Emelina begins shuddering and shaking like I have never seen her do before. The thought that the other skeleton is her nephew is too much, and she is overcome with grief. Abe holds her tightly while Erin and I circle them both in our arms. A lunch napkin with a smear of jelly on it will have to do until Samantha retrieves a box of tissues. Em ages before our eyes again. Her DNA will prove it soon enough, but in our hearts, we know what happened to Andrew Bidwell. Wife and husband disappeared without a trace fifty years ago, and two sets of remains are found within twenty feet of each other, hidden behind a wall. This is too much of a coincidence. Two homicides. Everything grinds to a halt. We need to tend to the oldest living Bidwell before any talk of how this changes the investigation can be hashed out.
Finally, Emelina comes up for air. “When we learned that Antoinette was murdered, I didn’t think for a moment Andrew had anything to do with it. Remember I was there for the three months after she vanished until he disappeared. He was lost without her. He became more and more sure that something bad had happened to her when no one heard from her. We talked about it for hours. He just didn’t know what happened or why. He was onto to something, and he died because of it.”
Over her shoulder, Erin gives me shrug as if there may be more to Andrew than Emelina’s belief in her blood relative. After all, blood is thicker than water.
“For the longest time, I thought the chief of police wanted to arrest Andrew when none of her friends, co-workers, or family heard from her. Andrew was upset about something and was supposed to meet the chief to clear the air. He was never heard from again. Not a word, not a letter, nothing.” In the backyard, the snow persons stand silent guard with their backs to Emelina. They have as many answers as we do at this point.
“Let me tell Ken to come here. I don’t want him to be alone either,” I say. No one argues with me. As much as my man would like to put this all out of his mind, I know he can’t keep it bottled up inside. I think that as much for my sake as for his.
I text Ken back that he should come to Erin’s home. This time we will offer him comfort and succor and not lay a Joe Friday “just the facts, ma’am, just the facts” on him. After all, he didn’t have to send me any of these awful new photos. It was his way of reaching out to us and acknowledging what we were doing today.
When I think for a moment, I realize that I am reeling from the new discovery. More importantly, is this going to kill my oldest and longest friend in Milford? I have never seen her so bereft. Is it better to take her to her doctor for a sedative? Should we take her home? No, it’s better that she be here with us. She can lay down in one of the kid’s beds. What about Ken, discovering two sets of human remains in less than a week? That is something that no one should have to go through once, let alone twice.
I don’t know what I am feeling or thinking now. Part of me is screaming that I should be horrified at what my husband has stumbled into, yet another part of me is trying to make sense of what clues this new discovery affords us. My mind is working like a blender trying to make a smoothie out of blueberries and ball bearings.
Luckily, Abe is getting calmer by the moment. After the shock of the discovery, he is focusing entirely on our friend. “Emelina, dear, we have to breathe. Let’s breathe in together and breathe out.”
They start, then Erin and I join in. Deep inbreaths and deep outbreaths. Slowly, her sobs become less frequent and less severe. The color returns to her cheeks, and between blowing her nose several times, she gains her composure, then bursts into tears again, so we repeat the process until she is cried out. All the while we focus on our breathing. This process settles my mind as well. I stop the racing thoughts and concentrate on my breath. My body begins to relax. The tension leaves my neck, shoulders, and upper torso. My stomach and bowels are still clenched, and maybe someday I will learn to relax them too. I am positive that is where I bury my deepest feelings.
A voice interrupts my thoughts of white puffy clouds I remember as a little girl lying in the warm grass on a summer’s day in the bucolic English countryside.
Abe says, “You are probably right to assume it’s Andrew, Em, but there is a small chance it is not. You need to keep that in mind. You don’t want to suffer needlessly. We are here for you. How can we help?”
“Abe, just by being here with all of you helps.” She looks Erin and me seated across the table. “What if I was home alone and I got a call from Detective Shafer?” she asks.
None of us wanted to ponder this possibility. We tend to think of our spry elder as always upbeat and curious what the new day will bring to her. I’m afraid that this revelation may be too much for my dearest friend.
She says, “I am better staying here with you. I am not sure I can help much, but I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Erin and I disengage and move to the kitchen. “How are you feeling, Mommy?” she asks.
“Your father and Emelina’s worlds are rocked by this second bunch of bones. Daddy never wanted to see another skeleton again as long as he lived. And Emelina, look at her.” I shake my head. “I feel sad for them, but—”
“You are still trying to figure out how the body rolled up in the carpet stuffed in a closed-off coal furnace is connected to the body in the steamer trunk sitting next to it?”
I nod.
“Me, too, but let’s help Daddy and Emelina, and then we can sort this out,” says the queen of compartmentalization.
“Emelina said something in there that made you shrug. What was that about?”
Erin looks over my shoulder to be sure not to be overhead, then pulls me to the other side of the Bose playing her favorite ‘90s mix. “What if Andrew strangled Antoinette and hid her body, then killed her lover and put that guy in the furnace?”
“The police chief figured out what happened and called him in, and that’s when Andrew decided to flee,” I reply, playing Watson to her Holmes.
“Somebody else would have to be reported missing.”
“What are the chances of there being record of that from 1970 still kicking around?” I ask.
“Do you think your good friend Officer Barney Williams can look?”
“Maybe. I can ask him.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, he will be busy with the second discovery today. The media will explode with this,” I say.
“Historic Mansion, House of Horrors. I can see the headlines already,” she says with a wry smile. Then she asks, “How are you doing?” She is like me when I hear someone deflect the question asked. I will keep repeating the question until they answer it. I didn’t answer her and talk about my feelings. I know, I know. I spend too much time in my head, and I don’t always check in with my heart. My meditation and yoga practice helps me realize that. When one’s mind whirls a mile a minute, it is tough sometimes to ask about those slippery and hard to describe things called feelings. I know where Erin gets her Attention Deficit Disorder from. I could never teach a book class. I needed to be interacting with my students on their level, even if it meant sitting or kneeling on the floor. Being in the moment with those kindergartners all those years forced me to focus on the matter at hand. Rote memorization of multiplication tables? Please. But give me crayons and construction paper, and my students and I could focus for hours.
I found out you could show me crime scene photos and I will ask a question no one else has. That’s when Erin said that I had a special gift. So maybe at one time I had the attention span of a five-year-old. I grew out of it, didn’t I? I stare at April’s drawings of unicorns on the fridge for a long moment and remember that I must answer Erin, who’s been waiting during my visit to elsewhere.
“Sad for them, but happy that we may have the answers to where Antoinette and Andrew ended up. I feel sad that two people were killed now, but I think that it will help us solve a half-century old mystery.”
“There are other possibilities until we get DNA, but I think it is safe to assume Emelina is right, that her slain kin were hidden in the basement never to be seen or heard from again. We can act on that assumption, but let’s not get tunnel vision.”
“Agreed.”
We return to the dining room to see Abe and Emelina seated side by side on two straight back chairs, silently meditating with closed eyes, hands in a simple mudra position, quietly breathing together in unison. Emelina has a slight smile on her face. Not quite what I was expecting, but Abe has worked his magic on me before. Not to interrupt their flow state, Erin and I head over to the laptops and super-deluxe printer/scanner/everything machine. I begin feeding the beast as she keystrokes bits and bytes into CaseSoft. Everyone needs to be doing what they are doing in this moment.