There Once Was a Young Couple

Isn’t it funny the perceptions we create of our neighbors? We wave to them each day, engage in small talk, and casually watch over them, their homes, pets, and children without a clue who or what they are. We believe the lives we pull together of them in our heads. There is the young couple two doors down awaiting the birth of their first child. The older couple across the street who putter in their gardens, and so on. We believe the myths we contrive as fact. Never questioning that they could be more than living a typical middle-class life.

Then something gives a little poke into the reality we created of them. It tips our thought process and makes us pause to give a second thought. “Hmmm, I didn’t think Jack and Mary would do something like that”. We ponder it a moment and then forget, moving forward with our typical middle-class life. Until one Saturday when the pondering lasted more than a moment.

Charlotte woke still fuzzy-headed trying to remember what day of the week it was. “Ah, not a weekday, it’s a Saturday,” she thought and smiled. She snuggled into her blankets and relaxed letting the sun slowly awaken her. James was still asleep next to her. She knew he would rouse soon but she did not want to rush it for him. As she became more awake she thought about their new venture that started today. Their home was built in the mid-1800s and had become run down over the years. She was an old Victorian, with a wrap-around porch, turret rooms on each floor, a beautiful staircase, and more. In its day, the house had been grand. They purchased it with the intent of restoring it to her beauty. The project started three years ago, room by room. Today they were starting on the attic by removing the wooden built-in shelves.

Charlotte worked herself awake to start the day. As she pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt appropriate for the work ahead, James said a sleepy “Good morning.” She replied with the same and instructions to stay in bed a bit. There was no hurry for him to get up.

The June morning was too beautiful to drink her coffee inside. She took her mug out onto the porch as Doby, their Cocker Spaniel bounded around the yard. He was secured by the original black wrought iron fencing in the front of the house. One of many treasures they had found as they began the restoration. Charlotte looked around the neighborhood studying the other houses that had been built about the same time as their home. Most had been restored or were in the same continuation of reaching grandeur as their house.

James and Charlotte never knew what gems they would find as they worked in each room. There would be wallpaper from the 1800s, letters slipped behind mantles telling of the senders’ travels. Each discovered treasure was saved in one fashion or another. Trinkets and toys were on display, letters in shadow boxes. It was important to the two of them to keep alive the past of their home.

Charlotte was wondering about what items they may find today. An attic seemed like a perfect place for the long-forgotten and overlooked to have slipped into dark corners. Doby’s excited bark interrupted her thought process. Gina and Donald, the kind, giving, older couple from across the street were outside, getting an early start on working their gardens. Their yard was glorious. It reminded Charlotte of English cottage gardens, filled with such flowers as roses, delphiniums, and bellflowers. Donald looked up and smiled at Doby’s good morning bark. He rose, shook the dirt off his hands, and came across the street to greet Doby in a high-spirited fashion.

Gina joined them. Charlotte invited the couple onto the porch to sit a bit and visit. She knew the conversation would not be long as the three of them had projects to tackle on this warm and sunny day. As they talked, James came out, also dressed in shorts and a paint-spattered t-shirt.

“Good morning James! You look like you’re ready to get into some dirty work today!” said Donald. “Oh yes,” replied James. “We finally made it to the third floor! Today starts the renovations of the attic.” Charlotte noticed Gina and Donald glance at each other as James spoke. Just for a moment, it made her question what caused the exchanged look. The thought quickly floated away as Gina and Donald rose to head back across the street to tend to their flowers.

After a quick breakfast, James and Charlotte excitedly made their way to the attic. The windows were open to give a nice breeze as they began tearing out the wooden boards. Charlotte used a large hammer and James had a sledgehammer that bounced the “slam, slam” throughout the attic. The pounding noise carried out the windows down into the yards below. Dust floated around the room and occasionally another piece of history was uncovered. Doby enjoyed the excitement in the room and would run the attic and throughout the house.

As they neared the end of tearing out the shelving, Doby ran up the stairs in a flurry of delight. Gina and Donald were following close behind. Gina was carrying large, filled glasses. “We could hear all the pounding at our house and thought you could use a break with some ice-cold lemonade.”

“Oh, that sounds perfect!” Charlotte replied as they stopped and thankfully drank the delicious lemony water. The dust settled in the attic as they stopped for all to admire the work that had been accomplished. “Have you found anything interesting yet?” inquired Donald. Charlotte eagerly showed them the picture of a young woman from the early 1900s, toy jacks, and a few other odds and ends. Again, Charlotte noticed a glance that she did not understand, exchanged between Gina and Donald. It made her wonder, “It looked as if they had a bit of relief on their faces.”

