| Romance Fiction posted September 25, 2025 | Chapters: |
...25 26 -27- 28... 
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Rachel Meets Bill
A chapter in the book Yesterday's Dreams
The Untold Story Chap 5
by Begin Again
The landline rang from the kitchen. Mark answered on speaker. "Hart residence."
A pause, then an unfamiliar voice — older, roughened by cigarettes. weather, or age. "I'm calling for Rachel Hart?"
"Who is this?" Mark's tone was brusque.
Rachel hurried across the room toward Mark. "I'll take it," she said, lifting the handset and shutting off the speaker. "Hello."
"Rachel Hart?" the voice asked.
"Yes."
"Your boss told me to give you a call."
She almost said, My boss? But swallowed it with Mark nearby.
"My name's Bill Lane. A friend of your mom's." He hesitated and then asked, "Maybe we could meet?"
Rachel gripped the phone. "I don't know, Mr. —"
"Lane. Bill Lane.
The name registered in Rachel's mind. Now she understood why he was being evasive. She glanced to see if Mark was still standing there, but he'd left the room. She lowered her voice, "Trina's Coffee Shop at 4."
"No, it will be busy. Meet me at the monument at four."
"Which monument?"
"The big one in the cemetery," he said. "The one with the three words on it."
Rachel looked at the counter where her mother's two pennies sat heads-up in the violet dish. She remembered the large stone from the other day. "I know it."
The line went quiet. She realized he was waiting for her answer.
"I'll come," she said.
"Good," Bill answered, and the line went dead.
The back door opened, and Mark stepped in from the garage. "Who was that?"
"A guy from work. They needed info on a job."
"Don't they know you're busy?" He rubbed his jaw. "I think I'll make a run to the hardware store. I might grab something from Arnie's on the way back — the deli on Third. Do you want anything?"
"No, thanks. I am fine for now."
He took his keys and was gone a moment later. The side door thumped, and silence settled over the house. Rachel sighed and glanced at the clock.
Four o'clock. Two hours.
She pulled the photo sleeve from her tote and fanned the prints on the kitchen table — the lake, a blanket, the hand tracing her mother's palm, the porch light on the stoop. The brief note from the cookbook lay beside them — Same time. Same place.
"Who were you, Mom?" she asked the room. "Why all the secrets?"
She tried to keep working. Cupboards were safe. On the top shelf sat the cowboy-boot glass her mother used for iced tea. On the next shelf, jelly jars with cartoon lids, washed and saved as cups. She put them all in the DONATE box.
In the back corner, an old red cookie tin rattled when she lifted it. Inside were buttons, two stamps, safety pins, and a small bird pendant — the same shape she had seen at her mother's throat in the lake photo. She held it for a moment, then slipped it into her pocket. "I'll put you back if you don't matter," she said and closed the tin.
*****
She checked the microwave clock — 3:22.
She slid the prints into their sleeve, tucked them and the note deep in her coat pocket, and zipped it shut. "Help me out here," she said to the two pennies in the violet dish, both heads-up. "Nothing, huh?"
At 3:30, she locked the back door, left the boxes where they were, and stepped onto the porch.
By 3:35, she was in the Civic, heater blowing dusty warm air. She took the long way —past the lake road and the corner where the red pickup had slowed that morning.
At a light, she let her mind drift. She saw her mother laughing in the sun, then the porch light and the open door. It all meant something, but what did it mean?
A car honked, jerking her back to reality. She continued toward the cemetery.
She turned in through Hillcrest's iron gates and followed the path. A red pickup sat by the bend, its cab empty. Two rows over, a man in a blue cap stood at her mother's grave with both hands on a cane. When she parked and stepped out, he looked up, saw her crossing the path, and walked toward her.
Rachel couldn't help thinking that she liked his smile.
"Rachel Hart?" he asked.
"Bill Lane," she answered.
He tipped his cap. "I'm sorry for your loss." His eyes went back to the stone. "Your mother and I were friends. I'll miss her. We walked here on Fridays."
"I didn't know." Her voice came out thinner than she liked.
"She meant it to be that way." He looked toward the big marble at the crossroads —FAITH. LOVE. HOPE. "She carried a lot. She always said daylight kept stories honest. I wasn't sure I agreed, but I didn't press the issue. That would have given her more to worry about."
He extended his hand toward the bench beneath the engraved LOVE. "Shall we sit, or will you be too cold?"
"No, here is fine."
They were both silent for a moment, and then Rachel asked, "You asked me to come. Why?"
"So, you don't have to guess." Bill reached inside his coat and took out a thin envelope, edges softened by time. "It's time you know the truth. Anthony handed me this the week before he was gone. I gave it to Julia once." He paused as if remembering. "She read it, cried, and gave it back. Said it wasn't safe in the house —Joe's temper, and a boy who might find it before he should. She asked me to keep it for her. So, I did. I often thought she felt as if I had it, it was buried and would remain in the past."
