The Silver Suitcase

by Terrie Todd

  “Should I call you Grandma or Aunty?” Katie-Lynn asked Ramona abruptly.

  Ramona smiled at the little girl. “I think you can call me ‘Mona’ if you like. All my favorite people do.” She looked to Benita for affirmation.

  In all the excitement of the previous evening, further explanation to the children had been overlooked. Now, on the two-hour drive to Roseburg, Benita tactfully explained to them that Ramona was her aunt and David was her cousin.

  “Ramona was born when Gram was very young and couldn’t take care of her. So because she loved her so much, she gave her to another family so they could adopt her. They moved far away, but now she’s found us all. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “And just think,” Ramona said. “If the diaries hadn’t gone missing, I might never have found you.” That brought a silence over the van as each passenger thought about the truth of Ramona’s words.

  “I’m the one who found the silver suitcase,” James piped up.

  “Yes, you are. You deserve a prize. How about a new hairdo?” Benita reached across the seat and ruffled James’s hair as he flailed his arms trying to fight her off.

  Uncle Jim hadn’t said a word since they left the city, but he joined in now. He looked at Ramona and, with an old familiar glint in his eye, said, “You gonna make your strawberry ice cream, Corny? I’ll help turn the crank.”

  When Ramona raised an eyebrow in Grace’s direction, Benita told her the story of the antique ice-cream maker with as much detail as she could remember. Just as she finished explaining, they passed a sign that read Welcome to Roseburg. Population: 453.

  Uncle Jim’s long-term memory was sharper than they’d predicted. He knew exactly where things ought to be in Roseburg, and the changes in the community annoyed and confused him.

  “That’s where the Morgan twins live.” He pointed as they drove by an old, well-kept house. But the general store he remembered had been replaced by a modern video rental outlet. Their old church was still standing, but it was now a seniors’ drop-in center. A new, modern building had replaced the school Grace once attended. Students played outside.

  “There’s Jean Little and Becky Tarr,” Jim said, watching the children. “They sure do like the swings. No one else can ever get a turn on those swings.”

  James and Katie-Lynn looked at each other, then at their mother. Benita shrugged and smiled.

  “Take a left up here.” Grace pointed. “This is the way to the farm. I haven’t been back since my mother moved to the city. I’m so sorry I never brought you here, Benita. Life has a way of getting so busy. Important things get left undone.”

  Ken turned left onto the gravel road as Benita quietly observed her surroundings. She imagined Gram as a young girl, riding beside Henry in his red Pontiac coupe down this same road the night they met. She wondered where Gram’s special place by the creek might be, or whether a creek ran anywhere nearby. Would Uncle Jim remember? She decided to ask, but when she turned to look at him, she saw that Jim had dozed off with his chin turned awkwardly into his chest.

  “Where did you live, Grandma?” Katie-Lynn asked.

  “It’s up ahead a little ways.” Grace nodded toward the road. “My goodness, I feel kind of nervous.”

  “You think you do?” Ramona giggled. “I’m feeling nervous and a whole lot of other things I can’t even identify.”

  “See that white house up ahead on the left?” Grace sat taller in her seat. “That’s ours. Someone tore down the old house Gram and Uncle Jim grew up in. Looks like there might be a garage or something in that spot now.”

  Ken pulled into the yard and stopped in front of a blue Dodge truck parked there. A black and white dog gave a couple of halfhearted woofs and greeted the guests, his tail wagging as if he was greeting old friends. Slowly the group climbed out of the van, leaving Uncle Jim asleep in the back. The dog allowed Ken to pet him while the others stretched and looked around, staying close to the van. Finally a man in rubber boots appeared from around the back of the house and approached them.

  “Come, Rascal.” He patted his thigh with one hand but stayed focused on the strangers as the dog ran back toward him. “Hello there. Can I help you?”

