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  "Grandma?" Mallie moved up next to her.

  "I found it," she sounded out of breath. How could that be she wondered? Then with another push it moved with a rush and she could feel the wood give as it moved inward. She pushed it open, listened to the silent awe behind her, felt Mallie press up even closer next to her trying to see into the small space.

  "Dad helped her," she remembered it now. And remembered too wanting her own secret and special space. Remembered her sister offering to share hers and throwing the offer back in her face. "Help me up here, Mallie."

  "I think one of us should go first, just in case." Casey moved forward, more than a little shocked. She had hoped, really hoped they would find something here. But this was the last place she would have expected to find anything.

  "No." Charlie stated resolutely. "I'm going first."

  Mary placed a hand on Casey's, caught her eyes and communicated plenty in just a look. To their aunt this was about more than who went first.

  "Be careful," Casey couldn't stop herself from saying.

  Charlie slowly made her way on her hands and knees through the narrow crawl space. "I don't know exactly where this little bit is but it opens up into the attic above the side porch. Once Dad set it up for her, Miri slowly turned it into her idea of what a hide-away garret would look like."

  "A writer's garret," Mary said softly as she climbed through the doorway behind Mallie. She thought of the mother she knew, the mother who had always been there for everyone else, taking so little for herself including time for her desires. Her dreams. It was so hard to see her this way. Through the prism of her dreams that never came true.

  Charlie scooted into the small room, moved enough away from the little opening so the others could move in as well then scooted back so she could sit on the little built-in bench near the shutters on the far side of the room. She sighed, then looked around remembering...remembering her jealousy over this little room that wasn't any bigger than she remembered...a really big closet.

  There was quiet as each of them eased into the small room and staked out a place on the floor. It was small, with only the bench that Charlie sat on and a small desk centered under the eaves with an even smaller desk chair sitting in front of it. On the desk were two wooden boxes. As everyone simultaneously looked at her, Mary moved slowly and pulled the chair out so she could take a seat at the desk.

  She gently moved one of the boxes towards her so she could lift the lid. It was filled with papers. She carefully sifted through them, noting the immaculate, flowery handwriting she recognized immediately as belonging to her mother. "It's filled with her writing." She read from a couple of the sheets. "It's a book, she was writing a book." Her voice caught.

  "What about the other one?" Mallie wasn't certain what to do with the sadness she felt in the room. She moved over to sit closer to her grandmother on the little bench.

  Mary carefully closed the lid on the box in front of her and moved it to one side of the desk. When she pulled the other box closer, she saw this one was more ornate, with carvings on the lid unlike the plain, simplicity of the first one. Carefully opening it, she shifted the flashlight so she could better see its contents. "Oh!" She moved the box closer, lifted the lid up and back so it would lay behind the box on its hinges.

  "Mary?" Casey could see her face even in the dim light. Saw it go pale.

  "I think some of this was her father's." She heard her voice hitch, swallowed, then looked at Casey. "Our grandfather." She lifted out an old wallet and a stained linen handkerchief. She turned and handed both to her aunt. "I believe these were your father's."

  Charlie held them in her hand, staring at them, then held them close to her heart. She was overcome with a grief so fresh and new the pain was overwhelming. "They still smell like him." She could barely speak. The pain of the rush of memories evident in her expression. She brought the old leather and linen to her face and breathed in deeply.

  Mary barely heard her. She was slowly reading a letter, one in her mother's handwriting. And as she read her heart simply shattered and broke. Such pain emanated from the words scrawled on paper now fragile and brittle with age. Written only months after the death of her father, Miri Ludwig had written of how her life had changed, how her days no longer held her father's laughter, how his void in her life had left her empty beyond measure.

  "Mary?" This time it was her aunt who noticed the change in her niece. Saw grief for a loss she had never experienced, grief for a man gone long before her own birth.

  "It's a letter Mom wrote." Her voice was low, shaken, as splintered as were her thoughts.

  Three women, spanning three generations, linked by the strongest of bonds waited in silence.

  Mary turned to them. "It's a letter she wrote to God." She looked to her aunt, realizing suddenly with painful clarity that the child she had been so long ago looked even now as she had in childhood to those who had never failed her.

  "Read it to us, honey." Charlie spoke strongly, with a strength that came from the need of the woman before her. "Read us her words. It's for you to read them."

  Mary looked down at the letter she had only just skimmed through. "It's dated a couple of months after your father died." She cleared her throat, "Dear God." Her voice choked up, her eyes filled.

  "Honey," Charlie began, "your mother is with you every bit as much as if she was sitting right here next to me." She didn't hear the slight muffled noise of movement from the short little crawl space that had led them into the room. Didn't see her own daughter at the opening. Didn't see her pause to look around silently, take in the scene before her, the emotional expressions on every face she saw, then keep her silence...moving no further from where she was.

