Andi Unexpected

by Amanda Flower

  I held my breath. “You didn’t tell Dr. Girard that, did you?”

  “No. Thankfully, I kept that bit of information to myself.” He spoke faster now, “I explained to Miss Addy why you’re so interested in the name Andora and what you found in the attic. I hope that’s okay.” He paused. I heard the worry in his voice again.

  “Yes, that’s fine,” I assured him. I wished he would get to the point. Colin looked prepared to grab the phone out of my hand. I scooted away from him just to be safe.

  Mr. Finnigan chuckled. “You’re lucky she detests Girard. When I told her what happened between the two of you, she was fit to be tied.”

  I held my breath.

  “She has agreed to meet with you and asked me to invite you to have tea at her home on Friday afternoon at four o’clock. I’ll be there as well.”

  “And she’ll answer any questions I have about Andora?”

  “I think she will, Andi, but you have to let Miss Addy tell her story in her own time. She won’t have it any other way. That’s what got Dr. Girard in trouble. He wanted her to drive straight to the heart of the story. He wasn’t interested in hearing about her impressions.”

  “Can Colin come too?”

  Colin nodded so hard beside me, I thought his head would snap right off his neck.

  “I thought you might ask that, and I’ve already arranged it with her. Be there early. Miss Addy doesn’t tolerate lateness. She lives just a few blocks away from you. Colin knows where it is.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Finnigan.”

  “You’re welcome. Again, I apologize for Dr. Girard’s behavior.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, and this time I meant it.

  As I carried an old baby stroller into the garage, I stopped in my tracks and gaped. Bethany was standing in the middle of the room, writing prices on stickers and placing them on items—everything from old Barbie dolls to window frames. But what really surprised me was the state of the stuff. All of the items were unpacked and organized by category in neat piles all around the garage. When the sale finally started at the end of the week, all we’d have to do is open the garage door and let the shoppers come inside.

  I picked my jaw off the floor. “What happened in here?”

  Bethany looked up from the coffee mugs she’d been pricing at twenty-five cents each. “What?”

  “It’s so neat and organized. You did this just today?”

  She shrugged. “While you and Colin have been working up in the attic, I’ve been out here doing this. It’s no big deal. Where is he anyway?”

  “Still in the attic. I think we can start moving some of my stuff up there tomorrow.”

  “Good. Be sure to move that poster first.”

  I chewed my lip. “How is Zane?”

  She glared at me. “That’s none of your business.”

  “You haven’t said anything about him since we moved here. I’ve been wondering what’s going on.”

  “Just leave that baby stroller anywhere.” Her face appeared pinched. “I have to go inside for a minute.”

  She ran out of the garage and almost knocked over Bergita who was on her way in. Bergita didn’t try to stop Bethany. “She didn’t look too happy,” she said, placing a roll of price stickers on one of the long tables. “I brought her some more stickers.”

  I put the stroller in the front corner of the garage next to a pair of roller skates. “She’s never happy.”

  “You might want to cut Bethany some slack. Moving here has been hard for her. It’s a lot of change in a short period of time.”

  I frowned. “And it’s been easy for me? I lost my parents too. I moved to a new place too.”

  “You did. But you’re a different person and handle it differently. I think your sister has realized that you’re tougher than she is.”

  “But I’m not.” I tapped my toe against the wheel of the stroller. “And I wasn’t our parents’ favorite either. I heard her tell you that I was.”

  Bergita stuck her hands into her shorts pockets. “Eavesdropping?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “Ah, well, what your sister believes about how your parents felt is her issue, not yours. You need to give her time to work through it.”

  “In the meantime, she hates me,” I said barely above a whisper.

  “She doesn’t hate you. She’s jealous of you—and not just because of your parents.”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but she continued talking before I had the chance.

  “Give her some time and space. But most of all, pray for her.”

  What Bergita didn’t know was that I’d given up praying the day my parents died.

