We Find What Is Lost: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 1)

The Letter

Rachel opened the envelope and pulled out the folded papers. It was indeed a copy of the original; the black writing on grey background made that evident. She decided to read it out loud for Al's benefit.

Dear Rachel,

If you are reading this, then you have begun your work as executor and are cataloguing the contents of the house. I hope you have begun work on the upper floor first, and have found this letter before venturing down to the basement. I need to explain something to you before you find what is in the coal cellar.

"Jesus," Al said. "We really should have gone in the bedroom."

"We had no idea we'd find what we did," Rachel said. "Now shush, and let me keep reading."

"Sorry."

What you need to remember is I grew up in a very different time from the one you grew up in. You didn't know it at the time, but yours was the first generation to inherit the benefits of the work started by the sexual revolution the decade before. Birth control suddenly wasn't something you acquired in secret, in shame, and abortion wasn't being prosecuted as murder anymore. I may have outwardly lamented how you would never turn out to be a young lady, but in secret I cheered you on, knowing you would never be forced into a role you didn't want for yourself, a privilege I certainly didn't enjoy, and even your mother didn't really have. I can understand some of the things she did, even if I didn't like her as a person. She didn't have the choices you were going to have when you became a woman. I think I remember telling you some of this when you were just turning thirteen, but you weren't old enough to understand, not completely. Not like you would now.

I was the daughter of a farmer who owned a lot of the land around this house at the turn of the last century, when New Westminster was in its infancy. We were not rich by any standards, but we were a well-respected farming family at a time when Queensborough was a rural area, not a bedroom community. Ironically, our wealth was only realized after we sold most of the land to developers in the housing rush after the war. But that's still in the future from the events I wish to discuss here.

We employed many people on our land, other families who travelled picking or wanted to settle in the area but couldn't afford to buy land for themselves. We employed whoever wanted to work; there was always enough to go around, and we didn't discriminate. Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Ukrainian, Czech, East Indian, Italian, our little island was a colourful quilt of cultures.

You can probably predict where this is going. There was a family. The nationality of the family is not important. The family had a son around my age, and we had a dalliance.

I can picture your surprise. You probably think James and I were soulmates from the very beginning, but he came later, after the war, and by war I mean the second one. I will confirm to you that James was the love of my life, and I could not have been the woman I became, the woman you knew, without him.

I was only a young woman when I laid eyes on this beautiful boy. You have to understand I had spent my entire life up to this point on our family's property, with some small trips downtown on the streetcar for some shopping. I was an only child; my mother suffered an illness after having me and couldn't have more. In hindsight I think I must have had a hereditary condition, but again we never discussed such scandalous things as women's reproductive health back then. I had no experience with other males than the ones who came and went with the seasons.

I could not take my eyes off him as he worked, often in the hay barn with his shirt off

"Well, well, well," Al said. "I never pictured Mrs. Anderson having a randy side."