She was eighty-two years old. Her children were in their fifties. Neither was married, nor living with anyone, though the woman's daughter had given birth to a boy many years ago, allowing the baby to be adopted.


Her mother had remarked it was the best thing to do.

Not long afterwards, ten years in fact, the daughter seemed to have decided sexual events required arduous effort, never letting on to anyone if she occasionally regretted her decision about the adoption when the years began to go by.

'Children,' she might remark as if she was discussing a foreign species.
One of the reasons the mother did not disagree with such a philosophy was that their father had disappeared when the children were growing up, resulting in her having to take a full-time job as a shopping attendant when they were still at school.

Her arrival home at night in those days saw she was too tired to consider another relationship, factors which appeared to be passed on to her children.

Change was now in the air, starting with the children visiting the mother at the home they had grown up in each week for more than a month. They were unsurprised when a neighbour informed them one day she had been taken to the local hospital. The daughter was almost pleased since it showed the mother could no longer look after herself as they had been warning her for months.

They visited her together.

After a week of hospital visits, the mother stroked her daughter's face one evening and said, 'you can do what you want with the property, even if I point out you grew up there and it means something to both of you. Neither of you are stupid so I'll leave it up to you. As you know, it's on valuable inner city land so developers will gather at the door as thick as bees for the honey.' She paused before staring from one of her children to the other. 'That's all I have to say on the matter of the will and testament.'

The children were impressed. It was a speech. They gathered on either side of the bed, each of them holding an arm and gently stroking her hands. She was exhausted, eyes drifting away as the heart monitor rose and fell in alarm on jagged slopes.

'Mum,' said the daughter. 'Is there anything special you'd like us to do for you?'

They looked at the mother, wondering if she was already out of the room in the nether world beyond. Each searched for a smile or a grimace, only to find she lay there on the bed, looking small and vulnerable, which she was, passing away in front of them at 11.03 pm.

Not another word was said.

The children judiciously arranged the funeral of the mother over the next few days, including a small notice in the local newspapers with her birth and death dates, along with their presence as a grieving son and daughter. They tried to think of a poem but all they could come up with was:


Mum was much loved by all, We often had a ball.

They did not use it due to a feeling of falsity. None of them had had a ball and any other rhyme was just as bad, such as we were often cool, or we used to shop at malls.

Nineteen people came to the ceremony, just before the cremation, including four relatives the children had never met before, and were never to see again.

'She had a strong ticker,' said one of them.

'A good innings,' said another.

'Always was a hard worker,' mused the third relative.

'I knew her well,' said the fourth relative. She turned to the children, looking them up and down as if to see if it was worth the effort. 'We went to the same school a few years ago. She was in the older class where she was the brainy pupil, especially as a spelling bee. She could out-spell the rest of the school put together.'

The four relatives all nodded, simultaneously gazing at the large clock on the wall and deciding they would leave without another word being said.

The children watched them go, sighing as they gazed around the remaining few people. If anything was to bring the father back, it would surely be the funeral of the mother, either for a final farewell, or in the vague hope a bit of the property he had once been part of might be his, even after all these years.

Family members often come out of the woodwork when a deceased's property is divided up.

Partly due to an unnerving feeling each of them felt over the funeral, they never returned to the house of youth until more than a month had gone by, both having agreed to have the house pulled down and a number of high rise apartments constructed on the urban site. It was larger than a double section in size by modern property standards.


Red Bar, an excavation company, was hired to do the property clearance before the building began.

Shortly after the excavation of the property began, the foreman of Red Bar made a discovery of public notice. Knocking down the old house and clearing the garden had been straight forward, even when the dust was still on the site and it was hosed. It was during the process of evening out the site when the discovery was made. This was when the ninth truckload of dirt was about to leave, requiring only one more load of soil.

By now the ground of the site was almost even with the furthest basement point of where the house used to be, and was about to be dug up and rolled flat by the grader.

At this far basement position a skeleton appeared, dirt falling off the bones when the skull popped out of the soil as if to say 'hello' to the newcomers.

The foreman called the police to let them know of the discovery, then the property owners, even if the skeleton seemed old enough to be from the last century.

It was.

Two hours later, as the afternoon sun was lowering in the west, a detective asked the owners of the site, 'any idea who the skeleton might be?'


The brother shook his head.

The sister did not.

'Do you know this person?' added the detective, given the woman appeared to be murmuring incoherently to herself.

She nodded, before saying, 'I always wondered if our father really did leave home.'

The detective blinked. 'You think the skeleton is your father?'

The sister looked at the brother as if she was only talking to him. 'You were twelve at the time I had the baby.' She continued matter-of-fact. 'Dad was the father. He used to get into bed with me when Mum was out, and you were either playing outside or Dad gave you some money to go to the shop for sweets.'

'You never ate them when I returned and offered you some,' he replied.
She stared even more at him. 'He was either going to blame it on me, or turn you into a marshmallow he used to say. I never thought Mum believed me when I told her who the father of the baby was. Now.' She gazed at the skeleton before nodding. 'After the baby was born in a hospital ward for illegitimate babies, I returned home to find Dad wasn't there. He'd run off due to never being strong on responsibility Mum said. Everyone believed her.'
'If what you say is true he didn't run far,' said the detective.

She continued her description, almost as if the skeleton was releasing these words. 'Later that year I found arsenic in the cupboard and asked Mum what it was for. Mum said she found the droppings of a large rat, leaving the poison out to kill him. Only took a few days to get rid of the rat she told me.' She suddenly smiled. 'She reckoned the house smelt better once she killed the rat.'

'You believed her?' asked her brother.

'Not once did she mention this was anything to do with Dad and what he'd done to me. As I say, I never thought she believed me when I told her who the father of the baby was.' She shrugged. 'I didn't think it was worthwhile arguing about it anymore.'

The detective intervened. 'The skeleton isn't necessarily your father.'

The sister regarded him as if she was watching an idiot who was unable to understand the obvious. 'Mum had that far away look in her eyes when she told me about killing the rat.'

There was a slight pause. 'Truth is often in a far away look.'

Simultaneously, they stared downwards.

The skeleton rolled backwards on the soil, not so much like a sigh as returning the look, jaw wrenched open and nailed in that position. The skeleton appeared mortified nothing could be said on its behalf and it wanted a go at letting them know how it had got there, especially if they thought it had once been a rat.

---

Return to CONTENTS