Chapter 2
I backed away with Maple until the farmhouse stood between us and the hill.
Then I called the sheriff.
I reported the moving handle, the open door, and the possibility that somebody was on the property. I did not mention ghosts. I did not believe in them, though my hands were shaking badly enough to make dialing difficult.
The dispatcher told me to stay away from the cellar.
I was happy to agree.
From the kitchen window, I watched the narrow black gap between the doors. Nothing emerged.
Deputy Lena Ortiz arrived twenty minutes later.
She listened while I showed her the tin and photograph.
“Have you checked the cellar since buying the property?”
“No.”
“Any contractors here today?”
“Just me.”
She asked me to remain on the porch with Maple while she approached the hill.
“Sheriff’s department,” she called. “If anyone is inside, come where I can see you.”
A scrape answered her.
Then a voice.
“Don't open both doors.”
Ortiz stepped sideways.
“Who’s there?”
“Elias Ward. I’m coming up. Keep back.”
An elderly man emerged slowly, carrying a flashlight and a canvas bag. He was thin, muddy, and breathing hard.
I had never seen him before.
He raised one hand.
“There’s bad air down there,” he told the deputy. “And broken stone over the lower passage.”
Ortiz made him put the bag down and move away from the entrance.
“Do you have permission to be here?”
He looked at me.
“Not anymore.”
“Not anymore?” I repeated.
“I used to work this vineyard.”
He seemed more interested in Maple than in my questions.
“She found the tin?”
I held it up.
His face changed.
“I hoped you’d get it before he came.”
“Before who?”
Elias looked at the deputy.
“Victor Bell.”
My uncle.
I had not spoken to him in years.
Ortiz called for another unit and a fire crew to assess the cellar. Then she separated us to take statements.
Elias said he entered through an old maintenance opening on the far side of the hill. He had come to collect documents from a dry shelf near the stairs.
When Maple barked, he climbed toward the main entrance.
“I heard someone outside,” he said. “I pushed the release bar. The door sticks. It only opened a little.”
The moving handle had a human explanation.
That should have relieved me.
Instead, I stared at the photograph.
“How do you know my uncle?”
Elias rubbed his forehead.
“Because his father owned this place.”
“My grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“My father never told me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Ortiz interrupted.
“Mr. Ward, why were you collecting documents?”
“Because somebody’s planning to destroy the cellar.”
I glanced toward my house. That morning, a demolition contractor had left a message about an assessment I had never requested.
I had assumed it was a mistake.
“Show me what you brought out,” I said.
Ortiz opened the bag with Elias’s permission.
Inside were three stained notebooks wrapped in oilcloth and a small wooden plaque.
BELL FAMILY VINEYARD.
My stomach tightened.
I called my father.
He answered cheerfully.
“How’s the new place?”
“Dad, did your family own a vineyard?”
Silence.
“Dad?”
“Why?”
“I found a photograph. There’s a boy beside a dog. I think it might be you.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Under an oak tree.”
He made a sound I had never heard from him before.
“Are you near the cellar?”
“No. A deputy is here.”
“Listen carefully. Stay away from it.”
“Who is Elias Ward?”
My father did not answer immediately.
“He was my friend.”
“He’s here.”
Another silence.
Then my father said, “I’m coming.”
He lived ninety minutes away. He arrived in seventy.
As soon as he got out of his car, Elias stood.
For several seconds, the men stared at each other.
My father looked smaller than he had that morning on the phone.
“You’re alive,” Elias said.
“So are you.”
I held out the photograph.
Dad took it and touched the boy’s face.
“That’s me.”
“What year?”
“Nineteen seventy-four.”
“Who buried the box?”
He looked toward the oak.
“I did. Four years later.”
I felt the ground shift beneath everything I thought I knew.
“Why?”
Dad glanced at Ortiz.
“Because I thought nobody would believe me.”
Elias stepped closer.
“I looked for you, Tom.”
“They said you’d left.”
“They told me the same about you.”
Ortiz watched them both.
“What happened here?”
Dad turned the photograph over. His eyes filled when he saw the warning.
“I was fourteen,” he said. “There were drums stored in the cellar. My mother found out they were leaking into the ground.”
“My grandmother?” I asked.
He nodded.
I had grown up believing she died before I was born.
“What happened to her?”
Dad closed his eyes.
“My father said she was ill. Then he said she was gone.”
Elias reached into his coat pocket.
He pulled out a recent photograph.
An elderly woman sat beside a window, her hands folded over a blanket.
Dad stared at it.
May you like
Elias spoke quietly.
“Your mother is still alive, Tom.”
