‘Yeah, my grandfather—my father disappeared soon afterwards and now I’m trying to find him.’
‘Wow—you’ve sure got your work cut out. I just don’t have anything here that relates to the old house—not even any old paperwork or anything.’
‘I didn’t really expect that you would,’ Morton acknowledged.
‘I’m just trying to think if there’s anyone in the neighbourhood who was here back then and there’s just nobody that I can think of, sorry. The neighbours on either side of us are all relatively new.’
‘Don’t worry—thanks for your time, though. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Okay. Well, I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.’
Morton ambled slowly down the drive, absorbing his surroundings. He paused before he climbed into the car, taking in the view before him—exactly the same view as his father would have seen every day until he vanished forty years ago. He turned back to the house and imagined it as it would have been on that fateful Christmas Eve. Snow on the ground. Darkness but for the flames eating the house from the inside out. His father watching the building collapse. His grandfather trapped inside. What happened next? Morton knew that his father had gone to stay with a friend in the next street, from where he had written his final letter to Morton’s mother. It was time to go and visit that house.
‘No joy?’ Juliette asked, as he climbed back into the car and fired up the engine.
‘No—they don’t know anything. He said I could go inside and take a look around, but what’s the point? I might as well look in any old random place on the street.’
‘Where to now?’
‘Ocean Avenue—not far away.’
‘Where your dad stayed after the fire?’
‘Yep.’
It took less than two minutes to get there. As Morton swung into the drive, he knew he was in for another disappointment. The house was crippled by years—possibly decades—of abandonment. Among the wild undergrowth rose a broad grey three-storey building. On the floor around it were puddles of smashed glass, the open cavities an access point for a range of vermin now treating this place as home. Something—whether deliberate or natural—had torn a large hole in the roof, exposing the inside to further destruction.
‘Looks like the owner might be out,’ Juliette quipped.
Morton shot her a strong look. ‘I’ll just have a peek inside.’
‘Please don’t,’ she begged, ‘I can’t save you over here.’
It was a fair point; she had come to his rescue on multiple occasions back in England. ‘I’ll be two minutes,’ he promised. ‘And I won’t leave your sight.’
‘Just to warn you—I won’t pay the bail.’
Morton grinned, closed the car door and walked up the steps to the porch. He tried the front door. Locked, though God only knew why; anyone with the remotest inclination could easily have gained access. He peered through a narrow, glass-less window beside the door. As expected, the inside was dilapidated, ripped apart and, in places, burned. If he’d been alone, he would have climbed inside, just to see it for himself, to stand on the very floorboards upon which his father had also once stood.
He stepped from the porch and looked at the upstairs rooms. His father had slept up there, somewhere. But whose house was this? And where did his father go from here? This ramshackle building was his final clue. He stared at the house and, for the first time since leaving England, doubt crept into his mind. They were on honeymoon for three weeks, but with the final week being spent in New York. That gave him just one week and six days to find his father. A massive challenge, now that he was actually here, facing yet more setbacks.
‘I’ll find you,’ he whispered under his breath, turning from the house back towards the car. He climbed in and added the next destination to the GPS: Oak Neck Cemetery. Four minutes.
‘What’s there?’ Juliette asked. ‘Or who’s there, should I say?’
‘My grandfather—possibly my grandmother, too, for all I know,’ he replied, pulling out onto the quiet back streets of Hyannis Port.
The sprawling green lawns of Oak Neck Cemetery spilled down to meet the roadside. Morton drew the car to a stop and they both climbed out. The cemetery was large but the gravestones were sporadic, which didn’t bode well for him. In England, a sparsely memorialised cemetery was usually an indication that below the perfect lawns were thousands of unmarked graves.
‘You take that half in the sun and I’ll take this half in the shade?’ Juliette suggested with a smile.
‘Done. Remember—any Jacklin graves at all—give me a shout.’
He watched with a pang of tenderness, as Juliette made for the first memorials, seeming to float in her white summer dress and floppy straw hat. He really was a lucky man to have married her.
He turned to the first headstone. Dolloff, large letters shouted from the top of the granite. That was one good thing about modern American headstones—there was no need to get right up close in order to determine the name of the deceased. He moved along past a large pine tree to the next two stones. Clark and Walton, both replete with small American flags. Then he moved to the next row. Five more graves—none of them correct.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and marched along the next line. There were more graves here, but none for which he was searching.
‘Morton!’
He turned to see Juliette waving frantically at him. She pointed animatedly to the grave beside her. ‘Look!’ She’d found it. Despite the debilitating heat, he ran towards her. He reached her and glanced at the nearby graves. There was something he clearly wasn’t getting. ‘Isn’t that a funny name? Geoffrey S. Skull—Geoffrey’s Skull?’
‘Is that it?’
‘It’s funny,’ Juliette defended.
‘Hmm,’ Morton mumbled humourlessly, as he
