The faint clacking of heels assured Ronnie that Missus McKinney was on the other side of the house. Ronnie’s socks muffled her own footsteps as she ran up to the satchel and grabbed the journal. But also there was sheet after sheet of notes: page numbers, word counts, rearranging letters like a madman.
She found herself so focused on the nonsense strewn about the pages that Ronnie didn’t hear footsteps approaching until Missus McKinney had almost returned! The window wasn’t far, but she’d be visible through the doorway if she went for it. Ronnie instead ducked through a side door into an old musty kitchen and tried the window in there.
It wasn’t just jammed; it had been nailed shut.
There was no back door.
Ronnie’s heart bounced against her ribs. Her breath had stopped dead along with the rest of her body. All she could do was wait for Michelle McKinney to catch her and… She had no idea.
But her enemy didn’t enter the kitchen. Missus McKinney stayed in the other room and muttered bitterly to herself. It took a minute, but Ronnie was able to breathe again. Mere feet from capture, she opened the journal to discover red marks on nearly every page.
Heavier footsteps in the other room signaled the return of the ringleader. “There was no one there, of course.” A pause. “Where is it!?”
“What?”
“The journal, woman! Where is the journal!?”
Ronnie ducked into a cupboard while they bickered about whether or not she was lying to him. When he shrieked for her to find it, Ronnie just barely managed to close the door and duck down in time for George Fabel to storm into the kitchen. She glanced through the little adjustable slats on the door to see him practically foaming at the mouth as he scanned the room before running out and leaving the kitchen door wide open.
Once the sound of footsteps was gone entirely, Ronnie emerged and shut the kitchen door again for some privacy.
If she ran now, they’d catch her for sure. But she had the journal. Ronnie opened it up and turned to the last page. Amaranth Jones always looked at the most recent information first to find clues. There were only two red marks here, both underlining important sections.
More than anything, I hope that people get to see Kristian for who they truly were instead of the hero they had to be.
Poetic, but that was to be expected from a painter. “Why they really were”, “hero”, and “had to be” jumped out at her. As did the word “they”. This wasn’t a hypothetical person, it was one of Keith Graham’s closest friends. Why be so vague?
I’ve put the other painting in the safe, along with their own journal. I won’t remember the code if I write it down, but I’ve set the safe to open when the three most important pages of my journal are entered.
That explained the importance of this journal, but it didn’t make figuring out the code any easier. Even though Mister Graham’s journal wasn’t as long as the bible, it was long enough that guessing combinations wouldn’t work. And George Fabel, attorney at law, hadn’t found any success with all the time he had to look for clues.
Sneaking back into the other room, Ronnie checked the safe. It was a padlock safe with numbers ranging from zero to fifty. Only the first fifty pages of the journal could be part of the combination. Mister Fabel seemed to have come to the same conclusion since that was where most of his marks had been made.
Ronnie glanced out the open window to see Michelle McKinney struggling through fallen leaves in heels. They seemed to think that whoever had taken the journal made a run for it. The urge to do so was still there, but Ronnie choked it down and ducked back into the kitchen.
Pages one through fifty. Ronnie scanned the red marks on each page, but George Fabel in his desperation had marked so many unrelated things that it was hard to make out any patterns at all. She flipped through quickly, then went backwards and still found herself lost. There wasn’t time to study it deeply!
Most of Mister Fabel’s marks covered sections that were about Kristian larson. That made sense, but if Keith Graham was covering up a secret, the three most important pages wouldn’t be random things about Mister Larson. The birth of his son on page forty-nine was surely a big deal but probably had nothing to do with what was in the safe.
On page twenty-three, a section circled in less-faded ink read: Despite being happily married, Kristian continues to confide in me that he struggles to feel accepted by the women in his life the way he’s always wanted to be. I do my best to sympathize despite not being able to relate. Ronnie felt that in her soul. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she didn’t really know the girls in her class until they’d accepted her as one of their own.
If George Fabel had only marked that section recently, then it wasn’t the kind of thing he thought must be very relevant. For him to have gone this long without figuring out the combination, he must not know what was relevant or not. Ronnie started searching for mentions of Mister Larson that hadn’t been marked yet.
On page thirty-seven, she found something. Kristian told me how he had wasted the entirety of the previous day away at the shop looking for a single dress to buy his wife. It had to be perfect, he said, but he was very visibly aware that I knew he wanted any excuse to indulge in examining the fabrics and styles up close.
Ronnie understood what that felt like. Dresses and girl shoes were always so much prettier than anything boys got to wear. Everyone knew that, but boys weren’t supposed to admit it or they wouldn’t look as manly. How had that gotten past Mister Fabel?
