It appeared to be the very same copy, which she had asked him to look at almost every night for the past several weeks. Each time she showed it to him he had done his best to be supportive. Whenever she would add a name or a date or some other insignificant tidbit of information she would show it to him acting as if she had discovered some rare and priceless treasure. He always tried to react with feigned enthusiasm, although he was honestly sick and tired of hearing about it. What had started out as a harmless little past-time project, had somehow evolved into a full-fledged obsession bordering on mania.
Jason glanced briefly at the document, not actually paying any attention to it, and with unplanned sarcasm born of his months of frustration, he asked sardonically, "Ok, honey. What new incredible historical fact did you discover that has gotten you so excited? Leave me guess...your grandfather was once a physician's assistant...no...no... Your great-grandmother had a long lost cousin named Bertha who knew someone who knew someone who once knew Abe Lincoln. I can hardly wait to hear the news." He hated hearing the cynicism in his own voice but it had been an exhausting week both at work and at home and he was stressed to the point of breaking. The last thing he wanted to do was to sit and listen to the wild ramblings of his fixated wife.
Stephanie's reaction to Jason's sarcasm was not what he had expected. He had assumed she was so caught up in her own world the comment would pass right by her unnoticed. Fortunately, the kids were too engrossed in the blaring television to pay attention to them. But Connie Franks was keeping an eye on the escalating situation with furtive glances from the kitchen. Stephanie noticed the woman paying what she felt was far too much attention to them so she stood abruptly, grabbing Jason by the wrist.
"Jason, come with me!" she said in a commanding tone, which caught him so by surprise there was little he could think to do but to follow her. She led him out into the hallway, past the family room and finally up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. Once inside, Stephanie shut the door and directed Jason to sit on the edge of the bed.
He sat quietly, looking attentively holding the family tree document while Stephanie paced back and forth impatiently. He could see something building up inside of her. She held a manila envelope in her left hand while repeatedly opening and closing her right hand in a fist. A change seemed to have come over Stephanie almost as if she were neither her normal self, nor her maniacal self, but another person entirely.
Her response came in the form of a concise and coherent tirade directed angrily at Jason through clenched teeth. "Don't you dare speak to me in such a condescending manner, acting as if you are trying to humor a rambling mad woman. I may be a bit involved in this research project, but I am most certainly not insane. In case you haven't noticed, I've been working myself ragged trying to find the final piece of this historical puzzle and I finally found it today. And for your information, Mr. Condescension, the missing link, the thing that has been causing me so much frustration, ended up coming from your side of the family tree...not mine. So why don't you keep your snide sarcastic comments to yourself and shut up for a minute, listen to what I have to tell you."
Jason was taken aback by Stephanie's reproach. She had never reacted in such a way before and he was unsure if she were simply overwhelmed by something she discovered, or she had finally gone over the edge. There was a fire burning in her eyes, the likes of which he had never previously seen. He cautiously replied, "Look... Steph... I'm...I'm...sorry...I shouldn't have been so smart about all of this... I know how important it is to you...please…forgive me...and please show me what you found out."
For a moment, Stephanie stood glaring at Jason with a wild rage that seemed to bore a hole through him. He was genuinely concerned that for the first time in their marriage she might be inclined as to pick up a sharp implement and plunge it into his throat. She had never even remotely made him feel that way before, and he had no idea what might happen next. Fortunately, after the brief moment of uncertainty he could see her anger fade and become replaced once again by her excitement about her discovery. Jason, again felt more comfortable as he watched her fury dissipate.
"Well," she began, pointing to the first of two typed sheets of paper he held. "Remember how I told you how my great grandmother and grandfather, Marie and Dwight, as well as their two sons, Matthew and Charles all died on the same day?"
"Yes, I do," Jason replied, adding, "We assumed something like a fire or illness or some other such tragedy must have killed them." Jason thought uneasily about the day several weeks earlier when Stephanie discovered actual documents, which led her to that particular discovery. At that time, when she had told him, he acted like it was the very first time he had learned about the coincidence of the four family members' deaths on the same day. Jason couldn't let on that he was already aware of it, not to mention the graveyard, the headstones and the probably significant of the name, "Fallen Stones". He had done his best to appear surprised when she had told him her news. He couldn't risk Stephanie learning about what he had found or how he had destroyed and buried the headstones so many months previously.
Back then, he felt he was doing what was best for Stephanie and face his family at the time, but now that she had become so involved with her family history, he was certain she would be furious with him if she knew he destroyed the headstones. In hindsight he realized perhaps he should have simply left the stones lie where they were. Chances were no one would have found them anyway and then he could now pretend to discover them and end up looking like a hero to Stephanie. At that time, however, he truly believed Stephanie would have been bothered, knowing about the graves. But back then his wife was a different person than the rambling, confused woman he now saw standing before him.
For a moment, he considered digging up the pieces and spreading them around in the tall grass. If he did that, then he could act as if he stumbled upon one of the fragments. Stephanie would assume they had gotten broken over the years quite naturally or, at the very least, by some vandal. They could then look for the rest of the pieces together eventually completing their reconstruction. Maybe he would still want to do this in the spring after the ground had thawed. But he needed to give the idea more consideration. He could wait and see what Stephanie's frame of mind was by then. Living with her in her current level of agitation made spring seemed like it was years away.
