1
A Gift of Love
Grace Singleton grasped the oak railing firmly and forced another step up the narrow wooden stairs. Beneath her palm the railing was smooth and cool and indifferent, a sharp contrast to her heated and agitated state. The fourth step creaked, but today the creak sounded less like the mere scurrying of a mouse than it did like the roar of a lion. Grace's legs trembled. She wanted to stop, to yell, "No, I won't do this," but after much discussion and argument, she had agreed that it must be done.
At the top, in the dimly lit hallway leading to the bedrooms, Grace paused and looked back down the stairs into the foyer with its faded floral wallpaper, its standing coatrack, and its long, narrow, wall mirror over a walnut table that had seen better days and now played host to three straw baskets that served as receptacles for their mail, and past all this to the doorway of the kitchen. Two women stood in that doorway, one tall, her face determined, one short, twisting her hands. The tall woman nodded encouragingly and waved Grace on.
Grace drew a deep breath, lifted her head, and started down the hallway feeling like a common thief as she slid the key into the door of Amelia's bedroom. Perspiration beaded her forehead, her upper lip. She tugged at the checkered bandanna tucked at her waist, wiped her face, and slipped one end back under her belt. The house, usually filled with kitchen clatter or chattering voices, was quiet now.
"How did I allow Hannah and Olive to badger me into sleuthing?" she muttered. Her mind raced. I'm about to commit a monstrousinvasion of Amelia Declose's privacy, opening her drawers, riffling through her closet, I, who detest prying, snooping, meddling in someone else's business. This overriding sense of guilt left her nearly breathless.
"Someone has to do it and you know her best," Hannah Parrish, her strong-willed fellow boarder had insisted.
True, Grace was closer to Amelia than either Hannah or their meddlesome landlady, Olive Pruitt, but how close was that really? Anticipating entering Amelia's room, even under these circumstances, made Grace tremble.
But if I don't do it, Grace reasoned silently, that pushy Olive will, and she'll shove and yank and dump things from drawers without any respect for Amelia. I'll handle Amelia's belongings with care. Resolutely, Grace squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and turned the knob.
Amelia's room was impeccable with white walls, white lace bedspread, lace-edged pillow shams, and no magazines strewn casually about as they were in Grace's room. Pink satin slippers were tucked neatly under the bed, and books were carefully stacked on the night table. Grace walked over and read the titles: Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, a slim volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and a copy of The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. As she turned, the mirror over the bureau caught her eye. Why was it draped with a towel? Was it cracked or clouded? She peeked. The mirror was intact. Grace scrutinized the bureau, a model of fine handcrafting with its turned mahogany legs and trim. It bore the marks of time: a zigzag scratch on one side, a water stain on its surface, and behind the brass pulls were tiny nicks where fingernails had gouged the finish.
It seemed least intrusive to begin with the closet. Amelia's dozen or so white dresses and several white pantsuits filled the small space. The floor was bare. The round flowered box that Grace removed from the shelf above the clothes rod revealed no letters, no diary, no address book, no photographs. Nestled inside the box, wrapped in sheaves of white tissue paper, lay a wide-brimmed, white straw hat with a cluster of cherries securely fastened on one side. Grace smiled. The jaunty hat reminded her of those worn by women strolling the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in old 1920s photographs.
Standing on tiptoe, Grace shoved the hatbox back onto the shelf alongside several pairs of sturdy SAS shoes, a pair of New Balancewalking shoes with the heels worn down on the inside edges, and a slim pair of white Capezios.
She could still hear Olive Pruitt's voice informing them about the new boarder just before Amelia arrived a few months ago. "I think Amelia Declose used to have money. She's been lots of places, like Europe. Fancy lady she is, you can tell to look at her. Prissy too, always wears white. Uses funny foreign words, too. I hope she don't put on airs." Olive had gibbered away in her usual magpie fashion as she dished up their dinner of corned beef and cabbage. "I run a simple clean establishment." She set a blue crockery platter on the table. "Nothing fancy, and I don't take kindly to snooty folk."
Grace had tuned out her landlady's cigarette-strained voice, and when Amelia arrived, wearing a tailored white linen suit with a pale blue scarf tucked about her neck, Grace found her a pleasant, though rather reserved person, but not the least bit haughty, unless you counted--and Grace did not--the sprinkling of French expressions that slipped into her speech, especially when she was excited or pleased. Amelia's tentative smile, her soft voice, her unassuming ways, reminded Grace of friends back home in Dentry, Ohio, and Grace had gone out of her way to make Amelia feel welcome.
The bureau drawer was open. Had she opened it? No. Yes. She must have. Silk scarves of varying shades of blue, neatly folded and stacked one atop the other, lay alongside lacy white handkerchiefs, lace collars, and a striped gray-and-white stocking case. The second drawer held white cotton underwear, silk vests, full slips, and long silk bloomers and under the vests a small, unlocked, sandalwood case containing several fine pieces of sterling silver jewelry.
Increasingly uncomfortable, her hand shaking, Grace shut the drawer and took refuge in the upholstered rocking chair by the window. The rocking chair, the mahogany bureau, a Tiffany lamp, a battered steamer trunk, a watercolor of two girls sitting on a beach watching a sailboat race at sea, and two suitcases were all that Amelia Declose had brought.
How much did she really know about Amelia? Amelia spoke longingly of the latest Broadway production in New York, enjoyed the music of Mozart and Vivaldi, and worried about cars driving above the speed limit on Sugar Maple Road. She volunteered little information about her past, and Grace had never asked. Yet it puzzled her that Amelia received no phone calls or visitors, and Grace nowrealized that there were no photographs in Amelia's room, not on her walls, not on her bedside table, not on her bureau. What quirk of fate had brought this lovely, well-traveled woman to Olive Pruitt's drab boarding house at Number 16 Sugar Maple Road in Branston, Pennsylvania?
Grace raked her teeth across her lower lip. Her mind drummed a constant reprimand. This is wrong. This is dishonest. I'm betraying Amelia's trust. How will I ever face her? Outside the window she could see all the way down Sugar Maple Road. Straight as a ruler's edge, the solid, redbrick houses with their squat, second-story roofs, redbrick steps, and square, stubby front porches lined the street. A dark-haired boy rode by on a shiny blue bicycle tooting its horn.
"What's taking you so long? Did you find anything?" Olive's deep, raspy voice coming from the stairwell jarred Grace.
"Not yet. Be down soon."
A moment of silence. Then the voice again, crackling with impatience. "Hurry up, it's almost lunchtime."
Grace shivered. The idea of food sickened her. Her head ached.
"Almost finished." Grace roused herself and hastened back to the bureau where she had found the Capezio shoe box in the bottom drawer. She carried the box...
