Liam's Secret

“You should get dressed today, Eileen,” Lizzie said to her older sister, gently touching her shoulder.

Eileen let out a sigh as she set her teacup down on the table. She knew Lizzie was trying, but nothing was going to make things any better. She really just wanted to be alone. She missed Liam terribly. She missed the way he added just the right amount of cream to her tea every morning. She missed his hugs. She missed how he would leave his work boots on the floor by the door every night after work. Lizzie had put them in the closet while tidying up for Eileen, but Eileen pulled them back out and set them down by the door. She wasn’t ready to put Liam’s things away yet.

“Ok,” she responded reluctantly. “I was actually thinking that I would pull the weeds in the yard today.” Eileen stood and immediately felt drained. Her back was sore from the lack of restful sleep and her head hurt from all the crying of the past few days.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Lizzie responded.

“I want to,” Eileen snapped back. Then, realizing how harsh she sounded, she took a quick breath and said, “Honestly, Lizzie, working in the yard is exactly what I need right now. I know you mean well, but I think I need some time alone. I know you must have a million things to do with the kids and all. I’ll be fine. Please.” The last word exited Eileen’s lips like a whisper.

Lizzie faced Eileen, her forehead wrinkled. Eileen reached out and gave her a warm hug. Her face buried in Lizzie’s long curly red hair, she murmured, “I can’t thank you enough for how much you have done for me since...” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. She pulled back just a bit, her hands on Lizzie’s elbows and said, “I promise I’ll call you if I need anything.”

Lizzie smiled at her sister in agreement. Making Eileen promise again that she would call if she needed her, Lizzie threw on her shawl, grabbed her purse and headed to her car. Eileen shut the door and let out a deep breath, her hand still on the heavy brass doorknob. Finally, she thought to herself.

Dressed in her favorite worn t-shirt, torn jeans, and old tennis shoes, Eileen headed out to the yard to do exactly as she had said. She dropped to her knees and was welcomed by the hard ground below the soft cold grass. The sun was just starting to shine on the rose bed that laid in front of her. She remembered the day when she and Liam bought the house. They were so excited for the blank canvas that the yard provided them, and they agreed they wanted to plant a beautiful rose garden right in front, next to the bay window. Eileen smiled as she remembered how they couldn’t agree on the color of roses they wanted, but how Liam gave in to her request for only white and yellow. When it was time to plant the rose bushes, Liam had used his yardstick to make sure they were spaced the exact same distance from each other. Being a house painter, he was always so particular about the details of everything, and although she often teased him about it, Eileen admitted to herself that she would definitely miss that too.

Before starting, Eileen filled her lungs with the fresh air and exhaled slowly. She slipped on Liam’s gardening gloves. Liam’s gloves were thicker than her own. He was the one who did more of the heavy yard work and took complete charge of the roses, thorns and all. “Wow, there sure are quite a bit of weeds and grass in here, Liam,” Eileen said aloud.

She began pulling weeds, starting at the back of the bed, by the house. Not more than twenty minutes later, Eileen had made her way to the right corner where she spotted something unusual in the small space just below where the bay window pushed away from the house. It looked like fabric of some kind just under the dirt. She reached over, pulled it out of the dirt and shook it clean. It was indeed fabric - a muslin that looked like the one she often used in her quilting projects. This piece of muslin looked very old and worn from weather and time. Something was wrapped inside. She carefully pulled the fabric away to reveal a little black book in a clear plastic storage bag.

What have you been up to, Liam? Eileen’s curiosity was piqued. She slowly opened the plastic bag and removed the little black book. Setting the bag down, Eileen opened the book. The pages were yellowed. She immediately spotted Liam’s handwriting. He always wrote with such precision. The writing was neat and perfect. Flipping through the pages, Eileen found lines and lines of what looked almost like an informal ledger. There were dates going back ten years on each line. Next to each date was an amount with a dollar sign. After the very last entry, a straight line was drawn and the number twenty thousand dollars was written just below it. A heart was drawn just to the right of what appeared to be the grand total.

Eileen gasped, her right hand instantly covering her mouth. She leaned back and rested on the grass with her legs crossed. “Liam,” she said aloud again. “What in the world is this?”

Her mind began racing. Did Liam save twenty thousand dollars? If so, why was it secret? She fought back the tears and shook her head. They had been married for almost twenty-five years. Eileen refused to believe that Liam was hiding something like this from her. She flipped through the book again, looking for an answer somewhere. She found one sentence scrawled on the back cover. It read, Clarity lurks over clouded knowledge.

