Buried Truth

I took a deep breath as Melodie and I climbed into our car for the six-mile drive to Tewksbury, a small town in northeastern Massachusetts. Tewksbury is the home of the Oblate Residence, a retirement home for Catholic priests in the Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. We had arrived in Massachusetts the day before, after a long drive from our home in South Carolina and had spent the night in a hotel in nearby Lowell. I was feeling weary, and wary. I had been working toward this day for twenty-five years and I still dreaded what was about to happen. I wore a dark suit and Melodie a dark dress, though the mid-June weather was hot and sticky. The first time in years that I’d worn a suit–but this was an important day, and we wanted to be respectful. News crews from Buffalo and Boston were shadowing our steps and we expected to encounter Oblate priests at the cemetery. We wanted everything on this day to be as respectful, as reverent as possible. I was anxiously hoping that all the planning, the commitments, permissions, and logistics were going to come together to allow us to find the answers denied us for so long. We arrived at the Oblate Residence on Chandler Street at 9:30 a.m. and met up with Dr. Ann Marie Mires, the forensic anthropologist we had engaged. We had spoken on the phone several times but never met in person. Ann Marie was key to what would happen over the next few hours—and the next few hours were key to resolving the tangled circumstances that had shaped the course of my life. I helped Ann Marie carry her equipment bags from the parking lot beside the residence toward the cemetery above and behind it. Many Oblate priests had been laid to rest there, one in particular whose repose we were about to disturb. As we approached, I could see a blue tarp stretched between some of the trees, blocking the view of the southern end of the cemetery. Sticking up above the tarp was the bright orange arm of a backhoe. I was sweating now, more from nerves than from the muggy morning heat. This was the last thing I had wanted to do, but secrecy, cynicism, and obfuscation had left me no options. On the path to the cemetery, Ann Marie, Melodie, and I were met by David Arthur, who introduced himself as the residence administrator. He was cordial and professional, about seventy years old, and using a cane. David told us, “The excavators have a policy that family members can’t be next to the site while work is in progress.” I was secretly relieved. I had no desire to witness what I believed would be a gruesome proceeding. Anybody embalmed and in a coffin for twenty-five years couldn’t be very pleasant to look at. David pointed to a park bench beside the oak tree-lined pathway leading into the center of the graveyard. He suggested that Melodie and I wait there.