Page 7 of Married By Midnight
“Alright, miss.” Dell turned to leave. She could hear his boots thud against the wooden floors of the house. Suddenly, she heard them getting closer and he reappeared in the doorway.
“Miss? I know it ain’t none of my business, but your father was my friend. My best friend. Treated me more like a brother, than my own brother.”
“I know, Dell. You are family, no doubt about that.”
“You father didn’t trust banks, no how.”
“What do you mean?”
“His money? He buried it.” Dell scratched his head. “The way I reckon it, that money now belongs to you.”
“Buried it? Where?”
“Well, that’s the funny part,” Dell said, crushing his felt hat between his gnarled hands. “He didn’t say where. I know that he would get enough and then bury it.” Dell looked up at the ceiling like he was trying to recall a memory that was buried deep inside. “Always on a night with no moon.”
“No moon?”
“That’s when he would bury the jars. The darkest night of the month.”
“Thank you for that information, Dell,” Sarah said. “You are a good friend.”
“T’ain’t nothing, miss.” The footsteps sounded down the hall until they disappeared, followed by a door catching on the spring.
Buried. She needed to go back through her father’s items and see if she could find any truth in what Dell said.
She never recalled her father or mother saying anything about burying money, but then again, they were closed lipped when it came to financial matters. Since Mr. Mathews said that her father had closed his account at the bank… well he had to keep his money somewhere.
She would need to go back into his office and see what she could find. In order to do that she would need something for courage. Since she didn’t drink, she made herself a cup of tea and then headed into her father’s office.
The office was just as he left it. It was a large room with windows that overlooked the road and the barns. Her father wanted to see what was going on in both places at once.
There was minimal clutter in the room. Just a few pieces of furniture, a stone fireplace, and a painting on the wall. A large desk sat in the middle of it. Sarah remembered practicing her letters at the desk as her father reconciled the accounts. There was a sideboard with a hutch. Behind those glass doors were books that she and her father would read together.
There was nothing that she enjoyed more than curling up on her father’s lap and putting her head on his shoulder while he read to her about far away worlds and tales of bravery. She wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve.
Putting her cup down she went to the fireplace and arranged the logs just the way her father taught her. Stuffing a few pieces of tinder between the logs, she then struck a match and watched the small twigs curl up. It only took a moment for the fire to chase away the chill in the air.
Sarah looked around the room and decided she should start at the sideboard. Opening the doors to the hutch she ran her finger along the spines of the books, allowing the memories to wash over her.
There was a stack of papers on one of the shelves, so she pulled those out and put them on the desk. The rest were books. Closing the doors, she started looking through the drawers for any clues she might find.
She found a few leather journals that she put aside. She would take those upstairs and read through them this evening. Adding a few more papers to the stack on the desk, she moved her search to the desk itself.
Inside the desk was a ledger and a pencil and a lithograph. Sarah flipped it over. It was a picture of her and Lacey. She remembered the day it was taken – a man had come to town to take photos of Creede. He also offered his services to anyone who would pay five cents for a lithograph. Momma insisted on paying for a picture of her two children riding a rocking horse. It was one of the many props the man had. Sarah would have preferred one with the monkey that traveled with the man, but her mother was insistent that they sit on the wooden horse.
Sarah cracked a smile—the lithograph captured five-year-old Lacey exquisitely. From her curly blonde hair to her twinkling eyes, everything about Lacey radiated happiness. She was especially happy before she died, as Lacey had found love at a mere seventeen years of age. And it was no surprise. Lacey Abrahams was extremely beautiful. There was rumor that her beau was going to propose when she turned eighteen. That would be in just a few weeks.
Sarah looked at the photograph again. Yes, Lacey was beautiful, and sweet and kind, and all those things that Sarah wasn’t.
She tried to pretend that the comments she heard in town didn’t hurt her, but they did. “Poor Jacob. Blessed with two daughters, but only one is attractive enough to tempt a man.” Her momma referred to her as a late bloomer. Now, at twenty-two, she resigned herself to be a spinster.
She slid the picture in her pocket and pulled out the journal. It was a list of figures and symbols. It made absolutely no sense, but what she could determine was that the figures were dollar amounts.
Perhaps there would be something to explain it in the journals. She placed the ledger on top of that pile. There was nothing else in the desk, so she sat down and started going through the papers she pulled from the cabinet.
Her father kept meticulous records. There were receipts for every purchase since they owned the farm. There were bills of sale for every crop harvested and sold. But there was nothing that told her where he hid his money.
Sarah put her head in her hands. She had been through every drawer, every scrap piece of paper and nothing she found mentioned anything about buried money.Think! Think! Think!she chided herself.
