That morning, Jessica woke up feeling amazing. She was wondering what her friends would say when she told them the news. She sat up in bed and put her hand on her pendant thinking to herself, “Good morning mom, I mean Brenda.” She smiles and gets out of bed. She heads to the kitchen where she can hear her mom putting away dishes, she walks up behind he and kisses her on the cheek, “Good morning mom.” Missy turns around and is surprised to see how cheerful Jessica was. She was afraid that after everything that happened the night before sank in, that Jessica may not be adjusting as well. “Good morning to you my dear. Don’t you seem happy this morning? Would you like some breakfast?” Jessica cheerfully replied, “Why wouldn’t I be happy mom? I am the luckiest person on the planet. As for breakfast I think I’ll just grab some cereal before running out to meet the group.”
After eating her cereal, Jessica runs up to her room to get ready to go out. As she was walking down the stairs, she heard her mom on the phone, “She’s doing great Brenda. She is happier than I have seen her in a long time. I know. Well, I knew you’d be wondering so I figured I should call you. Yes. Okay. Well, I’ll give you a call later this afternoon. Talk to you then.” Jessica smiles to herself, knowing where she came from meant a lot to her. As she’s heading out the door she yells to her mother, “Love you mom, I’ll see you in a few hours.” Missy yells back, “Love you too, and be good.”
As Jessica heads off to William’s house, she is very excited to tell him the news. She was very close to William, and liked him as more than just a friend. She was sure William felt the same way, but he was just waiting for the right time to tell her.
Back at Williams, the secret William was keeping from Jessica was eating him up. He couldn’t believe he didn’t tell her right away that he thought Brenda was her biological mother. He told himself that when he sees her, he’s just going to tell her about the necklace. He’d come up with some excuse as to how he seen it.
Jessica arrives at Williams and knocks on the door then enters the house. She yells out, “Hello, William are you home?” She is walking towards his room when suddenly he walks out of the bathroom wearing a towel. “Hey Jess, I’ll be right with you. I just finished showering.” Jessica, a little red faced asks him, “Do you need a hand up there?” William turns back to her, “Very funny. Grab some juice from the fridge and I’ll be right with you.”
Jessica is pouring some juice as William walks into the kitchen, “Listen Jessica, there’s something I need to tell you. The other day,” Suddenly Jessica interrupts him, “Wait, I need to tell you something first. Last night, the old friend my mom was having for diner, it was Brenda.”
William is a bit confused so he lets Jessica continue. “During dinner, we had some wine, and when my mother brought in this pie, while we were eating our dessert and I noticed Brenda was wearing the same kind of necklace as mine. She put it on the table, and I put mine to it, and it was a perfect match.”
William, relieved that he didn’t have to tell Jessica he knew, looked at her real serious and said, “Wait a minute. Last night at dinner you had wine?”
Jessica slaps his arm: “I’m being serious. When we put the two heart pieces together, in side was the phrase, ‘my heart will never be complete without you’.”
William smiled at Jessica: “That’s amazing Jessica. Guess that explains a lot. Like why Brenda looks so much like you, and the similarities between the two of you with how you act and your interests. I think that’s awesome that you finally have that mystery solved about who was wearing the other half of your necklace.”
Jessica: “Isn’t it great? Sorry I interrupted you. What were you going to say?”
William just looked at her for a second, “It doesn’t matter. After the bombshell you just dropped, I can’t even remember what I was going to say. So, are you going to tell the rest of the group? I wonder what their reaction will be.”
William grabs himself a glass of juice and he sits down with Jessica asking her if she’s really okay, and if there is anything he can do for her. She explains that she is truly happy with what she’s learned and that she appreciates his concern. They continue talking for a while until there is a knock on the door and Matthew and Alexis walk in. Matthew shouts out, “William, where you hiding at?” William yells back, “We’re in the kitchen.” As they enter the kitchen, the see William and Jessica sitting on some bar stools around the island. Matthew looks at them, “So what’s up guys?” William just smiles, “Aren’t you guys just joined at the hip these days?” Alexis smiles at Matthew then turns towards William, “Guess some people know what they want in life a little sooner than others.”
William tells them to grab a chair and have some juice while they waited for the rest of the group. He asks how the fishing trip went. Alexis was quite excited as she was telling them about the fish they caught and how impressed she was with the patience Matthew had with her. Matthew was bragging about how big the fish Alexis caught were and saying how much he enjoyed taking her.
In a short time, the others arrive and they are all sitting around the island. William looked at everyone and told them there were a few things they need to share with the group. He figured Jessica’s news was most important so he asked her to go first.
Jessica told the group about the special diner her mother planned, and the unexpected guest being Brenda. She proceeded to explain about how she received a necklace on her thirteenth birthday that was from her biological mother, and showed the group hers. She continued about how Brenda was wearing the necklace that was the match for the one she had. She gave a brief description of how the Davis’s adopted her and why Brenda gave her up for the adoption. She then went into a bit more detail of the conversations they had afterward, and how she was going to be more like a friend to Brenda then a daughter.