On page six, circled multiple times in red: Kristian is adamant that his secret be taken to the grave. I understand his concerns – Earnest is certainly not Paris, where his deviancy would be tolerated enough for him to simply disappear into the masses. There’s nothing I would like more than to abscond with him across the sea to France so that we could join the free artists and perhaps he could live in a way that brings light to his eyes. Alas, he is adamantly a G-dly man with a duty to his family.
It was weird the way Keith Graham wrote the name God, but Ronnie dismissed it. She had a combination to try: six, twenty-three, thirty-seven. If not that, some other combination of the same numbers. And if not that… Ronnie didn’t have much time to keep looking.
First checking to make sure the room was empty, Ronnie walked in and up to the safe. She turned the dial slowly, nervous when she reached thirty-seven and didn’t hear any kind of click or thunk from within the safe. Deep breaths. Ronnie turned the handle and pulled.
The safe opened slowly but without resistance. Hinges squealed and groaned as she, huffing and puffing, dragged the heavy door out of place to expose the brittle contents. A rolled up canvas and a small, leather bound journal sat inside. She picked the latter up first and turned to the bookmarked page.
I told Keith my secret today. He is the first person in the world to know that my life is a sham. G-d, in his infinite wisdom, has cursed me with the longing for womanhood even though I am a man made in his image. I told Keith this on the verge of tears, expecting disgust or admonishment. Instead, he held me close and assured me that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
Ronnie stared open-mouthed at the page, not registering the sound of footsteps until someone had grabbed him by the collar.
“You!” George Fabel pulled Ronnie back hard, making her drop the journal. “I should have known it would be you!”
“George! Stop! She’s harmless!”
“This little deviant is no more harmless than it is a girl!” George yanked the wig off Ronnie’s head before growing her at Michelle and snarling, “Do not let him get away!”
Ronnie thrashed against Michelle but to no avail; the older woman was simply too strong for her.
Mister Fabel picked the journal off of the ground and placed it on the table with the painter’s. “Finally, an end to this nightmare.” From the satchel, he pulled out a box of matches.
“Stop!” Ronnie cried, kicking uselessly at Michelle McKinney’s shins. “You can’t!”
“George, we have what we came for. Let’s just go and take care of this elsewhere.”
“No! I will not live another minute with my grandfather’s reputation on the line! This ends now, in this room!”
Ronnie told him, “I called the police! They’re coming! They’ll shoot you if you set things on fire!”
“Lying does not come naturally to you, young man.”
George Fabel struck a match and held it up to the pages, which smoked for a second before catching fire. Kristian Larson’s journal burned while he moved the match over to Keith Graham’s. Tears welled up in Ronnie’s eyes.
“Please! This is wrong! You know that the truth needs to come out!” She sobbed, then asked Michelle McKinney, “How can you say you care at all about this town’s history!?”
“This is for the best,” Michelle said as the painter’s journal started to burn. “People want the past to be a happy place. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“You’re not doing this for anybody but yourself! How is him getting to decide what happens to this town any different from the government getting to decide it? I thought you cared about everyone’s freedom, not just your own!”
Missus McKinney didn’t respond, but her grip did weaken. Ronnie broke free and ran for the table just as Mister Fabel turned to the safe. She grabbed the satchel and started slamming it against the burning journals, trying to put out the flames. George Fabel swore and grabbed her arms, but dropped the book of matches in the scuffle. He tried to drag her away from the table as the books were engulfed and smoke stung their eyes.
“George! George, sirens! The police are here!”
Mister Fabel let go of Ronnie and reached for the rolled-up canvas in the safe. Ronnie latched onto his shirt and tried to pull him away, shrieking for him to stop. Michelle McKinney backed into a corner as uniformed police officers ran into the room. One of them grabbed Ronnie by the waist and pulled her away, though she didn’t stop screaming. George dropped the canvas when another officer slammed him against the wall and started reading him his rights. Missus McKinney was ushered out of the room, Ronnie dragged along behind her, while the last officer took up Ronnie’s position of trying to beat out the flames before they spread.
It was ultimately somewhat disappointing for Ronnie to find herself sitting in the back of an ambulance wrapped up in a blanket while the police took control of the situation. Her wig, like the burned remains of the journals and the rolled up canvas, had been thrown into an evidence bag and kept away from her. George Fabel was in the back of a police car while an officer spoke to a disheveled Missus McKinney. He was talking about jail time and cooperating with the police until she said she wanted to speak to a lawyer and was pushed into the car alongside her co-conspirator.
