Truth didn’t matter

True story: I took a polygraph.

One Christmas, despite the icy roads and poor driving conditions, we gathered at my grandparents' home to celebrate: my husband and I, my dad, my brother, and my uncle from California along with his somewhat-new-to-the-family second wife.

Sascha and I drove up from Lafayette for the day. My uncle and his wife were staying with my grandparents; my dad and brother lived nearby.

My uncle, my mom’s younger brother, had been in and out of our lives since I could remember. When I was a toddler he dropped out of college and went to New York, then to California where he got involved in a religious cult. He ended up in an arranged marriage that gave him 5 children (Christian soldiers as I liked to call them), all of whom were homeschooled with varying amounts of actual education and socialization.

The cult involvement that started in the late 1970’s estranged my uncle from the family for 13 years. Every now and then my uncle would call or send a card with pictures of his growing family, but he didn’t visit. My mom and grandparents missed him, and I noticed the pain even as a child.

When I was sixteen, I decided to fly out to Los Angeles and visit my uncle. By this time, he had supposedly left his cult (plot twist: he hadn’t). My mom was having surgery to remove a large melanoma on her arm, and I had an urge to see if the family could reconcile. Turns out we could, at least for a bit.

After the family reunited, the five young cousins appeared in shifting combinations. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. Eventually, the arranged marriage couldn’t hold and my uncle and his first wife divorced.

Enter Vivian. His second wife was a friendly, talkative woman. She was attractive, classy, and as my dad remarked more than once, way out of my uncle’s league. She was a woman of God with strong convictions, or so she said. She also seemed a little fixated on the value of items in my grandparents' home.

Their small townhome was nicely decorated with antiques they had kept since they got married in Kentucky and later moved to the Northwest Indiana suburbs. They bought nice things and kept them nice for as long as possible. No clutter. Although everything was tasteful and looked great in the full picture of the home, nothing was all that valuable. Just sentimental.

Each visit, Vivian would ask my grandmother about the value of something in her home. The year prior, the discussion focused on my grandmother’s wedding china.

“Do you know what your china is worth?” she once inquired.

“Um, no. I have never thought about it. I doubt it’s worth anything.”

“Oh, I am sure it’s worth something,” she would insist. “It’s old and beautiful. I should take a picture and see if I can find out.”

In a later recap conversation, my grandmother and I discussed that knowing the value of the china would only be interesting to someone who was interested in selling it, which my grandmother had made clear was not her goal. After all, what would we eat Christmas dinner on?

This particular Christmas felt a little rushed. Sascha and I had to get back to our house of dogs before their little bladders gave out, and the 1.5 hour drive in good road conditions was extended with the poor conditions. We took our dessert to go.

A few days after the holiday, my grandmother called. Her voice a little shaky, soft, but somehow also serious.

“Jenny?” My family has always called me Jenny. I reserved that for them and my friends in Germany.

“Have you seen my jewelry? My everyday jewelry,” she continued.

“No. Why? Can’t you find it?” I felt super nervous instantly. My grandmother was over-the-top organized and not forgetful.

“I put it away when the cleaners were here before Christmas, but it’s not where I left it.”

My grandmother had a beautiful mirrored vanity tray in her bedroom where she would put her day-to-day jewelry. Just like the other items in her house, the value was in the meaning, in what each piece represented. My mom and uncle had given her a ring with their birthstones in it decades ago. Since my mom’s passing at age 52, everything connected to her felt priceless.

Once when I was helping my grandmother clean before the cleaners arrived, I put her jewelry in a small embellished leather bag that I had seen in her drawer, waiting for its purpose. I told her I would put the jewelry in there to get it out of the way and out of sight, not that she should worry, but maybe tempting people is also not a great idea. She followed this ritual every two weeks. And she did this just before Christmas.

But now, the jewelry was gone.

I asked Sascha if he could remember seeing my grandmother’s jewelry on Christmas Day, but he couldn’t. I asked my grandmother to ask my brother, but I knew he wouldn’t have even noticed the jewelry had it been laying directly in front of him. My dad even less so.

