How I Spent my Summer Holiday

Grandpa was on the phone when I arrived in the kitchen for breakfast the next morning. It was one of those conversations that is a waste of time to eavesdrop on. ‘Yes…okay….uh huh….certainly’ and so on but I couldn’t help listening. The presence of the skeleton in the barn continued to be a mystery and I hoped it would be solved before we had to go back home again.

Finally, the call ended. He sat down at the table with us, laying his cell phone next to his plate. He cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Good news. We’ve been given the green light. The investigation in the barn is over. We are free to go out there anytime we want, anywhere on the land actually and do what we want. The police have collected all the evidence they can find. I don’t think it was much, considering how thorough they combed through every inch of the barn, but they’re done now. And what’s more, I am free to go back to my life again.”

“The coroner has finished his investigation of the bones. He can’t find any evidence of trauma of any kind. Says it’s male child’s body, ages 6 or seven or thereabouts based on the size and on the teeth. A couple of the baby teeth were missing and the adult ones hadn’t grown through the gums yet. He thinks it may have been there for up to 35 years or more considering the state of decay. He can’t say for certain how or why the child died. He suggests it may be hypothermia, if he died where we found him, which is a possibility. Or perhaps natural causes of one sort or another that wouldn’t show up in the bones if he died somewhere else, and someone placed him there. The fact that he was hidden behind the boards suggests that may make more sense. The good thing is that they have reached the conclusion it wasn’t me.”

“What’s hypothermia?” asked Isabelle, sounding out the word carefully so as not to mispronounce it.

“Freezing to death.” I answered before Grandpa could reply. I had learned about it through Scouts.

“How horrible,” murmured Grandma, shaking her head. “What on earth would he be doing in the barn?”

“They can’t figure that out,” replied Grandpa. “And they have absolutely no clue who he might be. They started looking for someone who matched this description in the local records and couldn’t find anything, so they have been looking further and further afield. Gone all the way across the States now and there’s nothing. Lots of missing children, of course, but absolutely no one that fits this particular description is on record as missing anywhere in the United States. It doesn’t make any sense at all. You’d think if you lost a child that age, you would be looking for him.

We all sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts about the boy. Then Grandpa pushed back his chair, stood up and said. “Time to change clothes. I’m looking forward to spending all day out in the garden.”

It didn’t take but a few minutes before he appeared in the doorway with the parcel I had found in his hands. “What’s this?” he demanded of me. “I went into your bedroom to open the window and get some fresh air to move through the house, and this was laying on the desk. It’s got my name on it.

“I found it in the library” I stammered. “I was planning to give it to you because it didn’t look like it had been opened. But you were out with the police all the time. First, I forgot about it because of Treasure Island. Then I decided to open it in case it had a clue about the skeleton.”

“Why would anyone send me a parcel about the skeleton? And,” turning to Grandma “why would it be hidden in the library instead of being given to me?”

Grandma’s eyes had widened when she first saw the parcel, but now dropped down. “I hid it,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Lose me, there is no way you could lose me.”

“It was shortly after Lassie died and you had given up your dream of farming and I was fat and ugly and pregnant. I knew it was from her. I didn’t want you to go back to her.”

“Her?”

“Sara Hampton?”

“Sara Hampton? I would never leave you for someone like Sara Hampton!”

He dumped the contents of the parcel onto the table and picked up one of the photos. “Well, look at that. It is Sara Hampton. It looks like she had a son.”

“Who is Sara Hampton?” asked Isabelle.

“Nobody important,” answered Grandpa as he pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. He picked up the circlet and began shredding the marigolds with his fingers. “Sara is a woman from my past. From way back, before I met your grandmother. First of all, you have to realize that the years at the end of the sixties and early seventies were a very different than now. They were very different from any time in history. There were so many of us young people back then. The baby boomers they called us because we had all been born after the second world war. Times were good. The country was prosperous. We were free to do anything we wanted. It’s hard to explain from today’s viewpoint, but there we were, in the middle of it.”

“I didn’t have any money to go to university and thankfully I escaped being drafted, so I took to the road, hitch hiking, after I graduated from high school. Everyone was doing it back then. In time I ended up in Oregon and was invited to join a commune called Serenity Place and so I did. I thought it would give me a chance to be a farmer. Anyway, Sara was part of that commune. We were like a whole big family sharing everything: free love, flower children, drugs, marijuana, LSD, whatever you wanted. It was a crazy way to live when you look back at it.”

“Well, Sara liked me. I didn’t think too much about her. She was far too lost in the drugs most of the time, but she insisted on hanging around me. As we were ‘family’, I didn’t push her away, but I also didn’t let her get close, even though everyone in the commune assumed we were a couple. One of ‘the family’ members came back from a trip to India. He told us that marigolds are used there as love charms. For some reason we had a lot of marigolds blooming that summer. Someone decided to hold a celebration of love, in which we all wore garlands like this – the girls on their heads like crowns and us men, around our necks. It was a wild and crazy night with almost everyone passed out from drugs or alcohol before it ended.

“Sara wore this circlet from then on, replacing the marigolds with fresh ones, when the others dried out. She insisted it meant I had married her that night. I don’t know where she got that idea, although it had been mentioned that marigolds are also used in weddings in India.

Now, your grandmother here had a friend named Charlotte who had heard about Serenity Place and wanted to check it out. Grandma decided to go with her. They drove across the country together.” He looked across the table at her with a tender smile on his face. “When I saw her walk into the dining room I was completely smitten. This was my woman! And she has been that ever since, even if she has a tendency not to believe it at times.”

“Serenity Place did not impress your grandmother very much so she left and headed back to Fernwood Manor where she belonged. As soon as I realized she was gone, I asked Charlotte where she was going. I packed up and followed her. The rest is history. We’ve had such a good life together.” He looked at the photo in his hand. “I had quite forgotten that Sara Hampton existed.” He took a deep breath. “Well, it appears she is with us now. Let’s see what she has to say.”

He picked up the envelope, ripped it open, pulled out a letter and began to read. Suddenly his face went white. He dropped the letter and reached for his cell phone. He punched in some numbers. When the call was answered he said “can I speak to Detective Richolt, please.” We could hear “Detective Richoldt here” faintly through the cell phone. Grandpa’s response was abrupt. “Can you meet me at the boat launch at Pigeon Lake immediately? And bring along a couple of divers, if possible. I’ll meet you there and let you know what I have found.”

Grandpa picked up the letter, stuffed it in his pocket and headed out the door. In no time at all we heard the truck roar out of the driveway. Silence returned as the three of us looked at each other in amazement.

To be continued….