My Story, Part Three

“Come on, it’ll be dark soon,” Melissa headed out the door and toward the corner.
Mom always said they lived in the best location possible. Right on the corner was Roxbury, where they lived. Across the field from them was Roxhill, their elementary school. Across the street Fred Meyer, a gas station, and their doctor’s office. The doctor was getting very old, and whenever they had to see him, Mom always reminded Laura to speak up and breathe loudly so he could hear. Even with the stethoscope, he had trouble hearing.
Laura hated doctors, hospitals, any thing associated with them. She had asthma, and lots of memories of waking up in the night, wheezing, unable to breathe. Mom would have to pile her in the car and take her to the emergency so they can put her on the breathing machine. Sometimes, and this made Mom mad, the drive was enough to help Laura’s lungs work properly. The drive was always calm, quiet, peaceful, and it calmed Laura down and she could breathe again. Mom hated arriving at the emergency room with her breathing fine. Like a false alarm.
Laura also remembered the time she’d had her tonsils take out. She had to stay the night at the hospital. There was a vague image in her head of seeing her family right before the surgery, but it was really fuzzy. She’d been sitting in a wheelchair, drugged up on who knows what, and there they were. It was like in the movies, when they put Vaseline on the edges of the camera to make it look like it glowed. That’s the snapshot in her head. A fuzzy, glowing family.
Maybe that was after the surgery. She didn’t remember. But she didn’t have much trouble breathing anymore. Mom told her that she’d almost died a few times when she’d been a baby. Stopped breathing. Even had to ride in an ambulance one time. Another time, her aunt Linda did CPR. All in all, she was a really lucky child. Still alive.
Miranda had asthma, too. Dad smoked. A lot. What would you expect?
Dad didn’t live with them, but he always stayed over on Christmas Eve. Laura couldn’t remember when they were together, but that didn’t bother her. She never thought to ask the questions. Never really wanted to know. Things were fine the way they were. During the school year, she spent most weekends at his place in West Seattle. Other weekends, she’d go with Mom and her other siblings to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s in Bellevue. To the haunted house.
Laura had never seen a ghost herself, but she could still hope. The back rooms at Grandma’s were the most haunted. Sometimes, when she went back there by herself, she felt like someone was watching her, like there was someone there she couldn’t see. She hoped it was Shelly, the little girl ghost. But she never felt comfortable when she went back there alone, so it had to be the man in the black top hat. Or the crazy old woman searching for Shelly.
Laura shivered thinking about it. It would be great to see a ghost, but she wasn’t sure she could handle that. She usually went to Dad’s place anyway.
But at Grandma’s they always picked blackberries. Her and her cousins and siblings would go and pick blackberries. Aunt Rosie, Grandma, and Mom would take the gathered berries and turn them into a pie. There was always vanilla ice cream to go on top.
Grandpa would teach them how to catch bumblebees in large soda bottles, or ants in a jar. Laura didn’t think anyone loved Grandpa more than her and her cousin Nathan. He was the world to them. Once he’d taken them fishing. Nathan had been ecstatic, and Laura had thought it would be fun. Turns out, with fishing, it was mostly sitting around and waiting, something she wasn’t good at. She still liked to help him collect worms though. Lightening rods in the ground.
But there was the garden. Grandpa had a garden in the backyard. A very large backyard, mostly hill, with a plum tree right in the center. There were strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and a compost covered in flies. Laura thought the compost was interesting, and Grandpa said it made the best dirt. The compost was near the very old, run-down truck.
The truck spoke of magic to Laura. As far as she could remember, it had never worked. It sat there, rusting, and Laura couldn’t figure out why he kept it. He said it was because of the bag of gold stuck between the seats. She didn’t see any gold.
“Right there, far down. See that brown bag?” Grandpa pointed. “That bag is full of gold. Someday I’m going to figure out how to get it out of there, then we can be rich.”
Laura looked again, and this time there it was. Small brown bag, something Robin Hood would have attached to his belt. Awe filled her, and an excitement. They had a bag of gold coins, just out of reach. She swore she saw it shimmer.
“How do we get it?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t thought of that, yet,” Grandpa replied, adjusting the cowboy hat on his head. He was never without that hat. He may live in the city, but he hadn’t always.
“How did the gold get there?” Laura whispered, fearing the bag of gold would disappear if she talked too loudly.
“Trolls,” he told her, absolutely serious. “Trolls put that bag there for safe-keeping. They didn’t think I would be able to see it. Troll bags of coins are invisible to grown-ups, but that’s the joke on them. I never grew up.” And he laughed.
“They were trying to hide it from you by putting it in your truck?”
“Yeah. And if we ever find a way of getting it, we have to be very careful they don’t find out it was us who took it. Wouldn’t want a mad troll after us. They can be pretty fierce.”
“I’m not scared of trolls.” Laura paused, thinking for a moment. “Maybe, if we took a coat hanger, made it straight with a hook at the end, we can put it between the seats and grab that bag with it.”
“Good thinking. We’ll have to try that sometime.”
She couldn’t remember if they ever did try poking it with a clothes hanger, but that truck held magic for Laura. The old, blue truck with the bag of troll gold.
It was a house full of magic. Ghosts, troll gold, gardens, and the leprechauns that lived in a magic world in the walls. Carrie had the key, but we never found the keyhole.
Carrie had what looked to Laura like an old, antique key, something from a Victorian mansion. She said it belonged to the doorway into their special world, where leprechauns were nice, and no taller than Erin. She said when they finally found the right keyhole to that world, the leprechauns would celebrate their return by making a great feast of cakes and goodies and chocolate on a long table with a table cloth. They would stand there around the pretty dessert table in a green field, blue skies and rainbows behind them, maybe even flying horses in every color.
Carrie, Laura, Erin, and Diana went through the whole house, trying to fit the key into every dent and crevice in every wall, but never found where the key fit. Laura dreamed of the place many times, hoping they’d find a way in. The dreams were beautiful, but only dreams. It was years before she realized places like that just didn’t exist.

Morning dawned, bright and early, waking Laura...