What could that mean? Eileen brushed the curly strands of brown hair away from her eyes. She slipped the book back in the plastic bag and set it down on the fabric laying on the grass. She rose to her feet and returned to the garage to find the small shovel that she and Liam used for planting. Returning to the rose bed, she began to dig into the soil all around where she had found the book. Her efforts came up fruitless, and the rose bed was now a mess.

She felt along the crevices of the stone wall of the house behind the rose bed, testing to see if any of the stones would move and possibly reveal a secret hiding spot. Again, she found nothing.

Now frustrated, she grabbed the book, the bag, and the fabric and stormed inside. She dropped the items on the kitchen table and ran her hands through her hair. “What is this about, Liam?” she shouted, looking up at the ceiling. “What have you been up to? What does this all mean?”

She stood silent for a moment and then plopped down in the chair across the table from the window. She saw a cardinal fly by the window, and she thought to herself, Ok, I’m going crazy now. She and Liam had always believed that the presence of a cardinal was a visit from a loved one that had passed, but she worried it might just be wishful thinking on her part now. Was her mind playing tricks on her?

A single tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek as Eileen stared out the window. “I can’t do this without you, Liam,” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I don’t know how to live my life without you. We were supposed to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary in just 4 months!” Her shoulders sunk forward, her back rounded, and her forehead rested on her hands on the table. She gave in and allowed herself to sob uncontrollably for a few minutes before raising her head and wiping her tears with her hands, unknowingly smearing dirt across her tear-stained cheeks. There is no use feeling sorry for yourself, she thought. There is nothing you can do, Eileen. He’s gone now.

Eileen picked up the book again, determined to find some meaning. The heart drawn next to the grand total gave her the reassurance that whatever this was, it was full of good intention. And she knew her late husband. Liam was kind. He was a hard worker and a family man. And most importantly, he was honest - she never doubted that.

Twenty-thousand dollars was a lot of money. Liam’s house painting and Eileen’s job as a receptionist at the local dentist office in their small town often required creativity when it came to raising their two boys, but they always made ends meet. And they were happy. With Liam’s unexpected passing, Eileen was grateful that they had paid off the mortgage on their small home the year prior, but she really didn’t know what the future would look like for her. Both sons were grown with their own families and had moved away. She was grateful that her sister still lived nearby, but she was also realistic that life would certainly be very different without Liam.

Flipping again to the back of the book, Eileen re-read the sentence that Liam had written: Clarity lurks over clouded knowledge. She wondered if it was a clue. Clarity and clouded... could that be a reference to diamonds? Dropping the book, she rushed into their room. She found her jewelry box, but there was nothing unusual to be found among her costume jewelry. She searched all around the jewelry box, feeling the back of the dresser. It was a dead end.

Clarity lurks over clouded knowledge. She wondered, is it the word knowledge? Could it have something to do with his books? Maybe there is a book about diamonds, she thought. She raced to the bookshelf in the living room and inspected each and every book. She looked behind and on top of the bookshelf. Still nothing unusual to be found.

Eileen collapsed onto the sofa, again frustrated but relieved for the distraction all the same. She rested her head on Liam’s favorite throw pillow and felt something jutting out between the pillow and the couch. She reached down and pulled out Liam’s paperback book of word puzzles. Liam loved solving word puzzles of all kinds, and the irony wasn’t lost on Eileen. “That’s it,” she yelled as she sat straight up. “It’s a word puzzle!” She ran to the kitchen and grabbed the book and looked at the handwritten phrase one more time: Clarity lurks over clouded knowledge.

Within seconds, she saw the answer. The first letter of each word spelled ‘clock.’ How had she not seen that before? She ran to the grandfather clock Liam had inherited from his father a few years ago. He adored the clock, and he would wind it every single Sunday morning. Eileen remembered Liam showing her the secret compartment on the top right side. The compartment led to a storage space just behind the clock face.

Eileen opened the compartment and there it was. Right in front of her was a yellow envelope stuffed so full that it couldn’t be sealed closed. She pulled it out of its hiding spot and reached in to find bills of all kinds. She didn’t need to count it. She knew exactly how much money it contained. And along with the money, Eileen pulled out a brochure of a romantic European vacation for two. That was the answer. Liam was planning a trip for their twenty-fifth anniversary.

Eileen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she crumpled into a pile on the floor and just gave in to both emotions. Moments later, a cardinal settled on a nearby tree branch outside her window.