A Secret in the Attic (Mystery/Suspense/Romance)

by Samantha Jillian Bayarr

  “There’s quite a bit more to the story than that, and I’d like the opportunity to explain it to you. Perhaps when you are feeling a little more up to conversation; you can call the number on the card and set up an appointment with the office. Please call within the next few days so I can discuss the details with you.”

  The young man turned, and was gone before I could process what had just happened.

  Emily was suddenly behind me, placing a consoling hand on my shoulder.

  “Who was that? He was kinda cute.”

  I handed her the card. “He said he wants to talk to me about my mother’s estate. “

  “What estate?”

  I let out a guffaw. “That’s exactly what I asked him, but he seems convinced my mother has some family inheritance. He wants me to call him in a few days so he can talk to me about it, but we both know there isn’t any point. When he realizes he has the wrong Lucy Blackwell, the situation will take care of itself.”

  “What if you’re wrong, Claire?”

  “Then it should stay dead and buried with my mother who will never know she had a family.”

  I crumbled to the curb of the long drive that led to the cemetery, tucking my head down to muffle the deep-felt cry that had waited until now to let loose from my throat. I could feel Emily slouch against my small frame, pulling me close to console me as I continued to sob, not caring who heard me. She said nothing to me as she stroked my long, reddish-blonde hair. After some time, I lifted my head, unable to cry anymore. A storm rapidly approached behind us, and everyone had long since left the cemetery. They would all be waiting for us at Frank’s, but I wasn’t up to visiting with any of them. Even though they had been my mother’s friends and regular customers for as long as I could remember, they weren’t really family. And for some unknown reason, I suddenly felt unattached from all of them, despite the fact I’d grown up with them. My mother was the only family I had ever known. I had no idea where my father had been my entire life. When my mother became ill, I hoped for months on end that he would come to see her, and that he would want to see me, but when she took that final turn down the road that would lead to her death, I knew I would never see him.

  Emily managed to get me into the passenger seat of my car and drove me to Frank’s where her own husband and child had already gone. She got me out of the car and inside the diner before the storm unleashed its fury. As thunder cracked and lightning flashed, my mother’s friends consoled me one-by-one. I stood there, stunned, not really participating in any of the conversation. Just going through the motions in what seemed to be a slow-motion afternoon that dragged endlessly on.

  Finally, Emily put me back in my car and drove me the three blocks to the tiny house in which I’d been raised, where she tucked me into my bed and promised to return the following morning. Her husband blipped his horn, signaling her he had arrived to take her from me. I clung to her hand in desperation, but it slipped away as I gave in to sleep that overcame me.

  ****

  On Monday, I woke earlier than usual, vaguely remembering Emily being with me for a short time the day before to check on me as promised. I’d slept for more than thirty-six hours, despite the constant interruption from the nightmares, and felt somewhat clouded in memory of the time that had lapsed without my knowledge. I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to grasp the date as I stared at it with unbelieving eyes from the face of my cell phone. I tossed the phone on the other side of my bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, hoping it would help me focus. The days leading to my mother’s death had become a blur of events, including the unexpected visit from the lawyer at her funeral.

  I lifted the young lawyer’s card from my night stand to examine it. How it got there, I had no idea. Tempted to call him for reasons other than my mother’s so-called estate, I reached for my cell phone, but replaced the card on the night stand, changing my mind. Though I was feeling slightly crazy, I knew it would be inappropriate to ask him out, and I certainly wasn’t ready to talk to him about my mother. I wasn’t ready to hear that my mother’s life had all been a lie. Or that she hadn’t needed to struggle because she really had a family out there somewhere that somehow never found her before it was too late. That sort of thing didn’t happen in real life. Who was this lawyer kidding?

  My phone buzzed an alert that Emily was calling to check on me again. “I’m up.”

  “You don’t sound very up. How did you sleep?”

  “I couldn’t stop dreaming about Amelia.”

  “Don’t try too hard, Claire. In a few days you’ll feel better. Maybe then the nightmares will stop.”

  “I hope you’re right. Maybe I’ll get dressed and sit in the park for a while. Some sunshine might just be the thing I need.”

  A moment of silence ensued from the other end of the line. “Would you like me and Isabelle to go along to keep you company?”

  “Yes. And bring some bread so we can feed the pigeons.”

  “Are you kidding Claire? We’re not ninety years old.”

  “Oh my Gosh, Emily. You don’t have to be ninety to enjoy feeding the pigeons.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll bring bread so we can feed the pigeons, Crazy.”

  “I’m sorry, Em. I just want to do something that doesn’t require any effort or thought.”

  “No worries. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

  ****

  At the park, we competed with old couples feeding the pigeons. As it turned out, it wasn’t as relaxing as I’d hoped.

  “Have you decided if you’re going to call that lawyer?” Emily spoke over the pigeons’ coos.