  Mary took a deep breath and reached for the strength that could only come from within, reached for the strength she had always found in her mother's love. "Dear God," she began again. "You've always been there for me. But in these last months I can't find you. I can't feel you. I've reached out for you...I've reached for my father. Not as I would to you in my faith but in the need to know he's with you. I can't feel him. I can't feel you. I am alone. I know you're there God. But I am alone." Mary stopped, steeped in her mother's grief of so long ago. Completely oblivious to those surrounding her, she took another breath and continued. "You've stood by me in my worst moments. You've stood with me when I was my worst. As did my father. The days are so hard, the nights never end. Everything I believed I could be came from his faith in me. From my faith in you. My days began with his cherished voice. My nights ended with his promise of a wonderful tomorrow. I know now he was even then your greatest shepherd. But the light of my days is gone and the dark of my nights is endless. I am at my weakest God. I am alone."

  Charlie spoke quietly into the heavy silence, her voice shaky and fragile. "I think I'd like to see if perhaps we could put a staircase off the side porch coming up here. I would like very much to spend some time up here but I just don't think I can do that crawl space more than once." She sighed, feeling her age more than she cared. "My sister invited me more than once to spend time up here with her." She paused before continuing quietly, "I turned her down each time because I was bitter that our father did this for her and not me. Maybe if I hadn't, maybe if I hadn't been so bitter and full of myself, I would have seen beyond my own grief to hers." She let herself be pulled even closer to her granddaughter who had her sister's eyes. "Maybe she wouldn't have felt so alone." Her voice caught, but she continued, needed to continue. "So, if it's okay with you honey, I'd like to spend some time up here now as I should have then. I've got a bundle of my Mad Money stashed away," she squeezed the hand that held hers tightly. "As my precious Mallie can attest, and..."

  "I think, Mama," Carrie interrupted her mother as she entered the room from where she had waited, still barely able to swallow past the lump caught in her throat. "I think that I can handle the cost of the stairway for you."

  "Carolina." Charlie would have risen to go to her only daughter
if Carrie hadn't gotten to her first, squeezed in next to her on the other side of the narrow bench.

  No one in the room missed Charlie's pleased expression that eased away some of the grief they all were experiencing. Carrie looked around, saw the sorrow that lined both Casey and Mary's faces.

  "So, Mary, do you think we can handle a stairway?" There was no way to ease this kind of grief. But you could channel it elsewhere.

  "Yes. Of course we can." With hands that shook visibly, Mary laid the fragile paper gently back into its place, just as her mother must have so many years ago, in the box with its ornate engravings. When Charlie reached out to hand back the old wallet and handkerchief, Mary took the hands that held the cherished items, closed her aunt's small hands over them. "Those are yours, Aunt Charlie."

  "Honey..."

  "They were your father's." Mary saw the tears glisten in her aunt's eyes. "They're yours. Mama would want it that way." She looked clearly into the tear-filled eyes. "I know she would."

  Charlie brought the treasured leather and linen close to her heart again. "I don't know for certain, I was so young, but I know Miri was with him when he was taken to the hospital that last time. I think these were with him then. They must have been given to her when he was admitted." She took a breath, smelled all that she remembered of her father. Held on to it like a prayer. "It must have been so hard, having to be everything for all of us then, and having no one to be there for her."

  "She had her God." Mary saw Mallie's tentative expression. "She may have questioned him, may have questioned where he was but she never questioned that he was."

  "But she said she couldn't feel him." Mallie objected.

  "Sometimes grief numbs us, honey." Casey spoke up, her voice unusually quiet. "And during those times," she paused, remembering her own times of bone-numbing grief. "It's hard to feel much of anything." She looked at her cousin's daughter. "And remember honey, Aunt Miri was barely your age when she wrote this."

  Mallie was stunned. She knew, she had been told, had heard the stories, but had never really thought about it that way. "I didn't think of it that way," she said her thoughts out loud.

  Mary was looking at the wooden boxes that held her mother's words. A part of her felt they belonged here, in her mother's special place. A much more selfish part of her wanted them where she could care for them. Make sure they were kept safe. And close.

  "Mary," Carrie spoke directly to her cousin again. As she raised her eyes from the desk top Carrie was shook by what she didn't see. Mary was always calm, always serene, nothing ever disrupted that aurora of serenity that cloaked her. For this moment though it was gone. "Are you okay?"

  "I almost didn't buy this house." Mary wondered at all the unexpected twists and turns that had been taken that brought her to this. "I didn't come here to buy this house." She looked back at the desk. "If I hadn't, if Aunt Charlie hadn't remembered," she fingered the ornate lid, thought of what it held, had held for over half a century. "We wouldn't have found this."

