Authors: Adrianne Lee
April flinched at the unnerving instrumentation.
Vanessa seemed to suffer none of her qualms. “Ooh, how spooky—like a ghostly warning to stay out of here.”
To kill the unsavory notion, April hit the light switch. Dust motes came alive in the dull yellow haze offered by the shade-less bulb suspended from the ceiling. The air smelled as old as some of the pieces of furniture hung from the rafters.
“
No ghosts,” April said. “Only the usual cobwebs, clutter and dead bugs.”
Vanessa skirted by her into the crowded attic. Her green eyes were as round as grapes. “Calendar House has so many secrets. If only these walls could talk….”
The wind and rain replayed their jarring caterwaul. April looked around uneasily. “That would certainly make things simpler….”
“
Simpler? What an odd thing to say?” Vanessa snatched a nineteenth century woman’s hat from a nail and plopped the ponderous contraption onto her head. She turned to April with a mystified expression. “What things?”
Just ghosts of my own to lay to rest,
April thought, tempted for the second time this day to tell Vanessa about her illness. But her reasons for not doing so hadn’t changed. She pointed to the hat. “Oh, you know, things like—which of my notorious ancestors owned that wonderful hat?”
Vanessa grinned. “It is grand, isn’t it? Perhaps she was a slave, smuggled in through one of the tunnels.”
And I thought I had a big imagination.” April laughed.
But Vanessa was deadly serious. “Have you ever been in the caverns?”
“
No. They were strictly off limits to us kids.”
Putting the hat back on the nail, Vanessa sighed. “Well, you’re not a kid any more. I’m going to make Thane show them to me while I’m here.”
“
I’m not sure they’re even accessible. You heard my father say no one’s been in them for years.”
“
Where there’s a will….” She spun away from April, obviously expecting and not wanting any argument, and continued to prowl the attic. Almost immediately, she squatted beside a brass bed-frame, examining a cardboard case. “Voila! The punch bowl. Now there’s supposed to be a box of extra cups somewhere.”
By the time the two women had unearthed and carted to the kitchen various candlesticks, baskets, and boxes, the rain had slowed to a steady thrum.
Looking around the attic, April said, “That’s everything but the extra punch bowl cups. You search this end; I’ll check the corner by the windows.”
She headed toward a chest-high wall of cardboard cartons, shuffled through the first stack and moved to the next. Lifting the top box, she stopped cold. Behind it was an old steamer trunk. Goose bumps sprang across her flesh.
“
Aha!” Vanessa shouted from the other end of the attic. A second later, she stood next to April with an oblong box cradled in her arms. Cobwebs stuck to her pale hair and her forest green sweater, and dust to her slacks. “The extra punch bowl cups.”
April paid her no mind. Her attention was riveted to the trunk.
Would something
inside it trigger her memory
?
The prospect had her shoving aside crates. Excitement clogged her throat and her voice came out strangled. “Help me get these boxes out of the way.”
“
Sure.” Vanessa set the cups near the door, then hurried back. “What did you find?”
“
Something I’d forgotten all about.” Anticipation drew a cold film across her skin.
With dispatch, they had the trunk in the center of the room. Using her sweatshirt sleeve, April wiped a layer of dust from the lid.
“
Ooh, it’s beautiful.” Vanessa ran her fingers lightly across the brass hinges and the wooden staves, stopping on the raised initials. “L.W.C.. It was your mother’s?”
“
Yes.” Her voice quavered.
“
Do you know what’s in it?”
Possibly, her past and her future.
“No….”
“
Is it locked?”
April shook her head. Even now as she reached for the leather straps, unbuckled them, she could hear Lily complaining about the lost key. With trembling fingers, she unclasped the latch and lifted the lid.
A stale scent of lilies-of-the-valley wafted from the trunk and dropped April to her knees. It was the fragrance Lily doused herself in, made meek by the years of encapsulation in the steamer trunk, yet still powerful enough to assail her daughter with myriad memories.
A sudden panic hit her. All at once, the attic seemed suffocating, the trunk lid too heavy to lift. For the second time since she’d left Phoenix, she wanted to run and hide, let the past stay buried, but her lethargic limbs ignored every command to action she gave.
Vanessa knelt and shoved the lid back until it rested on its hinges.
Startled, April blinked at the other woman, suddenly too aware of her surroundings, and the fact she wasn’t alone. In her zeal to see inside the trunk, she’d pretended it didn’t matter who shared the experience. But it did.
The eagerness on Vanessa’s pretty face struck her as distasteful. This was just another adventure to Thane’s fiancée, but it could mean April’s whole future. And it was private. Not for the scrutiny of some avid fan of the movie star her mother had been.
Then why didn’t she ask her to leave? The answer was simple.
Fear.
The intense panic she’d experienced only minutes before had stripped her confidence for taking a solo stroll down memory lane.
Besides, the thrill of discovery rife in Vanessa’s eyes said wild horses couldn’t drag her away. “Wow! Look at these.”
Shoving her hair from her eyes, April let her gaze loose on the contents of the trunk. A mélange of vibrantly colored papers stared up at them—posters of Lily’s movies. At one time, these had covered the walls of the master bedroom; constant reassurance to her mother that the life of glamour and fame and adoration she so coveted had actually been hers, not some fantasy imagined by her sick mind.
April stared at the face so similar to her own. “It’s like seeing myself in another era, in strange clothes and peculiar hair styles.”
She hadn’t meant to say this out loud, but Vanessa was nodding in agreement as she lifted a couple of the posters and held each toward April, comparing the two faces.