We stayed on the phone and walked through her preparations for my uncle, the cleaners, Christmas, and everything that happened after. Still no recollection of anything other than dropping that leather bag into the top drawer of her dresser.

My grandmother called back a few hours later. Exasperated that no one knew anything.

“You don’t think the cleaners took it, do you?” she cautiously asked.

“I mean, anything is possible, but that would not be my guess. They would have had to risk opening your dresser drawer to take it out while you were still milling about. It sounds risky. What did Uncle Jack and Vivian say?”

She let out a sigh, “Vivian said it was probably the cleaners.”

“That’s it? She accused them straight away?”

“Well, she first asked if it was valuable.”

I felt that chill down my spine that told me all I needed to know.

Doubt was creeping into the air. My brother had been physically and mentally unwell most of his adult life, leaving him unable to work consistently. He had never moved out of our childhood home and relied on my dad, and sometimes my grandparents, for financial support. My uncle was sure that my brother had pawned the jewelry.

The accusations then switched to Sascha. He wasn’t blood related and had been alone in my grandparents’ bedroom using their bathroom on Christmas. Somehow I evaded finger pointing. My dad had never entered my grandparents’ bedroom.

And in an unexpected shift in focus, my uncle started to doubt his wife. We all had felt it was strange how she had always fixated on everything my grandparents owned. Plus, she had spent a lot of time alone in the bedroom since that was where she and my uncle were sleeping. And, different from the rest of us, she instantly accused the cleaners of stealing before trying to problem solve where the jewelry may have been.

Tensions grew and the desire for answers grew too. My uncle, in an attempt to clear his wife’s name and pin the jewelry theft on my brother, suggested we all take polygraphs. His treat.

This felt laughable and like a waste of money to me, but if it meant figuring this out, I was happy to oblige on his dime.

Sascha and I drove 2.5 hours to the north side of Chicago on a cold February day in full disbelief this was where our family’s life had landed. We chuckled on the drive at the ridiculousness of it, but there was no doubt that we were both pretty uneasy about the process.

We arrived extra early and sat across the street in a cafe passing the time and exchanging very few words. The waiting caused my palms to sweat, my stomach to twist, and certainly an elevated blood pressure for us both. My uncle had arranged for Sascha and me to have back-to-back appointments and for him and his wife to have theirs back-to-back as well. My brother was the only one who couldn’t attend due to his health problems–he had just had surgery and the recovery had been rough. The staggered appointments also prevented us from awkwardly crossing paths in the reception area.

It was my turn, then Sascha’s. The ex-investigator took us into a conference room together and gave a quick and very serious rundown of the procedure. I kept feeling the corners of my mouth turning up ever so slightly. Nervousness? Hilarity that I was taking a polygraph? Or the feeling that we were on some kind of prank TV show? I sensed right away that our leader did not appreciate my smile.

In the testing room, I was hooked up to a heart monitor and a pulsometer. A bizarre internal dialogue snuck out of my brain cloud:

No turning back now. I might have stolen the jewelry. I guess we'll find out now. Wait, no, of course, I didn’t. But did Sascha? No. Of course not. Would I divorce him if he did? What am I doing? Stop. Focus. Focus. Focus.

The interview started. The first questions were easy. A baseline measurement was taken to know how I handled no-risk inquiries. But the jewelry questions made me feel weird. Had I been in my grandmother’s bedroom? Of course. We all had always had free range access to everything at their townhome. And since my mother’s passing, I had been expected to know where everything was. I enjoyed that level of trust.

Thirty minutes later, I exhaled. Glad it was over. The shaking of my hands lingered. The nerves involved with taking the test rested, but the anxiety about the results persisted.

I returned to the conference room where I passed the baton to Sascha. Those intrusive thoughts returned.