  I flashed her a look of annoyance. “I was wondering how long it would take you to bring that up.”

  Emily closed the bag of bread. “Don’t you think you owe it to Lucy to find out the truth about her past?”

  “What if the past is better left in the past?”

  Hungry pigeons began to fly restlessly overhead. One of them pooped on my shoulder, then swooped back on the ground and waddled toward me. I threw a waded piece of bread at the pigeon and it bounced off its back. The pigeon pecked at it quickly, devouring it before the other pigeons could get to it.

  “What a pig you are,” I snapped at the bird. “You think you can just crap on me and then gobble up all the bread?”

  “Claire. Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re yelling at a pigeon and throwing bread at him. This is obviously upsetting you, so maybe we should just go.”

  “It’s not like I threw a rock at the dang thing. And I’m not upset about feeding these stupid pigeons. It’s the nerve of that hot lawyer showing up at my mother’s funeral that’s bothering me.”

  “Then call him and yell at him, Claire, instead of taking it out on the pigeons. I mean it. Call him and find out what he wants. Do it before it drives you completely crazy.”

  I couldn’t call Mr. Avery. I was too afraid I’d blurt out how gorgeous I thought he was.

  Isabelle began to cry, and Emily stood up and pushed the stroller to her car without saying another word to me.

  ****

  I squirmed in my seat in the waiting room of the lawyer’s office, wondering why I’d agreed to meet with him so soon. Maybe I needed more time to think this through before jumping into something I couldn’t take back hearing. I’d always had an impulsive nature; it was something my mother claimed I’d inherited from her. If I’d inherited anything from my father, my mother would never have admitted it to me since he was always a sore subject of conversation. The only real conversation we’d ever had about my father took place after I found an old picture of the two of them hidden in the drawer of her bedside table when I was looking for loose change. I couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, but my mother told me everything she knew about the stranger which in my opinion, wasn’t worth repeating. He was a con-artist and thought my mother had money, and left her as soon as he found out otherwise. Just where he got the idea my mother had anything
of worth was still a mystery—unless…

  “Miss Mayfield....Mr. Avery will see you now.” The receptionist had been calling my name; for how long, only she knew.

  I stood up to follow her to his office, feeling a little embarrassed.

  His office was fairly large, with an expensive desk in the center of the room. Behind the desk, the entire wall consisted of built-in bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling. Large law books filled every shelf, and I thought it seemed like an awfully accomplished look for such a young lawyer.

  “Have a seat, Miss Mayfield. Mr. Avery will be right with you.”

  When the receptionist closed the door, I stood with shaky legs, trying to get a better glimpse of the files that lay open on the desk; one in particular that caught my eye. On the left side of the file was a color photo of a mansion that looked remarkably like the one I’d been dreaming about for the past few nights. With trembling hands, I rifled through the pages of the file until an old photograph fell from the stack of papers. I picked up the sepia photo that boasted a wealthy family posed on the lawn of the very mansion from my dream. I turned the photo over to find faint writing from a quill pen, my focus drawn to the names; The Blackwell Family: Edward, Peyton, Fredrick, Amelia, and Baby Lizzie.

  I nearly dropped the photograph at the sight of the name, but turned it back over to get a better look at the family. There it was; the middle child. She was the same as the child I’d dreamed about. Struggling to breathe, I picked up the file, noticing my mother’s name on the front cover. I let it drop from hands, not caring that the contents scattered across the desk, some pages falling to the floor.

  Feeling nauseous, I looked around the room, wondering if it would be rude to vomit in his trash can, or risk making a mess by running to the bathroom. All I knew was that I couldn’t have the handsome Mr. Avery seeing me vomit in his office.

  Before I realized, I was leaving the building, whisking right by the receptionist who was calling out my name. I hopped in my car and sped out of the parking lot as though someone was after me—a ghost, maybe.

  I pulled over on the side of the road about a block from the office and searched furiously through my purse for my cell phone. I dialed Emily, tapping my foot on the floor of my car impatiently as it rang once, then, twice, and a third time before her voicemail picked up. I hung up on the voicemail, waited a few seconds and dialed her number again.

  This time she answered.

  “Isabelle’s sleeping,” she whispered into the phone.

  “I’m sorry, Em, but I have to talk to you.”

  “How did you get done with the lawyer so fast?”

  I pushed aside sweaty strands of hair pasted to my forehead. “I couldn’t do it, Em. I had to get out of there before I threw up.”

  Emily sighed loudly. “What are you afraid of, Claire?”

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Amelia is real. Or she’s a ghost, and she’s haunting me. There was a picture of her with her family in front of the mansion that I’ve been dreaming about. And all of it was in my mother’s file at the lawyer’s office.”

  “Slow down, Claire. You’re not making any sense.”

  “The whole thing doesn’t make any sense, Em.”

  “What did the lawyer have to say about it? Surely there’s an explanation for it.”

