The Time of the Fireflies

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  My eyes roved the scene over and over again, searching for details. There on the mantle above the fireplace — behind the minister in his black robes. Among the flowers and wedding bells, Anna Marie had been nestled prim and proper in all the wedding tulle loveliness. That exquisite doll had been smiling her secret little smile and gazing out at the world with her piercing blue eyes.

  The doll had been at the scene of every single tragedy.

  But did that mean anything? Sunrise lightened my bedroom, and I opened my eyes. The doll being inside the house wasn’t unusual. She belonged to the family. She’d been passed down to every generation. I’d inherit her one day, too. She was just a doll. Nothing strange about that.

  “You’re dreaming crazy things,” I told myself.

  I’d time slipped through four generations since Miss Anna was a girl. Her daughter, Daphne. Her granddaughter, Kat. And her great-granddaughter Gwen. I’d even relived my own accident. Chills crept up my spine as I realized that every single generation had a terrible tragedy associated with it.

  And every time a tragedy happened, the doll had been there, watching. Smiling her perfect, disturbing smile.

  When I woke for the second time, it was broad daylight, and I was upside down on the bed with the blanket twisted around my toes. I ran straight into Daddy’s room, but he was nowhere in sight. Just a damp towel in a heap on the bathroom floor.

  When I got downstairs, he was eating grits cooked in the microwave. Blech. He looked as bad as he had the previous night with his bloodshot eyes. He was in a clean shirt, but he still hadn’t shaved and looked as grubby as a ditch digger.

  “We opening up the store?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” he said, gulping down a demitasse of coffee. “I’m going to nose around the property, inspect the sheds. Then go down Main and talk to some of the neighbors that live behind us. Someone’s got to have seen her leaving.”

  “She didn’t take anything with her,” I said. “No money, no nothing.”

  “Which means she can’t have gone far, right?” he said hopefully.

  I chewed on my lips. “Did you — did you guys —”

  He set his cup in the sink. Stared me straight in the eye. “Did we what? Spit it out, Larissa.”

  I gulped and tried to speak. “I was just wondering if you guys had another fight.”

  “You mean an argument between me and Mamma?” He looked pained. “Is it that bad?”

  I shrugged and tried to find my cereal in the cupboard. The box was empty, but I wasn’t hungry.

  Daddy put his hands on my shoulders. “No, we didn’t have a fight yesterday, Larissa.”

  I peeked up at him from under my long hair. “I’m worried about the baby.”

  “Me, too, honey. Me, too.” He paused and held out his hands. “Come here.”

  I ran into his arms and felt sobs heaving in my chest. I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have had you come curl up with me last night. I’m only thinking about myself and not about how worried you must be.”

  “Is it okay if I call Grandma Kat?”

  My daddy let out a groan. “Of course! I was going to call her last night, but it got so late I hated to wake her and have her worrying all night. Or have her driving over without any sleep. Will you talk to her while I get out and do some asking around?”

  I nodded and he kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be back soon. Then we’ll open shop for a few hours. But I don’t —” He stopped.

  “What, Daddy?”

  “Nothing, honey. Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

  He’d said those reassuring words again, but what if we didn’t find Mamma? What if she was hurt? The baby could die. She could die. Mamma had never come home last night. Which meant something terrible had happened to her. But maybe she’d left on her own. What if she’d wanted to leave us and she was gone for good? That was just as bad.

  I found Grandma Kat’s phone number on the pad next to the calendar and dialed. She picked up on the second ring. “Good morning, baby doll. How are you today?”

  I couldn’t even answer her. “Mamma’s missing,” I blurted out.

  I heard her take a sudden breath. “What are you talking about? Where’s your daddy?”

  “He’s out looking for her. She never came home last night. The sheriff was even here —”

  “I’ll be there fast as I can,” she said. “And I’ll pack a bag.”

  My grandmother lived in Baton Rouge, almost two hours away.

  Glancing at the clock every two minutes, I tried to eat something, but nothing was appetizing. Leftover gumbo in the fridge had congealed grease on top. I shut the door and nibbled on a cracker.

