by Mere Joyce
Hailey nods as if in agreement.
“Read the whole thing, Nolan,” Thomas says.
He finishes his drink and sets the empty can on the floor behind him so he can pay attention to my words.
“After the death of their half-sister, five brothers are in court today fighting over where their sister’s final resting place will be,” I read. “The argument, which has divided the brothers, is over whether the deceased should be buried in the family plot in a local cemetery or in the cemetery of the deceased’s hometown. The deceased, a young woman who died as a result of a lifelong disability, was born of an extramarital affair, leading the plaintiffs of the case to argue that her body has no rightful claim to the family plot.”
“We have a family plot?” Hailey asks.
I think, if the situation were different, she’d be laughing right now. As it is, she looks disturbed by this new nugget of information.
“Is there anything else, Nolan?” Allison asks, ignoring Hailey’s remark.
I shrug. “Just a little. It says: ‘Court proceedings will begin today at the Simcoe County Courthouse.’ That’s it. I think the only reason it showed in the search at all is because whoever uploaded the picture they use of the courthouse labeled it Hacher v. Hacher.”
“I hate that title, it’s morbid,” Kayla says.
“That’s what the court case would have been called,” Eli scoffs.
“So, now we know what they were fighting over,” Hailey says. “Whether or not Julie got to be buried with the rest of the family.”
“Well … did she?” Allison asks.
She looks around, but no one has a satisfactory answer.
“I didn’t even know we had a family plot,” Hailey sighs.
“Neither did I,” Kayla agrees. “Did anyone, um …” She trails off and looks at Forrester.
He understands her unasked question and finishes it for her, though his eyes remain fixed on the gold key.
“Did anyone see my dad get buried?” he asks in a flat voice. “I didn’t,” he adds, though I can’t tell if the addition is made out of guilt or just out of fact.
“No, we didn’t,” Allison says.
Thomas shakes his head, and his response is good enough to account for both of us.
“So, we still don’t know,” Hailey says as she stretches her legs out before her. “We’re fucking useless, aren’t we?”
“I’d say we’ve done pretty well, so far,” I offer, my tone a congratulation I don’t quite mean to suggest. We have done pretty damn well, but the subject doesn’t lend itself to celebration.
“Well, aside from actually going to the cemetery …” Eli starts.
Before he can continue, Allison puts a hand on his arm.
“There’s one more thing we can try,” she says, eyeing her twin. “Dad used to be all into genealogy when we were kids, remember? We thought it was creepy, all the old photos and grave records he had.”
Eli squirms with annoyance to hear his dad mentioned, but as Allison keeps talking, his expression shifts.
“You’re right,” he says, sounding almost relieved to have something to offer to our investigation. “There are sites to collect grave records. I’m sure he’s put the family stuff up there. If we find the cemetery, we should find information on the graves.”
“I know the cemetery,” Forrester says. “I haven’t been there yet, but I know where Dad’s buried.”
“Then, Nolan, get to it,” Eli exclaims.
Forrester gives me the name of the Barrie Union Cemetery, and right away I locate a website with grave records.
“If we find Julie’s grave, we know she’s buried with the others,” Allison says.
“But if we don’t?” Kayla asks. “It could mean he hasn’t updated the information since then. You said this was a hobby when you were kids. I remember he used to talk about family history and stuff. Does he still do it?”
“I don’t think so,” Allison says. “So, maybe you’ll be right. But at least there’s a chance.”
“Here they are.”
I smile when I pull the page up. Thomas moves in close again, and I shift the screen so he can see it. There is Grandpa and Grandma’s information, as well as one more grave’s details.
“Is she there?” Allison asks.
Thomas and I exchange glances before we shake our heads.
Allison deflates, and Eli’s eyes grow dark.
“That could still mean the records haven’t been updated,” Hailey offers, but when she catches my eyes her voice trails away.
“The records have been updated,” Thomas breathes.
“How do you know? No one’s died since Julie,” Allison says.
“Allison,” Kayla whispers in a sharp voice.
Allison glances at Kayla and then turns back to Thomas and me.
“You mean …”
“My dad’s there, isn’t he?” Forrester says. He squeezes the key tightly in his fist.
“Yeah, he’s here.” I nod.
“But Julie’s not,” Allison continues. “Which means she’s not buried with everyone else.”
At this point, it’s easy to confirm our suspicion. I go to the grave selection site and search Julie’s name without a specific cemetery attached to it. Her information comes up as soon as the page loads, in a cemetery in Bracebridge — an eternal hour away from her father and her half-brother.
“They treated her like family because our grandfather wanted them to,” Allison says, her words bitter as I put down my phone and draw my knees into my chest. “But when she died, they decided she wasn’t true family, after all. What a beautiful memory.”
“They didn’t all think that,” Kayla says. She reaches over to the pile of photos in front of the twins and picks out the one of her pregnant mother feeding Julie. “That’s why they were in court in the first place. Some of them — at least one of them — wanted her to be buried with the family.”
“The question is, who was on which side?” I ask.