  Over the next two days, I avoided my sister as much as possible while waiting anxiously for Friday, the day Colin and I were finally going to meet with Miss Addy. Colin and I spent most of that time in the attic. Once we’d finally cleared out everything I didn’t want to keep, which was most of it, we had the dirty task of scrubbing the floorboards and walls. Because of his asthma, Colin had to take frequent breaks to get away from the smell.

  Amelie took us to the hardware store to pick out some paint to replace the sailboat wallpaper. I settled on sky blue because it reminded me of the color of the Central American sky my father had talked so much about.

  When taking breaks from the cleaning and painting, Colin and I read everything we could find at the public library and on the Internet about the 1930s and the Great Depression.

  According to what we read, on December 16, 1929, which was the day Andora came into this world, the United States was in turmoil. The stock market had crashed in late October of that year, on a day that would be forever called Black Tuesday. Immediately after the Crash, people ran to their banks to withdraw all of their money. But for many, it was too late and they lost a fortune.

  With no money to cover the payroll, businesses laid off workers by the hundreds. The worst of the layoffs came in 1933, but they started as early as late 1929 when Andora was born. Men and women woke up every morning well before sunrise to go out and look for work.

  Even in rural areas like Killdeer, the Depression had a devastating effect. People could no longer afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, which meant the farmers’ prices dropped dramatically. Acres of crops were left to rot in the fields and orchards because no one bought the produce.

  Colin and I were sitting side by side on a paint-spattered tarp in the middle of the attic, as Colin read aloud to me from his iPad. Mr. Rochester sat at the edge of the tarp trying to flick blue paint from his paws. I’d told him to stay away from that paint tray.

  “Listen to this,” Colin said. “Children were the most severely harmed by the Crash. Many parents turned kids out of their homes because they could no longer feed their children. Some children found jobs in factories but worked in terrible conditions.”

  “Let me see.”

  He handed me the tablet computer, and I scrolled down through the article. “Here’s something.” I read aloud, “Sometimes parents sent their younger children to live in orphanages or with family members who weren’t as severely impacted by the Depression.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened to Andora?” Colin pushed his glasses up higher on his nose with his thumb.

  “I hope Miss Addy can tell us.”

  CASE FILE NO. 18

  When Amelie had said that Bergita organizes a two-day neighborhood garage sale every year, I’d pictured a few houses selling mismatched furniture and moth-eaten clothes. Boy, was I wrong. It was so much more than that. She got the entire street involved. Up and down Dunlap Avenue, neighbors scrounged their garages and basements for anything that might earn a buck. The neighborhood mothers rushed around their yards and yelled to their children to “get that dented flatware from under the buffet,” “go find that broken synthesizer,” and “bring out every empty hanger.” Everyone hoped to make a profit off the out-of-towners who visited Killdeer during the university’s annual Endless
Summer Festival.

  Bergita went so far as to ask the town council to close off our street to thru traffic on Friday and Saturday, and she even borrowed all of the church’s eight-foot rectangular folding tables.

  It was now early morning on the first day of the neighborhood garage sale. As Colin and I flipped over another table and set it upright on its legs in the middle of the street, I said, “Bergita doesn’t mess around, does she?”

  Colin grinned as he spread a yellow vinyl tablecloth over it and secured the table cover with masking tape. “No way. You should have seen her the year Killdeer celebrated its bicentennial—she was the committee chairperson. There was a parade that weekend, and the elephant rides were the best.”

  “Elephant rides?”

  “Oh yeah,” Colin said seriously. “Bergita borrowed the elephant from a friend who’s an animal trainer.”

  Bethany rolled a wheeled cooler over to us and stopped. She put a hand on her hip. “Bergita wants the pop on this table.” I noticed she wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  Colin looked from one sister to the other. Finally, he said, “Thanks. We can do it.”

  Bethany nodded and walked away.

