Chapter 01
An attic is an interesting place to visit; it holds treasures and secrets. Sometimes the secrets are the treasures.
One damp April afternoon, just after I turned eight, I climbed the narrow stairs to our attic to see what there was to see. I had been in the attic before, but when it’s raining and you can’t go outside you’ve got to find something to do.
I spent most of that chilly afternoon investigating the dusty, dim lit recesses of the upper story of my home letting my imagination run free. In a trunk I found a beautiful satin and ivory gown that a beautiful queen from some far away kingdom had worn. There were rare old magazines and newspapers. I even found some old clothes that had been worn by movie stars. Inside some boxes, lined in the smoothest velvet I had ever touched, I found priceless jewels fashioned by a master jeweler only known by his last name, Avon.
The rain stopped suddenly and through one of the attic’s duty windows came a golden ray of spring sunshine that allowed the dust particles I had stirred up to perform a lively ballet in it’s warm yellow beam. As the light faded, I noticed it was illuminating an old chest sitting beside some boxes of old records. It was not just any chest though, it was a pirate chest no doubt about it. It had been hidden away by some high seas marauder for safekeeping. I wondered what treasure was sleeping inside just waiting for someone like me to awaken it.
There was a large padlock on its center hasp that shined brightly after I rubbed off some of the grit with my fingers. It looked like brass, but it was probably gold; you could never tell with pirates. I searched the entire attic for a key. I had heard a story about some bearded pirate that had hidden hundreds of fake keys to one of his most valuable chests to thwart anyone from getting his treasure. I didn’t find hundreds of keys, but the three I did find wouldn’t open the lock. My mother called so I gave up my search for another time and headed downstairs. I hadn’t thought about the chest since that long ago rainy day.
XXXXX
“Hey Mert, listen to this.” Maude Adelaide croaked to her elder sister; the home rolled cigarette bobbing up and down in the corner of her mouth, grey ash sifting onto the newspaper she was reading.
“Listen to what? I cain’t half understand you with that nasty thing hanging out of your mouth.”
Maude looked up from her paper, her glasses glinting in the morning sun that was pouring through the kitchen window. Wearing trifocals had been a bone of contention for Maude; she had adamantly refused to put them on for weeks after picking them up from the optometrist. Once she did, she found they gave her the ability to glower in three levels of magnification. As she stared down her twin, Maude muttered, “Ya’ cain’t hear ‘cuz your practically deaf!” Myrtle looked away. Maude returned to her paper.
“It’s the write up ‘bout Erin Collins’ weddin’. It’s on page six next to Mavis Corder’s piece she wrote for the Kitchen Wizard. I cain’t believe they asked Mavis to write anything. For that matter, I cain’t believe Mavis can write.” Maude cackled at her clever remark. Well, clever to her anyhow.
“Is that Jerry’s daughter?”
“Yup, sure is.”
“Well, what’s it say or cain’t you read with all that smoke in your eyes?” Myrtle said continuing her campaign against her sister’s smoking habit.
The Adelaide sisters, Myrtle and Maude, the only living octogenarian identical twins west of the Mississippi; a fact lost to most and cared about by fewer still. The Sisters, as they were known, were the Millersburg County Weekly Democrat’s most loyal readers, ardent critics and longest continuous subscribers. Each Wednesday afternoon, Pete Simpson rattled down the Sister’s overgrown lane in his well-worn US Postal Jeep to deliver two copies of the weekly paper and any other mail they might be receiving. There wasn’t much to deliver though. The Sisters had out-lived their immediate family. Their extended family, nieces, nephews and some assorted cousins, lived in either Arizona or California. There were a few that still lived in Illinois and southern Missouri and they wrote to The Sisters, but the letters were few and far between.
“Hmmm …? That is peculiar.” Maude mused.
“What is Maude? Blast it, I cain’t see a thing anymore without my glasses, and all this smoke, too.”
Maude ignored her sister’s dig. “Listen to this. It says “… The bride wore her mother’s beautiful satin & ivory cathedral length wedding gown with matching slippers. The Belgian lace veil covered her radiant face. And …” Maude’s voice trailed off. “That is mighty peculiar. That is mighty peculiar indeed.”
XXXXX
Jack and I were standing on the bank of the creek that angled across my parent’s farm. We were watching the water slowly drift downstream as a Meadowlark sang happily somewhere behind us. I had brought Jack to the creek the first time he came to the farm with me. He had been nervous about meeting Mom and Dad; I guess all boyfriends are nervous the first time they “meet the parents”. Fortunately, for him, they weren’t home when we got there so we took a walk and ended up at one of my favorite places, the creek.
