by Hillary Avis
Allison led Willow diagonally across the square to the gazebo, where a bronze plaque was imbedded in the ground by the steps. She’d passed by the inscription a hundred times but never stopped to read it.
The Founders Gazebo. Dedicated on Independence Day, 1948. Built on the site of the former Founders Tree after the tree was felled by lightning. Erected with the generosity of the Claypool Family, the Founders Gazebo Committee, and the Linn County Historical Preservation Society.
So the Claypools built the gazebo. The Crisps made the paper that became the books. And the third family, the Bakers...what had they made from the tree?
Allison’s gaze drifted from the plaque to the building on her left. One of the few brick buildings in town, City Hall faced Founder’s Square, too. It housed the police station, too—if a small office and a couple of holding cells could be called a station—on the second floor. The first floor, with large plate-glass windows to the street, contained the city offices, where Remembrance residents could pay their water bills, apply for building permits, and lodge complaints with the mayor or city council. Since the 150th anniversary celebration, it also held a small display about Remembrance history, complete with photographs and artifacts.
That was where Myra met Elaine, back before Elaine had even moved to town. She was interested in local history, Myra said, but that seemed like a flimsy excuse. Why in the world would Elaine care about Remembrance if she’d never been here or lived here? It was a charming little town, but it was just that—little. Most people outside the county had never heard of it.
And even if Elaine had some true connection to Remembrance, it’s not like the tiny tribute to the town’s history would have taken much effort. A few photos tacked on the wall, a few items in a glass case. It required a week to set up, tops. When the display was done, why didn’t Elaine go back to where she came from?
Instead, she moved here to be the guardian of the memory library.
Something had drawn her here. Hope surged in Allison’s veins, buoying her across the square toward the blank stare of City Hall’s dark windows. The glare of the glass and the stark reflection of Willow’s fur and the mass of clouds sweeping across the sky made it impossible to see the display inside. She cupped her hands to the window and could just make out a row of framed photos hung above a case that held the moldering pioneer journals that’d been unearthed from the roots of the Founders Tree when it toppled.
Three of them, one from each founding family.
Was it a coincidence that Elaine put up the historical display and then became the library’s guardian? Or did she see something in the photographs or journals that led her to the library? Allison squinted through the glass again. Like the gazebo plaque, she’d seen the display a hundred times but never really looked at it. She toured it with Paul when it opened for the town’s 150th anniversary, back when her life was perfect. Boring. Normal. Whatever you wanted to call it.
She racked her brain, trying to remember who—or what—was in the photos, but she couldn’t recall a single image. Staring at the faded, black-and-white photographs hadn’t done much for her. She’d mostly tagged along behind Paul, their pinkies looped together as he stared at the photos while she leaned her head against his shoulder, trying to be patient and planning the evening’s dinner menu in her head.
“What’s so interesting about a bunch of dead people?” she’d teased him.
She’d give almost anything to be back in that moment, blissfully ignorant. But now she needed to know. Maybe there was something interesting in those photos. Something Paul had seen—and Elaine had seen, too.
Allison held her breath and tried the door, even though she knew it was locked. City Hall was never open on Saturdays. As she expected, the door rattled on its hinges but didn’t budge open. She let her breath out, disappointed. She’d have to wait until Monday, when someone with a key could open it for her. Willow flopped down next to her, letting out a deep groan of her own.
Allison grinned. “What’s so interesting about a bunch of dead people, huh? That’s what I said.”
Willow snorted and rolled onto her side, letting her head rest on the concrete. Allison tugged gently on the leash, but the dog just closed her eyes. Naptime in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Fine, you can rest, but at least let’s find a bench so I don’t have to stand here like a weirdo.” Willow opened one eye and then, with a resigned expression, stood and followed Allison back across the street to the park to look for a bench.
