by Amy Vansant
Hm.
There’s an idea.
Putting the shoebox aside, she carted the planter back to the source of the leak, setting it beneath the drip to catch the water.
Problem temporarily solved.
Hurrying back to the exit, she lowered herself through the hole and shifted the door back in place.
Hopefully the rain would stop soon. Tomorrow she’d have one of the Pineapple Port handymen come out and assess the situation.
Pain in the neck.
Abby jumped to her feet as Charlotte landed in the hall and stood sentry as she folded up the ladder and headed into the kitchen to get a better look in the shoebox.
Charlotte put away the flashlight and opened the box. It smelled like dust, if dust was a smell. She didn’t imagine anyone would be making Attic Dust a candle scent any time soon.
Probably somebody’s old tax documents.
Flipping through the papers inside, the first to catch her eye was a newspaper clipping about a new resort opening somewhere in Jupiter Beach, Florida. The story featured a small group of employees standing in front of a charming, multilevel gray building with white columns and trim.
Maybe a box of vacation ideas?
The rest of the container contained drawings, filled math and spelling worksheets and a few torn pages from yearbooks with row after row of smiling teenagers. At the bottom she found a yellowing photo of a baby wrapped in pink swaddling clothes.
A folded sheet of paper pressing against the side of the box turned out to be the birth certificate of Siofra McQueen, whoever that was.
Probably the baby in the photo.
What kind of name is Siofra? Charlotte wasn’t even sure how to pronounce it, but knew whatever she guessed would be wrong.
Charlotte did the math—if the certificate belonged to the child in the photo, baby Siofra would be forty-six now. She couldn’t think of anyone her grandmother might know named McQueen.
The box probably belonged to someone from the family who owned the house before Nanny.
She was about to fold up the certificate when the name of the birth mother caught her eye.
Estelle Byrne.
Hm.
The woman had the same first name as her grandmother, the woman who raised her after her mother died. Soon after, Nanny also died, and Charlotte was unofficially adopted by the Pineapple Port fifty-five-plus community, and raised as their unofficial mascot. Overnight she’d gone from no family to hundreds of doting, if older, mothers and fathers.
The father’s name didn’t ring a bell: Shea McQueen.
Something nagged in Charlotte’s brain and she stared at the certificate in an attempt to give the thought ample time to bubble to the forefront of her cerebral cortex.
Byrne. Byrne. Something about that last name…
Wasn’t that her grandmother’s maiden name?
She lowered the paper and looked at Abby.
“Do I have an aunt?” Once again, maybe she had more family than she ever imagined.
Abby glanced up and then settled her head back between her paws, chin on the kitchen floor, her burst of midnight energy seemingly drained. She rolled on her side and stretched her legs out straight as Charlotte flipped back to the top of the pile and reopened the newspaper article.
The grinning faces of the Loggerhead Inn.
A few of the girls in the photo were the right age then to be around forty-six now…
If her grandmother had had another baby, and this box was full of snippets from that baby’s life, then her mystery aunt had to be one of the people in that staff photo, right?
Why else would the clipping be in the box?
Abby grunted to show her annoyance and Charlotte looked down at her.
“I think you’re going to have to stay with Mariska for a bit.”
Abby sighed and Charlotte leaned down to ruffle the crop of hair sprouting from the top of her sleepy pet’s head.
“Mommy’s going to Jupiter Beach.”
Chapter Three
At exactly six o’clock, in Targetsville, Florida, the Loyal Order of Gophers released a series of staccato belches to the recognizable tune of Shave and a Haircut. They flipped over their glasses with a deft hand maneuver rumored to previously only have been accomplished by the ancient Double-Jointed Pygmies of South Wallento, and furiously thumbed their noses at the sky.
“To T.K.!”
The four men practiced for the Inter-Lodge Synchronized Drinking Olympics every third Wednesday night, and if another lodge ever started in the area, they were sure to bring home the gold.
