Requiem [COMPLETED]

Treason

Those memories of ours got us into trouble, but they also changed the atmosphere between us. We began to openly voice questions that at least I hadn't dared to even think about. It began with talks of our memories, but also included our experiences reading grandma's diaries. That led to debating what happened to all the children. What happened to all those family members whose pictures were on the walls of the parlor, but whose names couldn't be found on any documentation except a birth certificate or one census report? An idea had been slowly congealing in my head and finally found form as it sprouted a possibility of fulfilling both my undergraduate thesis project and my personal obsession with our family history. Sven had the same idea I did, though of course had a more sinister perception of the causes. Luckily we came to realize we were both thinking of the same clues—Sven found me checking up on them one afternoon in September.

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results you're accruing before you convince yourself you know the answer."

"Sven! You know I hate it when people peer over my shoulder. Aren't you suppose to be at work?"

"They sent me home early; it was slow and Angie wanted to pick up a few more hours so I let her take closing. So what are you scheming over? A strategic air-bombing raid over enemy territory? I see you have the land tracts for the farm; I can hardly suppose that you're advising paternis primus over putting in new flower beds. What are the circles?" Under his joking words I sensed a wariness at why I was looking homeward. He still didn't trust me.

"I'm comparing depressions I remember and trying to figure out where the old family cemetery is."

"What family cemetery? Now you're making things up; there's never been a cemetery, at least marked."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What?"

"You emphasized marked, so you've thought before about unmarked graves?"

"What are you talking about?! You're reading too much into me egging you on. You never take an offhand comment for what it is."

"That's unfair, and besides the point—"

"That's exactly the point. I just thought from reading the diaries that Marie must be buried with her husband somewhere on the farm, because grandma Vivian references burying her dad near the copse after he got 'mortally wounded' in that fight."

"How do you know that they're not in the Sverdrup Church cemetery?"

"I had Chuck go look around there one day in high school; there aren't any graves stones that don't clearly belong to the founding families of Wolverton. No strays, and not a single Leitch."

"When did you decide to jump on board my project?"

"I didn't; after reading the diaries back in the day I was curious. The only Marie in the cemetery was Marie Ohe, who died in like 1940. And anyhow, what project?"

"Oh, well... anyhow, if you'd taken public archaeology or the pioneer settlements class you would've guessed they wouldn't be there anyway. Most Midwestern farms had family plots even up until the 1920s. They're almost certainly on the homestead somewhere, most likely among the house and yard complex with the trees protecting it. I'm writing the proposal for that archaeology thesis I have to do about re-finding the old family cemetery on the homestead."

"A very interesting idea—but what spurred it?"

I'd gone and put my foot in it. Sven sat down across from me.

"Sigrid, why do you want to go to the farm?"

I played with the map edges, trying to uncrease them.