My name is Charles Fredrick Diesel, Charlie. This is my family’s story. On the surface, it is not much different from other families. I grew up happy and loved, but I realized early on that my parents had parts of their lives they kept secret. Something hidden in the shadows only discussed around town in whispers. Something so powerful that it could make my mother wake in terror.

By the time I started high school, I had become obsessed with finding out what was hiding in those shadows. I needed to know what triggered all those hushed discussions, and I prayed for a breeze to carry the “whispers” away.
Over the years, I listened to every anecdote my family told, recounting events as families do. It was the stories that they rarely told, stories that evoked emotions, only spoken in gentle tones, that I most wanted to hear, the times I did my best to eavesdrop.

I always had questions about my family, but it wasn’t until the summer before my senior year in high school that I started to answer them. I was able to break a code and access family files. Once I could convince those close to us that I knew “our secret,” that was when, and only when, they were willing to help fill in the information aroused by my curiosity. Even after all my resourcefulness and my snooping, I still had misgivings. I had trouble putting it all together. I still had more questions than answers.

My dad was the talker in the family, but even he “wouldn’t go there.” I had my own home and a family before I could get him to share, at least a little. We worked together on land that had been in our family for generations before my dad slowly started to offer enough to make sense of the events, almost enough to put the pieces together. In truth, there were always missing pieces, pieces that never fit.

My mom would never talk. I tried hard, but she would never acknowledge my questions. In her defense, she told me, “Sometimes it’s best not to know.” When all was “said and done,” she was right.