  I tried to get the store ready by going through the morning rituals, but Daddy wasn’t here and everything felt wrong. Everything was wrong.

  Next, I riffled through Mamma’s purse looking for clues. I slipped my fingers around her keys, studied her driver’s license, and found a few dollar bills in her wallet plus a few crumpled old receipts.

  After that, I sat on the floor in front of the doll case and stared at the empty spot left by Anna Marie. I thought about the doll’s icy blue eyes and how I used to get the heebie-jeebies. But a doll can’t look at you. They’re made of porcelain and cloth and plastic. They’re not alive.

  I couldn’t get past the knowledge that the doll didn’t really belong to my family. Anna Marie rightfully belonged to Dulcie. That fact made me squirm inside, like I had worms in my gut. Guilt on my shoulders. Going clear back to my great-great-grandmother Miss Anna.

  I paced the floor a hundred times. Stood in front of the wall of telephones and willed the girl to call me and explain what was happening. Total silence. “Where are you?” I shouted, and then stormed into my bedroom.

  Halfheartedly, I made my bed, then went to the bureau and poked through my earrings and bracelets. I picked up a necklace I didn’t wear very often because I didn’t want to accidentally lose it. My grandmother Kat had given it to me for my twelfth birthday a few months ago. A simple gold chain with a gold heart on it, but the chain was tarnished, the heart plain and simple. She’d said it was very old and told me to take care of it. I needed something to do while I waited, so I put the gold heart around my neck and fastened the clasp. I touched the heart while I stood before the mirror. The antique necklace made me look grown-up. Took the focus off my scar, too, which was never a bad thing.

  An hour later, Grandma Kat’s car screeched to a stop in front of the antique store. She barreled through the door, dropped her overnight bag, and picked me up in her arms all in one scoop. She was tall and ramrod straight with long dark hair that came out of a Clairol bottle. I wrapped my arms around her neck as her own arms held me tight and close. She was still strong enough to carry me to one of the ratty, overstuffed sofas sitting in a corner that no customer ever purchased. One of the sofas we used ourselves when we wanted to squirrel away with a book on a rainy day.

  We curled up together in the corner, and Grandma Kat pulled an afghan over us, keeping us tight like a cocoon. Then she whispered in my hair and rubbed my back.

  “Mamma is gonna be okay, isn’t she?” I hadn’t believed anyone else, but I knew if my grandmother said it was all right, it would be.

  Grandma Kat pressed a hand over her heart and looked straight into my eyes with her dark green ones. “Yes, she is, Larissa, I’m feeling that right here. I think Maddie needs us to find her because something bad could happen. I’m not saying it will, only that I can’t explain the strange feeling I’m having. Maybe I’m just superstitious, but there it is. Or maybe I’m just getting old.”

  “You’re not old,” I told her.

  She gave me a lopsided grin. “Well, that’s debatable.”

  I couldn’t help staring at her, trying to see the young woman underneath the wrinkles. She’d been strong and gentle and kind then, too. She’d raced upstairs in her beautiful white wedding
gown with the lace train and white tulle veil to save her grandmother despite the flames and smoke. Despite the fact that she could have died. And now, despite her strength and unwavering hope, I could tell she’d been crying on the drive across Highway 10. Her eyes were puffy and the lines around her mouth seemed deeper than usual.

  I filled her in on Daddy and the sheriff and the missing persons report.

  “Maddie disappearing like this does not fit with what I know about my daughter,” my grandmother said. “She had a reason. And if we can figure out the reason, we’ll know where to find her.”

  “That seems too easy.”

  “Well, it sounds easy, but figuring it out might take some time. Tell me what’s been going on around here lately.”

  I fidgeted and chewed my lips. Should I tell her about the strange phone calls? The cloud of fireflies that helped me slip through time?

  “The doll’s missing,” I said, blurting out the next thing that popped into my head.

  Grandma Kat’s eyebrows jumped. “Show me.”

