by E. A. House
“I’m waiting until the screening to see the documentary,” Chris protested. Bethy’s documentary was set to be screened at the museum as soon as Bethy, Redd, and the rest of their crew got safely back from Russia, and Chris was stubbornly resisting seeing the documentary until the big event.
“It’s not the documentary,” Maddison sang. “It’s this.” She came to a halt just past the door to the side room, in front of the concluding statements about the exhibit—and the life-sized black-and-white image of Aunt Elsie, frozen in the act of shelving a box at Edgewater Archives.
“Oh,” Chris said. Around the image were a handful of smaller pictures—Aunt Elsie in front of the archive, Aunt Elsie at a local elementary school, Aunt Elsie at eighteen, poring over a book and wearing the locket and looking so much like Carrie that it hurt.
This collection was donated and established in memory of Elsie Kingsolver, Archivist, community leader, and the first person to see the final resting place of the San Telmo, the inscription over the picture read. There was a picture of Ryan Moore in the exhibit, because Chris and Carrie and Maddison had insisted that the museum tell the whole story of the search for the San Telmo, instead of just the fun bits. Chris had been there, and in fact had been one of the loudest voices there, when they’d argued for that and got it. But that picture was over with the rest of the San Telmo timeline. This was different, and somehow more. Aunt Elsie was, at last, given her due credit for finding the San Telmo.
“Carrie came up with the idea,” Maddison said. “At that board meeting you missed because of the dentist appointment. She wanted to dedicate the collection to Aunt Elsie instead of any of us and everybody agreed that was a good idea, and then Dad and Redd helped find all the pictures for this.”
“This is great,” Chris said, looking up at the picture of his aunt. Maddison put a friendly arm around his shoulder. “I think she really would have liked it.”
“Do you like it?” Maddison asked.
“Better than bacon-and-peach bites,” Chris said.
Maddison grimaced theatrically. “Then you better not look at the dessert table when they bring out the sheet cake and the ice cream,” she said. “Dad had the last word on that and you know how he is with maraschino cherries.”
“Oh no,” Chris said. “Well, as long as that’s the only thing I need to worry about,” he added, thinking of how nice it was not to have a mystery to solve. Nice, and a little bit boring.
“About that,” Maddison said, removing a toothpick from a miniature sandwich with great care.
“Maddison . . . ?”
“You didn’t happen to see the exhibit on Annie Six-Fingers in the local heritage section of the museum, did you?” Maddison asked. “Because we never did get a clear answer on who left the first handprint we saw in the woods, and it’s a little hard to tell from the black-and-white picture of the 1992 Annie Six-Fingers sighting, but that sighting happened in the exact same place we found the handprint.” She looked up at Chris, her expression equal parts fascinated and guilty. “So, I was wondering . . . ”
Chris felt his shoulders slump. But his mind was already running through everything he had ever read about Annie Six-Fingers, and the logistics of getting out to the woods again, and how much video cameras cost.
He sighed, but he was already fighting down a smile.
“I’ll just go find Carrie then, shall I?”