Startled, Gretchen stepped back quickly; she had not opened her mouth or spoken a word. She whipped her head around to see what the mirror might be reflecting. Nothing there.
“See something?” Esther asked, squinting. “That’s a funny old mirror, isn’t it?”
Gretchen told herself she was just tired. It had been a long trip and she needed to eat something and then call Simon, maybe take some of the money Janine had given her and go book herself into a hotel. She’d yawned, was all, had opened her mouth without realizing it. She’d been scared of nothing but her own tired reflection.
Esther pointed through the door across from the mirror.
“Here’s your room,” she said. “The others are more . . . cluttered. This used to be the library.”
A new moldering smell—this time more bookshop than thrift store. The room was astonishing. Bookcases from floor to ceiling on three walls held thousands of books, old hardcovers, but contemporary-looking titles too—bright covers and paperbacks and dusty leather-bound tomes, a heavy oak table covered with papers and books and boxes of old photographs. Surrounded by three chairs, all carved in the same manner as the mirror. In the corner by the window there was an ornate four-poster bed with a quilt made of red and pale-blue triangles. A mosquito net hung delicately down over it and an old Persian rug sat at the foot.
“For the wasps, not mosquitos,” Esther said.
“I thought you said they didn’t sting.”
“I said I never got stung,” Esther said. “There’s a difference.”
Dingy moth-eaten lace curtains hung before leaded glass windows, facing the west, and sunlight was pouring through—maybe the door had been open a crack and the orange sunlight had reflected in the mirror and caused some trick of the light in the mirror. Gretchen was embarrassed she’d been scared by the mirror, embarrassed that she still felt scared, could feel the chill of the glass as if it had penetrated into her bones.
“I hope you’ll be happy here,” her aunt said. She stepped over to the wall, and pointed to two sepia-tinted portraits framed in black. “These are your great-great-great-great-grandparents, Fidelia and George Axton.”
In the portraits they were very young. Fidelia had dark eyes like Gretchen’s mother and the same shape face; it was uncanny how similar the expression was, amused but reserved, thoughtful. But her hair was certainly not the same as Mona’s wild curly mane. She’d had it combed down painfully straight and pulled back.
“Fidelia,” Gretchen said. “Was that a popular name?”
“I don’t know,” Esther said.
“My mother gave me an old journal by someone named Fidelia Moore, when I was a kid.”
Esther laughed. “What a coincidence,” she said playfully, looking at Gretchen like she was a little slow. “That happens to be your great-great-great-great-grandmother’s maiden name. And she kept plenty of journals. Years’ worth.”
Gretchen took a breath. “This is that Fidelia?” Seeing a photograph of the woman whose personal thoughts she’d read (and often mocked), while standing in the ruin that had been the woman’s home, was unsettling. Especially because there was such a strong family resemblance—she could recognize the slope of her own nose on Fidelia’s face. Why hadn’t her mother told her the journal had come from their family? The entries she’d read were from when the woman was in her teens. In the picture she didn’t look much older than that, but was already married.
“And this is her husband?” Gretchen asked.
“It is.” Esther raised her eyebrows. “Charming-looking chap, eh?” she said sarcastically. Where Fidelia looked thoughtful and alive, George looked blank, a wealthy man with fancy clothes and no personality. Based on the photos, no one would have said they were well matched.
“Listen,” Esther said. “All the family history has been collected in this room—most of the documents, anyway, journals, schoolwork, newspapers, letters; I haven’t had a chance to go through it all. But everything’s here . . . somewhere. More or less . . .” She opened a drawer in a side table and pulled out a small bundle, handed it to Gretchen. It was a pile of letters with ornate script, the envelopes of which Gretchen could barely read. They were tied up in a black ribbon.
“These were written by Fidelia.”
Gretchen was fascinated. Here at her fingertips was the entire history of her family. She touched the faded ink on the front of the first letter, then stared up at the picture of Fidelia.
“Thank you,” she said to Esther, and as if she were offering the woman a gift in exchange, she picked up her camera and took a picture of Esther sitting there beneath the portrait of Fidelia. That made Esther smile.
The house itself was one of the best subjects for a photo essay she could imagine. She leaned out the window near the monstrous rose thicket that grew alongside the house, and aimed her camera up the road at a little white house that looked like something from a fairy tale. Framed by the window and accented by the rosebush, it would be a lovely picture.