  “Hi! So sorry to intrude.” Benita watched her mother step forward and shake the man’s hand, wondering what might be going on in her mother’s heart. “My name is Grace Gladstone and I grew up on this farm. My parents, Stuart and Cornelia Baker, built this house and my grandfather had a house right over—” But suddenly Grace was overcome with emotion and couldn’t speak anymore.

  Benita stepped over and placed an arm around her mother’s shoulder. “I’m her daughter,” she said. “This is my, uh, aunt, Ramona, and her son, David. Uncle Jim is asleep in the car. He would have grown up in the old house. This is my husband, Ken, and our children, Katie-Lynn and James.”

  “Would you mind if we took a little look around?” Ken said. “We understand if you’d rather we didn’t, of course.”

  “It would mean the world to us if we could.” Grace had found her voice again.

  The man shook Ken’s hand. “Andrew Beckman. I bought the place from a guy named Sanderson in 1995. The old house was gone by then.”

  “Sanderson, yes. That’s who bought it from Mother.” Grace had regained her composure. “Oh, I hope this isn’t an intrusion. I would so dearly love to just walk around the property.”

  “Not at all. Take all the time you like, and when you’re ready, come on in and see the house too. We’ve made quite a few changes inside, but you’re welcome to see it.”

  “Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.” Grace took Ramona by the arm and Benita watched as the pair of them stopped to admire a colorful flower garden in the middle of the yard.

  Just then Uncle Jim stepped out of the van. He stood quietly for a moment, looking around. His eyes, which usually held a vacant look, brightened as he began to recognize his surroundings. “My tree.” He walked over to an interesting oak tree—four trees, really, that were growing so closely together, their trunks nearly touched and their branches all intertwined as though they came from the same source. The others watched as Jim put his hand on the rough bark and looked up into the branches. “It’s big.”

  “When I was a little girl, I could curl up right in the center of those four trunks,” Grace said. “Now, I think they’re too close together even for you to try that, James. Want to try?”

  James managed to squeeze his body in between the trunks but he certainly wouldn’t have been able to curl up there. He hopped out again and chased the dog, Rascal.

  “What do you suppose is going on in Uncle Jim’s mind?” Benita asked no one in particular. The others followed as he wandered over to an old, dilapidated outbuilding.

  “This was Grandpa’s milk house,” Grace said. Benita could picture Gram there as a young girl, separating the milk and carrying it to the house, just as she’d read. “The old barn is gone, though.” Jim seemed to be looking in that direction, too, and he wore a bewildered expression on his face as though he was wondering how the barn had disappeared.

  “Gram’s diary mentioned a garden many times—and a clothesline,” Benita said.

  Grace tried to find what had always been their garden spot. “It’s hard to even orient myself. The landscape is different, the trees bigger. Yet it all seems smaller somehow. I used to swing on a tire swing right around here somewhere.”

  For the next thirty minutes they roamed the grounds, Grace keeping up a stream of stories and explanations, Benita offering what details she could remember from Gram’s diaries. Ramona ate it all up. Rascal kept the children entertained and seemed delighted to have visitors.

  When they were ready to go inside, Andrew Beckman showed them around the house and Grace oohed and aahed over the attractive renovations. The things that remained the same, however, interested her even more, and these triggered memories that
she happily shared with Ramona.

  “This was my bedroom. I suppose you and I would have shared it if—well, you know.”

  Ramona squeezed Grace’s hand but made no reply.

  “Thanks again, Mr. Beckman,” Benita said after the tour, as he walked them back to the van. “And when your wife gets home from work, please tell her how much we appreciate you letting us tramp through your house.” She paused for a second. “I hate to ask anything more of you, but would you happen to know if anyone by the name of Simpson or Roberts lives in the area?”

  Mr. Beckman removed his cap and scratched the back of his head before putting the cap back in place. “Sorry, can’t say I do. But that doesn’t mean they don’t.”

  “Roberts?” Grace asked when they all sat in the van again. “Who do we know by that name?”

  Benita took a deep breath. “Ramona, you haven’t asked anything about your father.”

  Ramona looked at her. “No. I hoped we’d get to that, but was too chicken to bring it up. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for, as they say.”

