The woman moved to embrace her and Sophia held out her arms, longing for a real hug. Her mother grew stiff when embraced and though she tried to comfort her children, her own grief had turned her body to stone. Sophia sighed as the woman wrapped strong arms around her. She pressed her face into the woman’s small chest and she felt the wetness of her tears on the soft linen cloth. And then the warmth and the comfort dissolved and Sophia’s arms held nothing. She opened her eyes to the empty loft. The dust moved, unsettled, in the place where the woman had sat, but the woman herself had disappeared.
August 18, 1935
Sophia crawled beneath her bed. She stared up at the springs flecked with dust and traced her finger along the iron frame. Outside wheels crunched over the stony driveway and a door slammed. She turned her head and watched her mother’s bare feet pass. The screen door opened and slammed shut.
“Hi Heather, how ya doing?”
“Busy, Sheriff,” her mother said shortly, and Sophia imagined her wiping flour on her apron. Her hair would be tousled with flyaway strands sticking from her messy ponytail. Her mother was beautiful, everyone said so, but never more beautiful than mid-day when the housework left her dishevelled. Then she transformed from the rigid woman who longed to put everything in its right place to the flesh and blood person who wasn’t afraid to hug and let you lick the cookie dough spoon before she washed the dishes.
“I’m looking for Rosemary Bell. Lives down by Moores Hardware, about Sophia’s age?”
“Well she’s not here as far as I know, but Sophia run off this morning so who’s tellin’ if they’re together. Sophia’s thirteen now and should be doin’ chores, but some days I don’t have the heart to scold her.”
Sophia lay perfectly still wondering if she ought to reveal herself. Instead, she listened.
“Rosemary’s been missin’ since last night actually,” the Sheriff continued. “Her ma called me up this morning when she still hadn’t come home. They thought she might have walked across town to stay at her grandma’s, but no sign of her there either so I’m checking with all her little friends…”
“Summer makes vagabonds out of most our children,” Sophia’s mom murmured.
“That it does. Well if you see Rosemary, tell her to high-tail it home. I’d say it’s gone too long to avoid a lashing, but it will be lesser the sooner she shows up.”
“Will do, Hal.”
Sophia watched her mother’s feet pass by a second time - the bottoms dirty and hard looking. She returned to the kitchen where Sophia hoped she was making blueberry dumplings with the blueberries she and Grimmel had picked the day before.
Sophia crawled from the beneath the bed, made sure her mama’s back was turned, and sprinted for the woods. It was her turn to fill the wood box, and Sophia’s mama expected her to clean the chicken coop too. But summer was fading fast, and Sophia woke that morning desperate to search for salamanders. She glanced behind her a final time and slipped into the trees.
Chapter 6
September 1965
Hattie
Hattie slumped onto the couch with a groan. Her back ached from shoulders to hips and a sticky sweat made her white t-shirt cling to her skin. She surveyed the apartment and smiled despite the chaos that greeted her. Yes, boxes stood waist high in nearly every inch of the space. Yes, the walls were mustard yellow, the carpet threadbare, and the bay window’s bench was rotted clear through, but it was all hers.
She could hear Mrs. Bowers, the woman who owned the house and lived downstairs, trying to coax one of her cats in from the porch.
For the first time in her life, Hattie lived on her own. She played with the tiny charms dangling from the gold bracelet around her wrist, meditatively rubbing her thumb over the shapes.
She leaned back and closed her eyes and again conjured a vision of her future apartment. A blue suede couch, just like Coco Chanel’s, stretched over thick burgundy carpet. On the couch, Hattie’s future cat Edgar lounged sleepily with his long white fur fanning around him in a sunlit halo. The ornate gold side table held a sleek black telephone, a tall Tiffany lamp and a stack of art books. Across from the couch, two wing backed leather chairs courted the sofa. A new bench had replaced the bay window seat with a thick pad and a black coverlet, piled high with throw pillows. On the window ledge a steaming cup of cocoa fogged the window. From the street, a melancholy song drifted in the air and carried with it memories of dancing beneath twinkling lights. Most important of all would be the little balcony containing her easel, a stack of fresh canvas and a whole case full of paints.
In her vision a figure appeared. A little girl in a bloody yellow dress stood just behind Hattie’s easel.
A loud knock at the door startled Hattie from her reverie. She snapped her eyes open and frowned at the chipped coffee mug adorning the pale wood coffee table she’d taken from Gram Ruth’s barn.
She had not seen the girl in years. Unlike other ghosts Hattie had encountered, the girl never spoke. Hattie would no longer be able to daydream about her future apartment without placing the little girl in it.
The knock came a second time and she sighed, pushing the image from her mind.
“Hi,” she said, opening the door and smiling cautiously at Mrs. Bowers holding a pie.
“Peach. Baked it myself this morning. I’m so happy to have another lady in the house.” The woman shuffled across Hattie’s doorstep, moving aside a box to set the pie on Hattie’s little kitchen table.
Jude
“Not too close,” Jude called to the group of women staggered in front of the historical museum. There were five women aging from seventeen to eighty-five years old. They represented a photo journalism piece for Radical Feminism, a magazine devoted to covering real women neutralizing gender stereotypes.
The seventeen-year-old wore a pretty yellow sun dress. Her wavy strawberry blonde hair sat in a pile on top of her head, held there by sparkling barrettes. In her solo shot, she would wear overalls, and sit on the tire of the enormous combine she drove at her father’s farm. The others, a mechanic, a carpenter, a banker, an attorney and the oldest woman, Janice, a professor, all looked the part of the perfect lady. They smiled with red lips, and jutted their hips out, admiring patent leather high heels. It was the comparison photographs that excited Jude. The pictures that blew their first impression out of the water. Jeans and suits, oil streaked hands, leather briefcases, all truths that most people preferred to ignore.
“Interesting shot,” a man spoke behind her, but she ignored him.
No stranger to the attention of men, Jude rarely gave them first priority. She lowered her gaze to the camera, clicked the shutter several times and stood back, surveying the position of the sun.
She could feel the man continuing to hover behind her.
“Can I help you with something?” she quipped, turning to face him.
The man, tall and broad with golden hair that curled beneath his ears, smiled, and offered Jude his hand. Unnervingly handsome, Jude thought, gazing back at gray-blue eyes that reminded her of Petoskey stones.