I had come to the creek often as I was growing up. I would sit on the outcropping of rock that I called “The Pirate Ship” and throw rocks into the water, listening as each stone broke the water’s surface with a “plunk” or “ploop”. Throwing rocks was good therapy whenever I had something on my mind.
On the drive up to the farm, Jack asked if we could go back to the creek. He said he needed some fresh country air and the creek was a great place to go to get it. I readily agreed.
“Erin?” Jack asked, jarring me back to the present. I jumped when he put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay, Jack, I was just daydreaming. What do you need?”
“Tell me about this rock again.”
“Jack, I’ve told you this story a hundred times. Why do you want to hear it again?’
“I like that story. Besides, you’ve never told it to me when we were actually here.” Jack jumped up on the rock for emphasis.
I laughed. “Okay, sit down and listen up.” We sat and I spent the next hour telling him of my many adventures at the creek.
“You have quite an imagination, Erin. I never would have noticed that this rock looked like a ship.”
“It was where I was captured by pirates more than once.”
“Pirates, huh?”
“Yes, but in the end my hero would arrive just in the knick of time and save me. Then we would take the pirate treasure and live happily ever after.”
Jack laughed. “Pirate treasure?”
“Yes, chests full of emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds.”
“No doubloons or pieces of eight?”
“No, just jewels; my pirates were very particular.”
Jack was laughing as he reached down and picked up a rock then tossed it into the creek. The “ploop” as it broke the water’s calm surface was a familiar, comforting sound. Jack leaned down to get another rock, but stopped in mid reach.
“What in the world?” He was staring at the ground by my feet with a questioning look on his face, his brow furrowed.
“What?” I looked down as well, but saw nothing.
“There.” He pointed to the ground. “What’s that by your foot?”
I began studying the ground at my feet. “I don’t see anything Jack. What are you talking about?”
“That shiny thing, what is it?” He knelt down in front of me and brushed some rocks and dirt around on the ground.
“I don’t see anything Jack. What did you find?”
Jack looked up at me and smiled. I noticed tears in the corners of his eyes and was about to ask him if anything was wrong, but I quickly found out that everything was so very right. Jack held out a diamond ring.
“What I found is the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most amazing woman I have ever met and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t speak.
“Erin Ann Collins, will you please marry me?”
He gently took my hand and slipped the ring on my left ring finger. It fit perfectly.
I looked at my hand and its new occupant still too stunned to speak. It was a simple gold band with a single solitaire diamond in its center. It sparkled in the late afternoon light like … well … a diamond. After what must have seemed like an eternity for him, I found my voice and answered him.
“Yes, Jack, I will! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
I threw my arms around him knocking him off balance. We fell to the ground with me on top of him. He wrapped his arms around me and we enjoyed one of the most passionate kisses we had ever had.
XXXXX
Dad cried when I told him that my boyfriend, now fiancé, Jack Ivey had proposed. I guess all fathers cry when their daughters tell them they are going to get married. It must be something about losing the only girl who truly loves them warts, feathers and all.
Dad stood up and began to talk to Jack about the responsibilities he would soon have. Dad said all the stereotypical things a father-of-the-bride-to-be says to a soon to be son-in-law. You know, things like, “She may be your wife, but she’ll always be MY little girl!” and “You take care of her or I’ll take care of you!” We all laughed at the bravado.
Jack and Dad have gotten along remarkably well since we first started seriously dating. They’d gone hunting and fishing. Dad helped Jack make some shadow boxes for his mother for Christmas in his workshop. That’s when I knew Dad approved. Dad had taken Jack into “The Workshop”.
One weekend, Jack spent more time with Dad than with me. I complained to Mom and she told me to calm down. “After all, Erin, it is the first time your father has had a boyfriend.” We both burst out laughing. We were still giggling when they came in for supper. They asked what was so funny and we laughed that much harder. They went to wash up with puzzled looks on their faces.
XXXXX
At some point during the impromptu engagement celebration, Dad took me into the kitchen and asked when I could come back to the farm by myself. I had the following weekend free and Jack was going to be out of town. I asked him why.
He said, “There’s something I need to tell you. I’ve needed to do it for a long time.”
I guess the look on my face changed because he added, “Don’t look so serious, Erin.”
“Okay.” I said warily.
“Ladybug, what I’ve got to tell you is … well … I guess it’s my advice to you about love.”
“All right, I’ll come up Thursday after work. I need to use two personal days before the first of the month anyway or I lose them. I’ll make it a four day weekend.”
“Sounds good to me, I miss having you around here.” With that, Dad hugged me.
“Dad, about this “love talk” next weekend.” I said while he still had his arms around me.