  Grace looked from Ramona to Benita with raised eyebrows.

  “Mom,” Benita said, turning to Grace. “Remember when I told you the story of Gram’s boyfriend, Henry? He was a Roberts. He lived with his parents in Winnipeg, but he had Roberts relatives here and he came to work for them the summer before he died. That’s how he met Gram. He worked on his uncle’s farm.”

  Grace nodded. “Oh . . . yes. You did mention that, I think. Such a shame that he died.” Then a realization hit her. “But I suppose if he’d lived, my mother would have married him and there would have been no me . . . and no you, Benita!” She turned to the children and tickled them. “And what about these peanuts?”

  James looked at his mother. “Grandma’s being weird, Mom.”

  Ramona watched with amusement. “My father’s name was Henry Roberts?”

  “Yes. And he loved Gram very much.” Benita told the story of how Henry had joined the army but died in a train wreck before being shipped overseas. “He never knew of your existence, Ramona. But he had already asked for permission to propose to Gram when he returned.”

  Ramona took this in with a sigh. “I wonder what they would have named me?”

  “That’s easy,” Benita said. “To Gram, you were always Mary Sarah, named after her mother.”

  “Mary Sarah Roberts.” Ramona pronounced the name cautiously as though trying on a glass slipper. Then she laughed and shrugged. “That’s much too plain and ordinary for me. Believe it or not, I grew up Ramona Olivia Victoria Bartmanovitch. I had to marry Bob Stanford just to tone things down a bit.”

  The others laughed.

  “Mona?” Katie-Lynn piped up.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I like your fancy name. Are you a princess?”

  “Am I a princess? Well, now.” She looked at Grace with a mischievous grin and wiggled one eyebrow. “I might just be the ugly stepsister.”

  They were coming to love Ramona in the most natural way, and not only for her astonishing resemblance to Gram.

  CHAPTER 57

  “Uncle Jim, we’ve packed a lunch,” Benita said. “Do you know a nice place by the creek where we can have a picnic?” She knew she was probably grasping at straws, but it was worth a shot. She had already asked her mother, who knew the location of a nearby creek, but knew nothing about any special spot.

  Surprisingly, Jim pointed a gnarled finger. “Right up there. Turn right on that road right there. That’s where we go fishing, right, Corny? Did you bring my fishing pole?”

  Ramona smiled and patted his knee. “Sorry, Jim, I guess I forgot it this time. But if you can help us find our spot, we’ll have a nice picnic there, okay?”

  Ken followed Uncle Jim’s directions down the gravel road a couple of miles, taking a left and then another right down a dirt trail. Though nobody said it out loud, Benita wondered if they were all thinking the same thing: Would they end up stuck in the mud somewhere, or lost? But the farther they drove, the more Jim seemed like his old self.

  “Here it is. You can stop the car right here and we’ll walk. The creek is over that bank. I’ll race ya, Corny.”

  The “race” consisted of Ramona taking Jim’s arm and allowing him to lead her over the bank and down a well-beaten path to the water’s edge. Clearly, this special spot was still in use, but no one was around today.

  Benita watched from the top of the bank while the rest of the family went ahead, following Jim. If this was his and Gram’s fishing spot, it was likely Gram and Henry’s special spot, too. This would be where Gram came to cry and where she received the angelic visit. It would be the spot where Gram’s faith took a giant leap, the turning point from which she never looked back. Benita felt as though she were about to step onto holy ground. She reverently took in the scene before her: the sparkle of sunlight on the water, the brilliant orange and yellow leaves dancing in the gentle breeze, the scent of fall in the air.

  “Gram,” she whispered. “Can you see us here? Do you see us together? We’ve found Mary Sarah.”

  When Benita caught up to the group, Grace and Ramona were laying out the picnic lunch and the kids were trying in vain to skip stones in the skinny trickle of water. As they filled up on turkey sandwiches, carrot sticks, potato chips, oatmeal cookies, and McIntosh apples, Uncle Jim told stories about the perch they’d caught here, frogs and tadpoles collected, and the rope swing he and Cornelia had rigged. For a moment, he seemed completely healthy. Then the clarity was gone. “You tell one, Corny.”

