The Return

by Margaret Guthrie



  Truth softens with time and embitters those burdened with the knowledge of the terrible night described in Silent Truth. This sequel is an interesting look at children growing up without parents, and parents whose children look at them differently because of great loss and guilt in their Quaker community. The protagonists find little peace when they are haunted by a different kind of spirituality that leads to a dramatic conclusion.

  –Marty Yochum Casey, M.F.A., Publisher

  Margaret Guthrie’s poignant sequel describes the pain of families hiding the actual truth about their youthful experiences from their own children. The story illustrates how traumatic events can ruin relationships. Forgiveness and a ‘spiritual’ truth touches every member of the community.

  –Minette Riordan, Ph.D., President of Scissortail Publishing

  THE RETURN

  by

  Margaret Guthrie

  ******

  PUBLISHED BY:

  The Return

  copyright 2006 by Margaret Guthrie

  Cover graphic of the leaf courtesy of Punchstock

  *****

  The Return, copyright 2006 by Margaret Guthrie

  #

  Like a stone thrown into a pond

  truth spreads ripples to the shore

  yet falls to the bottom, unnoticed.

  It lies buried there, silently waiting

  for someone to brave the mud

  and find it.

  –M. G.

  ##

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  a note about the writer

  #

  Chapter 1

  Her dead mother came to her in dreams. L-y-d-i-a, L-y-d-i-a she called, just like when she was little and her mother needed to know where she was. But that was thirty years ago. She was eight years old and her sister Margie ten when their parents were murdered in the school gym next door to where they lived. The dreams followed her into the days.

  Lydia forced her mind back to demonstrating the cobra asana to her yoga class. The mood was quiet. She felt their eyes on her, watching her slow, deliberate movements. From her face down position on her mat she pushed up with her hands, arched her neck and raised her head, curving her spine. As she continued to raise her trunk she felt the pressure of each vertebrae, one to the next, a comfortable pressure, relaxing all tension. She looked up and held the position as she started to count to twenty.

  At the count of nine, the phone in the next room started a piercing cry threatening Lydia’s concentration. She pushed it to the back of her mind and continued to count, ten, eleven, twelve, slowly and evenly. She was aware and grateful that Carrie came from the kitchen and plucked the phone off the hook. Lydia finished her count, gradually returning to a sitting position on the mat. Carrie gestured toward her.

  Lydia sensed it was Margie in California, conveniently forgetting it was mid-morning in Illinois. She clamped her lips tight against a sigh and asked one of her students to continue the yoga session.

  Lydia took the phone, wet from Carrie’s hand pulled from the dishpan. Carrie gave her a warning smile before returning to the kitchen.

  “Margie?” Lydia said as calmly as her irritation allowed. To be calmly active and actively calm was one of the goals at the Yoga Ranch.

  “I interrupted,” Margie said without apology. “But I never know when is a good time to call.”

  “I know, Margie. My schedule keeps changing. Go ahead.” Lydia stood at the desk in the office between the kitchen and large activity room and watched the retreat guests practice their hatha yoga asanas. The student teacher seemed to be doing just fine.

  “Well, it’s about the house,” Margie said. Lydia nodded to herself. “The attorney says we’ve got to do something about it soon. There’s been a committee formed and they’ve approached him about buying the house and lot, tearing everything down and making it into a park. Being next door to the school grounds they think it’s a natural use for the place. People are beginning to call us negligent, Lydia,” she said in a lower tone, as if the thought were so embarrassing she didn’t want to speak of it.

  Lydia eased her small body into the swivel chair that threatened to slide away from the desk. Tear it down? That sent a chill through her. The old house in New Hope, Iowa, where they had spent their first years with their parents and grandparents and which they now owned still held confusing memories and she needed that old house to help clarify them.

  “They can’t do that,” she heard herself say. “They can’t just take away our history like that.” Lydia sat forward with feet flat on the floor.

  Carrie was slamming pots and pans around in the kitchen as if to make sure she didn’t overhear this personal stuff. Getting involved in each other’s private lives was discouraged, unless of course, it was invited. Too many personal calls, like this very one Lydia was having were discouraged too, but Margie sounded more and more desperate lately.

  “Well, they can,” Margie said. “We have let it go, you know. It’s been two years since the last renters left and we don’t really know how Jake’s been taking care of it.”

  “You’ve been paying him right along,” Lydia reminded her. She received copies of the bills.

  “Of course. And he’s said the roof leaks aren’t getting any better, and the paint’s peeling and no one wants to rent it anymore.”

  “Right. And if things go bump in the night that doesn’t help, either.”

