Chapter 10: The Purple Puzzle
I looked into Rachel’s eyes and asked, “How did you know about Jessica? Who told you? Mr. Powell? Lara?”
I was not trying to accuse her. She spent the whole year comforting me over Jessica’s disappearance by not leaving me alone. When Rachel asked me to tell her about Jessica and spent the entire day talking about her, I realized she knew about Jessica all along.
I said, “I am not upset, but just the opposite. I kept Jessica hidden from you, but you knew about her and comforted me. I just want to know how you knew.”
Rachel slipped off the bed and grabbed something from her drawer of stuff and a book. She handed me the book. It was her puzzle book. Cryptograms.
“Rachel, you know I am not good with word puzzles. Just tell me.”
She nodded to the book. She wanted me to look at the book.
“Now you choose to be the normal, quiet Rachel rather than the unusually talkative Rachel like you have been all day.”
A warm expression settled on her face, and I resigned myself to finding the answer in the complicated word puzzle book. I thumbed through it, but it all looked like a bunch of codes you were supposed to figure out, somehow. The puzzles were so confusing to me.
I was relieved to some degree that someone solved all the problems. I would never figure these out, but I didn’t have to. I would have gone crazy trying to figure them out. Instead, I scanned through the answers for references to Jessica, but that was probably just as hard.
Even if there were hints about Jessica, that would be far beyond me. I looked for words like “best friend” or just “friend.” I was hoping this was not some sort of riddle. After spending several minutes looking, the suspense was killing me.
I looked at Rachel, “I don’t know what I am even looking for. You know I am not good with these puzzles. Can’t you just tell me? I don’t even know where to start.”
She said, “If you don’t know where to start, go to the beginning.”
“Just as cryptic as ever,” I mumbled.
Rachel stuck her tongue out at me in response to the bad pun.
“Let’s save that for later.” And Rachel aimed a kiss at me.
That exchange took the edge off my frustration, and I resumed my search for the mystery of Jessica.
I closed the book and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and sighed. When I opened the front cover, I saw an ad for a website, CryptoFriends. “Send fun coded messages to your friends.” It was a site for sending cryptograms between friends.
Below the ad, someone had written something, and I immediately recognized the handwriting. There was a username: bigheartmama. Under that, I saw the inscription: “From, Miriam Yeager.” My mother’s name, before we had changed our names. I looked at Rachel in complete surprise and asked, or rather stated, “You knew my mother before we changed our names.”
Rachel nodded her head as a tender look of admiration spread across her face.
How? I wondered in my head, and then it occurred to me.
“Mr. Powell said my mom still kept in contact with someone after we changed our names, even after we were supposed to cut off all contacts. That was you, wasn’t it?”
Again, she nodded.
I paused to collect my thoughts. I had wondered who that contact was. Leo had investigated it, but couldn’t find anything. I tried to think of any of my mom’s old friends, but no one stood out. Now here she was, her mystery friend. I was trying to process all this, then remembered that I was trying to make the connection to Jessica.
I asked Rachel, “Did my mom tell you about Jessica?”
She nodded.
“That means you knew about me, too.”
Rachel nodded as tears accented her smile.
I was too slow at this and was missing something. I thought my mom’s old friend was old. I looked at the front cover to see the date on the book. It was from eleven years ago. If Rachel was that old friend, she was much younger. In fact–
“I thought my mom’s friend was older, but you would have been a child when she gave you this. You would have been eight years old–”
I stopped talking when the realization hit me. If I had been looking at Rachel, I would have seen her nod with a broad beaming smile on her face as she pressed something into my hand. Instead, my eyes stared at the drawing on the wall, which featured a twelve-year-old me holding the hand of an eight-year-old girl with short black hair–the same girl who drew the picture and had given it to me all those years ago.
As a gift for the picture, I had given her a toy ring with a purple gem. She was so thrilled with it that she kissed me on the cheek. Sometimes when I looked at that drawing, I saw that look of sheer joy on her face.
I looked from the drawing to Rachel’s face, and as I was putting the pieces together, I saw that same face of joy look at me.
I looked at what Rachel had just given me. There in my hand was that purple ring! Suddenly I felt this kiss on my cheek. I turned to look at Rachel close to my face.
“Rae?”