  Ramona merely smiled.

  “Why don’t we take a little walk, gentlemen?” Ken helped Uncle Jim to his feet and David and James joined them. “You want to come, too, Katie-Lynn?”

  Benita felt grateful for the chance to sit on the blanket with her mother and Ramona as the men and children explored farther up the creek. The women packed up the leftovers, then sat soaking up the warm sun. Part of her wanted desperately to tell the story of Gram’s encounter with the angel here. The other part knew she could never do it justice without having Gram’s actual words to read to the others.

  “It’s so beautiful here.” Ramona lay back on the blanket and rested a forearm across her eyes. “What stories can you tell me about this place? Did Cornelia come here often?”

  “I never knew this place existed,” Grace admitted. “If it was Mother’s special spot, it was one she left behind in her youth. What can you tell us, Benita?”

  Benita needed no further encouragement. To the best of her ability, she told the story of Gram’s experience: how she had come here after learning of Henry’s death, and how she had encountered someone—or something—and how that spiritual experience had changed her life.

  Glad she had read that diary entry more than once, Benita filled in the details now, right down to the Jersey Milk wrapper that stayed in the diary all those years. Throughout the telling of the story, Grace and Ramona did not interrupt even once, and the others didn’t return. It seemed like a sacred moment to Benita, and she wanted to honor Gram in the telling of her story. Once she had told all she could remember, the other women sat in silent contemplation for a moment.

  “That solves a mystery for me,” Grace said finally.

  Benita and Ramona both looked at her expectantly.

  “Benita, I never told you this,” Grace said. “Moments before your grandmother died, she said something that was puzzling to me, but that obviously meant something to her. She opened her eyes, but she wasn’t seeing me, or the room, or anything I could see. She seemed to be looking beyond the ceiling, and she suddenly smiled the biggest smile. Then she said, ‘Hi! I knew you’d come back for me.’ And just like that, she was gone.

  “At first, I thought maybe she’d seen my dad. Then, after you told me about Henry, I wondered if it was him she saw. But now I know. It was neither of them.
”

  “It was the angel,” Ramona said.

  Grace nodded slowly.

  Benita wiped a tear from her cheek. “His name was Aziel. It means ‘God is my power.’ And he was probably mighty powerful. Gram said he was the tallest person she’d ever seen.”

  “Her father was six foot four,” Grace said. “So she knew what tall looked like.”

  “Wow,” Ramona murmured. “Imagine seeing a real angel.”

  Suddenly, Grace chuckled.

  “What’s funny, Mom?”

  “It solves another mystery, too. About ten years ago, Mom went over her will with me and when we got to the subject of funeral arrangements, she was adamant that we not put any angels on her headstone. ‘Why not?’ I asked her. ‘Because they never get them right’ was all she would say. I thought she was losing her mind.”

  All three women laughed until the tears came again. A sparrow flew down from a small evergreen, landed a few feet away, and hopped over to the edge of their blanket. Three pairs of eyes concentrated on the little bird, who seemed oblivious to them. He found some picnic crumbs and eventually flew back into the safety of the greenery.

  “I have a thing about sparrows,” Ramona said. “This will sound weird, I suppose, but . . . well, I might as well show you.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a folded scrap of paper that was yellowed and obviously old. As Ramona smoothed it out, Benita could see it was a page torn from a hymnbook, page 272.

  “This is the one thing I have from my birth mother.” Ramona began to softly sing the words printed on the page before her:

  More secure is no one ever, than the loved ones of the Savior

  Not yon star on high abiding, nor the bird in home-nest hiding.

  “As a little kid, my parents taught me that God sees each sparrow fall, and he cares infinitely more about me than he does about sparrows. Somehow, that stuck with me, and to this day . . . every time I see one, I remember: God is watching over me and he cares.”