  “Lydia, don’t be ridiculous,” Margie scolded. “That’s just Jake’s imagination.”

  “You don’t believe mother’s back haunting the place?” Lydia felt the silent disapproval on the other end of the line. She hadn’t told her sister about the dreams. Nor was she ready to tell her about waking up and feeling that someone had just been there. Someone other than her housemates. She’d checked. None of them had called her.

  “Of course not.” Margie made what sounded like an angry growl. “That’s disgusting.”

  “So maybe Jake Jackson’s just tired of taking care of it,” Lydia suggested. “Or maybe he’s got a guilty conscience about letting his friends into the gym That Night and wants the house torn down so he’s not reminded. You know, out of sight, out of mind. Maybe he’s the one formed that committee.” Lydia grabbed a pencil and notepad and started drawing circles and squares, a nervous habit she had when talking on the phone.

  “A guilty conscience is no reason to tear down a house,” Margie said.

  “Right. But if he thinks Mother’s back and moving things around...”

  “Lydia, I put that to rest a long time ago. I told him in no uncertain terms I would hear no more of that nonsense.”

  “Yeah, you did. Maybe that’s when he turned his attention to forming a committee to persuade them the house needed to go.” And maybe that’s when their mother changed her attention from Jake to herself, Lydia thought.

  “You mean persuade them our mother’s...” A disheartened sigh came over the line. “I know you believe in spirits, Lydia, but making our mother a ghost is sacrilege. I won’t have it. Mother doesn’t deserve that.”

  Lydia decided not
to push the idea, but couldn’t stop herself from saying, in a mild tone, “It’s not disrespectful,” then added, with a little more emphasis, “memories have a lot of energy in them. Anyway, you’re right. Someone’s fear is no reason to tear down a house.”

  The morning that changed their lives forever was hot and still. The first day of June, 1969. They’d come downstairs and sat behind the closed door that opened into the hallway by the living room and kitchen. The tone of the voices had stopped them. Their grandparents, the sheriff. Concerned, shocked voices. Confused, pained voices. Just before they gathered the courage to open the door and find out they would never see their parents again.

  “I suppose Jake might fear the whole thing is not done. Not put to rest,” Margie said thoughtfully. “I suppose that could activate an imagination.” The line went silent, a pause that was intolerable to Lydia.

  “So, do you have some plans?” Lydia prompted her sister.

  “I’m thinking of going to New Hope, live in the house awhile and feel out the situation. I might help Sherrie Claxton with her small printing business. That’d give me a bit of income. Then, I’ll see what it takes to register the house as an historical building.”

  “I see.” Lydia felt herself being eased into Margie’s vision of her project, and sensed it wasn’t a small one. “You realize a historical building has to meet certain qualifications, that repairs would have to follow those specifications.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And what money are you going to use to do that?”

  “Well, I thought maybe you’d be interested in sharing some of the trust money for that, Lydia. Come out and join me in the project. You just said you’re interested in preserving our history.”

  
Lydia scowled, sighed, and put both elbows on the desk. This wasn’t fair. Just because Margie was newly divorced and free from a tyrannical husband she expected her to change her life? Leave the Ranch with its communal type living? Leave a job she loved? Leave the people who thought the same as she, who had the same language, the same goals?

  “I understand the need to do something about the house, but I have commitments, Margie,” she said at last. “And I’ve got to cut this short. I’m supposed to be teaching, right this minute.”

  “But couldn’t you arrange to go on leave or something? A couple of months, maybe three? Next spring? I’m not talking about this fall. The house is half yours, you know. I can’t make decisions about it without your okay.” Margie was talking fast as if trying to get everything in. Lydia felt her jaws tighten with the pressure of ambivalent feelings. Yes, she should be helping make decisions about the house. And she did wonder what her dead mother was calling her attention to. But did it have to take her away from the Ranch?

  “Margie, you’re the one who wants to get away from Brad. You’re the one interested in business. You’re the one interested in...” She stopped, realizing how hollow her arguments were sounding, how far short they were from the real problems.

  “Maybe we can find out how those people are living with what happened That Night, Lydia.” The words came over the line like a whisper, a low almost subliminal suggestion.

  Lydia caught her breath. Chills brought goose-bumps. Why did Margie have to say that. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Maybe she wanted to know why their grandparents forgave that Dale Harris so easily, the one who bludgeoned and strangled their parents, then went off to Vietnam before he ever got charged with a crime and got himself killed. Maybe she did wonder why Grandpa and Grandma sent them off to live with Uncle Ted and Aunt Nora instead of raising them themselves. That feeling of abandonment still hit her sometimes. They had all eaten together, studied and read together, done chores together. They were all one family. Until That Night and everything collapsed around them.

