Secrets of Bayboro Mansion

                                     

                                                                                 One

 

Aunt Betsy’s death haunted thirteen-year-old Jace Burke’s thoughts as he sat in the back seat of his family’s SUV. The winding Maine roads drew him back in time.

In his mind, he was six again. The buzz and clatter of nurses scurrying about the emergency room had pulled him to consciousness. His thoughts wrapped in cotton struggled to the surface, like a swimmer trapped under dark ice. Through hazy slits, he saw the face of a strange woman hovering over him. Though the face was unfamiliar, her eyes held a message of love and trust. He grew to know this woman as Aunt Betsy.

“Jace, I’m going to find a new home for you,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. “No one will ever hurt you again.”

He remembered how those words had made him feel—confused, happy, and scared at the same time. What he couldn’t remember—now or then—was who he was, or anything about his life before that moment. It was as though that day in the emergency room was the first day of his life.

Aunt Betsy kept her word, and a month after turning seven, Jace was adopted by a family from Florida. Charles and Kaitlynn Burke along with their two daughters, one seven and the other twenty, became the only family he knew.

Hoping for peace, he stared through the rain-streaked window of the SUV at a massive Maine forest. But the trees flickering by brought no comfort, just a carousel of images and questions with no answers.

Aunt Betsy was dead. Nothing would change that fact. However, how she died was a different matter.

Like a cry from her grave, the newspaper article announcing her death echoed in his mind.

Bayboro, Maine: The blizzard claims another victim. Police say Betsy Fletcher, 68, was found frozen to death in her home Thursday. This week’s storm took out power and phone service in much of Northeast Maine, leaving hundreds scrambling to keep warm. Officer Bill Sheppard said he found her while checking on the locals Thursday morning. “She apparently fell asleep and died of hypothermia,” he said. “There were no signs of foul play….”

Jace wrestled with the words in silence. Nothing made sense. Aunt Betsy grew up in Alaska. She knew how to prevent hypothermia, he argued against phantoms.

Anger over the police report churned like sour milk in his gut. Jace knew her death was no accident and if it took his whole summer vacation, he was determined to prove it. He owed her that much.

His parents, both police detectives for the Coral Cove police department in Florida, thought otherwise.

Unbelievable! Jace mused. You’d think they’d see—but nooo.  “I feel as bad as you do, son,” his dad had said, “but you need to look at the facts. She froze to death—it’s a terrible thing, but it isn’t murder.”

He and his sister Cailey had argued that Aunt Betsy had survived some of the harshest conditions on earth. Then, there was the matter of her last letter, in which she wrote about several break-ins to her home. No one had been caught. “A blind man could see the break-ins and her death are connected,” Jace and Cailey insisted.

They pressed their case for weeks, and their father finally relented and contacted the Bayboro police department. He spoke to the investigating officer, only to confirm what he already believed. It was a tragic accident; there was no sign of foul play. She had simply died from hypothermia.

The splash of a car passing in the opposite direction pulled Jace back from his thoughts.

He glanced at Cailey, who flashed him a look that said she cared. He returned a smile and a nod—happy to have a sister like her.