She didn’t want to end up like her aunt Helen. Grandmother Anne had made sure to relate Helen’s existence to Eve’s. She knew Eve wasn’t happy and Eve hadn’t even told her about it.
She pulled into the long driveway to the enormous house and immediately felt better. There were huge trees lining both sides, and they made a canopy over the car. She breathed a sigh of relief this time. The house had been passed down for generations, and she had found so much history in the attic, it was unreal. Items and documents from the very time she longed to be in.
She pulled around the circular drive and parked in front of the great pillars that led up to the house. It was such a beautiful house. She was delighted that her family had kept such good care of it. Someday, she felt it would be hers. She only had one older brother, and he was married with his own house and a small family.
She went in the front door without knocking.
“Grandma? Grandma?”
There was no answer. She regretted calling out, in case her grandmother was taking an afternoon nap. But then, the house was large, and her bedroom was not nearby. It was upstairs and down the hallway. There was too much room for one elderly lady, but Grandma Anne was active and had many friends and family over. Eve’s grandfather had passed away two years previous, and Anne had not shown any interest in another man since then.
She didn’t rule it out, though, and the thought made Eve smile. Grandma Anne wouldn’t have any trouble if she put herself back on the market. She was still slender and energetic, though she took the time she needed to do some tasks that would not take younger people long to do. She even had a long mane of strawberry blond hair that she kept back in a braid ninety percent of the time.
Instead of calling out to her grandmother again, she turned and locked the door before taking the circular stairs to the second floor. She continued up to the third floor and walked with quiet steps to the door that would lead to the attic. It was small. A fat person would not fit through the door or the narrow stairwell leading up to the attic. She could barely make it in herself, now that she wasn’t a child. She had no idea how they had originally gotten all the furniture and other things up there until her grandmother told her the reduction in size was necessary for the renovations.
She took the narrow stairs, running the tips of her fingers along the wall as she went up. She took the steps slowly. This was her personal museum. She had spent the last month going through the items and still had a lot more to look at. It excited her, one of the only things that she cared about anymore and made her smile.
The door creaked a little when she opened it, and she thought she would have to get some WD-40 for that. She poked her head in first and flipped on the light switch. It flooded the room with a soft white, and she looked around at the odds and ends. Half of the room was organized from where she had begun going through it. The other half was still chaos, old toys, games, furniture and trunks of all shapes and sizes taking up the space in a haphazard fashion.
She couldn’t wait to go through it and see what she would find. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, placing one hand on her chin and the other on her hip. She looked around. Where would she start today?
Near the window to her left, the sunlight was spotlighting a brown trunk with an arched lid. That looked like a good place to begin. She hurried to it, kneeling in front of it when she got there. It had a flat metal latch on the front, and it locked with a key. She had encountered trunks like this before. Her grandmother had, at some point, taped every matching key she could find to the side of the trunk it belonged to. Eve hoped this one had a key. She moved her fingers gently along the metal framework around the trunk, peering at the front and sides closely. She reached over the trunk and felt the back side. Relief flooded her when her fingers made contact with the taped key. She dug at the tape with her fingers until it was released.
Eve put the key into the lock and turned it, enjoying the small click she heard. She lifted the latch and then the lid, using her strength against the heavy wood.
“Good grief, you’d think people wouldn’t have made these so heavy.” She murmured. Finally, the lid came up and slammed back when she lost her grip on it. It made a loud clunk but stayed open. She held out her hands as if to block it from falling again, though if it had, it probably would have broken her bones. When she was sure it wasn’t going to come slamming down on her, she looked down at the contents.