  “Is something wrong between you and Bethany?” He paused. “I mean, more than normal?”

  I ignored his question. “Let’s just unload this pop.”

  Colin opened the cooler without another word.

  “Back up!” Bergita yelled. Colin’s grandmother stood in the middle of the street, waving her hands in the air as she directed a food truck between two parked cars. The truck’s hazard lights flashed on and off like angry red eyes, and the truck made a soft beep-beep sound as it backed into the space.

  “Cut to the right!” she cried.

  The back wheels shifted.

  “Okay, keep coming back … a little more! A little more! There! Stop!”

  The truck jerked to a stop. Bergita seemed pleased with the truck’s placement and walked over to join Colin and me at the pop table. She wiped her hands on her shorts. “I do have to say that every year this event gets better and better. It’s hard to top myself, but somehow I manage.”

  “Do many people from the festival come over to the sale?”

  “It varies from year to year, but we’ll have a good crowd. Don’t you worry.” She gestured up and down the street at the piles of sale items peppering the green lawns of Dunlap Avenue. “I know the type of people who go to the festival. They’re mostly older alumni who like to go antique shopping on the weekends and love a good deal.”

  I watched as Amelie and Bethany helped a neighbor across the street set up a table filled with her kids’ unwanted McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys. “Do you have any antiques to sell?” I asked Bergita. “I mean, what makes something an antique, anyway?”

  Colin said, “An antique is a collectible that’s considered to have some type of value because of rarity, craftsmanship, the materials used, or a connection to a significant event. Typically, things that hold their value are considered ‘antiques’ if they’re a hundred years old or more. Newer stuff is considered to be just collectibles.”

  Bergita shook her head at her grandson. “No more Antiques Roadshow for you.”

  At three o’clock I was moving a metal rack filled with old clothing from one end of our driveway to the other and back again. My mind drifted. What if Miss Addy didn’t really know Andora? Where else could I look for her? I couldn’t wait any longer to go to Miss Addy’s house.

  I found Colin emptying a box filled with old jelly jars. Each jar had a cartoon on the front of it: the Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and more. “I’m organizing them by parent company. See? Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, and Disney.”

  “Are you ready to go?” I interrupted.

  He looked at his watch. “It’s only three o’clock.”

  I gave him a stern look. “Remember what Mr. Finnigan said. We shouldn’t show up late.”

  He set aside his jelly jars. “Just let me grab the casebook.”

  “Hurry up,” I said.

  Colin ran inside his house. While I waited with my bike on the sidewalk, I noticed some of the neighbors were taking advantage of the current lull in potential customers. They headed inside their air-conditioned homes to escape the late afternoon heat and cool down. I kept looking back at Colin’s front door. What was taking him so long?

  When he finally reappeared, his hair stood on end and his T-shirt was askew. He had a notebook in his hand, but it wasn’t the casebook.

  “Where’s the casebook?” I asked.

  “I can’t find it. Did you take it home last night?”

  “No. I remember leaving it with you.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But I can’t find it anywhere. I hope it didn’t get mixed in with the garage sale stuff.”

  “Where did you have it last?” I asked.

  “I remember putting it in the middle of my desk this morning.” Colin stuck the new green notebook and his football pencil in my backpack. He picked up his bike off the lawn and climbed onto the seat.

  I glanced at my watch. It was now 3:45 p.m. “We’ll look for it when we get back. We’d better leave now or we’ll be late getting to Miss Addy’s.”

  CASE FILE NO. 19

  Miss Addy’s house was a few blocks away from our neighborhood, but on the other side of the university. Colin led the way. We pedaled hard across campus, where many people busily finished preparing for the weekend’s Endless Summer Festival, which would start later tonight. Tables and booths covered the campus grounds. In front of College Church, audio-visual geeks plugged in speakers and microphones on a newly constructed stage for Friday evening’s symphonic band concert.