“
You are very like her—same golden hair; same shaped face, same aqua eyes.”
“
I’ve been told that all my life.”
“
I can imagine, but—and I hope you won’t take offense—there’s a definite difference, something in her eyes that’s lacking in yours. You can almost hear her saying, ‘To hell with the world and all its conventions. I’m Lily Cordell and I make my own rules.’ See? It’s in all the pictures. You can see it on the screen, too. That’s the quality that set her apart from other great actresses.”
What a pity that insouciance hadn’t been an act
,
April mused. She smiled at Vanessa. “I’m not offended. My aspirations don’t run to captivating audiences or gaining worldwide acclaim.”
“
Really? I can’t say the same. Bad press isn’t any fun, but there are a lot of perks that go with fame, too. I love attending parties important people attend. Having an uncle for Governor has been great! That’s what I want for Thane and me. Don’t be surprised if you’re invited to visit us in the governor’s mansion some day.” She settled back on her heels and snatched up a couple more posters.
What would it be like, April wondered, feeling a twinge of envy, to actually be able to plan a future?
“
Do you suppose the whole trunk is filled with movie mementos?” Vanessa asked.
This possibility cast a pall over April’s expectant mood. It was doubtful Lily’s treasured memorabilia would give her what she was after. Stifling the urge to shove the other woman aside and start plowing through the trunk, she schooled her control to move slowly. “We won’t know until we look.”
One by one, they transferred the playbills to the floor while Vanessa exclaimed over the movies she had seen and over some she hadn’t. Beneath the posters, they discovered bundles of paper trussed together with white ribbons. “Fan letters,” April exclaimed, upon closer inspection.
“
There must be hundreds of them.”
“
At one time there were thousands.” And Lily had known them all by heart. A vision of her mother seated at her dressing table, reading and rereading these accolades, flashed into April’s brain, dragging with it the resentment she’d felt for the faceless people who seemed to be the only recipients of her mother’s affection.
With a swish and a rustle, the bundles landed quickly atop the posters.
Bent at the waist, Vanessa dug into the trunk and came up with a fistful of tissue paper. Excitement hovered about her like a visible aura as she propped the package on her lap, and carefully uncovered a comb and hairbrush. “Look at these! My God, are they real silver?”
Nodding, April reached for the tarnished handle of the brush, but couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Instead, she rubbed her clammy palms on her jeans. “Nothing but the best for Lily Cordell.”
“
I feel like a queen,” Vanessa trilled, lifting the brush to her sleek hair.
Dismayed at this presumptuous action, April caught her by the wrist. “Please don’t.”
“
Oh…I’m sorry.” Looking contrite, but slightly puzzled, Vanessa laid the brush and comb on the tissue paper and began rewrapping them.
Not knowing quite what to say, April turned back to the trunk and extracted one of several leather-bound scrapbooks. Almost immediately, the other woman joined suit. How long they poured over them, April had no idea. Each contained a hodgepodge of newspaper clippings and magazine articles of Lily’s exploits. The few snapshots had been taken at celebrity events or royal functions. There wasn’t a single picture of her family. She knew Thane’s fiancée must have noticed this oddity and was grateful she hadn’t mentioned it.
Looking up from the open scrapbook on her lap, Vanessa asked, “How could your mother give up such a wonderful life, the travel, the glitz, the exciting people, to stay on quiet little Farraday Island? Didn’t she feel confined? I know I would.”
Although, the question shouldn’t have been unexpected, it caught April unprepared. Did this fall into the same off-limits category as her illness? she wondered, trying to decide how to respond. She was certain what Spencer would say: Leave the past alone. But that was his way, not hers, and the intolerable thought of more lies dissolved all indecision. “I don’t know what story was given out to the press or the public at the time—I hadn’t been born. But when Lily was thirty-two, she was stricken with agoraphobia; an abnormal fear of being in an open space.”
Bewilderment stole across Vanessa’s face. “I don’t understand. How was she stricken with a phobia?”
“
Agoraphobia is hereditary. Her grandfather had it all of his life. And it can come on at any time…right out of the blue.”
Silence hung heavy in the attic as Vanessa seemed to mull this over. When she finally spoke her voice was almost a whisper. “Aren’t you afraid of getting it?”
“
I can’t live my life worrying about what might or might not happen in the future.” The words were flippantly spoken, but the truth was until she dealt with the past, the future was too uncertain to ponder. “At least, the medical profession has a greater understanding of the disease now. There’s medicine and therapy to assist those afflicted in lessening anxiety attacks to manageable levels. There was no such help for Lily.”
“
It must have been devastating for her to lose her independence.”
The suggestion brought April up short. For so many years she had hated her mother for never showing her the tiniest of affection; but not once had she considered Lily in terms of a woman suffering, only one who enjoyed making others suffer. The twinge of compassion inside her felt alien. “I guess it was. I remember she couldn’t stand to be alone in a room. And I suppose it explains why the entertaining never seemed to stop.”
“
Speaking of which—I’d better get those punch bowl cups down to Cynthia before she sends a search party.” Vanessa rose and swiped at her dusty knees. “Thanks for indulging my curiosity about your mother. I swear every time I mention Lily’s name the rest of the family either changes the subject or acts like they haven’t heard me. I was starting to wonder if there was some deep, dark family secret I wasn’t to be told.”
“
Oh, I doubt it.” April cringed inwardly.
She
was the secret, but couldn’t her family see their efforts to avoid the past were adding to its mystery and allure? If only the trunk had proved as interesting, she thought, turning back to it as Vanessa departed.