Grant’s father, Walter, had died seventeen years earlier.
Evelyn rarely spoke of him except to describe how difficult widowhood had been.
“What happened?”
“Paul found an envelope inside Dad’s Bible.”
My skin prickled.
“What envelope?”
“I never saw what was in it.”
“Did Evelyn?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Paul told me not to tell her.”
That sentence chilled me.
“Why?”
Grant exhaled.
“I asked him the same thing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Dad had left something behind that explained a lot.”
I gripped the phone tighter.
“Explained what?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Grant.”
“I’m serious. He just said Mom would destroy it if she found out.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
The line Paul wrote in his funeral notes suddenly connected to something much older than his illness.
“Where is the Bible now?”
“I told you, probably with Mom.”
“Find out.”
“I will.”
“Don’t tell her why.”
He laughed without humor.
“You think I’m volunteering information to her today?”
“Grant.”
“I know.”
His voice softened.
“I’ll call you.”
After we hung up, I returned to the funeral folder.
Brown Bible – check Luke 12.
Not read.
Check.
Paul had expected me to physically look there.
I thought about Evelyn carrying the Bible during the service, holding it as evidence of her closeness to Paul.
She might unknowingly have carried the very thing he had hidden from her.
My stomach tightened.
Then another thought came.
Had she unknowingly carried it?
Or had she entered my garage specifically to retrieve it?
I opened Paul’s papers again.
His list of incidents extended back decades, but the earliest entries were vague.
1998 – Dad.
2001 – letter.
2004 – Mom asked again.
At the funeral, I had read those as shorthand meaningful only to him.
Now they looked like part of a longer pattern.
Paul and I married in 1999.
Walter died in 2009.
The dates did not line up cleanly with my assumptions.
I carried the folder into Paul’s small home office.
His desk remained exactly as he left it.
A utility bill lay open beside a legal pad.
His reading glasses rested over the word total.
I sat in his chair.
The drawers were neatly organized because I had reorganized them months earlier while Paul complained that I was destroying his “system.”
His system had consisted mainly of piles.
The top drawer contained office supplies.
Second drawer, household records.
Bottom drawer, tax folders and warranty manuals.
Nothing unusual.
Then I remembered Evelyn.
Did you go through his desk?
No.
Her hesitation.
I pulled every drawer completely open.
The bottom drawer stuck halfway.
I tugged harder.
Something scraped behind it.
I knelt and looked underneath.
A narrow envelope had fallen behind the drawer.
My name was written on the front.
Not in Paul’s recent trembling handwriting.
This lettering was older.
Steadier.
I froze.
For a moment I could not touch it.
Then I slid the drawer free.
The envelope came loose.
DIANE.
Nothing else.
No instruction.
No date.
I carried it to the desk and opened it carefully.
Inside was a single photocopied page.
At the top appeared another man’s handwriting.
Walter Carter.
Paul’s father.
The page was part of a letter.
Not the beginning.
Not the end.
Just one page.
The first sentence started midway through a thought.
…because Evelyn has always believed losing control means losing love.
I sat down.
My eyes moved faster.
Walter wrote about his marriage.
He described Evelyn’s habit of manufacturing emergencies whenever Paul pulled away as a teenager.
Headaches when he went on dates.
Sudden illnesses before school trips.
Arguments whenever he spent holidays with friends.
Walter admitted he helped enable it because confronting her made life unbearable.
My hands went cold.
The pattern had not started with me.
Walter knew.
Paul knew.
And for years, all three men had survived it by accommodating her.
One paragraph stopped me completely.
Walter wrote that Evelyn’s resentment toward Paul’s girlfriends had become most severe with one particular girl.
Not Marla.
Someone named Susan.
I read the name twice.
Susan.
I had never heard it.
Walter wrote that Paul had once intended to leave town with Susan after high school.
Evelyn prevented it by telling Paul something that Walter later discovered was false.
The photocopy ended before explaining what the lie had been.
I turned the page over.
Blank.
“Paul,” I whispered.
Why leave me half a letter?
Why put my name on it?
I searched the desk again.
Nothing.
Then I remembered the Bible reference.
The remaining pages might have been hidden there.
My phone rang.
Grant.
I answered immediately.
“She has it,” he said.
“The Bible?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask for it?”
“She said no.”
My pulse quickened.
“Why?”
“She says Dad gave it to Paul, and since Dad was her husband, it belongs to her now.”
“That is not how property works.”
“I know.”
“Did she say anything about something inside it?”
Grant was quiet.
“Actually, yes.”
I stood.
“What?”
“She asked why I wanted it so badly.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Then she said there was nothing in it anymore.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“She said anymore?”
“Yes.”
“Those exact words?”
“I think so.”
“Grant.”
“Yes. Those exact words.”
The room seemed to narrow around me.
She knew.
Whatever Paul and Walter had hidden, Evelyn had known enough to search.
“Did she remove something?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she?”
“At home.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Diane, maybe that’s not—”
“I’m coming over.”
I hung up.
Then I looked at Walter’s copied page again.
Susan.
A woman Paul had apparently intended to leave town with before I ever met him.
A woman his mother drove away with a lie.
Whatever that old lie had been, Paul had carried evidence of it for decades.
And Evelyn had just told Grant there was nothing in the Bible anymore.
That meant she had found what Paul wanted me to see.
Click Here to continue read next: PART6: Evelyn Finally Admitted She Had Removed Pages From Paul’s Bible, But The Name Susan Opened A Wound Older Than Our Marriage
Six Minutes Into Paul’s Funeral, His Mother Rose From The Front Pew And Tried To Rewrite Our Twenty-Six Years Together
Part 5 of 12