This is the part of the mystery I doubt we’ll be able to solve, not without talking to our parents. I try to guess at what role Mom and Dad played in the fight. I can’t imagine them denying Julie the right to be buried with her father. But despite the laid-back nature of my parents, they hold some serious views of the world I could never come to grips with. Things not said outright, yet noticed in the odd turn of phrase or little shake of the head over some story in the news. I can’t put a name to it, but Thomas has commented on it in the past, and I feel it, too — there’s a reason I keep Brandon’s name a mere letter of the alphabet on my phone.
Maybe our parents would be against a child born out of wedlock. I don’t know them as well as I sometimes think I do. Speculations are pointless. The truth of the matter is I have no idea how they would — how they did — react to a situation like this.
“My dad didn’t want her in the family plot,” Hailey says, her words emotionless. She shares a knowing glance with Kayla and starts working her long hair into an uneven braid. “I remember a fight my parents had once. It makes a lot more sense now. He didn’t think of her as family. He wouldn’t have wanted her buried with his parents.”
“That’s horrible,” Allison says.
“The whole thing is horrible,” Kayla interjects. The picture she took is still clutched in her fingers. “But you can’t start hating everyone you disagree with. How do you think it would have been for them to be raised alongside a girl who was born because their dad cheated on their mom? The decision must have been impossible for each of them, and whatever they decided, they had their reasons for it. More reasons than we have any idea of.”
Allison picks at one of the pimples on her face, her lips drawn tight. She’s not pretty, but she could be. The swollen bumps all over her face and neck don’t bother me. Her attitude is what’s mak
ing her plain, the hard expressions and sour sentiments even veering her toward ugly. I hope it’s this weekend and the strain of her and Eli’s burden making her so miserable. I hope she gets the chance to be pretty more often at home.
“I would never abandon her like that,” she says. Her words are full of spite.
“I would,” Eli counters back, his voice almost the same in every regard.
He left the phrase unaltered on purpose, left the word abandon untouched as a challenge to his sister. She wants to argue back, but she stops herself because she knows he’s telling the truth. They’re so different, these two. So alike, but damn, so different.
“I think my dad was on Julie’s side,” Forrester says, drawing attention away from the volcano bubbling beside him. “I think that’s why he had the documents. And the clothes. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say my mother didn’t like the idea of Julie being buried with Grandpa, but Dad did. I bet that’s why the clothes were hidden, and …”
Forrester trails off, his brows furrowing as he opens his hand and stares at the key lying on his palm. His head tilts to one side in thought, and then, without speaking, he stands. We watch him cross the living room to where a pile of stuff waiting to be loaded into his car is stacked by the back wall of windows. Forrester rummages through a few items, and then returns to the circle, the small wooden chest from Julie’s boxes in the attic clutched in both hands.
Forrester balances the box on his lap and slides the tasseled key into the lock. The key twists with ease, a soft click allowing Forrester to lift open the lid. His eyes scan over the contents of the box, and his face takes on a peculiar, blanched pallor as his lips purse tight.
“What is it?” Kayla asks, her voice hitched and breathless.
“She …” Forrester swallows hard as his eyes lift to stare between us. “She’s not buried there.”
“What?” Allison asks, crowding in beside him to see. “What do you mean she’s not — oh shit.”
Thomas and I share a glance before we — along with everyone else in the room — scramble over to Forrester. We cram together, and I press into my brother’s shoulder to get a view of the box’s interior.
On the inside of the box lid, a small plaque has been engraved with a few lines of text.
May the body that kept you grounded,
Hold a soul that lets you fly.
And as the light of your life brightened the darkest of places,
So too will the strength of your memory uphold the things that fall.
Julie Annabelle Hacher 1976–2006
Nestled in the bottom of the box is a single item — a small plastic baggie that protects the coarse, gray grains of Julie’s cremated ashes.
“He didn’t bury her,” Hailey says, something almost like a smile twitching at her lips. “Sneaky bastard.”
“Hailey, this is serious,” Eli scolds, but Forrester shakes his head, his own expression brightening.
“No, she’s right,” he says. “Dad must have taken charge of having her buried. He must have ordered a headstone, but then … he couldn’t go through with it.”
“So he hid her ashes at the back of the attic?” Allison barks. “Hardly seems like a better solution.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know what he did,” Forrester says, ignoring her snarky tone. “Probably least of all my mom. So, he kept her safe until he could give her a proper resting place, or — I don’t know — until he could find somewhere to scatter the remains.”
Thomas puts a hand on Forrester’s shoulder, his fingers squeezing hard into the fabric of our cousin’s shirt.
“The map,” he mutters.
I scoot back to give my brother space as he pushes himself up. Long legs tripping over themselves, Thomas hurries to retrieve the old map from the folder. When he returns to his spot, he unfolds the paper and puts a finger to the marked route.
