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Not so many were stuck together this time. There were only a few unreadable entries before she came across a clear one, just two months later.
20 January 1890
I spend much of my time preparing for our baby, sewing gowns from the flannel Benjamin ordered me from town with our supplies, and knitting. Ben has built me a rocking chair so I can sit outside in the sun. I don’t like to be stuck inside and I can no longer ride the boundary with him as I am too big with child to sit on a horse. I miss him, and look forward to the day our son or daughter is born.
Catherine’s eyes immediately returned to the garments in the metal box. The lovingly made gowns. The blanket. So much time and effort had gone into each piece. And for what? To never be used? To be buried in a box in the ground for one hundred thirty years, forgotten about? A sadness washed over her. A sadness so deep it pervaded her very soul.
The next entry in the diary was on the very next page. A page stained with tears. The writing was different to the other entries. The letters were big, crudely formed. Not Catherine’s writing. Ink blobs smattered unevenly across the page. The writer of this entry was far more careless than Catherine had been. She held her breath. This was the answer she had been looking for…
23 February 1890
My darling Catherine. My heart is broken. Today you died. You must have gotten disoriented in the storm and you fell over the edge of the cliff not far from our hut. Maybe the baby was coming and you were trying to find me, or go for help. I shall never know. It took a long time to find you; maybe if I had found you sooner I could have saved you. Forgive me for not saving you, my darling, for I shall never forgive myself.
“And then he drank himself into oblivion and threw himself off the cliff, so he could rest beside you. Now it all makes sense. That’s so beautiful!”
“It’s morbid.” Jason shuddered. “Is that what you saw in your dream—Benjamin Ryan jumping to his death so he could join his wife?”
“Yes.” Catherine nodded. “I think so.”
They were both silent for a moment. And then it occurred to her.
“What’s the date?” she asked.
Jason glanced at his watch. “The 24th.”
“So last night was one hundred thirty years to the day of the anniversary of their death. That’s actually really spooky.”
“Just a bit,” Jason agreed wryly.
Although the sun was well up now and it wasn’t cold, Catherine shivered as a sudden chill went through her.Someone just walked over my grave.Her mother had said those words often and she hadn’t thought anything of them at the time, but now she wondered at their significance.Not my grave,she thought.But a grave all the same. A grave for these memories.She didn’t want to hold them anymore. She wanted them gone. She wanted them buried again. Put back where they belonged. Now that she knew the secret, maybe the unsettled ghost of the distraught Benjamin Ryan would be able to rest in peace.
“Let’s put these back in the ground. I can’t keep them. They’re not mine.”
“Don’t you want to show the current Ryan brothers?”
“No.” Catherine was firm. “They need to go back in the ground. They shouldn’t be disturbed anymore.”
Jason looked at her strangely for a few moments and she thought he was going to object, to argue with her, but instead he just nodded. Understanding. The thing she loved most about him.
“You return them then, and I’ll fill in the hole.”
Carefully, precisely, Catherine arranged everything inside the box just as it had been when she’d pulled it out of the ground. The gowns. The blanket. The diary. The rings.
“Goodbye,” she whispered, pressing the lid closed. She lifted the box to her mouth. Kissed the front of it right where it closed. Then she leaned down and placed the box at the bottom of the hole, sprinkling a handful of dirt over it. The dirt trickled evenly through her fingers, landing in a little pile on the lid. Exactly on top of where the wedding rings would be.
Then she stood up, balancing on one leg against the tree as Jason filled in the hole, using the broad mouth of the spade as a scraper, sweeping the dirt in over the edge. She watched, her heart in her mouth as the dirt slowly landed on top of the box, covering it completely. Burying it deep, just as it had been for the past one hundred thirty years.One hundred thirty years exactly. That’s not a coincidence. None of this is a coincidence. I was meant to come here for a reason. This is what the dreams were trying to tell me!It was a relief. It was as much of a relief as it was spooky and illogical. Crazy. Impossible.It’s not impossible,the little voice in her head that wasn’t her own told her.
Jason scraped the very last bit of dirt back into the hole and patted it down firmly with the back of his spade. Because it was all dirt here, if someone looked from a distance, they wouldn’t even be able to tell that the ground had been disturbed. Unless the Ryan men were looking for it, Catherine knew they would never find the box. And they wouldn’t be looking for it, because they didn’t even know it was there.
Catherine reached for Jason’s hand, gripped it tightly. Squeezed. Their fingers entwined.
“So you did it, huh? You solved the mystery.” The pride was evident in Jason’s voice and if she hadn’t picked up on it, the proud smile plastered to his face left her in no doubt whatsoever. “I’m proud of you,” he said.
Turning to face him, still clutching his hand tightly, Catherine smiled up at him, leaning in close. Resting her cheek against his cheek. Breathing in the scent of him, absorbing the very essence of him.
“You helped me,” she whispered. “We did it together. Thank you.”
Jason dropped a gentle kiss to her temple. Something about him seemed different now, like something had shifted within him. Was it that he finally believed her? Relief that now the dreams would hopefully be over? She wasn’t sure. Or maybe it was her imagination and nothing had really changed at all.