When she was finished, the group just looked at one another. This was quite a bit to take in, and they weren’t sure what to say. Eventually Sarah said to Jessica, “I now know why I thought Brenda looked like you after we met with her. But that is one of the weirdest strings of coincidences I’ve ever heard of. So last week when you thought someone was watching you, it was actually Brenda who happened to see you a couple times and didn’t actually know who you were?” Jessica replied with a smile, “Yeah, I know. It’s been a weird week. I’m still processing everything myself.” Jessica looked at William, “Why don’t you tell them what happened at the old mill yesterday?”
Everyone’s attention turned to William. “Well, Brenda asked if Jessica and I wanted to check out the other buildings on the property with her on Sunday. She didn’t want to do it with a large group since most of the buildings were a bit rundown and she was afraid someone might get hurt. As cool as it was going through the old buildings, we really didn’t uncover a lot of new evidence. Before we were leaving, I asked Brenda if she knew of any reason why only one curtain of a set would blow up from the wind, so we went into the house to check it out.” William suggested to Jessica that maybe she should fill them in on her last dream?
Jessica agreed it would help what happen next make more sense. “In my dream, the one where Mr. Johnson took the gold from the wood pile to melt down, I forgot that Mrs. Johnson found a small sack of coins that he had missed when she was building the fire in her oven. As she was about to take it out to him, a pot started to boil over and she put the gold down to tend to the pot. I never did dream of her actually giving the last sack of coins to Mr. Johnson.”
William continues his story, “So we are in the old house, and I lift up the curtain that moved, and the one that didn’t. The one that didn’t move was a lot heavier. Brenda explained to us that back in the day, they used to put weights in the seam at the bottom of the curtains to keep them from moving. While I was checking out the curtains, Jessica and Brenda saw the reddish orange fog from the video materialize behind me and float straight at me.”
Jacob interrupted, “Did it push you over?”
William continued, “No, but I did feel a strong chill go through me that made the hair on my arms stand up. So anyway, I started looking around everywhere in that part of the room to see what the traveller didn’t want me to find. I noticed that there was a small hole in the bottom of the heavier curtain that a mouse must have chewed. Since I was curious as to what they used to put in the curtain for weights, I slid one of the weights to the hole. It fell out and under the sofa. When I moved the sofa, there on the floor was a gold coin!”
Matthew became very excited, “You mean you actually found the travellers stolen gold? How much is there? Where did you put it?” The other group members were also getting excited about the gold find. William then told them to calm down. He continued to tell them how Brenda explained it was actually the property of the city since they now owned the land. He also explained to them that it was a part of the town’s history, and should be shared with everyone. The group was suddenly deflated. Everyone looked like their best friend moved away or something.
Jessica decided to put the whole thing into perspective for them, “You guys didn’t know there was gold in the house ten minutes ago, and now you’re upset that you don’t have it? It doesn’t make sense. These coins were never ours in the first place. And if you did want to see them, you just need to go down to the museum.”
The group couldn’t argue with her logic. They slowly started coming around to the reality of the situation. Alexis looked at Jessica, “So if the Johnsons never sold the house to the Anderson’s, and since Brenda is a Johnson and her being your mother makes you a Johnson, wouldn’t that have made the gold yours?” Jessica replied to Alexis’s statement, “If is the middle word in life. Everything could be different “if” something else happened.”
Sarah was sitting there with look of concentration, when she suddenly said, “So Jessica, since you are actually a descendant of the Johnson’s, maybe that is why you had such a connection with the house and you dreamt all that stuff about them back in the eighteen hundreds. It would make sense that all that happened because of the family connection.”
William looked at Jessica, “Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? I was wondering myself why you were having the dreams you were. First, I thought because you read the notebook that your imagination was just working overtime. After we found the gold, I had to start wondering if there was more to it. Maybe there is some type of family connection?”
Jessica just shrugged. She’d had quite the week already and was not about to complicate it any more by joining the group’s speculation, as the facts of the week were crazy enough.
Mathew looked around at the group and posed the question, “What’s next?”
The simple statement caught everyone off guard. Samantha asked, “What did you say Matthew?”
Matthew repeated himself, “What’s next?”
The group realized that they were basically done with the old mill investigation, and now needed something new to investigate. They started trying to come up with the next thing to look into. Samantha mentioned, “I heard my dad talking about this crop circle that appeared on the outskirts of town the other day.” “Well, it’s something to start with. I guess we could go for a walk and check it out,” replied Sarah. The whole group decided it would be a good placed to start a new investigation. They finished their drinks and headed out the door. As they were leaving the house, Jacob asked, “So with summer vacation coming up in a couple weeks, maybe we could go camping somewhere and try hunting for Bigfoot, or try catching a Sea Serpent?” William laughed, “Maybe little man, we’ll just have to see what happens.”
As they continue walking down the street, they started asking one another how they thought the circles were made. There were suggestions that a prankster just made them, another of an unidentified flying object creating it, and one of it being a natural formation from a whirl wind. They didn’t know what they’d find when they actually got to the location.