The Night Sister

“Maybe he didn’t have any plans or blueprints or anything,” Margot suggested. “Maybe he just made it up as he went along?”


Piper shook her head. “You can’t put up a whole building that way. Especially not if you’re not a carpenter or architect or anything. I’m sure he had plans.”

“Well, they’re not in this box,” Amy said, pulling the last photos and yellowed papers out of the first box, letting old bills and ledger pages drift to the floor.

She opened the next box. This turned out to be full of photos and papers from her grandfather’s days as a pilot in the army. There were lots of letters from his parents on the farm back at home; Amy skimmed through some of them and read bits aloud. They told about how much milk the cows were producing, what a good helper Clarence’s young cousin Fenton was turning out to be, the scrap-metal drives being held all over Vermont; they were peppered with gossip from town—Violet Stafford finally got a marriage proposal from Hank Ritter, Mr. Erickson had to close the local branch of the bank, little Richie Welks won the fishing derby last Saturday.

“I’m surprised he didn’t get bored to death by these letters,” Amy complained, tossing them back into the box.

“Nah,” Piper said. “I bet it was kind of comforting to get all that news from home. To see things back there were just as dull as ever. If I was up in an airplane getting shot at by the Germans, I’d want to know that back at home things were quiet and calm, and there were cows still waiting to be milked, and a plain girl waiting for a marriage proposal.”

“I guess.” Amy shrugged.

Margot dragged a metal file box out of the closet and popped open the clasp.

“What have you got there?” Piper asked.

Margot started flipping through the papers. “Looks like your mom’s stuff, Amy. Birth certificate, high-school diploma…Wait a sec, there’s something down at the bottom.” She pulled out a stack of letters in worn envelopes held together with disintegrating elastic bands.

“Check it out,” Margot said, handing them to Amy. “It’s more letters to that movie-director guy from Sylvie!”

Amy took them and thumbed through. “You’re right. They’re all addressed to Alfred Hitchcock, and they’ve got stamps, but it looks like they were never mailed. See, no postmark.”

“Weird,” Piper said. “Why go to the trouble of writing the letters, putting stamps on them and everything, if you’re not going to send them? And what’s your mom doing with them?”

“Beats me,” Amy said, tossing the letters back into the metal box. “But they’re not helping us with the plans for the motel.”

She rummaged around in the closet again and pulled out a brown leather folder with a clasp. “Bingo!” she cried, as she opened it up and peered inside. “Sketches for the motel!”

Piper moved close against Amy and looked at the papers Amy was eagerly pulling out of the folder. Clarence’s careful renderings of the motel he imagined were drawn in pencil on yellowing paper. There were structural drawings that showed the framing with measurements and elevation drawings from every angle.

The girls studied them, searching for some sign of a secret passageway or hidden door, perhaps a room between rooms.

“There’s not a damn thing in either building,” Amy said at last. “There are the twenty-eight motel rooms, the office, the laundry area and boiler room underneath the office. That’s it.” She blew out an exasperated breath, making her pink bangs puff out.