Beyond the door, a slice of the bathroom came into view. White pedestal sink, water running from an ornate brass faucet, a claw-footed tub with green glass orbs clutched in the brass talons, a leaded glass window . . .
No one standing in the doorway, even now that it was almost halfway open.
No one . . .
A whisper of movement slid past the baseboard.
I forced my gaze downward, an inch and then another, another, until finally I could see.
Not a shadow.
The cat.
A crooked black tail snaked around the corner as the furry intruder escaped into the library nook, leaving a trail of wet tracks in the dust on the floor.
Stumbling forward and collapsing against the bathroom entrance, I laughed, then gulped in air, then laughed, then gulped in air. Sometimes there really was a simple explanation. With the old lever-style faucets, it wasn’t impossible that a cat could turn on the water. Just to prove it, I stepped into the room and batted the faucet with one finger, turning it partway off, on again, then all the way off. It had to be the cat. He was smart, like one of the animals on Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks.
Bells jingled softly somewhere down the hall, playing a strange, sweet music against the silence. I followed the sound, expecting to find a black fur ball skulking among the bookshelves, but instead, the library area was empty. At the end of the corridor, the door to the blue room stood ajar now. Not open, not closed, but halfway between. The music was coming from inside, the high, distinct notes drifting into the hallway as random and alluring as luna moths flitting through space on a quiet summer night.
The roots of my hair tingled, and a shiver convulsed my shoulders. I remembered the door falling out of my hand and slamming against the wall the day Iola died. The impact had rattled the entire second story. Even if the cat could operate doorknobs as well as water faucets, how could the door be resting quietly a foot or so from the wall?
Maybe this was all some strange dream, and I’d wake up any minute, laughing about it. Cats opening doors and using water faucets! Really?
Yet the feeling that something was waiting for me in that room was overwhelming.
Not just waiting . . . but insisting that I come in.
Inviting me, drawing me closer, until I could see the slice of the room that the opening allowed.
Under the turret window, the marble-topped writing desk basked in the sunlight. There were birds on the windowsill again. Two. A cardinal and a robin. They watched but didn’t flit away as I touched the doorframe, craned sideways to see the foot of the bed. Part of me expected Iola to be there, looking perfectly at peace atop the wedding ring quilt in her blue-flower-basket dress.
She wasn’t, of course. In taking her away, the men had rumpled the quilt so that now it hung askew, even the impression of her body gone. Behind the door, one of Iola’s black shoes sat perpendicular to the wall, the toe propping the door open. Someone must have kicked it during all the coming and going when she died. The other shoe was still sitting beside the bed, neatly placed, exactly where it had been the last time I’d seen it. It looked lonely now, slightly forlorn.
The bells jingled again, and I swiveled so fast that I stumbled sideways and caught the cool crystal of the doorknob to steady myself. On one of the small walnut nightstands, the cat was walking in slow circles, arching to scratch its back against the scalloped edges of a Tiffany lampshade. Each time it passed the window, the shepherd’s hook of its tail touched the fringes of a stained-glass suncatcher with little brass bells dangling from the bottom.
“So that’s what you’re doing.” I pointed at the cat, pleased with myself for figuring out the secret.
He looked at me, his head tilting slightly as if he were coyly smiling back. Despite our love-hate dance all morning, I almost felt sorry for him. The scars of a long and difficult life were evident up close. The old tomcat had been through more than a few scrapes.
His look turned wary, and he quit circling in favor of keeping an eye on me.
“You’re just full of surprises,” I told him as his tea-colored eyes studied me up and down. “I’ll find out how you’re getting into this place, you know. I’ll figure out the answer sooner or later.”
He yawned in a way that said, Go ahead and try, kitchen-cleaning woman. You’ll never discover my secrets. His eyes met mine for a moment before he jumped from the table and whisked underneath the bed, disappearing beneath the dust ruffle and a patchwork of blue wedding rings.
Crossing between the bed and a closet doorway, I straightened the quilt. It seemed like Iola would want it that way.
The suncatcher was beautiful up close. Hummingbirds and passion vine. Patchy sunshine flickered through, spreading colored light over my outstretched fingertip as I swept it along the bottom of the three brass bells, listening to their music, then stopping to capture the one closest to the bed. There was a small gold sticker on the back. Turning the bell over, I cocked my head sideways to read the words.
Sandy’s Seashell Shop
An Ocean of Possibilities
The sticker wasn’t sun-dried or faded, and the green ribbon attached to the fringed window shade was still shiny and pliable. The tiny work of art hadn’t been hanging here overly long. Apparently, even though Iola didn’t leave her house, she still bought things somehow —at Sandy’s Seashell Shop, wherever that was.
The bell jingled as I let it fall into place again before finishing with the quilt, giving the room the picture-perfect, if dusty, look of the first time I’d seen it. I reached for the single black shoe behind the door, then thought better of it. No sense letting the knob crash against the wall repeatedly. The shoe almost seemed to belong there, as if Iola might have used the same trick herself.
I wondered if she liked this room, with its sunny windows and framed prints of ladies in turn-of-the-century gowns, hiding their smiles coyly behind lace fans, sharing tea in a garden, greeting beaus dressed as huntsmen on horseback, playing croquet with smiling, cherub-faced children. Over the bed, a majestic collie posed in lush green grass, overlooking a pastoral scene with sheep grazing on a hillside. Everything in this room spoke of a beautiful life, a perfect life.
But in the back of my mind, there were the things the deputy had revealed. Her life hadn’t been ideal. She’d been rejected by the good people of Fairhope. I knew exactly how that felt.
Outside, the breeze caught a nest of pine branches, spilling a beam of unfiltered sun through the turret windows. The spray of glitter and ribbons on the sill danced in the glow, and I was there beside it before I even realized I’d moved.
The curtain of light withdrew slowly, surrendering the old shoe box to shadow again as I leaned over it, took in a tangle of gold rickrack lying atop a pile of ribbon scraps and wallpaper shreds. The craft supplies had been weighted down with a bottle of Elmer’s glue and a pair of scissors.
The corner of a floral stationery sheet peeked from underneath the box, a few words in blue ink visible at the bottom of the page.
. . . in our own time.
Your loving daughter,
Iola Anne
The writing trembled uphill, the final e in Anne disintegrating into a curved line that slipped across the page and ran off the margin. The letter couldn’t have been written very long ago.
But . . . Your loving daughter? Iola had been in her nineties. There was no possible way her parents could still be alive.
I slid the box back a hair, read the rest of the last line.
We are all warriors in our own time.
What in the world?
Maybe Iola had been confused, suffering from dementia, hopelessly trapped in the past and living in a world that didn’t exist anymore. That might explain why she kept herself locked in this house and why some parts of it were in perfect order while others were cluttered with thirty-two rolls of wax paper and food stacked to the ceiling.
My skin tingled with the sense that someone was watching. It forced me to glance back to check, but the room was empty, of course. No one there to see me lift the box, slide the letter from beneath it, and begin to read.
Dearest Father,
I had thought there would be no more of these letters. It seems rather silly, doesn’t it, that I would write to you when penning words requires such effort now? These old hands. They don’t tell stories as they once did, send words into the world with abandon, the lines bleeding forth as if there will forever be more words, more paper, another pen filled with ink in all the hues of life.
How odd, isn’t it, that in the end, life comes to surviving more than living. But these things I do, this melody of an ordinary day, keep the hours in order. I have lived my way into this music, note by note, and now I know no other.