June 2nd 2022
Chapter 153
Our Participation in Curiosity
"What did you do?" Maya blurted out when Lucas arrived home with earth on his clothes. "You look like you rolled around in a garden or something… and your shoes…" she observed, trying not to sound like she was imagining all the ways he could get the house dirty. "What's that?" she asked of what appeared to be a medium sized box, rolled up in a blanket. He was supposed to have been at basketball practice, ahead of his game that afternoon, but this…
"That's what I'd like to know," Lucas replied, looking at the object in his hand.
She didn't have to worry about him getting dirt everywhere. It was practically built into him not to do such a thing thanks to his mother. The shoes were left out where they could stay harmless until they could be cleaned and, now that he was home, shirt and pants were also removed and brought down to the basement for washing. When he returned upstairs, changed into clean clothes he'd picked up from a completed laundry load below, the mystery item was being 'inspected' by the whole of their canine quintet, all of them bent to sniff at it, some trying to pull at the covering to see what was inside. Lucas managed to pry it back and brought it through the house and into the kitchen.
As the table was cleared, Lucas briefly recounted to Maya how the box had been found, where it had been found and by whom. The more she heard, the more his curiosity became hers as well. Of course, she wanted to know what was inside. Once the bundle was placed on the table and uncovered for her to see, they both stood there for a few seconds, observing it as it was. The box was metal, worn, of course covered with earth still, but all the same they could make out the design on the outside… It was old. Whether the box and the time of its burial were significant to one another, they couldn't say, but it could have been that it had spent several decades in the ground. Lucas and Maya looked to one another, that same question in their eyes.
"So… Either someone put it there after the fire…" Maya slowly spoke.
"Or before the stable was built," Lucas concluded. They looked at it again.
Faced with these options, they both seemed to have the same idea of it, mainly that whoever had buried it and why, they couldn't see a scenario in which this box did not relate or belong to the Sullivans, to his grandparents, and if that was so, then… this box was not theirs alone to open. So, as much as they hated having to leave the discovery off to later, they wrapped the box back up, and Lucas made a couple of calls while Maya made another.
They were meant to have their friend group dinner that evening, at Riley and Dylan's, but they cancelled for this week. Instead, after Lucas' game, they would make their way to the elder Friars' home, there to be joined by the Sullivan-Reyes family.
There was a lot of curiosity in the air already once they arrived, long before the box was brought out for them to see. What could have prompted this last minute dinner gathering? All through the meal, Lucas and Maya could see that question working away at the back of his parents' and his uncles' minds. They had to wait until after dessert, at which point Lara and Lydia took their little brother and their cousin's daughters off for a movie in the basement. Now, Lucas went back outside and retrieved the bundle from the minivan, while Maya incited the others to help her clear the table.
"What is that?" Keith Reyes asked when Lucas returned and presented the wrapped object. As he'd done before, he set it on the table and pulled back the blanket.
He'd been unsure of what the reaction would be out of the two siblings, specifically if there would be a reaction at all. He got nothing from his uncle Mike – which he'd sort of expected – while his mother immediately looked somewhere between startled and baffled. She didn't know what it was, but something about it stirred in her mind, like a memory she couldn't quite reach.
"I found it at the ranch today, after Thor went digging around… inside the fence," Lucas explained, and this definitely got a reaction.
Now they knew exactly where this box had come from, and the implications that Lucas and Maya had reached earlier connected with them as well, with Melinda especially, and Michael reached over to take his sister's hand. This might have belonged to their mother, or her father, or both of them together… There was a minimal chance that it had nothing to do with Marianne or Simon Sullivan, but slim enough to be called unlikely. This belonged to their family.
"Oh…" Melinda blinked.
"Mel?" Thomas pressed a hand to his wife's back. She looked at him, then to her brother, then to her son, then the box again as she reached down and lightly touched the top.
"I… She told me about this, I think… When I was very little…" She slowly nodded, more certain than ever. "It was the first time she explained to me about how she and Dad started the ranch. She said something about… how they'd both seen the place built from the ground up. It wasn't nearly as big and sprawling as it is now, just a few buildings at first, mostly the stables, of course. She said something about… putting a piece of themselves into each one. She never actually explained what she meant by that, but I remember getting the impression like something about it had made her happy… and then sad…" It was easy to understand why. This would have taken her right back to how she'd lost her husband, her daughter's father…
"You think that's what she meant?" Michael asked his sister as he looked to the box. He seemed to vaguely recall a similar story now.