  The phone suddenly felt heavy and Lydia noticed a tension in her neck, a heaviness on her shoulder as if a hand was pressing down. Mother, she thought. Don’t push me! She sighed.

  “I suppose Jake Jackson wants the gym torn down, too?” Lydia said too forcefully, too loudly. That’s where Jake’s father had found them the next morning after a strange phone call had told him there had been an accident. After the teenagers had fled, and were apparently scared into silence at what their friend/brother/hero, for that’s what the papers said he was considered, had done. And where you should be haunting, Mother, if you have to haunt. Lydia smiled as the weight lifted from her shoulder, amazed to think a spirit could be reasoned with, if indeed that’s what it was.

  “It’s still in use, Lydia. Not like the house.” Margie drew in her breath, realizing too late, perhaps, the acknowledgment she had just given to hauntings. Her frustration fractured the air waves into Lydia’s ear. “Aren’t you curious about what the community is like now?” Margie snapped. “I understand that those others with Jake that night are now the biggest farmers in the area. Pillars of the community.”

  “That lawyer’s been talking you into this, hasn’t he?” Lydia said. “What’s he getting out of this?”

  “Maybe he’s just getting trouble, Lydia. Between the New Hope committee and the real estate agent pestering him, Peter’d probably just like to get the house out of his hair.”

  “Peter, is it?” Lydia chuckled. Peter Anderson had handled the trust fund set up from their parents’ insurance money for the last thirty years. He handled the estate once their grandparents were gone. Margie was the one who got his letters and phone calls. She relayed them on to Lydia. It was the first time she’d heard Margie use his given name. Newly divorced, new attraction? But Peter Anderson had to be well over fifty, more than ten years Margie’s senior. And surely married. Lydia tucked that observation away.

  “Well, why not? It’s not that he’s a stranger.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Lydia’s circles and squares became larger and larger and she started filling in the white places with her pencil. The more she listened to Margie the more she felt pulled into that little Quaker community in Iowa that had been her beginning, and in a way, her end. New Hope. Lost Hope. She remembered how Margie put her arm around her when they waited on those stairs for the bad news. And when she helped her adjust to the big city and all those strange children in large classes. She remembered how Margie told off that teacher who asked if the cat had gotten her tongue when she was holding back tears and couldn’t speak. “She’s just scared,” Margie had told the teacher, in a real disgusted way that made the teacher purse her lips and sigh. And it was Margie who found ways to be loved by an aunt and uncle overwhelmed with two more children when they had just gotten theirs all grown and on their own. Margie set the example of helping Aunt Nora when arthritis froze her fingers into misshapen uselessness and it was Margie who became the chess opponent to their uncle in those quiet evenings when radio and television were forbidden.

  “I’m not trying to pressure you, Lydia. But as I say, something’s got to be done soon.” Margie sounded almost sad, as if the conversation had suddenly wearied her.

  “I’ll think about it.” Lydia’s heart sank after she put the phone down. She could see her happy life coming to an end.

  After years of searching, from college courses in psychology and religion, to exploring a variety of spiritual teachings and practices, Lydia had found a place she could call home. She didn’t want to go back into the world with Margie and explore things of the past.

  Lydia got up and went back to her class where the student was just finishing up. She gave her a smile and a grateful thanks. “An emergency,” Lydia said. She was tempted to explain further, but remembered that defending oneself, or excusing one’s actions, were discouraged. They were not necessary. She was what she was. So she held her tongue.

  Margie’s calls continued in the weeks that followed and Lydia’s dreams became more vivid. Or were they simply memories? She remembered her mother as always distant, with many things on her mind, thing
s more important than her daughters. Still, she did remember the three of them walking from the house to school together, then parting as each went to her own classroom. Sometimes her mother took her to her classroom door, bent down and gave her a hug and kiss before hurrying off. She remembered the wide stairs that went to the second floor where her mother taught English to the big kids. She remembered the pride she felt, having a mother who was a teacher there in the same building.

  Their father taught at New Hope school, too, but his classes took him to other buildings. One was an old barn where he taught Agriculture and Shop and the other the gym where he coached basketball. She mostly saw him at home. When she really got into remembering, she remembered how they had been cheated out of being their parents’ students, and then Lydia felt a cold anger rise up and saliva fill her mouth tasting like metal. Oh why did they have to get themselves killed? Why had they gone over to the gym That Night and made someone angry enough to be violent. The thought startled her, blaming the victim that way. But, on the other hand, there really were no victims. They had simply played out their karma.