Fallen Stones (41 page)

At Jason's further request, Connie Franks had also taken over the responsibility of preparing dinners for the family, as well as school lunches for the two oldest children. On Friday night when Connie had to leave early, Jason would often order pizza or Chinese food from local restaurants and have it delivered in time for dinner. If there were not a sufficient amount of leftovers, he would also order out on the weekends. This had been going on for more than a month, and Jason didn't know how much longer he could allow it to continue. He tried to be as supportive of Stephanie as she had been of him over the past summer, and he really wanted to be, but her strange absent-minded behaviors were really beginning to concern him.

In the loft, Sammy sat on the floor in what had become his usual manner, staring at some mind-numbing children's video which Stephanie had left playing in the DVD player. He had most likely watched the video more than a hundred times, yet he still sat as if mesmerized. The fact was, he was not aware of the program and even if the TV had been turned off and its screen black, he would not have noticed the difference. The young boy's mind was elsewhere, a million miles away in a magical land where every young child's imagination would love to travel. Although he was staring at the screen with his glazed eyes open, his mind was in a wonderful place of candy cane trees and lollypop flowers; a place of vibrant colors, amazingly pleasant smells and a never-ending array of delicious tastes.

However, below the surface of this idyllic landscape, evil lurked. The incredible land of wonderful childhood pleasures was a lie, a falsehood, a sham, projected into the young boy's mind by the ghastly beings that inhabited the property. And deep in the back of his young mind, Sammy could sense the underlying presence of the evil, but try as he might, he could not escape the grasp of their control. Whenever he started to become aware things in the magical world might not be quite as he thought, he would be confronted with some other amazing wonder and would in turn be conveniently distracted once again, forgetting his concerns.

It had taken the creatures some time and quite a bit of thought to determine a way to render the boy unable to remain a problem for them. This was especially difficult since they needed to do so without taking his life. But they had finally come up with the appropriate distraction. They created a hallucination; an imaginary place where the boy could be sent every day in order to be out of their way and out of Stephanie's as well so that she could complete the work which they had arranged for her. When he napped, his mind also traveled to that same special place of childhood wonders. This was the reason he seemed to nap for such long periods; he had no need or desire to wake up and leave the miraculous land.

This diversion had been created to be a strictly temporary situation in order that by the time the two older children got home from school and Jason returned from work, Sammy would always revert back to his normal persona, never remembering a single thing about the fantasy world of amazing daydreams. But when he and Stephanie were alone, he either slept for hours on end or spent his time awake staring at the television screen like a mindless zombie, while she toiled relentlessly, cataloging and documenting all day long.

In the beginning of her project, before the current level of intensity had set in, Stephanie often felt guilty about not spending enough time with her family and using all of her time to concentrate on her research. But now, if someone were able to get through to her and was actually able to solicit a normal intelligible response from her, Stephanie would not have even recalled those same earlier guilty feelings. The project had become the most important thing in her life, the only thing in her life. It was as if everything else became second to finding out the mystery of her lineage. Sometimes the need to know was so overpowering, she felt as if she might not be in control of her own actions. It was as if she were being driven to work more, and to learn more; like she were a marionette and someone else was working her strings.

To a casual observer, it would have appeared as if Stephanie had actually switched roles with Jason and had taken his previous workaholic traits to an even greater extreme. He was no longer spending long hours on the job and was home every evening and on weekends. But then again, he had to be, since Stephanie had all but abandoned her family. However, if anyone at his job were to ask Jason about his new work schedule, he would simply say he was spending more time with the family. He would never tell them that he was substituting for his wife, or that something was becoming so very wrong with her and that he had to be home as much as possible. The truth was Jason had absolutely no idea where Stephanie's mind was of late. It seemed to him at times as if she were becoming someone else entirely.

Now hard at work in the loft, Stephanie looked closely at the screen of her computer where she had typed a version of the almost completed family tree, compiled from her scribbled notes on the butcher paper hanging over her drawing board. When she began the project she only had a few names listed; her own, Jason's, the kids', her parents, Jason's parents, her brother Charles, her Uncle Emerson and her great grandparents, Marie and Charles Livingston.

However, during the past several weeks, she had been quite successful at completing her side of the family tree. The private investigator Washburn hired had done an incredible job of compiling his data. She learned from the report, the investigator had been a man named Jake Malone. His name sounded more like that of a gangster than a private investigator, but she supposed with Emerson Washburn paying the bill, anything might be possible.

With the hopes of supplementing Malone's investigation, Stephanie signed up for several different genealogy web sites. Although they were chocked full of great information, she never learned anything above and beyond what she had found in the large box of photos and documents, which Malone had compiled. She suspected he too must have utilized the same web sites she had found.

She looked carefully at her family tree on the computer screen, examining it for what must have been the thousandth time. Her side of the tree started at the top with the Livingstons and ended with her present family. It also displayed the dates of birth and death for those who had passed away; at least those whose dates could be confirmed.

She likewise had completed most of Jason's family tree back to his grandparents, and although she had identified his great-grandmother, she was unable to find anything about who his great-grandfather might be. This was causing a particular degree of frustration for her. It was like she had a puzzle waiting to be completed but the final piece was missing. She knew this single missing bit of information was the thing that was bothering her the most. But for the moment, she decided to put that particular missing link out of her mind and go back to reviewing her own side of the family tree.

 

Chapter 28

 

During her research, she discovered the Livingstons, Dwight Charles Livingston and Marie Louise O'Hara Livingston, had produced three offspring, two boys and a girl. The family tree notations for the parents read as follows:

 

Dwight Charles Livingston born July 23, 1890

died December 19, 1922

Marie Louise O'Hara Livingston born June 6, 1892 died December 19, 1922.

