“It will bury you,” Jude once told her, when Hattie was begging Jude to tell her stories of their mama. “Spend too much time in those memories and they’ll just heap on top of you until you can’t breathe.”
Jude never liked to talk about their parents. She insisted that the only way to look was forward. Peter would tell Hattie if she prodded enough, but he didn’t remember the things she wanted to know. He didn’t remember how their mama’s laugh sounded when she heard a really funny joke or what their daddy used to wear when he took Mama on a date.
Hattie looked at her watch and frowned. She’d intended to help decorate the food pantry for autumn and had been looking forward to it, but now, steeped in the past, she wanted to sit on the floor and spend days sifting through the history of her family. Tragic. That’s what Camille called it. Their history was tragic.
An accident took her mama. Hattie didn’t even know what kind. How funny, she thought, that no one ever mentioned what tragedy stole their mother. Funny too that she never thought to ask. Only eight when she died, it barely mattered that her mama died of something, only that she died. Dead, dead, gone forever. Her daddy broke the news, Hattie balanced on his knee. He said Mama went to heaven to live with Grandpa Andy. Hattie thought she cried though her memory of that time seemed frosted and blurry. Like she looked through glass thick with steam. More than a memory, she remembered a dark hole opening and falling into it. Falling and falling and never hitting the ground.
A muffled cough startled her, and she reeled back nearly falling over a stack of boxes. Deeper in the gloom before her, a man started to hum. She recognized the song, but not the voice it belonged to.
“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.”
Hattie’s heart thudded in her chest and she held the lantern up peering into the darkness where the sound emerged.
“Who’s there?” she called, but the humming took on a familiar ghostly quality, moving further away.
She walked forward and saw the young man clearly before he dissolved into the dust motes around him.
Hattie took a trembling step forward, the lantern bobbing in her shaky hands.
She looked at the place the man had been. A maroon curtain covered a pile of stuff. Tucked beneath the curtain, Hattie found a wooden crate. Someone had nailed the crate closed, perhaps in a hurry. The nails stuck at odd angles. The hammer, likely used, lay on the floor nearby. A strange sensation settled over her. She experienced a sudden desire to leave the loft and drive home.
She picked up the hammer and started prying.
It took longer than Hattie expected. Mostly because the odd angle of the nails made them hard to remove. As she grabbed them with the hammer’s claw, she wiggled and pulled, even putting her feet against the crate for leverage. Finally, one whole edge was nail free, and she pried the top open and peered inside, disappointed at the contents. The crate contained old newspapers. Reaching inside, she grabbed one from the top of the stack. Yellowing, but still crisp and intact, Hattie studied the name: Lansing State Journal. It was dated July 13, 1955.
She scanned the headlines, glancing over the articles about record production in the automobile industry and water shortages. On the second page, a grainy photograph caught her attention. She leaned closer, holding the lamp near the page, careful not to let the flame too close.
A woman peered out from the backseat window of a black car. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in a little o of confusion. She wore a scarf over her hair, and she’d lifted her hand to her throat where Sophia saw a heart-shaped pendant.
Justice for Rosemary Bell, the headline read.
Hattie scanned the article, eyes flicking back to the picture again and again. The reporter spoke of an unsolved murder of a young girl, Rosemary Bell, from the year 1935. At the time of the murder, the police believed another thirteen-year-old girl - Sophia Gray - had committed the murder, but disappeared before charges could be brought against her.
A long quote from Rosemary’s mother lamented their years of grief and their belief that justice would someday come for little Rosemary. The accused murderess, Sophia, had maintained her innocence; however, her knowledge of the murder at the time evidenced her guilt. Sophia Gray whose whereabouts for the past twenty-five years remained a mystery, had been remanded indefinitely to the Traverse City State Hospital, also known as the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, a facility for those suffering from mental illness.
Hattie looked again at the picture. She studied the woman and felt a growing unease. Though the woman’s face was blurry, Hattie stared at the familiar heart-shaped pendant set against her throat.
“But my mom wasn’t Sophia,” Hattie told the empty room. Her voice echoed in the space and she shuddered as it reverberated back to her… Sophia… Sophia… Sophia.
Her mama’s name was Anne. Still the picture unnerved her.
She pulled out another paper.
Again, the story did not appear until the third page.
Hattie gasped when she saw the photo above the story.
The photo revealed two young girls, arms linked standing in front of a pen of horses.
“The girl in the yellow dress,” Hattie whispered touching the picture. Though the girl did not wear a yellow dress in the picture, there was no mistaking her. Hattie had been seeing the girl her entire life.
The other girl was equally unnerving. Hattie might have been staring at her own reflection. The second girl had Hattie’s same long straw-colored hair, wide-set eyes and rosebud mouth. She wore a plain looking dress and her feet were bare.
“Rosemary and Sophia,” she said, leaning closer to the image.
The room seemed to lurch, and Hattie closed her eyes, pressing her hands against the floor to steady her. The newspaper fell to the floor in a whoosh and cast a cloud of dust into the air. Hattie opened her eyes and watched the lantern’s flame flicker and dance wildly despite the stillness in the air.
“Daddy?” she asked, strangely sure he spoke to her through the fire. The flame grew still, jerked once, and went out.
Chapter 9
August 19, 1935
Sophia
“Be a good girl, Sophia,” her mother said, wrapping her arms around Sophia.
Her mother’s face was wet with tears. She’d pinned up her hair and put on a clean dress, but already long tendrils fell free and clung to her damp face.
“I don’t want to go,” Sophia whispered glancing at the man who stood in their kitchen.
He wore a dark suit, his shiny black shoes foreign against the scratched, wood floor.
Tim leaned against the counter, his arms crossed, watching the man with suspicious eyes. Grimmel slouched beside him, his face streaked in tears.
“She’s in good hands, Heather," the man said. “We’ve got a great big house.” The man shifted his attention to Tim. “My son is a couple years younger than you, Tim. Your father and I had grand plans for our sons to play together. At least two of our children will get to do that,” the man continued, gesturing at Sophia.