  I grabbed her hand and we hurried upstairs to the doll collection. The empty space was still there. Part of me had been hoping I’d imagined the missing doll because I’d been so scared. Or it had been too dark to see her. I crossed my fingers that Anna Marie would be sitting in her usual spot, pretty as a picture.

  But she wasn’t. The only thing left was the cardboard sign saying NOT FOR SALE.

  “So your mamma took the doll with her?” Grandma Kat said thoughtfully.

  “That’s all I can figure out. She was the only one with a key to the lock.”

  “I see,” my grandmother said in a low voice. “There’s a reason she took Anna Marie, and if we can figure out why, we’ll know where your mamma is.”

  Grandma Kat was right, but my brain was bursting with so much the last few days, it was all a jumble. Seemed like I should know where Mamma was, but my fears had thrown a wall up, blocking me from figuring it out.

  “Let’s get us some tea in the kitchen, Larissa, honey.”

  I arranged several chocolate-chip cookies on a plate. Cookies that Grandma Kat had grabbed from her freezer and brought with her. When the teakettle began to whistle, she steeped the raspberry tea bags in our cups. I was dying to ask her a whole slew of questions about the Normand plantation house and what Miss Anna was like, although I had to pretend I didn’t know her name.

  After we sat down at the table, I asked, “What was it like growing up in that old house on the island? Who built it and lived there first?”

  “Oh, my, you’re talking ancient family history.” Grandma Kat blew across her cup. “Let’s see. You actually come from a family that came over straight from France with their life savings. They bought up a few hundred acres and started a sugarcane plantation long before the war, probably twenty years at least, in the 1840s. Sugarcane took off and made them a lot of money, and they bought many hundreds more acres. They built a big mansion house right there on the bayou. Several generations lived there over more than a hundred years.”

  “That’s a long time ago,” I said, eating up the plate of cookies one at a time.

  “Barges came up the river to load the cane and take it from there up the Mississippi. Of course, there were parties and balls and I heard once that one of your great-great-great-grandfathers was even mayor of Bayou Bridge — back when this town was much bigger and very important in the cane industry. When the Normand sugarcane plantation fell apart, the town shrunk. Land got sold off. Subdivided. People left for other places or other businesses.”

  “So Bayou Bridge wasn’t always this small?” I fiddled with my tea as it grew cold, wanting a glass of milk, but I didn’t want my grandmother to stop talking. I still couldn’t get the image of her in the ivory wedding dress out of my mind, her young face aglow with happiness.

  “Nope,” she said, getting up to freshen her own cup. “Lots of happiness and wealth out on the island, but lots of sadness, too. Especially after the war.”

  I studied her, knowing some of it. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “Well, bad times started with my grandmother, actually. Miz Anna Normand. She was the belle of the county, but in the first years as a newlywed she contracted polio, which put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”

  “How awful,” I said.

  “I never knew her then, of course, but she used to tell me stories about her youth. That she was a bit of a hellion. Sassy, bossy, demanding.” Grandma Kat gave a faint smile. “She used to tell me stories about her Uncle Edgar, too. She adored him. I think everyone did. He gave her a pony once, and by golly, that pony used to throw her every time she tried to ride her. She suffered lots of stitches and a couple of broken bones. But she married well. A handsome young man named Charles Prevost — my grandfather — who had money and combined his sugarcane farm with the Normand plantation. They had a daughter named Daphne, but couldn’t have any other children because Anna was too ill from the polio. Bad luck — or tragedy — seemed to follow her and Charles. The sugarcane didn’t do so well, especially during the Depression. Then they had several bad weather years. One year a hurricane came right up Bayou Teche and destroyed the crops just before harvest. They sold off parcels of the farm up and down Bayou Teche, year after year, to make ends meet. She told me once how happy they were when Daphne married a fine gentleman who had big plans for reviving the sugarcane. Henry Moret hired a new foreman, experimented with new farm equipment and planting rotations, but it didn’t last long at all. While they were still young, Daphne died during the birth of their second child — and the baby —” She broke off and her eyes got misty. “Miz Anna said it about killed her when she lost Daphne after everything else that had gone bad in her life.”

