The House on Cherry Tree Lane
Page 3
knew meant she would tell no more. She was a strange person, a secretive person, unwilling to share her childhood with anyone. Maybe she’d had a reason. I thought of something else.
“What about the corpse you found?”
"Dad told us that the corpse had been legless, severed at the knees...the victim, whoever it was, had been tortured to death."
"Then, I suppose no one ever found out who the murderer was?"
"Who can say?" Mom shrugged, lifting her frail shoulders. "Around the kitchen table years ago, I overheard my dad telling mama that he'd heard in town that the rancher's daughter had a suitor who'd gone missing. The couple was sweethearts long before her father found out. The young man was a hired hand who had a gift with trees. He'd tended to the young cherry saplings, coaxing them to grow in that particularly barren patch of California. They used to meet on the borders of the land."
"Where that woman was seen from time to time....,"
Waiting.
"When he disappeared, no one was surprised. It was thought he'd skipped town to avoid the father's wrath. The girl was sent with a distant aunt and was seen no more. The rancher who had owned the grove of cherry trees lost the land to a developer. He left town, a broken, embittered man. Most of the townspeople, that is, the ones that knew of his daughter, figured the poor thing had died of grief. But, that’s all heresy, no one really knows the truth.”
I wasn't sure how I felt, chilled in the breeze blowing off the balcony. "And the picture? What should I...?"
"Burn it." She said as she stared down at the faded photograph. "Sprinkle salt in the ashes."-Finis
AN: This story contains some factual events that occurred in my grandmother’s time, thanks for reading:] Happy Halloween!