← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Nicole And The Box In The Barn P.28 ✨
00:17:35
A bedtime series for kids and their families
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- [00:09]
A
Hello, friends, and welcome to Sleep Tight Stories. Nicole and her mom have found out more about the man in the photo. After talking to Angus. Nicole is at the beach with her friends and she enjoys herself. When her mom picks her up. She senses there is something that Nicole doesn't want to talk about. When Nicole speaks to Angus, he tells her things that makes her feel worried. Nicole and the Box in The Barn Part 28. Late October on Prince Edward island was not exactly beach weather. The wind was coming off the water in a way that made Nicole's eyes water. The sand was cold and packed hard underfoot, and the chips Emma had brought were in serious danger of becoming a seagull's lunch every time a gust came through. But there were five of them walking along the waterline. Nicole, Emma, Tyler from their lunch table, and two grade 8 kids named Brianna and Josh, who seemed to know everyone. And nobody was complaining, so Nicole wasn't either. She'd learned that this was apparently just a thing people did on Prince Edward island beach in October. Sure, why not? They weren't swimming. They were throwing rocks mostly, and arguing about whether Tyler's flat stone had actually skipped four times or three, and eating chips between gusts. Normal stuff. Nicole realized somewhere around the halfway point of the walk that she hadn't thought about Donald Dunn or the third figure in the barn doorway or the initial D in her father's journal for almost two hours. That felt like an achievement. Tyler was attempting to find the flattest possible rock, which meant he'd been crouched in the same spot for about four minutes while everyone waited. This is it, he kept saying. This is definitely it. Each time he said it, Brianna ate another chip. Tyler, emma said finally. Just throw a rock. You don't just throw a rock. You find the right rock. There's a difference. Nicole laughed. She hadn't thought about it before, but laughing with people you'd only known for a few weeks felt different from laughing with people you'd known forever. Easier, maybe less. Like you had to earn it. She was mid throw when Emma fell in to step beside her. My gran wants to meet you, by the way. Nicole watched her rock skip twice and sink. Oh yeah, she heard you were living on the McLean farm. Emma picked up a stone, considered it, put it back down. She got pretty excited about it. Said she used to know people who worked near there back in the day. Nicole threw another rock near there, not on the farm near it. She's like that, emma said. Old island stuff gets her going. She probably just wants someone to tell her stories to. I'd like that, nicole said, and she meant it, which surprised her a little. A few months ago she would have found the idea of sitting with someone's gran, listening to old island stories completely boring. It's not something she would have done in Montreal, for sure. Things have changed. Cool, emma said, like it was settled. She finally picked up a rock and threw it, and it skipped five times clean, which ended the argument about Tyler Stone entirely. Her mom was parked at the end of the beach road, engine running. Nicole could see her through the windshield, reading something on her phone. She climbed in, sandy and cold, and pulled the door shut behind her. The car was warm. It smelled like the cinnamon tea her mom kept in a travel mug on long drives. How was it? Good, nicole said. Her mom glanced over while pulling out onto the road. But no, but Nicole looked out the window. Just good. Her mom didn't push it. That was one of the things Nicole had come to appreciate about her. She knew the difference between I don't want to talk about it and there's actually nothing more to say. The fields rolled past, red soil, bare trees, the occasional farmhouse set back from from the road, a few houses close to the road, here and there. Nicole put her hand in the jacket pocket. The compass was warm, warmer than it had been all week, actually, a steady, patient kind of warm, like it had been waiting for the beach to be over. She looked out the window. Angus, she thought, right after a lunch of grilled cheese, which hit the spot. Nicole put on her jacket and headed out to the garden. The door was where it always was, vines curled around the frame, wood warm under her hand. She took a breath and stepped through the shimmer. The different air, the smell of wood smoke and hay, and Angus standing by the gate. That was different. He usually came from the barn or the fields, appearing around a corner with dirt on his hands and something to show her he didn't usually wait. Hey, nicole said. Hey. He didn't move right away, just looked at her in that careful way he sometimes had, like he was deciding something. What's wrong? Nothing's wrong. Exactly. He turned and walked toward the hay bale, and she followed. They sat. He picked up a piece of straw, which she'd learned meant he was working something out. I talked to my father. Nicole waited about the man who worked the east field. Donald. He turned the straw between his fingers. I asked him what he remembered because I only had Gran stories, and Gran