"If that's the case, then does that mean there's another one of those under all the other original structures?" Maya wondered aloud.
"Maybe…" Lucas slowly nodded, even as a realization hit him. "We weren't meant to find this, were we? If it wasn't for the fire, the place being torn down, and today, Thor…" No one replied, but they all saw what he meant, and they had to agree. This box and its fellows, wherever they rested in the ground around the ranch, there had never been any intention for them to ever be dug up again. And yet here sat one of them, ready to be opened and rediscovered. But if they had never been meant to pull it from the ground… did it also mean that they shouldn't open it?
"What do you think we should do?" Maya looked to Melinda and Michael. It would be up to them, wouldn't it? This was their mother, one of their fathers…
"I… I don't know…" Melinda was fretful as she looked to the box, then her brother. Michael squeezed her hand.
"Yes, you do," he told her with a confident nod, and she let out a breath. He was right. She needed to know, wanted to know.
So, she reached over and pulled the box nearer to herself, went about carefully opening the lid. The rest of them around the table couldn't help but feel as though they needed to hold their breaths. What would it be? What would they find?
There was another box within that first earth-stained box, like a second layer of protection for the contents they had committed to the ground. When Melinda saw it, she smiled at once. She recalled boxes like these in her home, growing up, just as her husband did. She held this box, looked at it with the reverence of knowing this was something one or both of her parents had once held, even as the first box and the blanket were removed, the better for all of them to focus on this one. Melinda opened it as she'd done the previous box.
If it had been set into the ground before the stable had gone up – as they'd soon confirm it had – then it would have been there for just about sixty-five years, five years longer than Melinda Friar, née Sullivan, had been alive. The proof of it was right there on top when the box was opened. The first item that was pulled out was a neatly folded front page for a now defunct local newspaper, dated in the spring of 1970. This was set aside, not yet unfolded, so that they might see what else was inside.
There was a flat stone, the kind that was ideal for skipping on water. Melinda saw it and looked instantly stricken with new emotion. The others had seen more than one picture of Simon Sullivan skipping one of these, and they knew he would have been the one to select the object, to hold it and place it in the box. There was another folded piece of paper, this one holding its purpose and meaning hidden on the inside, and it was pulled to lay flat so they might see. It had once been a very simple paper place mat, to be found in some restaurant or another. Again, it brought back memories to the elder Friars, but that wasn't the important part. Instead, on the back, they found a crudely done mock-up, in blue ink, of what was to become the Sullivan Stables arch, signed Marianne Sullivan.
There were photos, three of them, Polaroids. They were all of them very candid. The first showed a beaming Marianne holding the very same box Lucas had pulled from the ground, looking much cleaner and colorful than its dirty and faded counterpart. The second showed Simon Sullivan, standing with his arms spread wide, in the middle of the land right where the stable was just starting to be built, right where the box would be buried… Right where he would die, six years later… This was set aside, almost like the picture had burned Melinda's fingers. The third photo thankfully set her at ease, as it showed her father, one arm around her mother as she leaned her back to his chest, the other holding out the camera, so it might show them both, her smiling happily and him pressing a tender kiss to the side of her head.
"I wish I could have known them like this…" Melinda couldn't help but state, even as her voice trembled under the weight of emotion. Thomas put an arm around his wife's shoulders as the rest of them telegraphed their support from all around the table. "I used to think she looked… so sad, when I was small, and I didn't understand why, but then I see…" she drifted off, looking at the items set on the table.
Simon had been so much of her joy, and he had taken it with him when he'd died…
It was to wonder what her life would have been like if she didn't have Melinda, and the ranch… Then Jax Murphy had come into her life, and he had brought new joy with him. Then they'd had Michael… She'd spent all those years after losing Simon finding new joy and enjoying it when she had it, sharing it when she could… That was what had made Sullivan Stables into what it had become, into what Juliet and now Lucas strived to maintain, to carry on evolving, in whatever way they felt that it was possible.
"You should hold on to these…" Melinda finally decided, after looking to her brother. Lucas hesitated.
"Mom…" he tried to decline, but she insisted.
"I know you'll do what's right. The ranch is yours now. They would want you to have it."
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