  I hoped I could escape day two of the garage sale for an hour or so tomorrow—just to see what the festival is all about and maybe spread the word about the great sale happening on Dunlap Avenue.

  Miss Addy’s white house was shaped like a barn, and her yard was one huge flowerbed. The flower names came to me: impatiens, sweet woodruff, and bachelor’s buttons. I bit my lip. My mother taught me those names. In the summer she would ask me to name the flowers we saw during walks around our old neighborhood. I was always eager to play this game with her. Bethany was not.

  Behind me, I heard Colin trip on the bottom porch step at Miss Addy’s. I screeched as I suddenly felt him grab a hold of my T-shirt and pull me down with him. Together we tumbled onto the steps in a heap.

  “Ouch!” I yelped and pushed Colin off of me.

  At that moment the front door opened and Miss Addy loomed above us. All four feet nine inches of her.

  “I see you’ve found my home,” she said, her voice hard like steel.

  After Colin and I brushed the dirt off our clothes, Miss Addy led us into the house and invited us to sit on a tiny couch in the living room, which looked like it had been copied from some scene in a historical movie.

  Mr. Finnigan was already sitting in an armchair that matched the couch.

  Miss Addy disappeared into the kitchen to get the tea tray. I offered to help her, but Miss Addy shook her head with pursed lips. I suspected she thought I would trip and drop the tray.

  After she’d left the room, Mr. Finnigan’s head wagged back and forth between Colin and me. He chewed his lower lip. “What happened?”

  I rubbed the side of my leg where Colin had bruised it with his elbow during the fall. “Colin tripped on the steps and fell on me.”

  Colin flushed red with embarrassment. “It was an accident.”

  “Did she see you?” Mr. Finnigan whispered.

  “Yes,” I whispered back.

  “She won’t—”

  Just then, Miss Addy toddled back into the living room. “I won’t what, Patrick?”

  Mr. Finnigan grabbed a blueberry teacake from the tray and stuffed it into his mouth. Colin did the same.

  Miss Addy looked at me and raised her thin eyebrows. I accepted the cup and saucer of tea from her and tried to smile the sweetes
t smile I could muster. I had mastered this kind of smile for those times when my parents hosted Science Department meetings at our house. Usually, our parents asked Bethany and me to make a brief appearance before our parents sent us to our rooms for the night.

  One year I sat at the top of the stairs, listening to my parents laugh and talk with professors and students about the latest biological theories and research, and wishing I could join them. On those nights I longed to be more like Bethany who had no interest in science and could quietly go to her room and draw the night away. I, on the other hand, wanted to hear everything they had to say. I admit I didn’t understand most of it. But I consoled myself by thinking that if I studied hard, then someday I might receive an invitation to one of my parents’ gatherings when I was older. Now that would never happen.

  “Andi, are you all right?” Miss Addy croaked.

  My teacup almost slipped through my fingers. I jerked it upright and spilled a hot drop of tea on my hand. “I’m fine.”

  Miss Addy handed Colin and Mr. Finnigan a teacup each, and then she sat down in an ancient-looking chair with wooden arms. She got right to the point.

  “Patrick tells me you want to know what happened to Andora Boggs who was born in December of 1929. I have to say first off that I don’t know anyone named Andora Boggs except for you.”

  I opened my mouth to speak. Mr. Finnigan shot me a glance, and I remembered his warning to let Miss Addy tell her story in her own way. I snapped my mouth shut.

  Miss Addy took a sip of her tea and placed the teacup and saucer next to a ceramic figurine of a child playing the violin on the lace-covered coffee table.

  “When you’ve lived as long as I have, the things that happened yesterday aren’t as real to you as the things that happened decades ago.” She threw us a beady look as if daring us to question her mental capabilities. “Many people today look back on the Great Depression with something like a fondness. And maybe I do too, a little. Maybe we feel that way because we made it through. But living through that time was difficult; and for some, it was unbearable.”