“No, I don't think it's running away to put some distance between yourself and painful memories. Maybe I'll be back someday when I've put all this behind me, but right now it's all just too…well, painful.”
“I…I thought we'd be friends again.”
He shrugged. “Maybe we will. But like you told me before, not right now.”
“Asher, I'm sorry…”
“I didn't come here to lay a guilt trip on you or anything like that. I can't lie and say I'm not hurt and angry, I am. But I don't blame you for that. I just wanted you to know that I was leaving and I thought you deserved to hear it from me.”
“I…I don't know what to say.”
“How about goodbye? I have to go. I have a lot of stuff to do; packing and stuff, and I still have to go tell Will and Darin bye.”
I opened and closed my mouth silently a few times. “Goodbye,” I finally managed.
Asher gave me a sad smile and turned to leave.
“Asher wait,” I jumped up and threw my arms around him in a tight hug. At first he just stood there, then his arms slowly came up and completed the embrace. After a few moments he pulled back and quickly slipped out the door, but not before I saw tears forming in his eyes.
* * *
I was left stunned by Asher's news but tried to cover up my confused feelings when Micah came over later that night. We were alone in the living room, settled in front of the TV, when he asked, “Are you ok? You seem really distracted.”
“I'm fine,” I fibbed. “Just distracted, I guess.”
“Distracted by what?”
“Um…” Good question. I didn't really want to go into the whole Asher mess with Micah again, especially my ambivalent feelings about his leaving. A way out occurred to me. “You know, this whole thing with digging up the baby.”
The whole time I was recovering, preparations had been in full swing for the excavation of the basement at Amalie's house as we were all calling it these days. Steve had checked on the local laws concerning human remains found on private property and discovered that we were going to have to have the county coroner examine the remains do determine if they were Native American or not. He had 48 hours to look them over and as long as he ruled that they weren't native, which we were fairly positive they wouldn't be, we could rebury them in the private cemetery on the property with his permission.
Steve had called and talked to him, and while the man clearly thought we were all stark raving mad, he had agreed to be present when we dug up the cellar. In addition to Steve, Adam, Judy, me, Micah and the medical examiner, Bryan Caibre, the pastor of the local MCC church and Will's friend, would be there as well. It was shaping up to be quite an event. I wondered if we'd serve refreshments; maybe a little champagne and some hors d'oeuvres.
They had scheduled the big event for the weekend immediately following the doctor prescribed 7 days of rest. The medical examiner couldn't be there until that evening and seeing as how he was doing us a favor we had arranged our schedule to accommodate him.
“Are you nervous?” Micah asked me now.
“Not really. I'm just ready for it to all be over.”
“Well I'm nervous. I've never seen a real skeleton before. And I've still not seen a ghost. I'm wondering if Amalie will make a personal appearance.”
I shrugged as I flipped through the station guide on the TV. “If she does it'll only make your story that much better, right?”
“You still want me to go ahead with that story?”
“Why not? Steve thinks it will be good publicity. Hey, have you ever seen Beautiful Thing?” I asked suddenly. It was playing on Bravo and since it was one of my favorite movies it was the perfect chance to change the subject yet again. He hadn't and we settled down to watch.
When the big night arrived, we drove over in two cars, Adam and Steve in one, and Micah, Kane and I in Micah's. Judy, Bryan and the ME, or medical examiner, were supposed to meet us there. We were leaving early so we could meet everyone as they arrived. Kane hadn't particularly wanted to come, but his date had canceled on him at the last minute and he had decided that he might as well go along for what was hopefully going to be the last chapter in the Amalie saga.
Predictably, Judy was the first to arrive. The ME and Bryan weren't far behind. We all stood making small talk in the upstairs hall for a few minutes until Steve announced that it was time to get the show on the road.
Everyone crowded into the basement, which was lit as bright as day thanks to several 1000 Watt light stands that had been set up in each corner. I got my first good look at the medical examiner. He was a short, dark fellow with an egg-shaped, shiny bald head that stuck up out of a thin ruff of graying hair. He looked to be in his mid to late-fifties and was definitely on the portly side. He was wearing a very bored expression along with his dung-brown polyester pants and beige button up shirt. He gave the impression that he wasn't exactly the life of the party wherever he went. I wondered what Steve had told him as to why we suspected there was a skeleton under the floor. If he'd told him the truth I doubted he would have been here. He would have probably just called in the men in the white coats to cart us all away.
Personally, I was beginning to wonder if that wouldn't be for the best anyway, at least as far as I was concerned. I hadn't seen anything of Seth since the barn and I was frankly beginning to wonder if it had all been my imagination or some sort of delusion. Maybe Finn had done me a favor by knocking some sense into me with that shovel. Or maybe he'd damaged the part of my brain that housed the Gift, with a capital “G” as I had come to think of it.
Steve had told me that he and Judy had come back on their own while they waited for me to recover and Judy had pinpointed the spot where she thought the baby was. Now, while we all watched in a heavy anticipation, the two of them began digging into the packed earth carefully with small trowels. If they began to hit anything the ME would step in and assist.