“Yesterday in the bay,” he says, his eyes on Forrester, “when you talked about traveling with your dad. Simon said the time had come to let go. That’s why he wanted to take the trip. Years ago — the last summer we were here, a couple of months before Julie died — I overheard our dads talking about taking a trip, too. I never understood that conversation. Not until today. But I think they were planning to take Julie with them, while she was still alive. Maybe …” He looks at the box still poised on Forrester’s lap. “Maybe your dad was still planning to take her, even after she died.”
Forrester studies the ashes, one hand gripping the box as the other sweeps across the epitaph his father must have written. When he glances up at Thomas, the color is back in his cheeks and there’s a liveliness in his stare that I haven’t seen in … well, a decade. I’m glad. I have no reason to think Thomas’s assumption is wrong. But even if I did there’s no way I’d dare say anything against it. Forrester may never get another chance to learn something new about his dad. As weird as the situation has become, I’m happy this last discovery is, for him, a good one.
Kayla
THE STORY IS NOW complete. At least, as complete as we can expect. Our fathers fought over the death of a half-sister, over whether or not to lay her to rest as a member of the family. I can’t fathom how hard the decision must have been. Even in my most vivid imaginings, I doubt I could come close to feeling our parents’ pain.
I wonder if Dad knew Julie’s parentage when he was my age. Did he call her his sister? Did Grandpa call her his daughter? Or did they only refer to her as Julie, someone separate from the family altogether?
Would Dad be happy to know Simon kept Julie’s ashes? Or would he be sickened that the court’s decision was not carried out?
I love history. I want to study it in school and teach it as my career. But once again, this weekend has reminded me how little I know of my own family. Would Grandpa have been the kind of person to take a girl like Julie under his care? I never met him, so I can’t say. He could have been a sweet man with a good heart who made a terrible mistake — or maybe one who fell in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time. But then again, he could have been a jerk, a serial adulterer who only happened to get caught once. For all we know, it could have been Grandma who insisted Julie stay around. The affair could have destroyed their marriage, or the lesson could have brought them back together.
I know nothing. Absolutely nothing. I made the decision to come here this weekend in part to remedy that. I’m not sure the venture has been a success, at least not yet. When I get home, whether my dad likes it or not, I’m going to ask him about the history of the Hacher family.
Of course, if I want him to talk, I suppose I should share what I’ve discovered, too. But I’m not sure how much I’m ready to divulge about my own family secrets.
“Should we tell them?” I ask, this thought curling around me like a scarf of shivering cold.
“Tell who?” Eli asks, before he understands. “Our fathers? What good could it do?”
“Might do some good for the ones who wanted Julie buried with the family.” Hailey shrugs.
“Yeah, except we don’t know what side anyone was on,” Thomas reminds her.
“Forrester should decide,” Nolan suggests. “It was Simon’s secret. And no one else cared enough to help him make Julie’s final arrangements. So, they shouldn’t get a say in what happens to her now.”
I’m not sure everyone agrees with the reasoning, but no one argues against it.
“Well,” Forrester muses, “I think what Thomas said earlier makes sense. My dad planned to take Julie on a trip. He can’t now, but I can. I will. I don’t want there to be another fight between your parents. So … I’ll scatter the ashes along the way. Dad picked a route he thought she would like. I’ll take her to the same places, and once that’s done, she’ll be gone. It won’t matter if we tell them, then. At that point, they won’t be able to do anything about it.”
He looks to Thomas, who no
ds. Then he closes the box and locks it before placing it on the floor before us. For a long moment, we stare at the small rectangle of shining wood, no one making a sound.
“We should finish up and have some lunch before we go,” Hailey says after the silence has fully rippled between us.
Her words are out of place, jarring after the truths we’ve uncovered. But the suggestion is mundane enough it stirs us into action. Without talking, we place the pictures back into the bin and then move to the kitchen to pack up the remaining food before we start collecting our personal belongings.
After I’ve handed back everyone’s phones, I fish out my own cell and check my notifications. My stomach drops when I see no calls or texts have come from Hudson. But instead of the crushing weight I expect to set in, the lack of communication sparks a determination in me. I’ve already decided Dad and I are going to talk about the things he’s left unsaid for so many years. So, what’s stopping me from making Hudson participate in the same kind of conversation?
This weekend has brought with it a lot of uncertainties. But one thing I am sure of is the fact that unwanted silence does nothing but destroy. I love Hudson, and I’m scared about this new life the two of us are leading, about the changes he’s made without me by his side. But pretending nothing is wrong won’t fix the issues. Acting like I’m not afraid doesn’t make the worries go away.
I put my phone back in my purse, content to let it stay quiet until I make the call when I get home. When I glance back up, I watch my other cousins as they scroll through missed notifications and stuff the phones in their pockets when they are finished catching up. All except for Forrester, who presses his phone to his ear and listens to a voicemail that’s come through at some point in the last day.
“It’s the agent,” he relates, even while the message is still being played. “There’s already been an offer on the cottage.”
“Glad we did all that work sprucing the place up, then,” Eli groans.
“How is there an offer already?” Allison asks with a sidelong glare at her brother. “It’s not even listed yet, is it?”