wasn't always clear on details, and Angus was quiet for a moment when word got around that a farm worker was asking questions about the garden. Too many questions. The wrong kind. My father went to the farm owner quietly. He didn't say anything specific, just that the man was unreliable. Not a good fit. Nicole looked at him. So your family got him let go. My father was trying to protect the garden. I know. She did know. She understood it. Even. The McDonald's had been caretakers for generations. Keeping the garden secret was the whole point of what they did. But he had a family, Angus. He would have needed that work. Angus nodded slowly. He wasn't arguing. He'd clearly been sitting with this himself, which was probably why he'd been at the gate waiting for her. Neither of them said anything for a moment. A chicken wandered past, determined about something. The wood smoke smell drifted over from the direction of the house. Nicole picked up her own piece of straw, turned it over once, and put it down. She wasn't angry. There was no one to be angry at. It had happened eighty years ago and everyone involved was long gone. But it had happened. And it had consequences that were sitting in a box of old letters in Marcus Dunn's gran's house right now. Okay, she said. What else? Angus looked up. He'd been hoping she wouldn't ask. She could tell. He took a breath. I told Margaret about Marcus. Angus put down the piece of straw. When you told me about Marcus, he said, about his connection to the farm, I was worried about it. So when Margaret came by, I told her. Nicole looked at him. When was this? About two weeks ago. Two weeks. I know he didn't make excuses. I should have told you sooner. I just. I wasn't sure what it meant. And I thought maybe Margaret would say it was nothing and then there'd be nothing to tell. But she didn't say it was nothing? No. Angus looked at his hands. She said the Dunns were never meant to find their way back to this place. That if one of them had, it meant something in the web had shifted. Nicole was quiet for a moment. The web. That was what the journals called it. Time. Not as a straight line but a web with everything connected to everything else. She'd read the passage so many times she could almost recite it. Did she say what that meant? Something shifting? No. She just said it was important. And then she was gone. He looked up. She does that. I know, nicole said. She stood up and looked at the garden door for a moment. The familiar wood, the vines, particular way the light fell around the frame, even here in Angus time. She'd walked through it so many times now that it felt like a door in her own house. Something in the web has shifted. She turned back to Angus. He was watching her with the expression she'd come to recognize as him, waiting to find out if she was upset. She wasn't. Not a him, anyway. He'd been worried, and he'd gone to the person he trusted, which was exactly what she would have done. It's okay, she said, and she meant it. But Angus, next time Margaret says something like that, can you tell me straight away? Even if you're not sure what it means? Especially if you're not sure what it means. Okay, he said. I will. She believed him. I need to go, she said. I have to talk to my mom. Her mom was at the counter chopping vegetables when Nicole came in. Something for soup, by the smell of it. The kind of dinner that meant the afternoon had gone long and nobody wanted to think too hard about what to eat. Nicole toed off her sneakers, hung up her jacket, and sat at the kitchen table. Her mom looked over. Something in Nicole's face made her put down the knife. She came and sat across from her. Nicole told her everything. The McDonald family getting Donald Dunn let go at the end of the 1943 season. Just a quiet word to the farm's owner. Unreliable. And that was that. And then what Angus had told Margaret and what Margaret had said back. The Dunns were never meant to find their way back to this place. If one of them has, it means something in the web has shifted. Her mom listened without interrupting. When Nicole finished, the soup was forgotten and the kitchen was very quiet. Nicole, her mom said carefully, do you think Marcus knows anything about his great grandfather? About the farm? I don't think so. Nicole thought about Marcus in science class, the cartoon cows, the easy way he'd said that it's so cool when he found out where she lived. He's just a kid. So are you, her mom said, not unkindly, just true. Nicole looked at the book on the counter, the third figure in the barn doorway, still unidentified, the initial D in her father's journal. Marcus sitting next to her in science class with no idea that any of this existed. I think I need to see what's in that box, she said. His gran's box. The letters. Her mom nodded slowly. How are you going to ask him? Nicole didn't have an answer yet. She'd been turning it over since Angus's farmyard, and she still didn't have one. You couldn't exactly walk up to someone in science class and say, hey, can I look through your family's private letters because I think your great grandfather might be connected to a magical garden. I'll figure it out, she said. Her mom picked up the knife and went back to the soup. I know you will, she said. And that is the end of this part. Good night. Sleep tight.