The Problem with Dreams

Chapter 24 - Signs and Letters

The rest of Friday after visiting the new house was spent by the Abernathys rushing around at the farmhouse helping Matt get ready to leave for his final shift at McDonalds that afternoon. That was followed by the evening with Susan continuing on, trying to find all Matt's things from where they'd become scattered around the house. While Zackary, Jessie, and Greg all watched a Pixar movie on TV, she visited very room in the farmhouse, scouring it for anything that might belong to her eldest son. Much of it she had to show to Zackary to be sure it wasn't his, and some of it she ended up putting back, but by the end of the evening she'd accumulated a fair number of items which she placed in a pile in the center of Matt's bed.

"What is all of this?" Matt asked when he got home that evening.

"Things of yours I found here and there," Susan told him. "I wasn't sure how much of it you wanted to take home."

"I want to take this," Matt picked up a brightly colored game cartridge from the middle of the pile. "I lost this the first week I was here. Where did you find it?"

"In the kitchen, in one of the drawers," Susan said. "Are you taking it home?"

"Yes, but not all of this. Can't I just leave some of it in one of the drawers?" Matt asked.

"Yes, you can," Susan told him. "We'll probably put it all in a box though when we're ready to move."

Matt shrugged. "Just put it in the closet in my room at the new house. I'll go through everything later."

"Do you think you're ready to go?" Susan asked anxiously.

"Yeah, I think so. My flight isn't until afternoon, so I have time in the morning to look around, and I still want to show you that letter," Matt reminded her.

"What letter?" Susan asked.

"Max's letter," Matt told her.

"Who?"

"Max ... you know, the guy from the cave. The guy whose stuff we found," Matt said.

"His name was Max?"

"Yeah, Maxwell Tabor," Matt told her.

"How did you figure that out?"

Matt shrugged. "I read the letter. There were three of them all together. I think Greg found two of them."

"There were? I mean he did?"

"Yeah. They were in a box. I don't know what happened to the box though. It's not with the rest of Max's stuff, but anyway I learned something about him from each of the letters," Matt explained.

"So what did you find out?" Susan asked curiously.

"The guy was Jewish, he lived in New York when he was in high school, then moved to Boston after that. He had a girlfriend named Rosalie, and he was out here in California doing something for some sort of Partnership. We haven't quite figured that part out," Matt shared.

"We? Do you mean you and Greg?"

"And Ashley. I only showed her the one letter, when we took it to the museum, but it was pretty interesting once we got it unstuck," Matt told her eagerly.

"You took a letter from the cave to the museum?" Susan asked in surprise.

"Yeah, the last one we found. It wasn't as well-protected, so the paper was all sort of stuck together when we found it. The museum guys were able to get it unstuck for us. I just brought it home again last night and I gave it to Greg, but I really wanted you to see it before I go," Matt told her.