The Secret of Goldenrod

by Jane O'Reilly

  “Oh, Citrine, how you amuse me. If the story does not have a happy ending, you simply make up a new one.”

  Trina set Augustine on the floor and wiped her eyes. Maybe it was too much to expect the doll to understand everything, but her silly sense of the real world sure came in handy when Trina was feeling unhappy.

  “That reminds me . . .” Augustine glanced sideways and whispered, “Is the giant dead? Is that how you revenged upon her?”

  “Charlotte? No, she’s not dead.” Trina laughed. “In fact, you’d be proud of me, Augustine. I stood up for myself and told her she has to be nice to people.”

  Augustine crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “Do you mean to tell me you have made friends with the angry giant?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call us friends. Now she thinks I have something that belongs to her.”

  Trina didn’t get very far recounting the saga of bets and dares when Augustine waved her hands in the air. “I already know this story of giants and coins. Is there not a beanstalk you can chop down?”

  “No, Augustine. There is no beanstalk.”

  “Then I suggest you give the money to the giant and all will be well.”

  Trina shook her head. “I’d give the money to Goldenrod if I could, but in a way it really belongs to the whole town.”

  “Then you must find a way to repay the whole town.”

  Trina frowned. “That would be, like, one dollar apiece, Augustine.”

  Augustine held her hands to her ears. “I do not like these stories of numbers. I like stories about surprises and fair maidens and grand parties.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “Therein resides the answer, Citrine. We must have a party and invite the whole town!” Augustine twirled like a ballerina and her little nightgown fluttered like moth wings in the sunshine. “We were always the happiest when there were parties.”

  A party! Images of Goldenrod all dressed up with streamers and flowers and filled with happy people flashed through Trina’s mind. A party would be something wonderful to look forward to. “Augustine, that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.” She stared out her window into the morning sun, thinking how happy Goldenrod would feel to be all dressed up at her own party. “We could have a costume party. It will be the first Harvest Moon Masquerade Ball in more than a century,” she said.

  “Yes, it will be the merriest of times,” Augustine said. “But for now, Citrine, would you mind putting me back in my house? There are many things I would like to tell my mother and father.”

  “Sure,” Trina said absently, but she was thinking of everything she had to do to prepare for the party. The first thing she needed to do was make invitations. Three hundred ninety-seven of them, to be exact.

  “Citrine?” Augustine tapped her foot impatiently. “Citrine!”

  “What?” Trina said without looking up. She was trying to figure out how she’d make all the invitations when the harvest moon was only two weeks away.

  “My goodness, Citrine.” The doll reached out and pinched Trina’s big toe. It didn’t hurt, but it made her look up.

  “What?”

  “It is as if you are under a spell. I said, please put me back in my house. I do not have all day to wait for you.”

  “You sure are bossy today,” Trina said. She placed Augustine in her parlor next to her mother and father. Then she pulled a notebook and pencil out of her backpack and sat back down to create a list of things she needed for the party. Invitations, decorations, flowers, costume, she wrote before she was distracted again by Augustine’s unusually high-pitched voice.

  “Mother, Father, I have the best news. We are going to have a party. After all this time, Goldenrod will once again open her doors to the people of the town.”

  A terrible thought crossed Trina’s mind. She looked up from her notebook. “Augustine, what if no one comes to the party?”

  Augustine turned around and looked at Trina. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “If people are afraid of Goldenrod, they’ll never come to a party here.”

  “But they have no reason to be afraid,” Augustine said. “I have told you this already.”

  “Yes, they do. Miss Kitty will tell everyone in town that Goldenrod has been sitting in a graveyard for a hundred years, haunted by the ghost of a little girl.”

  First, Augustine’s mouth made a perfect little O. Then she motioned for Trina to come closer. “Citrine, you said people in your world like logical explanations for things they do not understand, did you not?” Trina crawled closer to the dollhouse, nodding. “Perhaps sometimes they try so hard to understand, they believe things that are not true.”

  Trina’s brain felt as twisted up as a pretzel. “Are you trying to say people believe what they want to believe?”

  Augustine smiled her ever-winsome smile. “I am trying to say you must give them an explanation that makes so much sense the idea must be true.”

  A warmth filled Trina from the inside out. All mixed up between “There’s no such thing as a haunted house” and “logical explanations,” the answer was clear: “So, if we let people believe that Annie was the ghost haunting Goldenrod, and then we make them believe the ghost is gone, no one will be afraid of Goldenrod anymore.” As convoluted as it was, the story made perfect sense. Trina cheered up. “I think it might work.”

