From the upcoming book, “Haunted Heirlooms: Antique Dealers Reveal Their Stories”
On last week’s post, Sam the antique dealer and his wife Alice hosted a dinner for their close friends, Dan and Melinda, fellow antique dealers in the state of Maine. During dessert, they continued their discussion of a print which Dan and Melinda recently acquired. Dan has decided to give the print, a lithograph, to his best friends. Surprised but pleased, Sam and Alice accepted the expensive gift and hung it in their drawing room. Sam’s father and his mother visited and were recovering from cataract surgery. Upon examining the print, now graciously displayed, his parents end up passing away, both from an unexpected heart attack.
Continuing now with Chapter 2 :
I tried as best I could to get rid of it.
That’s why I’m here again in the late fall of 2011, when everything and everyone is gone, dead or dying: like THIS, our old parents’ summer house at the edge of Bar Harbor. The house itself seems to be dying not literally, but unless I get it repaired, it may in fact fall apart like my parents did.
In the space of one summer, one suddenly had a heart murmur and then the next week, that pale and dry summer, the pale and dry rose garden of my mother finally unyielded buds – and my mother gave way to a heart attack right after her cataract surgery. Dad died right after and my siblings thought it was from a broken heart. Now they’re both gone and my heart too is broken, feeling betrayed by their sudden death and the betrayal of two good friends who gave us a gift we do not want.
Why?
First, I need to sell what was my childrens’ grandparents’ summer abode, being the oldest. It’s cold enough and no one – Jerry, Siobhan or me, wanted to drive up here, this town, this house, which presented us with an even briefer summer than Kittery. None of the kids liked it back then and even now. Jerry’s girls hated the drafty isolation. Siobhan is Siobhan. My two natural siblings who came shortly one year after another after I was adopted, agreed we should sell it. Sam, Jerry and baby sister Siobhan always agreed on everything.
Since the parental summer house was always dark, dreary and cold, I thought I’d bury the print up here. Like attracts like. A dark, dreary place deserves a dark, dreary print. Forgive me, Mom. Dad, I know you wouldn’t and would call it a waste to do that to a rare antique. Our values are just so vastly different. You’d say sell the print – that lithograph – but Alice and I just want it gone. It is just way too coincidental how you saw that print right before you both died.
But there’s more, Mom and Dad. The lithograph WALKED back to the house. Really, Sam, our beloved son? Yes, I can almost hear you ask that question, Mom. I never did get to ask you what you saw, Mom. Now, it’s too late.
