Bringing Mae Flowers

Part 3

I started by digging through property records and newspaper clippings from the city. Within an hour I knew the basics; for starters, Rose had been right about the name “Young”.

The house was built in 1906 by the Young family after their original family seat had been destroyed in a fire. The estate was once a large, prosperous orchard that grew apricots, peaches, apples, and pears, but a string of bad luck caused the family to sell off bits of the land a little at a time. By 1906 the Youngs had been reduced to a few hundred acres. After the Depression, they lost even that farmland and were reduced to the half-acre lot and a shack that once housed their lowest-paid workers- the small ranch-rambler house that haunted me today.

I skipped both breakfast and lunch as I drowned myself in their sordid past. The more I learned, the darker it became. The patriarch started as something of a war hero, “protecting” pioneers with a ruthless efficiency. He was well rewarded for his efforts. He was granted land and prestige that quickly corrupted the family. It started small: a gossip article here and there about infidelity and social faux pas, but the accusations escalated quickly when Sarah entered the Young Household.

The grainy black and white photo was hard to make out, but I could see her long dark hair tied into two braids down her back, and could see how dark her skin was compared to the bearded man who held a heavy hand on her shoulder. I could only imagine her face, and the expression she made at the camera, so I imagined that her face was as stiff and uncomfortable as her body language.

The Ute girl the Youngs brought into the big house as something between a foster daughter and a servant. She was listed on some census as a daughter of John Young, but it was unclear if that was true. Some gossip columns made some speculations about her when she first appeared, but they had a lot more to say when she disappeared.

“Sarah Young, foster daughter of John Young, thrown out of the house in disgrace.”

“Miss Young, snake in the garden? New evidence emerges about Miss Young’s illicit affairs…”

“Sarah Young, love child or lover? Witnesses confirm the rumors of Miss Young’s delicate condition..

“Sarah Young, love child of John Young, seen selling her hair at the local barber. before boarding a train headed east…”

My throat tightened and my eyes stung as I read the gleefully cruel gossip columns.

Some articles claimed that Sarah was John Sr’s lover. Others claimed she was with John Jr, or one of the other boys. Some said she was John Sr’s daughter who brought shame to the family- and some of the more salacious articles implied that all of the above was true. The speculations ran wild, but they could agree on 1 thing: by all accounts, when Sarah boarded that train, all she had were the clothes on her back, the baby in her belly, and bruises on her face.

After the flurry of articles written about Sarah, the Young family appeared in the paper less and less. There were articles here and there about their slow decline into obscure poverty, and the occasional mention of suspicious deaths and freak accidents. The most recent mention I found of the Young family at all was the obituary of Kevin Young from 1989. Before calling it a day, I moved from newspaper archives to the public database. After a few false starts, I found what I was looking for.

It was later afternoon by the time I finished my online investigation. I was tired, and my joints ached from the lack of stimulation all day, but I felt elated. I was about 100 times closer to solving my little mystery, because it turned out that the house’s current owner hadn’t moved far from his ancestral seat.