He said with a degree of hesitation, "Well...did you finally learn what happened?" He tried his best to sound as if he too wanted to learn the truth, but he most certainly didn't. He recalled how back when he had found the gravestones he experienced many strange sensations and even had suffered hallucinations. No other such events had happened since that time and he didn't want to open any doors, which might lead to a potential reoccurrence. But he somehow knew even before Stephanie told him what she learned, the story would be a bad one and might change the entire dynamic of their lives together forever.
"It's much worse than what we could have ever imagined." She said. Then she began to tell him about Maria murdering her two sons.
"Oh my God... what are you saying?” Jason interrupted. "How could you possibly know this? How...how did you come by such information?"
Jason felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach. All of the strange messages he had seen carved on the tombstones now started to make some bizarre sense to him. "Taken from us by the hand of evil" he thought to himself. That had been the message on both of the young boys' grave markers." At the time, the statement had seemed so mysterious and cryptic. Now it made perfect sense. The "hand of evil" was Marie Livingston's own hand. She had murdered the two boys.
Jason exclaimed, "Oh my word. This is all so horrible! But... what..."
Stephanie stopped him midsentence. "Wait. There's more... much more.” Then she continued with the tale telling Jason of Dwight’s murder of Marie.
"Oh my Lord!" Jason said but was unable to say another word as he stared at his wife with his mouth agape.
"There's still more," Stepha
nie said and told him of Dwight’s suicide.
"Unbelievable!" Jason exclaimed. "I can't imagine such a thing." But now many things suddenly began to make sense to him. The way the two boys' headstones were located separate from their parents; the fact that Dwight and Marie were segregated from the official cemetery and most of all, the cryptic inscriptions on their tombstones. It was all so clear to Jason now. He was overcome with sadness for his poor wife, having to discover such a horrible secret.
Chapter 34
"Oh, baby... Oh my God. I'm so, so sorry," Jason said, as tears began to well up in his eyes. He reached out to take Stephanie in his arms but she resisted. She surprised him by being neither upset nor overwhelmed by the information. Instead, she wore the excited look of someone who had made a miraculous discovery.
"Jason, look at me. I'm fine. And in case you didn't notice, I'm not a baby, and there is no reason to treat me like one," she replied stepping away from him. He was a bit surprised by the reaction as he had often used that particular term of endearment towards her previously, but he decided to let her unexpected comment pass for the moment. Then Stephanie began to pace rapidly back and forth, gathering her thoughts, before finally turning to Jason to tell him the rest of the story. "There's more, Jason. And I'm sure you're not going to like what I have to tell you."
Jason slumped back sitting on the edge of the bed. He didn't know how much worse this story could possibly get. After all, what could surpass a family murder and suicide? Stephanie's strangely calm demeanor unnerved him and since he was unable to read her, he braced himself for whatever news she was about to deliver.
"What more could there be?" he said. "That was some of most horrible news you could have discovered and it's a major black mark on your family history. No wonder you had such difficulty finding out the truth. I would imagine no one wanted this type of news to come to see the light of day. Your family probably did their best to bury it.” An involuntary shudder ran down his spine upon hearing his own words. "Bury it?" Why had he chosen that particular phrase? He realized suddenly, if there had been a family conspiracy to hide the truth, he too had become a major part of it. He thought once again, about his own burying of the shattered tombstones; the fallen stones. Stephanie spoke up and interrupted his train of thought.
"You don't know the half of it, Jason," she replied with more than a pinch of anger in her voice; her eyes staring intently at him. "Members of your very own family played a major role in causing the deaths of my ancestors as well!"
“What? My family?” Jason exclaimed questioning. “What in the world would my family have to do with your family, let alone be involved in this mess? You just said that the tragedy was a murder and suicide involving your great grandparents. What does that have to do with my relatives?”
Stephanie interrupted him, “Jason, just listen.” Then she proceeded to tell him about the affair.
"Whaaa.... what? What are you talking about? That's... that's just ridiculous!... It's... it's not...not possible." He stammered as he rose to his feet.
Jason was pacing back and forth next to the bed, as if trying to absorb what Stephanie had just told him. Then he realized his problem was much greater than that. It was not that he was trying to come to grips with the news; it was that he was genuinely concerned about his wife's mental state. Obviously, she had suffered some sort of psychotic break and had been hallucinating. How else could she have come up with such a crazy story? He heard Stephanie answering his question.
She said, "Yes. Not only is it possible, but it's also completely true. Agatha Jefferson was Dwight's mistress. She eventually became pregnant with your grandmother and then had her baby out of wedlock. Marie Livingston found out about the affair and about Dwight's illegitimate daughter and the knowledge eventually drove her insane. Then in order to get back at Dwight she drowned her two sons."
"But... but... why would she kill her own sons? That makes no sense whatsoever." Jason said with a weak and confused voice.