A few drops of rain began to spot the pavement, and Allison made a short dash for the gazebo. She and Willow took cover under the gazebo’s roof as the sky, which had darkened ominously since they started their walk, opened up into a shower. The first hint of Oregon’s famous June gloom.
Willow shook off the raindrops, looking perky and pleased after their sprint, but Allison just felt damp and demoralized, with bits of hair stuck to her face. She found a spot on a bench and perched there with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared with unfocused eyes at the rain now pouring down. It turned everything an uncanny shade of gray-green, like being under a waterfall. She let her eyes drift shut.
An image flared behind her eyelids. Paul laughing in her peripheral vision, his blue eyes crinkling with amusement as she teased him. Then she felt his shoulder pressed against her cheek, the warmth of his skin underneath the fabric of his shirt. She heard the murmur of people around them, passing through the exhibit.
It was like reading a book from the memory library, except it was her own memory, only enhanced. In front of her, the photographs on the wall, blurred. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and strained to see them, strained to remember the faces.
Paul’s voice echoed in her ears as he tapped the frame of one picture, almost in slow motion. “That’s my mom,” he said. “Doesn’t she look like a movie star?”
The picture finally came into focus as Allison actually looked at it. Paul’s mom, Zelda, on the edge of a group photo, standing by her parents. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her hair was curled, her lipstick dark in the black-and-white image but must have been red in real life. She had on a flowered dress, her gloved hands clasped in front of her.
“Cute,” Allison said, her mind slipping back to dinner plans and away from the photograph.
Allison’s eyes snapped open and she gritted her teeth in frustration. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?
Sometimes when she read books in the memory library, she could sort of slow the memories down, see details that the owner of the memory hadn’t noticed themselves. Maybe she could do that here, in the gazebo, with her own memories. She shut her eyes and forced herself to run through the memory again.
She was bored, she teased Paul, he pointed to his mother, and—she stopped the memory so she could look at the whole photograph. It wasn’t just Paul’s family. Other people were in the photo, too, standing in front of the gazebo. A young couple, the man’s arm around the woman’s slender waist. An imposing man in a boater hat with several adults and children gathered around him. Then Zelda and her parents. A label to the right of the frame explained who they were.
Descendants of the founding families gather to dedicate the new Founder’s Gazebo. Pictured left, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Crisp. Center, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Claypool, Sr. and family. Right, Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Baker and family.
Allison’s breath caught in her throat. It was right there in black and white—Zelda was one of the founders’ descendants. Paul’s mom was a Baker, the third founding family. It was ironic that Zelda Baker had married an actual baker and become a Rye. That’s why Allison had never known that Paul was descended from a founding family. The family connection was broken.
The Claypools had built the gazebo. The Crisps made the paper. And the Bakers...who knew. That was lost to history.
Then again, Zelda didn’t have any other siblings. And the kidnapping memory had shown Allison that Paul still kept secrets. Maybe he’d inherited whatever it was
that the Bakers had made from the tree! That could explain why Elaine was so obsessed with getting her hands on Paul’s family heirlooms. Maybe she thought that the object was hidden among them.
But what could it be? Not the plates, surely. It had to be something made of wood. Elaine would have known that, which is why she was so angry about the box Allison had delivered to Emily. None of the things in it were wooden.
Allison laughed aloud at the thought of Elaine’s expression when she saw the bottom of the box, the image made more comical when she slowed it down using the gazebo’s memory magic. Elaine was absolutely furious when she realized that the item wasn’t in the box. She knew it wasn’t there.
Allison still had a shot at keeping it from her, now that she had an idea of what she was looking for—something made from the Founders Tree. She looked out at the gray early evening. The rain was coming down hard, the gutters around the square coursing with water. But she was too antsy to wait on the bench any longer.
Allison patted Willow’s head. “Get ready—we’re going to make a run for it.”
Chapter 23
Willow’s nose poked comically out of the towel as Allison rubbed the last of the rainwater out of her ears and then let her grumble and shake until, satisfied, she curled up on the rug by the back door to wait for her dinner.
