Chapter 19

Something was wrong with Mom, the girls and I could feel it, as did Grace and Grandma. Sandy did too, but not as strongly as us. She seemed ... nervous, for lack of a better word. We all talked to her, and it helped, a little. I was worried that maybe her time had finally come, and she was going to leave us for her well deserved rest.

“It’s got something to do with the Bible. Every time I take it out I feel her hovering. It doesn’t seem to make her angry, or sad, just ... anxious. She won’t tell me what it is. Maybe you guys can get her to tell you. Either way, I think she needs resolution on whatever is bothering her.” Grandma had known pretty early on something was going on in our house, but it took four months before Miss Agnes revealed herself, in a dream. She asked us who Miss Agnes was the next day and we showed her the portrait. “That’s her,” she said. “I dreamed about her last night. We had a pretty deep conversation, mostly about you guys. She’s an interesting woman.”

Knowing wasn’t accepting, and it took another few months before she came to terms with the situation. I walked into her room one day to see her staring intensely at a chessboard. “What are you doing, Grandma?”

She rolled her eyes and grinned. Jen seems to think I got my sarcastic wit directly from her. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m playing chess.”

“Against yourself?”

“No, dummy, not myself. I’m playing Agnes. And let me tell you, she is very determined to win, every time. We’ve played eight times so far, and she’s won six. Not much of a gracious loser either. She knocked the pieces across the room tghe first time I won, and I made her pick them up. I wasn’t going to get on my knees, I’d never get back up.”

“How do you know what moves she wants?” Grandma really did roll her eyes then.

“Well, when the piece moves from point A to point B, I’m pretty sure that’s what she has in mind. Now shoo, I think I got her this time.” I got a mental image of Miss Agnes concentrating, a frown creasing her forhead. She just barely acknowledged me as I walked out, grinning.

I thought about it for a while, and one Tuesday I took my bike out for a ride, the Bible in one of the saddlebags. I rode for awhile, enjoying the day, before stopping at a park and finding a picnic table in the shade. Not knowing what I was looking for, I started reading the birth, deaths, the names of the spouse they married, the children they’d brought into the world, their record of spouse and children right up to Mom’s generation.

Her birth and marriage were recorded, as were the births of all her sons. She recorded the deaths of her children, a few words splotched with was what I knew to be tears. She recorded the marriage of her last son and birth of their grandson. His was the last entry in the Bible. I sighed, having found nothing of any value. I picked up the Bible and walked towards my bike, looking at it and not where I was going, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when I stumbled over the tree root, but it did, and down I went, the book flying out of my hands.

I landed with a thump and did what everyone does when they do something stupid or embarrassing that doesn’t involve real pain, I looked around to see if anybody saw me. It was the middle of the week and the middle of the day, so the place was deserted. I brushed myself off and picked up the Bible, inspecting it to see if it was damaged.

That’s when I found it. The binding had come loose, and I could see something stuck in the flyleaf. I carefully pulled, and an old evenlope came out, from Agnes to her only grandson.

You know, I’ve always heard that when you experience a life altering event you either remember nothing but the event, or you remember everything. I could hear the insects around the little pond down the hill from the table, the occasional ‘rummp’ of a frog, the drone from the engine of the small plane that was circling above, the wind through the trees.