  "But we did," Casey spoke up again. "We did and you have something you didn't before." She thought of her aunt, her mother, all that hadn't seemed important until this moment. "And we have each other." She looked at Mary, then swung her eyes over to Carrie. "I don't think much of fate, not like Mary does. But I have to wonder, and I'll be doing a lot of thinking in the days to come about how the three of us, the only daughters of those three women, ended up in this city at the same time when we haven't been in the same room at the same time since we were kids." She closed her eyes. There had been a few exceptions. "Except for funerals." She was worn out, worn down, and tired to the core. And couldn't believe what she was saying. "I must be losing my mind."

  "No, honey, you're just finding it."

  Casey just stared at her aunt. Trust her to cut to the heart of it.

  "Mother, you need to be in bed." Carrie thought they all needed to be but her focus was, had always been in recent years, her mother.

  "Yes." Mary gathered herself and the two boxes and made the decision for all of them. "We'll work through all this in the morning. Let's get back, find everyone a place to sleep, and..."

  "Have some hot chocolate." Mallie offered up. When everyone looked her way, she shrugged. "It's my mother's solution to almost absolutely everything."

  Mary smiled at her. "Hot chocolate it is then."

  

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Carrie tried with little success to shake away the weariness. The scent of freshly brewed coffee lured her into the kitchen but did little to calm the uneasiness that had been her constant companion long before yesterday...for what seemed like months. As she poured the steaming brew into one of the pretty chintz cups set out next to the pot, she let herself take a good look around the room. Last night she'd been simply too tired to really be able to appreciate it during the hour or more spent gathered around the table consuming hot chocolate and cookies. But looking around now she saw it was as charming, as homey, as everything....as she remembered it being in her childhood. It was all Mary's doing she knew, a dream come true for her cousin. One she didn't completely understand but could accept simply because it was so important to her.

  She made her way through the dining room, glancing here and there at what appeared to be clutter, but remembered enough from the night before to know it wasn't. She had a good idea where her cousin was even before she heard the steady creaking of the swing on the front porch.

  "You're up early." Mary studied the face that was only slightly less fatigued than it had been just hours before.

  "Not nearly as early as you," Carrie sat down beside her, settled back into the swing. Helped guide it with her foot.

  "I wanted to take a walk, and as luck would have it I ran into the very person I wanted to." She thought about Jackson's pleasant surprise that she wanted to share her mother's letter with him. His insight had helped her as she believed it would when she went in search for him even before her first cup of coffee. "He may stop by later on to see your mother." She glanced over at Carrie, saw the questions. "He was Nanno's pastor."

  "I don't remember him."

  "You were pretty little." Mary offered in explanation.

  "So were you."

  "I was nosier than you," Mary laughed. "I was nosier than all of us." She glanced at Carrie and saw the discomfort that seemed to always be there. "I didn't really remember him until we met a couple of weeks ago."

  Carrie sighed and decided to let it pass. She would deal with what she remembered and what she didn't when the man came by. "My mother maneuvered me here." It was a statement. She didn't need to ask, it was clear enough for anyone with an IQ above ten to see.

  Mary laughed again, feeling good she could so easily after last night's heart wrenching discoveries. "Is it a problem that she did or that you didn't figure it out immediately?"

  "A bit of both," Carrie admitted. "How do you feel about taking on another semi-long term guest?"

  Mary studied her cousin carefully. Over the years Carrie had rarely left her husband's side for more than a matter of hours let alone days. For her to consider otherwise pointed to problems beyond what she or anyone else in the family suspected. "Your mother is fine here. You know I wouldn't let anything happen to her."

  "I know that. I'd be more concerned about who would take care of you. My mother is the queen of intrigue, look at where's she led Mallie." She turned the cup around between her hands even as she shared a smile with her cousin. They both knew Mallie was having the time of her life. Carrie took a deep breath. She'd never been great on sharing her life, sharing anything with anyone, not even her family. It was safer that way. But she was at the end of her proverbial rope. "I'm tired, Mary."

  Mary could see that for herself. The weariness she saw in her cousin went far beyond a long drive and a late night. "Tell me, Carrie." She could imagine all sorts of things considering the life she lived and had for a long time, ever since her marriage.

  Instincts born from
years of caution almost kept Carrie silent. But this was Mary, her cousin who had bought their grandmother's home, the old Victorian house of her mother's childhood, and as she learned the night before, the house down the street where she'd spent the early years of her own childhood. Trust had to begin somewhere. "I simply can't be a politician's wife anymore." She closed her eyes knowing it wasn't quite that simple. She was evading. Not just with Mary but with herself. "I don't think I can be Nick's wife anymore." She couldn't be much more specific than that.

  Mary wasn't surprised. She'd reached the same conclusion years ago. "What about Nick?" She imagined Carrie's husband, the Senator, wasn't too thrilled by this development. Carrie had been a huge asset throughout his career. He loved her. She didn't doubt that at all. She just wasn't sure whether he loved her more than his position and the power that came with it. Watching her cousin closely, she feared she wasn't alone in that uncertainty.