Tommy Garth pulled his too-short Dr. Who t-shirt over his soft, hairy belly. Tommy’s dark hair swept back from his forehead in a greasy pompadour. His ragged mustache resembled any one of several varieties of fungus, and in a pinch, could be used as a makeshift Rorschach test. Though he earned his living as a handyman, his true love was filming little stories he wrote while on the toilet. He kept a tablet and pen on the floor beside his commode and penned stories about men and women walking across their living rooms to poke a fire or answer the door and get the mail. The films contained no love, drama, mystery or fantasy; people walked across rooms and cooked eggs or performed other mundane tasks. High art, he argued, never allowed anything of obvious consequence to happen. Not only were his movies devoid of intrigue, he also buoyed the art factor by requiring his performers to complete highbrow tasks, like using a bowl and a whisk to beat scrambled eggs instead of mixing them in the pan with a fork like a commoner.
Tommy couldn’t find anyone to buy his films until he had an epiphany one morning during a particularly long commode constitutional.
That’s when he started filming the actors in the nude.
Naked women accepted mail from naked postal carriers, naked men drank coffee and went to work for naked middle-management, naked grandfathers frolicked with naked dogs on naked hillsides.
Tommy sold an entire series of his naked films to a website entrepreneur who assured him they were ‘great pop art.’ The web guy even commissioned a dozen more custom films, though Tommy was at a lost as to why he wanted so many shots of feet in them.
“Finished up a great little film about dusting today,” said Tommy to no one in particular. “Lots of close-ups of bare feet walking back and forth. Some really good slow motion work.”
Mac Davies, Gopher treasurer, released a little burp. “You know that guy’s using your movies on a porn site, right?”
Tommy gave him a side-eyed glance. “No, he’s not.”
“A porn site for foot fetishes.”
Tommy snorted a laugh. “That’s not a thing.”
“Oh, my naïve friend.” Mac patted him on the back. “You’re an idiot.”
Mac winced at his own words and regretted calling his friend an idiot. He was trying to become a better person. There was a time when he was as happy as a physically fit, middle-aged, distinguishably graying man could be. His wife was the perfect homemaker. His dog never wet the rug. His goldfish didn’t die half as often as some people’s. His youngest son was a college baseball star and all-around good kid who’d recently moved in with his girlfriend, Jenny.
It was when he discovered Jenny’s given name was Jake that his world changed. When he realized “Jenny” had once been a tight end for the Crimson Tide (twice All-American), he marched to his car and tried to tear away his only bumper sticker, “Have you hugged your child today?”, only half-accomplishing the job. Now he drove around town sinisterly inquiring if the car behind him had hugged anything in the last twenty-four hours. He put in a request to be made Gopher treasurer instead of secretary, threw away all his pastel shirts, and subscribed to Sports Illustrated, Soldier of Fortune and Penthouse before his wife talked him off the ledge. He had a good cry, a long talk with his son and Jenny, and then vowed to be a better person. A bigger person. After all, he loved his son. What else could he do?
But being a better person was hard.
“You’re not an idio
t,” he mumbled to Tommy.
Tommy grunted.
“No, you were right the first time,” piped local Sheriff and Gopher Secretary (previously Treasurer) Frank Marshall.
Frank’s only real cross to bear was a series of recent changes to his koi pond, which featured three statues. A heron, a fishing frog that used to have a cigar in its mouth, and for a brief period of time after angering a local teen by busting him for truancy, a Virgin Mary with a cigar in her mouth.
Bob Garitz, the last of the Gophers, wore too many sweater vests. For reasons neither he or his wife Mariska, nor medical science could divine, he had a cold chest and really warm arms.
On the sleeveless sweater he wore on Gopher nights, Bob had pinned a medal he’d stolen from Major Hepper, commander of the old Air Force base upon which Targetsville now stood. Like the other Gophers, he’d spent much of his childhood watching thousands of yellow-grey dummy bombs fall to Earth with no more force than a bag of potatoes.