"Dwight loved his boys incredibly. And in Marie's damaged mind it must have seemed logical that by her killing them she would be killing Dwight emotionally... or something along those lines I would suppose."
Jason stood by the side of the bed, shaking his head in disbelief and looking down at the floor imagining the two dead bodies. "I... I just can't get my arms around all of this, Steph. I can't believe such a thing is possible. And if it were true, that would mean we are distantly related."
"I know it's hard for you to accept, Jason." Stephanie said. "But it's true and we have to learn to deal with it."
"But how did you find out all of this?" Jason asked, his engineer's mind looking to find a solution to their situation. He would want to see the evidence of this tale and would need to corroborate all the facts before he would allow himself to get too upset over it. After all, it could just be a big misunderstanding; a mistake. He knew nothing as important as this could simply be accepted on someone's word alone. He tried again to get an answer from Stephanie. "Where did you get this information?"
She explained, "I found out about the affair from an excerpt from Marie's personal diary, written in her own handwriting. And then I learned about the murders and suicide from a newspaper article from 1922." She held up the manila envelope. "I have them both right in here."
Jason reached to grab the envelope from Stephanie's hand wanting to see the proof first hand but she quickly pulled it away from him. "Easy, Jason. This stuff is almost one hundred years old. It is very brittle and fragile. I will be happy to let you read it but you have to calm down first. I can't have you damaging the documents."
With frustration and a great deal of self-control, Jason took a deep breath and stood still for a moment, allowing himself to become calm. "Alright Steph. I'm ok now. I just want to read the letter and the article."
"Very well." Stephanie said as she carefully opened the manila envelope and slowly withdrew the three blank sheets of crisp white printer paper. She delicately sat them down on the side of the bed, one next to the other as if she were handling century-old documents from the national archives. Jason watched her with complete disbelief. Then she reached into the envelope once again and withdrew the newspaper article and gingerly set it next to the blank sheets of paper. "There you go Jason. Read them and know the truth, but be very careful, I haven't had time to laminate them or protect them yet."
Jason looked at Stephanie with confusion for a moment. Then he looked back down at the blank papers and the recent newspaper article. One again he turned to look at Stephanie. At first he thought this might be some sort of strange joke on her part, but she had never been prone to doing such things before. Then Jason realized by the look in her eyes she was not joking. Stephanie really did believe these papers were ninety-year-old hand-written notes from Marie Livingston and the newspaper article was from 1922, not 2012.
He was not certain what he should do next. He was beyond confused, having never had any previous experience dealing with a situation such as this. Jason was both worried sick about his wife's mental state, but at the same time relieved to discover that all she had just told him was most likely untrue; just a figment of some delusional fantasy she was experiencing. He didn't know if he should try to explain to her that she was imagining everything or simply play along with her. If he tried to tell her the truth she would likely become angry and perhaps he might push her further over the brink of insanity. But if he said nothing he might be helping to fuel her delusions.
"Well?" Stephanie said, "Look at them, Jason. See for yourself what Marie wrote and you will understand that I am telling you the truth."
"Um...ok...just...just give me a minute," Jason said as he turned and bent over the bed. In that instant, he decided it would be best to play along for a while until he could figure out how he should handle Stephanie's situation. He knew now he was going to have to seek professional help. He was going to have to find a psychiatrist, psychologist or counselor of some sort. He didn't know how he wo
uld get Stephanie to talk to them, but things had gone way too far.
He pretended to peruse the documents, his hand clasped behind his back as if he were being careful not to touch them. As he did, he tried to estimate just how much time it would take to read a hand written document of this supposed length so Stephanie would believe he was actually reading something. He knew if he went too fast or too slow, she would sense something was not right and might become agitated. When he got to the end of the final blank sheet, he turned slowly to look at Stephanie.
She was standing next to him, observing him and nodding with a look of I-told-you-so on her face. "See, Jason. You see know what I was talking about. Now read the newspaper article."
So he did. It was a lot easier to pretend with the newspaper article, as it was an actual printed document. It was just not the particular story Stephanie thought it was however. The article was about a local woman who had written a historical book and had donated a copy to the Ashton Public library. Jason could sense Stephanie standing behind him, watching.
"See?" she questioned again. "Murder-suicide. Marie killed the boys and Dwight killed her then himself; all because of his affair with YOUR great grandmother."
Jason thought for a moment about how he should proceed. He assumed any newspaper article printed in that day and age would have only dealt with the facts of the case and would not have gone into anything such as an affair or illegitimate child.
After reading the article Jason stood quietly shaking his head. "Yes, Steph, you're right." he said, trying to sound convincing. "It just so awful; I'm certain the newspaper would not have lied."
"Of course they wouldn't have. They reported the facts as they were discovered."
Jason decided to take a chance based on his assumption about the newspaper. "But the article didn't say anything about any affair or any illegitimate child."
Stephanie said, "Of course not! They would never print such a thing! But you can plainly see it in Marie's journal entry. She knew about the baby and about your great-grandmother. You can tell by her writing the news was slowly driving her crazy. It was that affair which caused her to lose her mind and eventually kill her boys."
Fallen Stones Page 37