“This is the place in the painting.”
“The place in what painting?” Adam asked.
Recovering from surprise, Jennifer managed, “I can’t believe it. I must be mistaken. Jay, would you mind getting the painting from the car?”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, I think so, but it can’t be.”
As he walked back up the hill, they heard Nathan’s metal detector ping. They all watched as he narrowed the pinging to one spot, forced his weed digger into the spot and levered up a divot of soil. Crumbling the dirt away with his hand, he crowed, “Look, it’s an old bullet.” They crowded around him for a look.
Adam walked ahead. “Here’s the place we want to show you. This opening in the trees. “The big rocks inside almost look like an altar. How do you think that smaller crescent-shaped rock fits in? Don’t stumble against it. It’s sharp.”
Becca stepped into the circle and just as she climbed on to the boulder, rays of sunlight cut through the overcast, spilled through the trees and haloed her with its glow. “What is it?” she asked, seeing their amazed faces.
“There’s…,” Nathan searched for words, “…there’s an other-worldly feel here.”
To her surprise, Jennifer said, “Indians thought this a holy place. Now I see why.”
Jason gave her a sharp look. “And how would you know that? Have you seen this place before?”
“Only in the painting and…my dreams.”
Jason shook his head. “In her dreams? What next?” Switching to a subject he understood, he asked Adam. “What’s your construction plan?”
As he answered, Adam led the way toward the stream. “First, excavators will remove the burn debris and dig up the old foundation. Hannah wants to save those original stones to use in the new fireplace and in our rock garden. Then the builder lays the new foundation. I’ll show you our blueprints up in the barn, in case you have suggestions. We want a walk-out basement with big windows to bring in sunlight—no dank subterranean feel like…,” he faltered as a twinge of boyhood memory flickered across his mind, “like the one in the original house.”
“When do they begin?”
“Two weeks. Nice little creek, huh?” As they studied the gently running little stream, the metal detector pinged again. Nathan again focused on the exact spot and dug in with his tool.
This time, as the chunk of earth in his hand crumbled away, he held up a belt buckle.”
Nathan touched Adam’s arm. “If we’re finding things randomly like this, you really should measure it off in quadrants and go at this scientifically. This may have been a Civil War camp site.”
“Could you show me how?”
“My dad sure could, and I could help.”
Becca arrived with the framed picture and Jennifer held it up for them to see. “I think she’s right,” Hannah agreed. “It’s an amateur drawing but no question it’s this scene. Where did you get this, Mom?”
“At an estate sale in Great Falls.”
They snickered. “Well, of course. We should have guessed. That’s our Mom, the garage sale diva.”
Adam looked up the hill. “Okay, if you’ve seen enough here, we have a picnic waiting up by the barn.” He led the way.
When they reached the upper driveway, Jason helped lift coolers out of the car. “Will you keep the barn?”
“Only during house construction… to store materials and provide shade on hot days before the roof goes on the house. Then it comes down.”
Becca mused, “Instead of bulldozing it, why not salvage the barn wood to panel the basement walls? That shabby-chic look makes a unique statement, and the weathered grain would give a soft, gray textured background.”
Hannah smiled broadly. “Oh, I like the idea. Unique and practical.”
“Some people buy used bricks and wood from old building demolitions,” Jennifer added, “to preserve the materials but keep them functional.”
Hannah tucked the cooler into shade near the barn. “They call materials salvaged from old houses ‘architectural artifacts’. All kinds of stuff like hardware, stained glass, doors, chandeliers, columns, statues and more.”
Becca put the food baskets in the shade also. “So you’ve already looked into it?”
“When you’re about to build a house, which you do maybe once in your lifetime, you research a lot. Architectural magazines are full of ideas for using these artifacts. Some owners find a round window or stained glass feature or other odd pieces they insist their builder or designer fit into construction. That’s too fancy for what we have in mind, but I really like Becca’s idea about the barn wood.”
Jennifer couldn’t resist. “And salvaged artifacts are another way to recycle things instead of junking them.”
Becca turned to Nathan. “Uh-oh, Mom’s on her soapbox again. Recycling is one of her excuses for haunting those garage and estate sales.”
Nathan turned to Jennifer. “You know, my mother’s a garage saler, too.”
“Well then, she and I have more in common than thinking you’re a nice guy.”
“Why, thank ya, ma’am.” Nathan gave a convincing John Wayne imitation, thumbs stuck into his waistband.
Grammy winked at John Wayne. “You know the famous Will Rogers quote?”
Nathan shook his head.
“’Never squat with your spurs on.’”
When the others within earshot stopped chuckling at the quote, Hannah asked Grammy, “How was the trip from Florida to Virginia?”
“After all the confusion surrounding the move, getting here was the easy part.”
Jason asked Grammy, “Do you plan to buy a new car to replace your Mercedes?”
She considered this. “Jury’s out, but probably not. I don’t expect to drive much anymore. You and others offered to take me places while I live across the street, and the senior place where I move will offer transportation service. So I guess I’ll just hang on to the insurance money when it comes.”
Several murmured encouragement for that decision.
Adam turned to Nathan. “Want to take a closer look at the burned house?”
Activating his metal detector, Nathan cautioned, “The ground around the outside of the burn site is solid, but poking around in the ruins is risky and dirty—those black soot smudges are hard to wash off. Ask me how I know.”
Becca swatted him playfully. “You little fireman, you.”
“Shall I bring along the detector?”
“Absolutely,” Adam said as all but Grammy walked to the site.
Jason tried chipping away at one of the foundation rocks. “This isn’t a poured slab and cinderblock basement. These are stones and mortar and they’re in solid. How old was the house?”
Adam scratched his chin. “Records don’t go back about the original house because there was no building code then. People could slap together whatever they wanted on their land. The Yates family owned this farm property over a hundred years and two other farmers owned it in sequence before that. As for the house, looks like each owner added on instead of tearing down and starting over.”
“So this original foundation could be a couple hundred years old?” Jason calculated.
Adam kicked the wall. “They built them to last back then. Not the kind of construction some contractors get away with now.”
Jason admired the workmanship. “When you build it yourself, as this owner must have, only his best effort would do.”
“Or what was at hand that he could afford. Although Hannah and I have grand ideas for our house, many special features are too expensive for us. But we do plan to take turns coming every day to watch our builder’s progress, so we expect good results.”
Jason looked at the stones. “Think of it: this structure survived a couple hundred years of thunderstorms without a lightning strike burning it down. But you two moved here, and it finally happened.
“Think of old cobblestone streets and dwellings in Europe dating back centuries, and eroding pyramids, intended to last forever. Each constructed one stone at a time by human hands—just like this old foundation.”
He put an arm around his son-in-law’s shoulder. “If home is where the heart is, yours will be a fine one indeed.”