 

Stephanie was troubled by the fact that both of her great-grandparents died on the exact same day. Nor was she able to miss the connection between their deaths and the deaths of their two sons as she reread the next entry on the tree just below that of the Livingston parents.

 

Matthew James Livingston born June 12, 1916

died December 19, 1922

Charles Edward Livingston born July 2, 1918

died December 19, 1922

Sarah Louise Livingston born August 15, 1920

died October 16, 1975

 

Stephanie wondered what might have happened to cause the deaths of four family members on the same day. She was particularly bothered by the fact that December 19, the day they all died was the very same day little Sammy had been born, only it had been eighty-eight years earlier. She hated coincidences, and they never failed to cause her discomfort. Yet over the past six months her life had seemed to become a series of never ending coincidences, and this was yet another one to add to the list.

Sarah Livingston, the only child to survive, had been the grandmother she had never known. Sarah passed away the year before Stephanie was born. She realized as she read the entry how close her family lineage had come to ending on that fateful day in 1922 when four of the five members of the Livingston family somehow perished leaving her grandmother, Sarah, an orphan at two years old. Whatever tragedy had befallen the Livingston family must have somehow spared the toddler.

"Unbelievable!" Stephanie thought to herself. "She was only as old as my own little Sammy." Then she realized she had stumbled upon yet another coincidence. A cold chill raced down her spine as she shivered thinking about the young child Sarah. She could not imagine her own baby boy growing up without his family. How horrible that must have been for her grandmother.

Stephanie had recently made an additional notation to the section on Sarah Livingston, when she had found a note among the piles of paperwork explaining how Dwight Livingston's younger sister, Amelia Livingston Miller had taken young Sarah to live with her and her family in Ashton, eventually adopting the child and raising her as her own daughter. The girl had taken the surname Miller, and the family had moved sometime later to the suburbs of Berks County.  

Continuing to follow the family tree downward, Stephanie read the next entry; the one indicating when her grandmother married her grandfather.

 

Sarah Louise (Livingston) Miller married

Stephen Edward Washburn June 8, 1943.

Stephen Edward Washburn died May 15, 1968.

The couple had two sons.

 

This was how the Washburn name entered the picture. The next entry on the tree showed the births and deaths of her father, her mother as well as her uncle Emerson.

 

Emerson Charles Washburn born August 7, 1945

Died April 12, 2012

Nathan Edward Washburn born September 3, 1948

Died July 20, 1994

Marie Stephanie Jacobs Born August 18, 1949

Died July 20, 1994 - wife of Nathan.

 

There it was again; another coincidence. Stephanie c
ouldn't help but notice the strange twist of fate in how the Livingston family not only lost four relatives in one day, but then many years later, her own parents died when struck by a drunk driver, resulting in a second listing on the family tree of multiple deaths occurring on the same day.

Once again, she wondered about the original Livingston family tragedy and what might have happened. She found herself both wanting to know and at the same time not wanting to know. She somehow understood the answers to her questions could be answers she might not really want to learn. She followed the chart further downward finding the listing for both herself and her brother Charles under her parent's names.

 

Charles David Washburn born Feb. 17, 1973

Stephanie Sage Washburn June 12, 1976

 

Stephanie had originally had the word "Died" with a blank space next to their names, but no matter how many times Stephanie looked at the entries, it bothered her to see that empty space next to the word "Died". So, she chose to eliminate it instead. She understood the idea was silly, superstitious and maybe even a little paranoid, but she felt better with it gone. She had the same opinions about cemetery headstones, which often had the name of a living person along with their date of birth and a blank for date of death. Although Stephanie knew she, like everyone else would die someday, the idea of having a spot waiting like a hotel reservation gave her the creeps.

She looked again at her brother Chuck's name above hers. "Charles" had been part of the male family members' names since Dwight and perhaps earlier. If they had been aware of Dwight Charles and the rest of the family lineage she might have understood, but she suspected her grandmother may have had little knowledge of her own history, yet somehow the name Charles had nonetheless traveled down three generations. It was yet another coincidence, and once again one, which did not make her feel comfortable whatsoever.

Stephanie hadn't been able to find anything about her family earlier than her great grandparents so she was unsure how far back the naming tradition may have existed. She looked at the next entry.

 

Stephanie Sage Washburn married

William Joseph Sanders on June 2, 1998

Cindy Marie Sanders Born December 12, 2001

Stephanie and William divorce March 22, 2003

 

She hated having this entry in her family tree because of the bad memories it dredged up, but she knew if this were to be an accurate historic representation, she had to post the bad right up there with the good. This was especially true since someday Cindy might want to conduct her own research and trace her father's genealogy back several generations, since his family history was hers as well.

Then she looked at the final piece of her side of the tree, her marriage to Jason and the birth of their son, Samuel.

 

Stephanie Sage Washburn Sanders married

Jason John Wright (born May 22, 1974) on May 16, 2009  

Stepson Jeremy John Wright born October 21, 1999

Son, Samuel Jason Wright born to Stephanie and Jason

December 19, 2010   

 

She hesitated again for a moment seeing Sammy's birth date. How strange it made her feel, realizing the date of his birth matched the date of the Livingston family tragedy. That was how she had begun to think of the mysterious event, the Livingston family tragedy. She had no idea what catastrophic series of situations might have resulted in the deaths, but understood they likely had been bad ones.