  “I didn’t talk to him. I ran out of the office as soon as I saw the picture.”

  “Maybe the picture belonged to another file and they somehow got mixed up.”

  I was growing impatient with her logic. “Amelia’s last name is Blackwell. That picture looked like it was at least a hundred years old.”

  “Then you must have seen the picture when you were younger or something and it stuck in your head. Maybe it does belong to your mother, and it has something to do with the inheritance. But the only way you’re going to find out is if you go back and talk to the lawyer.”

  “No way; I’m done with all of this.”

  Emily sighed loudly into the phone. “Why are you always so stubborn? Why can’t you just go back and find out the truth?”

  “I’m just not ready for all this craziness, Em. I just buried my mother three days ago.”

  “Do you want me to go with you, Claire?”

  “No. I’m sure that gorgeous lawyer already thinks I’m a freak. I don’t need him thinking I’m a baby too.”

  “Why do you care what he thinks? Except that he is pretty good looking. Make another appointment and let me know if you want me to go with you.”

  “Okay.”

  I could hear the baby in the background. “Let me go, Isabelle’s starting to wake up from her nap.”

  I sat in my car on the side of the road, watching storm clouds pushing their way across the sky as though they were in a hurry. Rain poured onto my windshield in heavy pelts, but I didn’t bother turning on my wipers. I just sat there thinking of everything my mother had ever said to me as a young child about the supposed connection between her and the Widow Karrington. I wondered if she’d known about the family in the picture, and if she’d ever shown it to me. I remembered my mother telling me the orphanage had been closed from a fire long before I was born. The gossip around town was that my father had something to do with the fire, and they’d been looking for him ever since. Why the people in our town would be worried about an orphanage way over in Wellington, I never could understand. After all, Wellington was nearly an hour’s drive from Milford. Still, the only people I knew that were even aware of the fact were Frank and his wife, Ida, and they would never gossip about my mother’s affairs. Frank and Ida had been like parents to my mother, and they were like grandparents to me since I had none of my own.

  I turned on my lights and my wipers and put my car in gear, heading down the road to Frank’s Diner, hoping for some hot cocoa to warm my body and good conversation to warm my soul.

  ****

  Ida greeted me at the door and helped me out of my rain slicker. I sat at the counter and watched as she fixed me a cup of hot cocoa with extra whip cream on top just the way I liked it.

  “Thursday’s her birthday.”

  Ida clutched my hand from the other side of the counter. “I know darlin’. And I think she’d want us to have a party.”

  “I think you’re right. I’m just not sure if I’m up to it.”

  She put a hand under my chin and lifted my face until my eyes met hers. “That’s nonsense and you know it. Your momma wouldn’t want you moping around like the sky fell on you. Let’s have a big party in her honor.”

  I forced a smile. She was right. Ida made a few calls, and before long, a party was scheduled for Thursday night. Maybe a party would help. Still, the idea of having a birthday party for a dead person felt pretty strange. My mother was more the type to participate in such a thing than I was, but she’d always had a free spirit and an open mind.

  I phoned Emily. “Hey, be at the diner Thursday at four o’clock. We’re having a birthday party for my mother.”

  “Um, Claire—you do remember your mother is dead, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, Em. I haven’t gone completely bonkers. Ida wants to have a party for her.”

  I could hear the strain in Emily’s voice. “We’ll be there.”

  Ida finished her last call, then, turned her attention to me. “Is there anyone special you want to invite to the party?”

  “I just hung up with Emily. She’s coming.”

  Ida’s look softened. “That’s not what I meant. What about that nice-looking man you were talking to at the funeral?”

  I practically choked on my hot cocoa. Ida pushed a few napkins toward me so I could wipe my chin.

  “Ida, that man was a lawyer.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “He said he’d been looking for me to talk to me about my mother’s estate, but when I told him he had the wrong woman, he left.”

  She looked down and started wiping the already clean counter. “Oh, that.”

 
; I put my hand on Ida’s to stop her furious wiping. “What do you mean; Oh that?”

  Ida folded her hands and looked at me solemnly. “I was hoping for a better time to tell you about your Momma’s last wishes, but I suppose this is as good a time as any.”

  I looked around to see that the diner had emptied of its last customer, most likely because of the storm. “I already know what my mother wished for me. We talked about me going back to school before things got too painful for her and…”

  I couldn’t finish the sentence around the lump in my throat. My mother told me that she wanted me to go back to nursing school since I’d dropped out six months ago when she became really ill. She made me show her my re-enrollment for the winter semester, since we both knew I’d be too late to attend the fall semester. She didn’t want me working at the diner all my life the way she had; she wanted a better life for me. She’d protested on more than one occasion about my working there to care for her when she became ill, but after a while, working and going to school was too much to juggle when I had to help care for her, too. I didn’t mind, and she knew that. But that didn’t stop her from lecturing me with her last breath about going back to school.