Читать книгу Family Stories - Tessa McDermid - Страница 6

Summer 2004

Hannah scrambled up the last few rungs of the rickety ladder and then tugged her brother into the attic. “You’ve got to be quiet, Preston, ” she whispered. “We don’t want Grandma to find out we’re up here.”

“Wow!” He straightened, his head bumping the single lightbulb. Shadows danced around the walls, creating silhouettes of a forgotten Christmas tree, complete with decorations, a dress-maker’s dummy, a rocking horse and other remnants of the owners’ lifetime in this house.

“Didn’t anybody ever throw stuff away?” He stepped over a broken chair, the arms crooked, and bent to examine an old chest, its lid askew and clothes spilling out.

“I don’t know. But we’re not here to look at the junk.” She headed for a waist-high pile of boxes stacked neatly against the far wall. “We need pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the boxes. Preston plopped down next to her. Dust flew into the air and he sneezed.

“Be quiet!” She held her hand under his nose. “We’re almost directly over the kitchen. If Grandma hears us…”

She opened the top carton. Inside were stacks of folders, each labeled with a date from decades past and kept together with colorful rubber bands.

“Here, you look at these.” She handed him a stack, then pulled out another one for herself. She slid off the rubber band, and photographs spilled into her lap.

Several minutes passed quietly, the only sound the soft rustle of paper. “Okay, these might work.” She flipped over a photo of a man standing stiffly behind a young woman seated in a stuffed chair. “G.G. labeled all of them on the back, with the date and the names of the people in the picture. I think these are G. G.’s mom and dad. Our great-great-grandparents.”

She held the photograph by one corner, peering at her ancestors’ faded expressions. G.G., her great-grandmother, was 93. That meant the picture was more than a hundred years old.

“How do you know who any of these people are?” Preston shuffled through his photographs, barely pausing at any of them.

“Because I listen to stories. Stop it, you’re gonna rip them.” She scooped the pictures out of his lap and carefully placed them back in their folders.

“I don’t want to look at old pictures. Hey—some of this stuff is probably worth a fortune now.” He crawled over the floor to a wooden trunk perched under the window.

“Fine. I don’t need your help, anyway.” She’d actually invited him because the attic made her nervous. The few times she’d managed to slip up unnoticed by her grandmother had been at night, with only the single lightbulb for illumination. With the afternoon sun shining through the small oval window, the room seemed less eerie. She could have left Preston downstairs.

Except that he might’ve gone looking for her, which would have alerted their grandmother to her absence. She sighed and opened another box.

Her great-grandmother hadn’t filled this one with neatly cataloged folders. Instead, Hannah stared at old albums stuffed with envelopes of pictures and loose bundles of photographs all tumbled together.

“Well, crap.”

“Umm.” Preston scooted back to her side. “Mom doesn’t like you to use that word.”

“Oh, shut up, Preston.” She squinted at the top picture. Not even a date from the developing. “Okay, this seems more recent than the others but who are these people?”

Preston peered over her shoulder. “Maybe Grandma and her sisters?”

Hannah glanced at him in surprise, then studied the black-and-white picture again. “I think you’re right.” Three girls, wearing frilly dresses, stood hand in hand. Behind them was the fuzzy outline of a house and a tall tree with a few leaves on it. “Easter, ” she said out loud. “The trees are budding.”

“Or maybe autumn, with the leaves falling off.”

She’d give him credit for guessing the identity of the three girls, but these leaves weren’t the dry leaves of fall. “We’ll go ask Grandma if she remembers this picture.”

Preston jumped to his feet. “But if you show her the pictures, she’ll know we were in the attic.”

Hannah shrugged and stood up. She thrust two boxes of pictures into his arms and gathered two for herself.

“You don’t care that she’ll know we were up here?” he continued. “Then what was that big deal about being quiet and everything?” His steps left footprints on the dusty floor.

Hannah carefully deposited her boxes near the attic entrance. “I wanted pictures. Now that I have them, I don’t need to worry about being caught.”

“You’re crazy.” He grabbed the sides of the ladder and made his way down the steps.

Hannah leaned over the edge and passed him a box of photos. When all the boxes were stacked in the hallway, she followed him down. She pushed the ladder back up.

“Come on, let’s show Grandma.” She didn’t wait to see if he was behind her, knowing he’d be curious to find out whether she got into trouble.

Their grandmother sat at the kitchen table, her two younger sisters on either side. She stopped talking when Hannah and Preston entered the kitchen. “You’ve been in the attic. Hannah, you’re not supposed to go up there without telling me.”

“And then you say it’s too dangerous and I shouldn’t go up at all.” She placed the boxes on the table. “Grandma, I’m sixteen. I know how to be careful. I’m not going to fall through the ceiling.”

“Your father did and he was a grown man.”

Preston giggled. “Dad fell through the ceiling?”

His grandmother nodded. “It wasn’t funny. He could’ve been hurt.” But a corner of her mouth lifted in a lopsided grin. “He was here for Christmas and said he’d get the tree out of the attic for us. We were sitting in the living room and suddenly, a leg came right through the ceiling. Your great-grandparents still lived here. G.G. screamed and Grandpa Frank couldn’t finish his TV show. He had to help your dad.”

She tapped the box in front of her. “So, tell me what you found.”

Hannah settled on the chair between her grandmother and great-aunt Alice. This was the part of the visit she always enjoyed most. Hearing the stories. “Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. We can use some for the party.”

“Mom and Dad don’t want a party, ” Aunt Alice said.

“It doesn’t have to be a big party.” Hannah wrapped her own hands around her grandmother’s worn ones. “Grandpa Frank and G.G. have been married for almost seventy-five years! Doesn’t that deserve a celebration? I mean, people hardly stay married for a decade anymore, let alone seven of them!”

Aunt Margaret chuckled. “You can be pretty persuasive, Miss Hannah. But I don’t think even you can convince Mom and Dad.” Her expression sobered. “Mom got very upset when we mentioned a family dinner at the retirement home for their anniversary.”

“The party for their sixtieth anniversary was the last time we had any kind of celebration for either of them.” Aunt Alice picked up the photograph Hannah and Preston had been studying earlier. “Oh, look! The dresses we wore for the wedding of some cousin. Mom spent all week sewing them.”

They lowered their heads over the picture. All three were mostly gray now, but strands of their natural hair colors still peeked through. A blonde, a brunette and a redhead, their appearances just as different as they were inside.

Another picture caught Hannah’s eye. A tall, dark-haired man stood at attention in his navy uniform, his eyes bright and his bearing rigid. One corner of his mouth curved up as if he were having a hard time staying serious for the photographer.

Grandpa Frank. Her great-grandfather. The father of the three women sitting at the table. The love of G.G.’s life.

She reverently touched a finger to the picture, her mind racing across the years and past the generations as she recalled the family stories she’d heard.