Jack took a breath and said, “When I submitted to God’s will, I changed, but my obligation remained. That is why she lived here. It is Warnie who has held on to the anger. He says his private life was hardly ever at peace with ‘that senseless woman in the house.’” Jack imitated the slightly stronger Irish brogue of his brother. “Warnie believed her to be a horror. He is adamant that I could have written much more without her here. And I do believe he is right. But we’ve avenged that; there’s no need to hold on to the anger as he does.”
“What does that mean? Avenged?”
“It’s over.” He opened his palms to the ceiling. “Look at what we have been given, Joy. See the happiness of our life now?”
I did see, but the vengeful part of me wanted to find Janie Moore in the past and throttle her for whatever damage she had done to the man I loved. And again I saw a comrade in Warnie, another who felt the same as I did.
Frustration overwhelmed, and the words blurted from the deepest part of me. “You keep your heart hidden very well. You close that door and make sure no one opens it even a crack to see what is stored inside.”
“I don’t believe I do, but it might very well be that I can’t access feelings as easily as you do. You feel so much and so deeply.”
“I do, but I wouldn’t change that. There’s much I would change, but not that.”
He cleared his throat and stated simply, “I don’t want you to change anything at all.”
And with that, he lifted a book to read and the conversation was over. I sank back into the chair—I’d heard from Jack most of what I needed to know, if not everything. And it would forever be something I would hold private. Janie Moore was a love affair and one he regretted, ended, and also paid for with pounds of flesh and servile actions.
How I wanted to redeem his idea of love, his idea of what true desire might cost.
But who was I to redeem anything at all?
CHAPTER 40
（Love） You can be very sure it will not kill you,
But neither will it let you sleep at night
“SONNET III,” JOY DAVIDMAN
I saw the letter from another woman on his desk, and all propriety and all goodness told me not to read it, but my eyes could not turn away. I don’t know how I couldn’t have read it, although it had been a full two blissful weeks in Oxford with Jack and my sons, and I had no need to go ruin it.
The four of us had been a kind of family—we traipsed around Oxfordshire and took a train out to Studley Priory, a country estate that had been both a nunnery and a sanatorium—what a combination! We’d gobbled clotted cream and biscuits while the boys rampaged about with the animals, from Dalmatian puppies to hamsters.
Through those summer weeks, the house became an author’s workshop—Jack and I toiling away on all of our projects. My work was still as important to me as it had always been, and I fit it into the open spaces of our days.
We worried about Warnie, and Jack called the facility to check on him every day, hoping for the news that he was sober and well enough to travel. Meanwhile, the boys turned the Kilns acreage into their personal playground—playing cricket on the lawn, picking fruit, building forts, fishing in the pond. Shotover Hill became their conquering lands. There was chess at night, and walls and piles of books to peruse.
It was a rainy evening when I found Davy reading a French translation of Prince Caspian, muttering out loud and slowly—French words in a part American/part English accent.
“I’m proud of you, Davy. Greek and French and Latin all there in your brain; you’re brilliant.” I hugged him so tightly that he had to push me away.
The time passed in this pleasant way until it was midmonth and the news arrived that Warnie was being released from the hospital and was healthy enough to travel. Jack was to launch off to Ireland the next day. I’d slept in later than usual that morning and wandered upstairs to look for him in his office. So why I felt I must wreck this peaceful bliss with my nosiness, I’ll never understand.
The room was empty but for the things of him: the papers, letters, notes, and manuscript pages written in his tight cursive handwriting; the pipe tobacco and ash-scattered rug. I went to the desk checking for pages to type. The letters he’d answered that morning were piled to the left. The sealed letters, his answers, were stamped and stacked to the right.
He tossed letters after he answered them. I knew this because when I’d asked if he still had my first letter, he’d told me, “No. If something were to happen to me, I’d never want a greedy chap to come in here and gather my personal correspondence. People write to me of the most personal things.”