  I set down my last half-eaten cookie. “That baby was you, wasn’t it?”

  Grandma Kat nodded. “Daphne and Henry Moret were my parents. I had an older brother, but when my daddy finally gave up the farm after most of the land was gone, my brother moved to New Orleans and opened a real estate office. Your great-uncle, William. He left Bayou Bridge behind and never looked back. He let me have the old plantation house, which was wearing out by this time, let me tell you. It survived three wars, several hurricanes, famine, disease, and death, but it was still standing when I got married —” She broke off again and wiped at her eyes. “Oh, my, this is all old history, Larissa. Doesn’t matter anymore. Life goes on, it always does, and we make the best of things and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even when it seems impossible some days.”

  “What happened?” I begged. I wanted to hear her tell me. I wanted to know if what I’d seen was truly real.

  Grandma Kat grabbed a tissue box off the fridge and blew her nose. “Look at me getting all sentimental and weepy. Well! The beautiful plantation home burned down when I was getting married to my sweetheart, Preston DuMonde, your granddaddy, may he rest in peace.”

  “You mean the whole house burned to the ground?”

  “Pretty much. The fire department in those days was a long ways off across the bayou, and it just went up too fast. A kitchen fire, unfortunately. I mean, I know it’s just a house, but it was also a piece of history dating back to 1840. And my family home. Worst part was my grandmother Anna.”

  “What happened?” I was intensely curious. This was part of the story I did not know. I closed my eyes, conjuring up the smoke and the screams of the wedding guests. Miss Anna in her wheelchair at the top of the stairs as Kat fought the smoke one step at a time in her wedding gown to save her.

  “I’m afraid the last tragedy of her life was her own. She died from the fire. Inhaling all that smoke was too much for her lungs, which were weakened from the polio. She was gone by the time we got her out of the house. Had to lay her down right on the front lawn. She would have hated that. All the wedding guests, firemen, and police swarming the place. It was the best day of my life marrying your grandfather — and truly the most awful day of my life.”

&nbs
p; I shivered, tears stinging my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Grandma. To have the house burn down and your own grandma dying on your wedding day sounds like the worst thing in the world.”

  She patted my arm, smiling through her own tears. “Nothing to be sorry for. I’m sure it doesn’t mean much to you.”

  I gulped past my swollen throat. She was wrong about that. It meant too much to me.

  “Goodness,” Grandma Kat went on. “It happened so many years ago, although I miss her stubborn, crotchety ways. Anna Normand Prevost would have been your great-great-grandmother. She was born at the turn of the century. The year 1900 right on the nose.”

  I thought of Mister Lance and digging for old buried silver in the backyard. “Do you know what happened to Mister —” I stopped and cleared my throat, thinking of Dulcie and her mother as well. But there was no way I could speak their names. I wasn’t supposed to know them.

  “Who, honey?”

  “Oh, nobody,” I said carelessly, wiping at my nose. “I’m sorry your wedding day was ruined,” I added, changing the subject back again.

  “Fortunately, I had a very happy forty years with your grandfather. He was a fine man, and didn’t mind that I was — oh, listen to me go on and on.”

  “Didn’t mind what?” I asked as my grandmother suddenly pulled her hands off her teacup and into her lap. Heat burned my cheek as I touched the scar along my face, pulling my hair over to hide it.

  Something clicked inside my head. Grandma Kat always wore long-sleeved shirts with collars. Even in the heat of summer.

  I reached out to grab her hand. At first, she resisted, and then she let me pull back her sleeve. The skin on her arms was wrinkled, like you might expect with someone going on seventy years old, but her skin had an abnormal shiny texture. I always thought she got her wrinkles early, but now I knew that the marks up and down her arms weren’t old-age wrinkles at all. “You were burned in the fire, Grandma Kat. On your wedding day.”