There was a lecture from one officer about how bad it was for Ronnie to snoop into other people’s business before she was brought home. Adam Monroe had been right in his prediction that Ronnie’s parents would not be happy to learn what she’d been up to from the police. The word “therapist” was thrown around quite a bit. It was a relief to finally collapse into bed that night, but it would be well over a month before the new therapist ended up recommending what, in hindsight, was pretty obvious: it might be better for Ronnie to be given a chance to explore what it would be like to actually live as a girl.
It was only a few weeks before school started again that Ronnie heard anything new about her case, when a phone call from the local paper resulted in her riding down to the office on her bike. Inside was a man she didn’t know and also photographer Tyler Gooseman.
“I remember you,” she told him. “You showed me those old pictures.”
Ronnie was still wearing her sister’s hand-me-downs, though with permission this time. Her hair hadn’t had a chance to grow out, but a hair band helped her feel a bit more feminine. Clip-on earrings weren’t as good as the real thing but were a start.
“That I did. The police put a lot of effort in to keep your name out of the public record, but I knew that it had to be you who cracked the case. The hard part was getting in contact to arrange a followup interview. We were running out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
The other man opened up a folder on his desk and said, “Police sent the evidence you found to the university, and they’re about to make their findings public. We have the inside scoop and wanted to do an article. An exclusive interview with the girl detective would cinch it.”
Ronnie stepped up to the desk and looked at the photos from the folder. The burnt journals were hard to look at, but not all pages had burned up entirely. Enough writing had been saved from each to piece together a story. More importantly, though, were the oversized photos of the painting that Ronnie hadn’t gotten to see before it was snatched up by the police. A full-sized portrait of a handsome woman in a gorgeous dress smiling at the viewer. A smaller photo showed the signature on the back: Cecelia Larson, by the Trusted Artist Keith Graham.
Everything went blurry as Ronnie sobbed and covered her mouth. The photographer placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her to a chair. She sat, then broke down into a full cry. Ronnie cried until every last tear in her body had dried up, then choked out, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s quite alright,” Mister Gooseman said. “You did something amazing by bringing this to light. We would love it if you could tell us your story so it can be shared with the world, too.”
Ronnie nodded.
Michelle McKinney, on the advice of her lawyer, took a plea bargain to make a statement against George Fabel before stepping down from her position and leaving the state entirely with her family in tow. In the end, very little of what Mister Fabel did resulted in criminal charges, but he did plead guilty to false imprisonment of a minor for what he did to Ronnie in exchange for a reduced sentence and a merely suspended license to practice law. His firm on Main Street was shut down and remodeled into an antique shop before the summer had ended.
Adam Monroe didn’t face any legal consequences that Ronnie could see, but when the news reported that he was extorting one of his renters for free meals, he stopped appearing in public altogether. Naomi Turlington heard that his son had taken over managing the business operations. Nobody had noticed because the owners didn’t do much to begin with.
The university’s findings were quite scandalous, and the newspaper article that Ronnie had spoken for anonymously even got the attention of the local cable news channel. Some of the things that people said about Cecelia were upsetting to see, made even worse by the fact that Ronnie would be attending high school in the fall as a girl. Some of those people were going to be saying the same things about her. Still, the truth had come out, and Ronnie couldn’t help but feel proud that Cecelia Larson got to be known for who she truly was, eventually.
On the first day of August, Ronnie found herself standing in front of Dawson HighSchool in her dress-code-abiding khaki skirt and polo top, struggling to breathe.
“Are you ready for this?” Cindy Moss asked her. “I’m excited! Do you think we’ll have the same lunch period as everyone else?”
Ronnie shrugged, not trusting herself to speak without throwing up.
“You okay?”
She shook her head.
“Hm… You know, my older brother said that the guy this school is named after–Charles Dawson–he was part of the Underground Railroad. Rumor has it that the school is built on some old tunnels he used to help the slaves escape the police.”
Ronnie blinked, snapping out of her trance. “Really? You think they’re still there?”
Cindy laughed. Ronnie’s face burned for a second before she joined in. They had to hurry to get to homeroom without being late, but Ronnie still kept an eye open for any hints about secret passageways.
This was a wonderful story. I cried when it got to the reveal of the painting. Thank you so much.
such a cute story! loved the ending :)
That was sweet, I gave me a big smile at the end.
Aw I'm glad she discovered who she really is inside
Awww that was a nice ending. I'm glad everything worked out for Ronnie
Nice, a good story, reminds me of an encyclopedia brown book. Thank you for sharing.
Awww, always love when they finally get to be themselves! It's always my favorite part of the story!