Allison eyed the cluttered table. For the first time this week, she might actually be able to eat at it instead of standing up at the kitchen counter. No matter how long she lived alone, she’d never overcome her mother’s prohibition against eating in the living room. It was just one of those rules tattooed on her soul.
She grabbed the empty cardboard box still in the entryway and filled it with all the items on the table that weren’t wooden—the plates and bric-a-brac and metal kitchen tools. She didn’t bother packing the breakables in newspaper, just stacked them gently in the box and then moved the whole box to the corner of the dining room.
Only five things were left on the table. A carved thimble, a rolling pin, a back scratcher that had belonged to Paul’s father, Zelda’s small painted sewing box, and a cooking spoon. One of them had to be made from the Founders Tree and passed down by the Baker family.
She filled Willow’s bowl and made herself a PBJ sandwich with an apple and a tall glass of milk. Comfort food that didn’t require any effort. She sat down to eat it, but hardly tasted a thing because all she could think about or look at was the five wooden items, neatly lined up on the table.
Thimble, rolling pin, back scratcher, box, spoon.
They were all humble objects, well-used. The thimble had been in Zelda’s sewing box until she passed away, but before that, she’d wear it on her thumb when she darned socks. The rolling pin and wooden spoon lived in the drawer at Ryes & Shine and were used on a daily basis—Paul had inherited them along with the bakery when his parents retired. The back scratcher had hung next to the fireplace in their apartment, always within reach of Paul’s favorite chair. His father had kept it on a hook by their back door, next to a shoehorn and a spare set of house keys. The box—it just held Zelda’s sewing kit, first in Paul’s parents’ home and then in theirs.
They were practical things. Not magical—not as far as she knew.
Allison wiped her fingers on her napkin and picked up the back scratcher. She experimented by scratching herself on the back, but nothing happened. She waved it tentatively like a wand, feeling very much like a child playing dress-up. Embarrassing—even though her only audience was Willow, who was still crunching her kibble in the corner.
Nothing happened. It had belonged to Paul’s dad, anyway. A Rye. Unless it was a gift from his in-laws, it probably wasn’t passed down from the Baker family. Allison needed to focus on things she knew came from Zelda’s side.
She put the back scratcher back on the table and slipped the thimble onto her thumb. The inside was smooth and worn from years of use. Squeezing her eyes shut, she called up the memory of finding Willow chained to a tree, half-starved and wary. Immediately, the smell of dog assaulted her nostrils and a thrill of excitement ran up her spine, prickling her arms into goosebumps. This was it! The thimble had memory magic!
Willow’s hot, doggy breath hit her face. Allison opened her eyes and saw a wet nose mere inches away. Rather than fading along with the memory, the scent of dog intensified as Willow’s jaw dropped into a wolfy grin and she pawed Allison’s knee. It was real dog stench, not remembered. Willow had finished her dinner and now she wanted to have some fun.
Allison palmed the unmagical thimble and set it back on the table, disappointed. Willow swiped at her again, then scooted backward, bouncing her front paws invitingly.
“I can’t play with you right now!” Allison snapped at her. “This is too important.” She picked up the rolling pin, hefting it in her hands as she had many times before in the bakery. It was a Shaker-style pin, with a larger center cylinder and two handles, carved out of one piece of wood.
Or was it? She squinted closer at it, imagining she could see a faint hairline join between the handle and the body. Maybe it was just a dark line in the wood grain—the kind Paul liked to trace on the tables at Golden Gardens—or a natural crack after so many decades of use.
Willow tugged on the hem of her shirt sleeve, the knit fabric gripped delicately in her teeth. Allison jerked it away from her with her free hand and made an irritated noise. But rather than giving up, the dog took it as an invitation, and her next grab for Allison’s sleeve caught skin as well as fabric.