It didn't take long to find something; Amalie hadn't buried the baby very deeply. The collective sharp intake of breath at the sight of the first tiny dirty bones was easily audible in the oppressive silence. In the moments that followed the initial gasp not a sound was heard, and then a shuddering gust of wind swept through the room, as if the house itself was giving a sigh of relief.
* * *
Several hours later, a complete, if tiny, skeleton had been laid out on a piece of tarpaulin next to a shallow hole. Of those gathered around, only the medical examiner and Bryan had really been surprised by the grisly find. The coroner only took a few minutes of examination to tell us that while he didn't know how we knew about the baby, it had obviously been in the ground for a long time so it wasn't a matter for the police. He gathered up the remains in the tarp and stood up, tucking the surprisingly small bundle under his arm.
“Well, this is nothing official, but my preliminary feelings are that these are not Native American bones. If you still want to re-inter the remains on your own, I should be able to release them back to you on Monday if nothing comes up.”
“Thank you for coming out, Dr. Niemeyer,” Steve said graciously, brushing the last bits of dirt from his hands so he could shake the ME's outstretched hand.
Once he was gone, we all stood around looking at each other uncertainly, as if to say what now? Judy was still poking in the dirt.
“Well, I didn't know what to expect when you asked me to come,” Bryan said to Steve, “but I have to say this wasn't it. How did you know the…er, skeleton was there?”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” Steve said with a grin.
“Believe him,” Adam chipped in.
“Try me,” the pastor challenged with a friendly smile of his own.
“Well,” Steve began, but was cut off by an exclamation of surprise from Judy. She jumped to her feet cupping something in her hands.
“More bones?” Kane asked in a slightly aghast tone. His color had just started returning; he'd been looking a bit green during the excavation.
> “No,” Judy said. She definitely sounded excited and we all quickly crowded close to see what it was she had found. “It's a brooch.”
It was a brooch; one I'd seen before, in fact, on the portrait I had found in the storage room. It was crusted with dirt but as Judy brushed it away it was easily recognizable. “Amalie's brooch,” I gasped.
“Well, that cinches it,” Steve said with deep satisfaction.
“Cinches what? Who's Amalie?” Bryan asked in confusion.
“I think we'd better go somewhere a little more comfortable and we'll tell you the whole story,” Adam said, taking pity on the poor confused guy.
“How about our house? We can all get something to eat and relax,” Steve suggested. Everyone agreed and we all moved up-stairs, Steve staying behind long enough to turn the lights off.
We drove in a caravan of vehicles to our house and we were herded into the living room with drinks and a plate of cheese and crackers.
“Ok, so I want the whole story,” Bryan said as soon as everyone was settled. “What's going on? How did you know there was a baby under there?”
Adam and Steve exchanged looks, as if deciding how much to say. Judy, however, had no such reservations. She leaned forward eagerly.
“The house is haunted,” she said with the same fervor a chatty neighbor with a choice bit of information might tell a fellow gossip.
To his credit, Bryan didn't even blink. “Really? By the baby?”
“No, no. Well, yes, but not primarily.”
I didn't blame Bryan for his confused expression.
“The house is haunted by the spirit of Amalie Marnien,” Steve stepped in. “She was the wife of the man who had the house built in the mid 1800's. We think the baby in the basement was her child. I don't blame you for finding this all a little far-fetched…”
“Actually, I don't,” Bryan interrupted. “I'm not one of those close-minded clerics who don't believe in anything except what they were told to believe. I've had experiences with supernatural beings before and I'm not just talking about the Holy Ghost. I was even involved in an attempted exorcism when I was in seminary, although I never heard how successful we were. Not very, would be my guess. I wouldn't think the spirit world would respond to vague threats and mumbo-jumbo anymore than the physical world.”
Adam laughed. “I think we underestimated you, Bryan. I know it's a mistake I won't make again. You're taking this better than I did.”
Bryan grinned. “Don't worry, everyone seems to underestimate me; some because of the title and others because of my age. I'm used to it. It's actually fun to prove people wrong now and then. So this ghost, Amalie, showed you where the baby was? How did the baby die?”
“She didn't exactly show us,” Steve said slowly.
“We saw it in bits and pieces of vision seen by Killian and myself,” Judy explained.
That caused the young pastor's eyebrows to take a leap. “Killian, you're psychic, too?”
I snorted. “Hardly! Judy says I'm a sensitive, that's all.”
“That's all, he says,” Steve grumbled. Bryan looked impressed.
“Together we got a picture of Amalie falling down the stairs to the cupola and accidentally killing the baby,” Judy went on. “Then we saw her digging a hole in the earth floor of the basement. We concluded that she had buried the baby there so I went back and did some sensing down there and pinpointed the spot where I thought the baby was.”
“Hey!” I said, suddenly remembering my other vision. “How does the guy in the boat fit into this?”
Everyone turned to look at me blankly.
“The guy in my first vision? Or was that just a weird dream that had nothing to do with anything?”
“Good question,” Judy said thoughtfully. “I really have no idea.”
“Maybe it was Amalie's husband,” Bryan said.
