Wasting no time, we worked together to unpack as much as we could, setting empty boxes by the curb, before sunset.
Mom and I debated on whether I should go back to school right away. Given the time, it would only amount to a half day, but my face still looked awful. I emphasized I had enough going against me that I didn’t need to add a bad first impression to the list. She grudgingly agreed, not liking leaving me home with just Gran, but I figured it might just be safer than school.
We used the weekend to finish settling in. By the third day in the new house, everything went back to business as usual except for school. Though I appreciated the decreased swelling around my eye, the coloring remained so vivid in a small area that concealer did nothing to hide it. The edges of the bruised area progressively faded to a noxious yellow.
I used my day with Gran to study Belinda’s book. It worried me that this thing appeared to have taken such an interest in me, and I hoped I might find a clue somewhere in the worn pages.
On the first page, scrawled in shaky penmanship Belinda wrote the date August 17 1798. For a well-used book, over two hundred years old, it held together remarkably well. It showed signs of repair, none of it professional. Imagine if someone outside the family read it. Life for us was hard enough without inviting trouble.
The familiar words didn’t tell me much so I started studying the book as a whole. The penmanship varied in several areas of the book, none of it dated as the original pages. Meaning Belinda’s descendants had added to it.
In the family tree, no one noted dates of births or deaths, just a list of feminine names and connecting lines. No last names, not even Belinda’s. It made doing research on the internet very difficult. Everyone moving around often didn’t help either.
It never said ‘don’t write a last name’, or ‘don’t enter any dates,’ so why didn’t we put them in there? My thoughts went back to the possibility of someone reading it. Without dates or last names, who would take it seriously? Who would be able to glean any information from it to use to track down any of us?
Studying the tree, I noticed a pattern. I knew we only bore daughters, but not all daughters branched out.
It appeared that only one daughter out of each generation went on to have children. If Aunt Danielle had a baby, that child’s name had never been entered. I knew from talking to Aunt Grace that she’d purposely chosen a match where there wouldn’t be children. Is that what had been happening for two hundred years? I counted generations. I was the fourteenth. I cringed thinking how young some of the women had to have been when they gave birth.
“If you keep frowning at that book, it’ll burst into flames,” Gran teased walking into the living room where I lay dangling a leg over the arm of the couch.
“I can’t believe there’s so little information to go by. If it weren’t for the chant and me sleeping until sunup every day, I’d think this whole thing a fake.”
Gran nodded and made an agreeing noise before adding, “You should go for a walk. It’s not bad outside and the fresh air will clear your head.”
“Our ideas of cold are very different,” I mumbled as I went to bundle up.
Armed with a button-up grey woolen coat, thick cream-colored mittens, and a cute knit earflap hat with a tassel, I endured the cold to walk around the block. The bright sun fought to warm my face despite the chill. Gran, as usual, was right.
Breathing in deeply, and coughing out slightly, I let go of Belinda’s puzzle as I walked toward the downtown area. On our way through town, I’d noticed a little coffee shop I really wanted to check out.
Set in the lower half of a narrow brick two-story building, the door and two picture windows took up the front of the shop. The right window sported a white, painted outline of an old-fashioned coffee cup complete with wisps of steam. Above the cup, the words ‘Coffee Shop’ clearly identified the type of establishment within.
A handwritten sign hung taped to the inside of the window. In black marker, it stated ‘weekend help needed.’
Normally, I wouldn’t pay attention to it, but the hours caught my eye, seven thirty until one.
A bell above the door jingled as I let myself in. Coffee scented heat enveloped me. Pulling off my hat and mittens, I closed my eyes in bliss. The taste didn’t do much for me without a lot of cream and sugar, but the smell… I loved the smell of it.