“What about it?”
“Mom told me where babies come from when I was twelve.” I winked at him.
Dad burst out laughing.
XXXXX
I got to the farm around six the following Thursday evening. I had skipped lunch and left work an hour early to get a jump on the hour drive. I called Dad on my cell phone to let him know I was on the way. When I again asked about his “love talk” all he would say was that he would tell me when I got there.
The house was quiet except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room. I walked through the front door and called for Mom and Dad, but there was no answer. After going upstairs and putting my things in my old room, I went looking for them. The search did not take long. I found Dad on his private “patio” behind his workshop.
I always love going into Dad’s workshop to see and smell his latest project. I was one of only two women who have been offered the privilege of entering, and as Dad said more than once, lived to tell the tale. I wasn’t disappointed when I entered. The aroma of freshly cut cedar immediately enveloped me. Dad had been making jewelry boxes and cedar chests for people for as long as I could remember.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked as I stepped out onto the concrete slab that had begun life as a floor for a garage that was once connected to the shop. Stepping outside I noticed how cracked the slab had become. In some of the cracks lush yellow bouquets of dandelions had sprouted and were cascading across the cement. I gave him a hug and a kiss from behind.
“Hey Ladybug, she went to St. Louis to visit your Aunt Jane. She’s wanted to go for a while and she thought this would be a good time to do it. She called a little bit ago. She made it with no trouble.”
Dad was sitting in his old castered office chair whose upholstery was more duct tape than anything else. On the wall behind him, next to the door, was the sign that said, “Some call it clutter, I call it a system. Enter at your own risk.” He was cleaning his fingernails with his old Case pocketknife; it was a habit Mom detested. She had forbid him from doing anywhere inside the house.
Growing up I had noticed there were two distinct times Dad cleaned his nails. One was when they were dirty, like after he greased a plow or tractor. The other was when he had something on his mind. Dad had quit farming and sold most of the equipment several years ago. He only kept his beloved, recently restored International Harvester Farmall Super C tractor that he used to drive around the farm when he was checking on the cattle. That tractor, the Little C, was what I learned to drive.
Sitting near Dad, surrounded by dandelions, was a large, dusty, wooden chest with a big, tarnished padlock secured through the center hasp. I hadn’t seen or thought about that chest for nearly twenty years.
Dad looked up from his manicure and I saw sadness in his eyes. It was a far away sadness; a sadness from something that had happened long ago, but time hadn’t yet rounded off the sharp edges of the hurt.
“Sit down, Ladybug.” He motioned toward the old wicker loveseat that had been banished from the real patio years before. I sat. For a moment, Dad just stared up at the sky, his lips pursed in thought. Finally, he let out a long solitary sigh then he looked at me and spoke.
“I have heard that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Well, Erin, that is true. That is so very true. In my life I have had the privilege of having not one love, but five.” He was silent for a moment longer looking not at me, but through me.
“Thirty-nine years ago I married a wonderful woman. She was my high school sweetheart and my best friend.”
He smiled at the memory. I, however, was confused. Mom and Dad had just celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary just a few months before. My confusion must have been apparent because he reached over and patted my knee.
“You’re right; the math doesn’t quite add up does it?”
I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t Dad.”
“Her name was Laura Butler.”
“You were married to someone else? Why?”
Dad laughed. “Well, because I loved her that’s why. I loved her very, very much. It’s the same reason I married your mother.”
I slumped down in the old wicker loveseat. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my father had been married to anyone other than my mother.
“Does Mom know?”
“Yes, Erin, she knows. She’s known from the very beginning.”
“Why didn’t she ever say anything about it?”
“She never said anything because I asked her not to Erin. I told her that when the time was right, when I was ready, I’d tell you the whole story.”
It was quiet for what seemed like hours before my father spoke again. Before he did though, he stood, reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a chain with a gold key hanging on it. He knelt down and opened the lock on the chest. He raised its lid; I couldn’t see anything inside it from where I was sitting. I’m sure he had planned it that way purposely. He sat the lock off to one side and looked into it briefly before pulling out a book and closing the lid again. His old chair squeaked when he sat down.
“When I turned fifteen I was given this.” He held up the book. “It was given to me by an old man who lived down the street from us. When he gave it to me, he told me that I should write something in it everyday so when I was an old man like him I could show it to my grandkids and tell them about the things I did and how it was for me growing up. This is one of the best presents I ever received. His advice was some of the best I ever got. I’ve written something nearly everyday since then and I’m on my fifty-fifth volume, not to bad huh?”
I just smiled and nodded. “Tell me about her, Dad.”