For the children of Targetsville, each bomb had developed a distinct personality. The missiles little Tommy watched fall screeched “sweeeee KKKKKKkkkk,” and Bob’s bombs exploded “POW!” (Bob’s bombs were stealth bombs until they actually hit the earth). Walter ‘T.K.’ Weeble’s bombs fell Eeeeeeeeee SPLAT!, something like how a falling tomato might end its life, if it found its plump red bride picked by Momma Ragu and had access to a plane from which to commit suicide. Walter’s father had owned the area’s largest tomato farm, making him heir to a tomato dynasty and earning him the nickname The Tomato King, or ‘T.K.’ for short.
But now, the fifth and missing Gopher, T.K. Weeble, had passed away.
When the five Gophers were children, they knew exactly when those amazing silver planes would drop their payload and when it was safe to collect the ‘bombs.’ Collecting dummy bombs was more interesting than collecting baseball cards, but they didn’t fit in shoe boxes, took up a lot of space, and in the end, were pointless to trade and impossible to get autographed.
The teenage Gophers also killed time by dragging an orange egg crate to Major Hepper’s window and watching him reenact “The Wounded Soldier and The Kind Battle Nurse” with his well-endowed secretary. They witnessed the Battle Nurse nursing him back to health daily, until one hot summer day, Mrs. Hepper walked in on The Kind Battle Nurse valiantly sucking the poison from the Major’s freak snake bite and the life of the professional bomb snatchers became infinitely less interesting.
Eventually, Hepper and his men packed up the Air Force base, the five boys grew into men and the Gophers were born. Led by T.K., they spent their time bowling, talking, and taking the odd night-course in woodcarving or welding.
Mostly, they drank at The Bromeliad, the Targetsville bar which served as their lodge.
Tonight, they drank to T.K., who’d gone to that great tomato patch in the sky.
On this particular evening, none of the remaining Gophers knew they had one great adventure left.
Chapter Four
Charlotte glanced at her watch again.
Four o’clock in the morning.
Hm.
Well, all’s fair if the light is on.
Leaping out of bed and throwing on flip flops, she slapped across the wet road, the attic shoebox tucked under one arm, a light rain sprinkling her head.
She stood on her toes and peeped into Mariska’s living room through the window. Inside, Mariska sat in her comfy chair, nose in a book. Her unofficially adoptive mother, the Pineapple Port neighbor most hands-on with her upbringing, never slept well. Most of the time Charlotte felt bad for her, but this time Mariska’s sleeping woes were really handy. She’d been in her own drippy home, staring at her watch, unable to get back to sleep in her damp bed, when she spotted the light flick on at her neighbor’s house.
Finally.
Now she had someone to whine to about her leaky roof and explore the box of secrets she’d found in the attic.
Mariska had served as the closest thing to a mother Charlotte had after both her mother and grandmother died. She couldn’t grill her own family about the shoebox—not without driving straight to the Loggerhead Inn and starting the search for this possible, mysterious aunt—so, once again, Mariska would serve as her family’s proxy. She had been waiting for the sun to come up so she could give the Loggerhead Inn a call, but for now, dumping everything on insomniac Mariska’s brain would be a welcome interim solution to her own inability to sleep.
Charlotte tapped on the window with her nail. Mariska didn’t move. She tapped again, a little louder.
Mariska looked up and jumped in her seat, her hand fluttering to her chest, her book tumbling to the floor. She rolled her eyes and rocked herself to her feet before waddling towards the front door.
Charlotte moved to meet her there and Mariska greeted her wearing a thin muumuu, squinting at her through tired eyes.
“What are you doing out in the rain? You just about scared me to death,” she scolded.
“Sorry. I saw your light on and figured you couldn’t sleep.”
“I can’t. My legs ache. Come in.”
Charlotte entered and they moved into the living room.