He held it out. The front read Julia in a quick, slanted hand.
Rachel's fingers felt clumsy. "Does anyone else know about this?"
"If you mean Mark, I never told him," Bill said. "Julia didn't either. She was afraid of what Joe would do if the wrong person heard the wrong word at the wrong time. Maybe Mark guessed things. Guessing and knowing aren't the same."
Rachel nodded once. "I need to read it."
"I'll give you the space," he said, and rose. "I'll have a word or two with your mom."
He moved off toward the grave, cane steady on the gravel. Rachel opened the flap and unfolded one page. Anthony's handwriting slanted across the page, neat but hurried, like a man writing against the clock.
Julia,
By the time you read this, I'll be far from here. I wish I could have stayed longer, but duty calls. I don't regret answering, except for leaving you behind. You're the best part of me, the only part that feels true.
Rachel's eyes blurred. She pressed her lips together and read on.
You said once that love is a kind of faith. I laughed, but you were right. Faith is believing without proof. I believe in us. I believe in the life we'll build when I come back — a porch, a garden, maybe a dog that won't listen.
The words pressed deeper with every line.
If the child you carry is mine, then I have two reasons to fight my way home. If he's not, I'll still love him because he's yours. Raise him to be kind, Julia. Don't let this world harden him.
Rachel's breath caught. Her hands shook. The page blurred again. She blinked, trying to see the words written on the page.
If anything happens to me, keep this letter. Someday, when he's old enough, tell him that his father's last thought was of him and of you.
Always,
Anthony
She read it twice. The line the child you carry hit hard and wouldn't let go. She kept seeing the photos she'd picked up — her mother laughing at the lake, a hand tracing her palm, the porch light making a small circle of yellow.
Rachel clutched the letter to her chest. A sob broke free, sharp in the cold air. She bent forward, pressing her elbows to her knees, the words circling in her mind — the child you carry — tell him — always.
Her brother. Mark. Was he Anthony's son?
Her tears slipped faster than she could wipe them. For once, she didn't try to stop them. They poured out — grief for Julia, for Anthony, for the love stolen by silence.
When she could see again, she folded the paper on its crease and slipped it back into the envelope. She stood and walked to her mother's grave..
"He — Anthony — loved her," she said. It came out as fact.
"He did," Bill said.
"What happened to him? And don't tell me rumors. Was my father involved?"
Bill's jaw worked as his eyes studied her. Finally, he spoke. "It was about a year or so later, Joe knew Anthony had come back. He heard that there were meetings. He didn't like it." He paused, struggling with what to share with this vulnerable woman, but he knew what Julia would want, so he continued. "There was a fight outside Miller's Bar the week Anthony disappeared. I wasn't there. You'll never know how I wish I'd been there. I heard the stories. Anthony didn't come home. Men who drank with your father said Anthony 'took off.' Joe's knuckles and my faith in Anthony said different." He lifted his hand a little. A sadness filled his eyes. "That's as far as I can go today."
"Today? No, I want to know. Tell it all to me." She heard the edge in her own voice.
"I don't want to overwhelm you," Bill said. "Your brother watches. People talk. Let's take one step at a time. Trust me — it's better if you have time to digest things."
"Mark? Who does he watch? Is this why he doesn't want me to talk to the neighbors?"
"Perhaps, or maybe there is more." He softened it. "You've got the letter. Start there."
Rachel swallowed. "Is there anything else? Proof. Not stories."
"Your mother kept things neat," Bill said. "She tucked what mattered where anyone looking wouldn't bother. Sewing basket. Button tin. Inside seams." He looked at her. "You already found one roll of film. There were others, once. She hid them, afraid to even have them developed."
"Does Mark know any part of this?" she asked again.
"He knows your father," Bill said. "He knows what fear does to a house. That makes its own kind of silence."
Rachel looked back toward Julia's stone. "Why didn't she tell me?" It broke out raw.
"Because she was trying to keep you clear," Bill said. "And because the last time you two tried to talk, it went sideways." He let that sit without judgment. "She didn't want to give you anything more to carry."
He glanced at the gray sky. "I don't stay out long in the cold," he said. "Tomorrow, same place if you want more. I'll bring the one letter I kept from Anthony, besides this one. You bring what you find."
"Okay." She slid the envelope into the inside pocket of her coat, buttoned it, and kept her hand there.
"Promise me you won't take your brother head-on," Bill said before turning. "Make space for him to be wrong without making him your enemy."
He tipped the brim of his hat and headed for the truck. The door creaked; the engine turned over; he rolled off slowly.
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