“He was a sea captain,” Steve said, “He was lost at sea around the time we think this was happening.”
“Maybe it was the baby's father,” Judy suggested slowly.
“Huh?” I asked intelligently. I thought we had just established that he was lost at sea.
“The baby's father wasn't necessarily the Captain,” Judy clarified. “She was home alone much of the time. She was young and beautiful; it wasn't that uncommon, even in that day, for a woman in her position to have a lover.”
“Do you have any proof?” Adam asked.
“None at all.”
“This is like trying to put a puzzle together without knowing what the picture is,” Adam complained.
“And without even having all the pieces,” I added.
“We're not going to figure it out tonight,” Judy said pragmatically, “It may remain a mystery forever.”
“Cheery thought. I like to have nice neat endings,” Steve said in a slightly whiny voice.
“Real life doesn't always have nice neat endings,” Bryan observed. “So what was my involvement tonight, anyway? Why did you want me there?”
“I don't know really,” Steve said honestly. “I think it was just a feeling that someone from the church should be present at the disinterment of a body.”
“Are you going to rebury it somewhere?”
“We'd like to, assuming Dr. Niemeyer releases the remains to us.”
“So clinical, calling the baby `the remains',” Judy said with distaste.
“It would help if we knew what gender the baby was.” Steve tried again, “We'd like to bury the baby by its mother in the small private graveyard out behind the house. Amalie is buried there and there's a beautiful angel statue that I think Amalie had put up in memory of her husband. Would you be willing to officiate a small, informal service?”
“I'd be honored,” Bryan answered solemnly.
“We'll let you know as soon as the baby is released back to us.”
The conversation turned to other, more general topics, but I couldn't get my mind off the idea that Amalie's haunting days may not be over with the discovery and reburial of her child.
* * *
A week later a small group stood in a semi circle around the small grave that had been dug next to Amalie's plot. The sky was appropriately overcast, but for once the forecast wasn't calling for any rain. The somber group included Adam, Steve, Kane, Micah, Judy, Bryan, Will, and I. Will had had come along after hearing the whole story from Bryan, who he was apparently getting closer to all the time. I wondered if he had taken my advice and was making an attempt to move on with Bryan.
The baby's remains had been turned over to Steve first thing Monday morning. As Dr. Niemeyer had suspected, the bones were clearly not Native American and were from the mid-nineteenth century. He said the baby, which was a male, had only been about a couple months old.
A tiny casket was already in the grave. A small headstone was going to be installed in a few weeks. There would be no name on it since we didn't even know his name. All it would say was “Here lies the son of Amalie Marnien - Aged 1 month”.
The exquisitely carved angel statue stood over us, adding a touch of dignity and mourning to the situation. Now that the vines had been cleared away I could see that she was indeed quite beautiful, as Steve had said. Her eyes were downcast in a reverential manner, her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer.
Bryan cleared his throat and began to speak. “Life is a precious gift that is given to each of us. What we do with that gift is left to each individual, but until we are old enough to make those decisions for ourselves, it is left in the stewardship of our parents.
“This life that we are here today to honor was cut off far too early. I'm sure the pain that this caused his mother was something only another parent who has lost their child can understand.” Adam sniffed a little at that and I realized that he was crying. “While all of us can not fully appreciate the loss, maybe we can understand the preciousness of a gift that is taken away before we are ready. We can take comfort in the thought that this innocent child went to be with his heavenly paren
t even as he lost his earthly ones.
“As I was trying to find something that I thought was appropriate for a moment like this I ran across a poem that was written about the time this child lived and died. It was written by a woman named Helen Hunt Jackson, and standing here now looking at this beautiful angel statue, it occurs to me that this poem is even more fitting than I even first thought. Mrs. Jackson wrote,
“All lost things are in the angels' keeping, Love;
No past is dead for us, but only sleeping, Love.
At last.
“This baby may have died too soon, but he is not dead, but in the arms of the angels. May he rest in peace.”
In the silence I heard Judy whisper, “And his mother, too.”
* * *
We were leaving the grave site, Steve and Adam were filling in the grave, when Will caught my arm and pulled me aside.
“Can we talk for a second?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“I have a favor to ask, but first I want to know if you're ok?”
“I'm fine,” I told him. “Do you mean from the attack?”
“Not exactly, I know you're ok from that. I meant, are you ok with Asher leaving?”
I blinked in surprise. I hadn't expected that. I hadn't talked to anyone about his leaving and wasn't really ready to now. “Yeah, I'm fine. He's going whether I'm ok or not so what difference does it make?” That came out with more bitterness than I had intended.
“Yeah, ok. None of my business, I guess.”
“It's not that, Will. You know that. It's just, with everything going on; I haven't even had time to process it yet. I'm seeing Micah now, so I guess it shouldn't bother me at all, but it does.”
“Just because you are dating someone else doesn't mean you stop caring about people from your past. You helped me see that.”
“Are you dating Bryan now?” I asked, eager to change the subject.
“We're not exactly dating, at least not yet. We're just good friends for now. There's something I need to do before I'm ready to date. That's what I wanted to ask you about.”
All Things Lost Page 38
