The cool New York air blew through the valley. Molly looked around the gas station. It was nicer than she had thought it would be. In her mind High Falls had always been stuck in the 1800s. No horse drawn buggies, not new paper boys running around. Just a quiet town nestled in the bottom of a valley. Sloping mountains covered in trees rose above them in every direction.
Molly's mother stepped out form the inside of the gas station. "Hey, sweetie, sure you don't want anything?"
"No, I'm good, mom." Molly looked back at where Billy was filling the car. "I think he should be almost done. Let's head back to the car."
"No, let's take break and just rest here."
“Mom, Billy and I need to get this solved if we can and then get back to school."
"Of course," Molly's mom said. "You're right. I was just enjoying the nice day." She looked down at the ground and walked towards the car. Molly followed. When they were all buckled in Billy turned to Molly's mom.
"Aunt Meghan, do you know where we're going exactly?"
Molly's mother shook her head. "Sorry, I've never been to the old estate. My Grandparents moved away from New York when my grandfather had a falling out with his older brother. We've never really tried to reconnect."
“I thought you said the family spilt up to keep hidden,” Molly said.
“It did," Billy replied. “But ours was part of the family that stayed with the property, at least until our grandparents.” He stepped on the gas and pulled out of the gas station. “Maybe we can stop at a post office to ask about the address.”
“Are we even sure our family still lives there?” Molly asked. “If we haven’t talked to them for decades then maybe they moved, or died off.”
“We can’t know until we either find them or find the estate,” Billy said.
The post office was just about abandoned. A single employee stood behind the desk doing paperwork. Molly and Billy pushed Molly’s mother towards the woman.
“Uh, hello,” she stammered. The employee looked up. “I was looking for the estate of VanKraft. I, um, I have business with them.”
The postal employee blew a bored bubble. “Right.” She turned to her computer and started typing. She stopped as her eyes went wide. “You want to go to the house in the hill? What’s wrong with you people?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Molly’s mother said.
“The house on the hThanks for the submission Peter! I am very interested to see where the story goes! I added some quotation marks, just be careful about having both opening and closing sets. Sorry for the late posting. ill, that place is crazy old and is part of some giant estate, but nobody from town goes there. Not even the troublemakers or drifters go there. What could you possibly want up there?”
“They’re family,” Molly blurted out. “They’re sort of cousins that we wanted to catch up with.” The postal worker looked like she didn’t believe Molly. “Any way, can we have the address?”
The woman scribbled the address on a sheet of paper and passed it over to Molly’s mom. “Here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t know if anybody actually lives there anymore, so the road up to the place is in pretty poor condition. So if you get in trouble up there nobody is going to be able to come to the rescue. Don’t go falling through any rotten floors.”
