November 6, 2016
On a Sunday afternoon, Dad and I were raking leaves in the yard. Kermit and Gonzo tore around us, chasing each other and chomping at the leaves that flew into the air. Dad paused for a moment and watched me.
"What?" I asked, assuming he was about to criticize my raking technique.
"When you were little, you used to climb in the wheelbarrow on top of the leaves," he said wistfully. "I'd throw a few more leaves on top of you and pretend I didn't know you were there. Then I'd push you to the edge of the woods and dump you out with the leaves and you'd laugh and laugh."
Every year he shared the same anecdote, as if I didn't remember, or at least as if I didn't remember him telling me about it. Not only my parents, but all my older relatives, always seemed to tell the same stories over and over, while there must have been hundreds of others that went untold and unremembered. I wanted to dig deeper into our family history than the usual wheelbarrow memories.
Specifically, I wanted to know why at least one person in town thought my great-grandma was a witch. And also what might cause me to drop into a prohibition era Halloween party. I wasn't certain Madison and I had traveled to the twenties, but it was my mention of Gatsby that had tipped Liz off that I didn't belong in that time. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, so I guessed it was before then. It was possible that my great-grandparents had been at the party or somewhere nearby, or even my great-great grandparents, but I never knew them, so what kind of connection to them could have drawn me there that night? And what was Liz doing there?
"So," I started as I went back to raking, "at the Shipyard there's all these pictures of the actual shipyard that used to be there in the eighteen-hundreds. And you said before that a great-great grandpa or somebody worked on ships. So did he work at the Osgood shipyard?"
"Your Grandma Rose's dad was a captain and I believe his father was a shipbuilder, maybe at the shipyard you're talking about, but I think there were others around here at that time."
"What about Grandma's mom? And her grandma? What did they do? What were they like?"
"I wish I could tell you more, but your great-grandma passed before I was born." He clasped his hands over the end of the rake handle and rested his chin there as he gazed off toward the neighbor's field. "You're taking an interest in your ancestry now, huh? It's too bad your grandparents are gone, they'd have a lot more to say about it. I did get some old photo albums from Grandpa's house you can look through sometime, if you want."
"Can I look at them when we're done with these leaves?" I asked.
I still had a lot of homework to catch up on, but it could wait a little longer. There was an AP Biology project that was due the next day where we had to create a model of an assigned cell organelle and summarize its functions in a short paper. I'd done the fun part first and procrastinated on the paper portion.
The leaf pile was almost finished when my phone buzzed in one of the many pockets of my overalls.
Eric: What's your organelle?
Vanessa: Rough endoplasmic reticulum
Eric: Me too. Did you make it yet?
Vanessa: I did
Eric: SND PICS PLZ
I sent him a photo of my project that I'd taken to show Laura, another super smart person who freaked out the second she was asked to do something that required a bit of creativity.
Eric: How did you do that?! Teach me your ways
Vanessa: I used fabric and glue and shaped it and let it dry and glued buttons on it
YOU ARE READING
The Rockmore House
Paranormal*A sequel to The Palmer Pool* Vanessa Brooks, now a high-school senior, hopes to put her time-traveling days behind her, until an opportunity arises to return the favor of a fellow time-traveler stuck in the past. ****** As Vanessa Brooks begins he...