She looked around for the dog. “Izzy doesn’t even come out to say hi now?”
Mariska shook her head. “She doesn’t get out of bed this early for anyone. She’s like her daddy that way.”
Charlotte put her shoebox on the kitchen island and Mariska peered at it.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t recognize it?”
“No. Should I?”
“No, I guess not.” Charlotte opened the lid and retrieved the birth certificate to hand to Mariska. “What do you know about this?”
Mariska puttered back to her seat to gather her reading glasses from the table and returned to the island. She scanned the document and looked up at Charlotte, her expression blank.
“I don’t understand.”
Charlotte sighed. She knew by Mariska’s expression she didn’t recognize anything about the document. If anything looked familiar and she didn’t want to say, she’d be slipping on the strange, frozen mask she always adopted when lying or hiding something. It was as if she was afraid the tiniest arc of an eyebrow or quiver of a lip would give away everything. But, for some reason, she could never keep her nostrils from flaring in that pose. They were the true tell-tale.
Charlotte stabbed her finger at the line featuring the birth mother’s name. “That’s my grandmother’s name as the mom, but that’s not my mother’s name for the baby.”
Mariska’s forehead folded into nubby rows. “You’re saying your mother changed her name?”
“No. Look at the date of birth. That’s not my mother’s birthday or the right year.” She poked at the father’s name. “That’s not my grandfather’s name and the baby was born the year after he died.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying—”
Charlotte decided things would go faster if she left no room for interpretation. “I think my grandmother had another baby.”
Mariska gasped. “No. Estelle always talked about her only daughter. This has to be your mom.”
“It can’t be. This baby is ten years younger. Mom couldn’t look ten years older than she really was. And who pretends to be older?”
Mariska sat down on a stool. “Where did you find this?”
“There was a leak—”
“Where? At your house?”
Charlotte nodded. “When I went to the attic to find the source—”
“It’s leaking from your roof?”
Charlotte took a calming breath. “Yes. Where else would it leak from?”
Mariska shrugged in a world-weary way that implied she’d been fighting different sorts of leaks her whole life. “It could have been a window seal. Or under the door. Remember when I had that river coming through my sliders during that one hurricane—”
“Okay. Fair enough. But no, I have a roof leak. And when I went up to find—”
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“I’ll give you Jerry’s phone number.”
Charlotte stopped, her mind derailed from its gear by Mariska’s comment. “Jerry who?”
“He’s the roof guy. Those other guys will rip you off. You have to use Jerry.”
“Okay. Thanks. But I’m trying to tell you—”
Mariska barreled on. “Greta used that outfit with the commercials. You know the ones you see on the local news? They came out here and charged her an arm and a leg—”
Charlotte scowled and put her hand on Mariska’s. “I’m trying to tell you about the shoebox.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Thank—”
Mariska pointed an index finger at her. “But use Jerry.”
“I will.” Charlotte decided to skip to the end of her story in the faint hope she could finish it. “Long story short, I found the box nestled in the attic insulation.”
Mariska seemed to ponder this new information. “Like it was hidden on purpose?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. Very much like that.”
“What else is in it? Nothing that explains everything?”
“No. There are bits and bobs from schools all over the place—different states, different countries…” Charlotte smiled to herself as she dug through the box, thinking she had to be the only person in the world under thirty who said bits and bobs. Growing up in a retirement community, she used a fair amount of old-fashioned slang she rarely heard from the mouths of her ‘contemporaries.’
She found the newspaper clipping and handed it to Mariska. “And there was this too.”
Mariska looked it over before looking back up at her. “The Loggerhead Inn? What does this have to do with Estelle’s secret baby?”
“I think the baby must be one of the people in the staff photo, but the paper doesn’t name them. There are three women about the right age, though.” She pointed to each.
Marisa pulled down her glasses and shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. Your grandmother never said anything about a second daughter.”
Charlotte sighed. “I had to ask. I thought maybe you’d know something.”