James was ready to work again. Gina and Donald watched for a few minutes as James swung the sledgehammer and more shelving toppled to the ground. They excused themselves and left down the stairs. Charlotte’s odd feeling had not left her. She went to the window and watched the couple return to their home. They looked as though they were in a deep conversation with their heads close to each other as they spoke.

Charlotte turned around to watch as James’s swing of the hammer hit a high shelf that had an unseen drawer built in close to the peak of the roofline. Wham! The sound echoed and the wood splintered. As it fell, hundreds of pieces of paper floated around the room as if someone had set off a giant confetti popper. Charlotte was trying to comprehend what she was seeing when she heard James say a quizzical “What the hell?” Her eyes focused on the papers dancing their way to the floor when she realized it was money! The treasures of all treasures!

James and Charlotte shared their shocked looks. “It can’t be real,” he said, as the money settled. They started inspecting the currency. It was a mixture of fives up to one-hundred-dollar bills. “There’s several thousands of dollars here, Charlotte! How, why? Who put it here? We have been here three years, no one has ever come looking for it. Oh my gosh, Charlotte, I just can’t believe it!” She stared at him as his face shared expressions of shock and excitement in one look.

Then Charlotte put two and two together. “James, I think someone has come looking for it. Donald and Gina. I realize it now. They were giving each other odd stares this morning when we told them we were starting in the attic and again when they asked if we had found anything up here! Were they wondering if we had found the money? If it was theirs, why haven’t they said anything? This is all so odd.”

James sat down and started counting and studying the bills. “It looks like there is about twenty thousand dollars here. Wow! The dates on the money are all from the 1940s and 50s. It’s been sitting here for quite some time. Why? Wouldn’t have someone wanted to have spent it? Or put it the bank? What was the need to hide the money in a spot no one can find? I don’t understand.”

As James started to raise himself from the floor, his hand hit a small book that must have fallen with the money. A small black diary. The two sat together as they read the contents. It was the notebook of a young man named William Blakely. He was seventeen when he started his journal.

There were entries one would expect to find of a teenaged boy from the 1950s. Football games, sock hops. They quickly got bored and jumped ahead in the book. There they found the day Gina and Donald, the young couple that moved in across the street. William became rather smitten with both, wanting to be just like the handsome, worldly Donald and admiring the beautiful Gina. He spent as much time with them as he could.

As they continue to read, they saw the relationship was taking a dark turn. In William’s eyes, they could do no wrong and would do whatever was asked of him, chores in their home to running errands. They manipulated him using alcohol and cigarettes to make him feel like a man, not a teenage boy. Donald even introduced him to a woman that would have been called “fast”. William was a willing participant. After all, they are showing him how to be a man. William joined them at fancy parties with sophisticated and somewhat wealthy friends. He could not believe his luck the world had handed to him by the delicious neighbors that happened to move in across the street.

It was at these get-togethers, where people were drinking and with flirtatious smiles disappeared into other rooms, that William would watch as Gina casually slip a wallet from a purse or expensive baubles from a mantle. At first, he was shocked. Gina would giggle away his looks of despair at her actions. Soon enough she had taught him to do it. How to identify items of value. Eventually, in his mind, he saw no wrong in his actions. After all, if Donald and Gina could do it, it must be fine.

James and Charlotte put the book down and quietly sat pondering what they had read. James broke the silence with “They’re such nice people! I never would have thought such things of them. What happened to William? Where did this money come from? Did they rob a bank? Do we confront them? Call the police? I’m at a loss.”

Charlotte stroked James’ hand and replied “We don’t do a thing. There is nothing to report to the police. Their thefts of wallets and all are long gone and over. Perhaps William’s conscience wouldn’t let him spend the money he stole. We don’t know.”

She rose and went to the front window and watched the elderly couple as they weeded their gardens. She pictured in her mind a young version of the couple, wondering how far down the path they had taken William. A young, long gone boy she was now feeling needed her protection.

“But it’s most important that we don’t let Donald and Gina know we found anything. Now is the time we do a bit of our own stealing, stealing their history. We start studying them, learn what we can of them and William Blakely. We don’t know what we may uncover of the sweet, adorable older couple that lives across the street.”

“What could be buried under the roses, delphiniums, and bellflowers?”