She nodded as tears of joy filled her eyes. Those same tears filled my eyes as I threw my arms around her. “Rae. Rae. I have missed you. I thought I would never see you again.”
I held her tight as I was overcome with feelings of love and surprise at this moment that I never dreamed would come. She was here with me all along. But I still didn’t understand how she was here with me. My mind was trying to grasp this whole situation. I was unsure what to ask or how to put my head around this. I asked, “How?”
Rachel pointed to the book and said, “Your mother gave me this after you gave me that.” She lovingly held my hand with the ring in it.”
“So, you kept in contact with her through that site.” Rachel continued to have a big smile on her face as she nodded.
“My mom told you all about Jessica and me.”
She nodded again.
“I wish you would have said something. I would have remembered you.”
“You would have remembered me as a little girl.”
“You are much more than that now. You are a beautiful woman.”
She blushed, smiled, and kissed me, not on the cheek but on the lips. Her lips pressed against mine and lingered there, almost as if we were kissing for the first time.
As we broke the kiss, I remembered asking about Jessica.
“What did my mom tell you about Jessica and me?”
“Everything”
“Everything?”
“Everything up until your mother died.”
My heart, which has been bursting with joy, now felt heavy with sadness as I thought about my mom and how I missed her, and how she would have loved this moment.
Rachel, sensing my heavy heart, soothed me and said, “If she had not died, we would not have been together.”
I looked at her, a bit puzzled.
“When I lost contact with her –”
I started to connect the dots. “Mr. Powell looked for a woman who matched her description and found her and me. So, Mr. Powell was playing matchmaker by placing you here.”
“Because of your grief, I knew something bad happened to Jessica.”
Fitting another piece of the puzzle together, I said, “So, that is why you were comforting me this whole time. And because my grief consumed me, I didn’t recognize you.”
“Now, your heart recognized me.”
My mind made some more connections. “We spent this whole day talking about Jessica, celebrating her, remembering her, and grieving for her together. Because you shared that load, and I could see and feel more clearly.”
“Anytime, anything, or anywhere you think of her, I will share the load.”
I looked into Rachel’s eyes and could feel how sincere she was. I loved her for it. And I loved her.
“Is that why you fell in love with me so fast? You already knew all about me.”
Rachel caressed my face and lifted my chin until our eyes met. And she said, “I have been in love with you most of my life.”
She embraced me, and I could feel that love that she had lived on for all those years. Suddenly, I found all the wishes and dreams of meeting her again in that kiss. We had been kissing and making out for the last year. But this kiss felt like we had been in love for years.
“This is so overwhelming. I have felt so confused for the past year. Then like an angel, you come back into my life and give me hope and love. What did I do to deserve this kind of love?”
Rachel pulled me off the bed, dragged me to the desk, and set me beside her. She pulled out those crayons and the scribble pad I gave her. She started to draw a picture, and I watched with great anticipation.
She drew a picture like the one from eleven years ago but with a skilled hand of a true artist. I watched how she added more detail than the original one. She added little hearts coming from us and floating around us. With some simple crayons, she made the picture come alive. She captured all the feelings of the moment on that simple page.
She touched my hand, and I looked into her eyes. That magic moment took me back to those years ago when I watched her draw as a girl.
She said, “It was moments like these that made me fall in love with you. While my mother was destroying my crayons and my hope, you were filling me with love and hope.”
I sat there in awe at this moment. “But I just sat there!”
Rachel leaned close to me, just inches from my face, and touched the tip of my nose. She said with a warm smile, “Uncomplicated.”
I led her back to the bed, and we sat there and held each other for a few minutes, and then Rachel laid down and put her head in my lap with a contented look on her face.
Yesterday, I was looking forward to spending a whole day with Rachel. I had no plan or expectations. This day turned out to be way more than I had ever dreamed about. That burden of grieving for Jessica was lessened and shared with Rachel.
The last couple of years, I had wondered about my feelings for Jessica, whether she was destined to become my lover, or was she just my best friend? We had tried to mix romance with our friendship, but it was more sensual and sexual than romantic. Yet, our friendship stayed intact.
But that man who took her away from me. He had challenged Jessica’s feelings for me and had confused me as well. He wanted her to forget me, and she wanted to explore her feelings for me more. Finally, when I decided to go to college, I did exactly what Don had suggested. Jessica must have felt justified in trying romance with me, but we would not give up our friendship.