Starting Over

She awoke, as she had every morning for the last few days, to the sounds of the birds chirping noisily welcoming a new day. But it was the smell of stale, molding hay from the loft that brought her completely out of her pleasant dream and back to reality. She stretched, opened her eyes and gazed at the barn roof with the faint glow of the morning sun coming through the cracks. She knew that she needed to be moving on. An old abandoned barn was no place to spend the winter, but she still had no idea where she should go from here.

It was just over a month ago that her divorce had become final. She had spent over two decades married to a man that didn’t really want her but considered her his property and wouldn’t let her go either. She had given up her career, her friends and contact with most of her family to please him. Without even realizing what she had done, she had gone from talking with her mother every day on the phone to hardly ever speaking to her at all.

When their youngest child was a senior in high school, she decided she wanted to work outside the home again. She found a part-time job and eventually got back in touch with her old friends and family only to face her husband’s wrath as it worsened with each passing day. Every night when she came home from work, he was usually drinking and always angry. It got to the point that she dreaded going home, dreaded opening the garage door to find him waiting there. She had to get away from him but didn’t know how. Until one day she decided to let him think he had won. She told him that she would quit her job if they could move to their vacation home to work on their marriage. Once they were settled in, things went just as she suspected, nothing changed, nothing got worked on but bottle after bottle of whiskey. So, one day while he was at work, she packed up her things, moved back to the house in town and changed the locks. It took 3 years to get the divorce though. With him stalling and trying to sabotage her every chance he got. All she wanted was her home and a fresh start but somehow, his lawyer had convinced the judge that because he owned their family home before they married it was not marital property despite the years of hard work and equity they had put into it together to make it a home. The vacation home was his inheritance and definitely not marital. In the end, all she came out of the marriage with was her car, the money in her bank account, and most importantly, her freedom.

Needing to get away, she had loaded her camping gear into her little car and with what little money she had left, she headed off across two states to see the mountains. She had been dreaming of seeing mountains for a while now and had promised herself that she would take this trip as soon as the divorce was final. It was every bit as beautiful here as she imagined and when she found the old barn with no one around as far as she could tell, she decided to hide here until she figured out her next move or got kicked out for squatting.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts, after all, it did no good to think about how she got here, what she needed to figure out is where to go from here. But so far, she still had no idea what to do or where to go. She could go back and live with her parents, or she could go live with one of her children but she did not want to impose on anyone and to be honest, she preferred being alone. In the process of leaving her husband, she had discovered two important things about herself. One was that she is more sensitive to the world than normal people. She could feel and was easily influenced by the emotions of those around. She wanted everyone to be happy, often at the expense of her own happiness. The second thing she learned was that she was strong. No matter what life threw at her, she overcame it and became a better person for it. Even though she had no idea where to go from here, she knew that things would work out if she just had faith.

With a heavy sigh, she got up and after a meager breakfast, she started putting all of her gear back into her little car. A shame really, that she couldn’t stay. She had enjoyed the solitude of the old barn and was not anxious to return to life among the “normal” people.

Once everything was neatly packed up, she turned her gaze to the loft. Some of the best summers of her childhood had been spent lazing in the barn loft on her grandparent’s farm watching the kittens play in the sunlight and she had been fighting the urge to climb into the loft since she had gotten here. She was unsure if the footing would be safe up there even though the rest of the barn seemed run down but stable. If she fell from the loft and was badly injured, all would be lost, no one would find her. She decided to take the chance. She didn’t want to leave without seeing the view from the loft doors. Carefully, testing each rung, she climbed the ladder. To her delight, only one of the rungs were rotten, the rest held her weight without much protest. She emerged onto the upper level and was almost blinded by the sunshine pouring in and the beautiful view it illuminated. Trees stretching into the sky all around her. Cautiously she worked her way closer to the doors, putting one foot out in front of her to check the boards for weakness before taking each step. She was halfway there when her foot found something foreign under the ruined hay. She looked down and saw a battered, black rectangle laying at her feet. At first she thought it was a piece of shingle blown off the barn roof, but after flipping it around with the toe of her shoe, she discovered that it was a little black notebook. Throwing caution to the wind, she plopped down on the floor beside it and picked it up. A little over half of the pages were filled with small, neat, printing, the rest were blank. Curious, she flipped back to the first page and began to read.

Hello. My name is Joseph Crane and if you are reading this I assume that you are in the loft of a barn that my father and grandfather built when I was a very small child. That makes you a trespasser! But, if you would like, it also makes you my sole heir.

I am an old man and I have lived a full life; I have served our country and I’ve seen the world. However, I was the only child of an only child and having had no children of my own, I am the last surviving member of my family.

Once I finish writing this, I will be hiking further into the mountains to die. My doctors tell me it won’t be much longer and I want to leave this world on my own terms. I have sold off most of my worldly goods save the land on which this barn sits and I set up a trust to pay the taxes on it. If that trust has not run out and the land remains in my name, it now belongs to you or it will if you follow my instructions. I have buried an old ammo box not far from here and in it you will find some cash, the deed to this property and my last will and testament. Once you find it, take this notebook and the papers to attorney Thomas Morgan, his information is also in the box. He is a young man and God willing; he will live to see this through. If so, he has been expecting you.

Now, if you are interested, grab a shovel and follow these instructions.

She stared down at the little book in disbelief. Could this really be true? Only one way to find out! She rushed back to her vehicle almost forgetting the rotten rung on the way down but catching herself just in time. She quickly grabbed the collapsible shovel from her camping gear and headed out the rear door of the barn. She knew exactly where to find the starting marker. It was the remains of an old, long forgotten well that she had seen days ago when she was exploring the woods. When she got to it, she consulted the book once more then walked due east from the well surveying the ground as she went. After about 30 paces she found a large, flat rock buried in the earth like a forgotten tombstone. She walked straight across it and started digging. When her shovel finally hit something, her heart started beating so hard she thought it might explode! She gently lifted the box out of the dirt and opened the lid. There it was. A bundle of papers and two banker straps of 100-dollar bills! “Some money” turned out to be twenty thousand dollars! She could hardly believe it! Just then she heard the snap of a twig behind her and whirled around in time to see the tail of a deer disappear into the trees.

Clutching both hands to her pounding heart, she awoke as she had every morning for the last few days, to the sounds of the birds chirping noisily welcoming a new day. She stretched and smiled up at the roof of the old barn. She was still smiling a half hour later as she climbed behind the wheel of her car.

“After all,” she thought to herself glancing down at the dirty green box on the seat beside her, “it was a pleasant dream, and I look forward to finding out what happens next.”