A/N: Thank you for reading! One chapter after this one!
From Where We Came
Chapter 9
Early in the spring, 1931: The day dawned with a freshness of a rare rain, less than half an inch, but for young children, there would be rivulets of water running into the pond, depressions in the lawn that collected enough to splash, and dry dirt turned to mud.
The children dressed themselves in simple play clothes, grabbed a buttered roll from the pan always kept on the stove, and ran outside to find a new day scented by early blooming roses and lilacs. Their parents were away and the cook and the housekeeper knew the kids were allowed to run and play without supervision.
Together, the three children went everywhere. There was not a grassy spot or grove of trees, or rocky outcrop for miles around that they had not explored. The older two carried small tools, two shovels, a pick, a scoop, because there was always a place to dig or a rock to move or treasure to uncover. There were fences to jump and animals to track, wild berries to eat and rocks to break open.
On this day, the three children played all morning around the pond catching tiny minnows and frogs. Doris, the youngest removed her shoes and waded into the pond, fearless as her brother and sister, but then her dress got wet and she climbed out of the pond, removed her dress, and followed her brother and sister to the hillside behind the house.
Next to the pond, the hill was their favorite place to play and they had spent hours smoothing a place among the scrubby bushes and scattered rocks. The area was their secret place, not visible from the house. They had spent hours in the space, pretending it was a hideout from the bad guys or they were the bad guys hiding from the posse.
Today, David, who always had the best ideas, was using his pick to chip at a large smooth stone which he insisted contained gold.
As he pounded on the rock, his older sister used her shovel to dig a hole with no purpose. Doris saw them on the slope and did a zigzag walk up the hill. She'd forgotten her shoes so she tried walking on smooth rocks, jumping from one to another.
"Hey! Look at this!" Diane had found something interesting.
Doris continued to dawdle; her sister thought everything she found was supposed to be special. The young girl found a few blue wild flowers blooming and kneeled to pick all of them, thinking she could tie them together as she'd seen her mother do.
She heard her brother's excited voice and the sounds of digging and decided to ignore them as she placed the flowers in a neat row when, from above her head, she heard a terrified cry. The shriek was from Diane.
"Diane!" Doris called as she stood. There was no one around her, not her brother or her sister, just a patch of dirt and a few rocks. The little girl jumped over several rocks and came to the spot where she'd seen her siblings moments earlier.
"Diane!" She shouted again.
This time there was another shriek coming from below her feet.
"Down here! I'm stuck—and I'm slipping." Diane's voice was high and brittle sounding. "David fell in too."
Doris looked down to find a dark split in the earth; she squatted and looked closer. "Diane?" If she squinted she could make out pale fingers in the darkness.
And then the dirt underneath her feet shifted and filled the opening. She heard no more from her sister and scooted away from the spot.
She did not understand what had happened to her sister—and where was her brother. Looking around, she didn't see the shovels or the pick. Looking back at the ground, she found nothing—the dirt had completely hidden the black split—or maybe she had imagined what she had seen. For a few minutes, she sat back on her bottom still trying to figure out what had happened. Had she gone to sleep in the sun and her sister's shriek, her sister's white fingers all been a dream?
A minute later, she decided her brother and sister were hiding from her. She stood up, looked around and saw nothing, no one. If they were not on the hillside, they would be at the pond. She ran down the slope, her bare feet hitting sharp rocks, falling several times before reaching the pond.
Once at the pond, she kept running until she was exhausted; her lungs felt there was no air coming in. Her sister and brother had disappeared.
And then she knew. Their cook talked about people going to hell and always cast her eyes toward the ground. Doris had seen her sister sliding underground—going to hell.
For a while, Doris had no idea how long—she sat at the edge of the pond trying to make her six year old brain figure out what had happened. She knew everything in her world had gone terribly wrong because her beloved brother and sister were gone. When she finally rose to her feet and staggered up the lawn, she was seen and bundled inside, but Doris did not feel it. At some point during the long afternoon, she knew Diane and David were gone—somewhere, perhaps slipped away to scare her, perhaps in the place named hell.
As questions drifted through her mind, she forgot what had happened, sealed and buried, forgotten as quickly as the small blue flowers on the hillside. She never returned to the hillside; her parents kept her close for months. A black hole closed on her memories until she had only vague recollections and as time passed, she forgot about the hillside and the dark opening that appeared because a rock had been part of a man-made viaduct for water collection.
Once, there were three children who did everything together…
Doris Blakeney held the small shoe, a frown across her forehead. Her weepy eyes met Nick's in a plea. Softly, she said, "Do you think they lived long enough to suffer?"
Nick, always soft-hearted, sensitive, and sympathetic, said, "No, Ma'am, they wouldn't have suffered. They—they would have been gone in an instant." He had no way of knowing this, but he did know the elderly woman in front of him should not suffer.
Once the cistern was discovered, the rest was there to find. Nick had uncovered two small skulls, a thigh bone, another shoe, and a shovel. There was more but he wanted to talk with Grissom and Greg about how to do it and who should be contacted.
Nick looked up the sloping hillside where Stan, Grissom and Greg were working with ground penetrating radar. An opening for an old pipe, clogged with dirt and rocks—large enough for a child to fall into— had been found in the cistern. The three men were finding the remnants of this collection channel going up the side of the hill.
"This thing has to have been built in the late 1800s," said Stan. "Right up to the top of the hill."
Greg said, "I know I should not guess, but there are probably three or four pipelines running to one that ran into that cistern. And that one is what trapped the kids."
Grissom was using a shovel to expose an area of pipe when he said, "These are stones fitted together—I think the idea came from mining. Gold prospectors were using water to find gold and the original guy was a miner." He put his foot on the shovel and pushed causing the pipe to crumble into gravel.
"Look at this," he said as he knelt and used his hands to remove the debris in the old fragile pipe. The sandy soil and gravel ran through his fingers, some of it as fine as dust. Standing, he said, "Those kids didn't stand a chance—a freak accident."
A few weeks later, a small group gathered on a beautiful morning at the local cemetery. In the oldest part with the grandest gravestones of carved stone and marble obelisks, a grand monument towered over the others. To the right, a small marker of three hearts marked the empty graves of the Blakeney children. Unseen workers had dug a small rectangle in the ground.
Nick and Greg had returned to San Diego after experts in excavating graves had arrived at the Blakeney house but both had returned for this simple burial.
Sara and Grissom stood beside Doris who carried a bouquet of flowers.
A small wooden casket was removed from a mortuary vehicle by two men who gently lowered it into the grave. Doris looked around at the small group of old and new friends, smiled, and broke her bouquet apart. Slowly, she walked through the group, giving each person a flower, thanking them for coming.
Eventually, the grave was closed, the flowers scattered across the fresh dirt, and Doris stood near the double hearts engraved with the names of her siblings.
Smiling, she addressed the group, "Once, long ago, there were three siblings—Diane, David, and Doris—who did everything together."
For a moment, everyone was quiet, breathing in the still air.
Doris continued, "And back in 1931, one of their favorite things to do was to eat ice cream. We could never get enough of it! So today, just outside the cemetery gate is an ice cream truck—waiting for all of us."
The cemetery was quiet as the group walked back toward the gate. The sunlight flickered, birds called, a breeze ruffled leaves. Sara moved near her husband as his hand touched her back.
Softly, he said, "It is closure for her."
Sara leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I'm happy we could help Doris."
Her husband smiled and whispered, "Are you ready for another adventure—this time on the ocean."
"Always," Sara said as she placed her arm around his waist.
A/N: One more chapter! We appreciate hearing from you!