Toys (continued - page 3)
Report by: Debra Pickman
Our last child left about 5:30, I sat down to do paper work, and Lisa vacuumed the rugs. By 6:00 Lisa was gone and I had turned my attention to my family. Tony and I were getting dinner ready in the kitchen when I took a few minutes out to check on Taylor who was playing in the living room.
On my way there, something on the carpet in the dining room caught my eye. There were about 5-6 rings, the sort that you would by a little girl, strewn in a small area on the other side of the dining room table. At the time I thought it was odd, but figured that one of the children I took care of during the day must have dropped them.
What was puzzling, however, was the fact that I know Lisa vacuumed the carpet after the last child left, and the vacuum trails could still be seen under the area where the rings lay on the floor. I had called Tony in to see what I had found, but he had no explanation for them either.
A few day later, as I crawled into bed, my toes felt something odd between the sheets. I reached under them to pull out a necklace of pink and white beads on an elastic string. Holding them up in mid air, I know I must have had the strangest look on my face as I wondered where on earth they had come from and how did they get into our bed.
All of a sudden it dawned on me. The items that I had been finding in the house were the gifts I had given Sallie. I had put all these things in the gift wrapped box in the nursery.
I jumped out of bed, crept into the nursery where Taylor was sleeping, picked up the box with excitement and brought it to bed, so Tony could see me open it.
The wrapping paper had been undisturbed, just as with the baby doll I had wrapped and given her the year before, and I just knew that I would open the box to find everything in it just the way I had packed it.
To my surprise, there were only two rubber jacks, left in the netted bag they were originally packaged in. One the cardboard hanger that held the beaded necklace and bracelet, there was nothing, however the bracelet was found elsewhere in the box; they had both been taken off the cardboard holder. The interesting thing was that the cardboard holder had not been torn in order to get them off; something that would have had to have been done. Also found was an empty plastic box. The sponge, that lay in the bottom with slits for the rings it once held, was empty. The only thing that seemed undisturbed in the box was the plastic high heel shoes.
Was she trying to let us know she was with us, was she saying good bye? Its hard to tell, but I believe that this was the last known activity of Sallie.
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