“Ouch!” Allison reflexively dropped the rolling pin into her lap as she clapped a hand over the tender spot that Willow had accidentally nipped. Willow lunged for the pin—maybe her real goal all along—and ran gleefully away with the handle in her mouth, her nails scrabbling the floorboards as she made a sharp turn to lap the dining table. The rolling pin was too heavy for her awkward hold, though, and she dropped it to the floor, where it cracked in two and rolled toward the baseboard.
Allison fell to her knees, scooping up the pieces before Willow could run off with them again. Tears pricked her eyes as she turned on the dog. “Outside!” she commanded. “Now!”
Willow hung her head as Allison struggled to her feet, her hands full of the remains of the rolling pin. She set them on the table and opened the back door, barely able to look at the dog as she let her out.
Willow didn’t mean it. Allison knew that intellectually. But she was heartsick about the rolling pin. Literally, her heart was squeezing so painfully that she worried she was having some kind of attack. It was like part of Paul had been destroyed—yet another part of Paul. Another bit of his personal history ruined, taken from her. Taken from Emily.
She sank into the chair again and forced herself to breathe deeply a few times before she looked at the broken pieces. It was worse than she’d feared. Not only was one handle completely broken off, but it bore deep toothmarks and scratches from Willow’s bungled raid.
Maybe it could be repaired somehow. She held the handle up to the body of the pin, matching the broken edges. Glued, maybe—though then it would probably lose the strength necessary to beat out cold butter into layers for puff pastry or tackle a mountain of dough for scones. She let the handle fall back to the tabletop and for the first time, noticed the small hole in the center of the main cylinder.
It was hollow.
She picked the pin up, tilting it, and felt something slither from the core and out onto the table. At first she thought it might be part of the mechanics of the pin. Some kind of weighted rod or strengthening piece of metal. But when she picked up the slim object, it was clearly made of wood, not metal. Turned wood, with a metal nib.
A pen.
Her heart stopped. This had to be it. This had to be the Baker family’s secret, the thing Elaine was so determined to get her hands on. Why else would it be hidden inside a rolling pin? She clenched the pen in her fist, and a memory bloomed in front of her, overwhelming her senses.
The bakery, bathed in dawn lig
ht that illuminated the particles of flour still floating in the air from the morning’s dough. She hadn’t turned the sign on the door to “OPEN” yet, but the majority of the work was done. The mouthwatering scent of baking bread enveloped her. The best smell in the world—the smell of home. The smell of love.
She turned a fond eye on Paul, who was idly pushing his favorite rolling pin back and forth on the marble slab they used to keep enriched dough cold while he waited for the timer to sound on a batch of marionberry turnovers. This time of day, when the baking was done but the selling had not yet begun, he was usually full of jokes and flirtation, exuberant as he looked forward to sharing his creations with customers for the rest of the day.
But today he looked distant, lost in thought, his expression oddly fearful. He grimaced, his brows knitted together like he was trying to work out a puzzle.
“Did we forget something?” Allison asked, running her finger down their prep sheet, reviewing the penciled checkmarks. Everything was either in the oven or on the cooling racks. They even had some extra batches of cookie dough chilling in the walk-in to bake off at the end of the day for the after-school crowd, which meant they could take an actual lunch break today.
Paul blinked a few times and his expression cleared. “No—no. We got everything. I was just thinking about something that happened when I was little. You know how adults are so inscrutable when you’re a kid, but as you grow up, it all makes sense?”
Allison nodded, thinking of her own parents. They always kicked her out of the kitchen on Friday evenings after dinner. Her father would lean against the cabinets while her mother did the dishes in pink rubber gloves and they’d chat, sipping martinis that her dad made with olives and tiny onions speared on toothpicks.
Why did she have to play in the living room instead of on the floor next to them? She’d be quiet! But her father was firm about it. It was cocktail hour, adults only. It wasn’t until Allison was a parent herself that she understood how precious an hour alone with your spouse could be, even if that hour was spent doing chores.