What if Sascha had stolen my grandmother’s jewelry? We didn't have much money, but I think he knew we could ask my dad for help if the situation were dire. Did he know that? Yes, of course. But did my brother? He knew, but maybe his dislike for my uncle was strong enough that he would frame him for a crime. They had an unspoken competition for the favorite boy in the family. After my uncle’s separation from the family, my brother had assumed the role of the child who could do no wrong in their eyes. This jewelry mess was putting both theories to the test.

Sascha returned an hour later, and we were ushered out of the office suite to the elevator. That was it. No result–only those who paid would receive the results. Well, that was my uncle. And that didn’t feel very transparent. The end was definitely anti-climactic.

We drove home.

The next morning, my grandma called to tell us that uncle Jack had told her we all had passed the polygraph. That meant the only person who didn’t take the test must be guilty: my brother.

I told my grandmother not to believe that. First of all, Chris was bold enough to ask for money. He was. He had done this before. A clear head told me he didn't steal the jewelry. Second of all, he knew that jewelry in particular was never going to garner any substantial cash return. He had access to other items that would pay higher dividends. This was getting out of hand.

On the other end of the line, my grandmother started crying, “Your grandfather gave me such a beautiful ring that looked nice and was perfect to wear every day. I have been married for 65 years and never had a bare ring finger.”

I felt that in the pit of my stomach and pierced my lips together to choke back my own tears. Where the hell was her jewelry?

Telephone back and forths among the family resumed. My uncle was unwilling to share the actual test results but insisted that Chris was to blame. If he wanted to be exonerated, he would have to take the test. This felt like a setup. And now, for the first time ever, I dug in and really defended my brother.

We had always had a tumultuous relationship, we just saw the world so differently. But I felt awful that he was being accused so harshly, especially when his health was still recovering. And if my uncle wouldn’t share the actual results, how did we know he wasn’t lying? We didn’t. That was the quick answer.

I couldn’t stand any of this anymore. I crafted a long, harsh and very clear email to my uncle. I reminded him that we are his only sister’s children, and she would have been so disappointed that he would treat us so terribly. And that instead of looking after my brother and supporting him through his health crisis, he was causing more pain and mental anguish. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Chris and I no longer have an uncle.”

I read it over the phone first to my grandmother and then to my brother. I had blessings from both. My grandmother only cautioned that I couldn’t take it back once I set it out into the universe. And I was good with that. Sent.

Life started to finally resume. Jewelry was no longer a daily topic. Even so, that gnawing annoyance and sadness for my grandmother’s loss remained in the back of my mind. I could imagine how it must have felt for her every time she looked at her hands.

Nearly three months to the day that this stressful ordeal began, the phone rang. It was my grandma. My heart jumped before I even answered. I had this gut feeling that something had happened to Grandpa.

“Jenny, I found my jewelry.”

Thankfully, my gut instinct was wrong.

“What? Where?” I almost couldn't believe my ears.

“It was behind the row of cookbooks on the shelf in the spare bedroom.”

That seems like a very off place for the jewelry to reappear. And as her story continued, it started to make sense. She had been under time pressure to get everything ready for my uncle's visit and prepare Christmas meals at the same time. For a woman in her mid 80s she had remarkably been able to multitask and get it all done, refusing most help along the way.

This time, she had been jumping from task to task and instead of dropping the leather pouch into her top dresser drawer she carried it into the spare bedroom when she remembered she needed her caramel pie recipe. She set the jewelry down, returned the book to the shelf, and never thought more about it.

Such a relief. Mystery solved. But now the aftermath.

The next few weeks, my grandparents worked on repairing their relationship with my uncle and his wife. Although my uncle did accept their apology, his wife never did. In fact, we never saw or heard from Vivian again.

As for my uncle’s relationship with his niece and nephew, it never healed. I didn’t retract my sentiments in the email because we saw his true character in how he treated us, and that didn’t change whether the jewelry was there or not. He never offered an apology from his side either.

My grandfather had one more Christmas on Earth, and he spent it without his son. My grandmother had six more Christmases and countless other holidays. She, too, never spent another with her son.

Looking back, the jewelry was never really the issue. It was what people revealed when certainty disappeared.