  “Of course it will work. And then we shall have a party and you will invite your mother.”

  “My mother?” Trina gasped. “But you called her a trickster.”

  “I said perhaps she is a trickster. Or perhaps there is a logical explanation. You must always hear the whole of the story before you know its truth.” Augustine twirled through her dining room, humming her favorite song as she straightened the silverware at each place. “A party is a wonderful reason for a mother to come home.” The little doll waltzed into her parlor and put her hand on her mother’s chair. “Now all the lost mothers will be found.”

  Trina’s head was spinning faster than one of her dad’s drill bits. Her father, a trickster. Her mother, a trickster. What was the true story? What if her mother had made a mistake when she left them and didn’t know how to say she was sorry? What if she had been the one waiting all this time for Trina to find her?

  “But I don’t know where to send the invitation. My father says he doesn’t know where she is.”

  Augustine looked at Trina the way a mother might look at a child. “Then you must try to find out. Remember, no stone unturned.”

  Trina was afraid to let herself get too excited. But what if her mother could come to the party? Maybe she could stay in the pretty white room with the window seat. Trina drew a delicate sprig of goldenrod at the top of a blank page in her notebook.

  Beneath it she wrote, You’re invited . . .

  Chapter Twenty

  Trina was so lost in her daydream about the Harvest Moon Masquerade Ball and making an invitation for her mother, she jumped when her dad knocked on the door.

  “Okay if I come in?” he asked quietly.

  “Sure,” she said, feeling herself getting all jumbled up inside. She was still mad at her dad for lying to her, mad at her mom for leaving, and mad at herself for running away, but she was also scared to hear the whole story about her mother. She looked to Augustine for advice, but Augustine was already sitting stiffly in her chair—just like the mother and father dolls.

  I can do this, Trina said to herself. She had braved her fear of Goldenrod and a new school and even Charlotte, and now she would brave the truth about her mother.

  “Think you can open the door?” he said.

  Trina opened the door and her dad stepped in with a glass of milk in one hand and his other arm wrapped around the red coffee can of Dare Club money. The peace offering he brought with him this time was bigger than usual: balanced on top of the coffee can was a blue plate bearing a fried egg sandwich, which oozed with melted yellow cheese. “I thought you might be hungry,” he said.

  “Not really,” she said, afraid she’d thro
w up anything she ate.

  Without spilling a drop, he managed to set the can, the plate, and the glass on the floor, right next to the dollhouse. “You’re doing a really nice job with this place,” he said, peering inside it.

  “I’ve been fixing up houses my whole life,” Trina said. She could tell he needed time to warm up to the real subject on his mind, but so did she. She sat back down on the floor next to her notebook.

  “Kind of a crazy night, huh?” he said, pacing in a small circle near the dollhouse.

  “Sure was,” she said, feeling as if all the questions she had about her mother had lodged in her dry throat. “Now all we have to do is prove to everyone in New Royal that Goldenrod isn’t haunted and then everything can go back to normal.”

  “Trina . . . Citrine . . . Princess, don’t you think you’ve taken this haunted house stuff a little too far?”

  “I think you can believe anything you want, if it works,” she said. As her dad walked over to the big mirror, she decided she was hungry after all, so she took a big bite of egg sandwich. She watched him pull her dirty, wadded-up baseball cap from his pocket and hang it on one of the mirror’s fancy hooks. Then he picked up her softball glove. “I’ve missed our games of catch,” he said.

  Trina shrugged, already certain she couldn’t get through the conversation without crying.

  “I know it’s hard for you to live here,” he said.

  Hard? He had no idea. And then her heart seemed to stop beating when he reached for the postcards and fanned through the pile.

  She knew what she was about to say would hurt his feelings, but she had to say it anyway. Augustine had forgotten to point out there was her side to the story too. “They’re all I ever had of her, and now they don’t mean a thing,” she said.

  He nodded sadly. “Someday I’m going to make it up to you. All of it. Okay?”

  Someday. Trina didn’t like that word anymore. She didn’t want to nod her head and let him think that someday was okay with her. Someday was full of empty promises. Gone were the stories of her mother’s adventures. “You made me hope for something that could never be true,” she said.

  His shoulders dropped as he set the postcards back on the mantel. “Oh, Trina.” He walked toward her, but she quickly looked down at her drawing of the sprig of goldenrod in her notebook and kept working on the invitation for her mother. Her bed creaked as he sat down behind her. “I’ll admit I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years, but this one . . .” When his voice trailed off, Trina turned around. He was staring at the floor.

  “I promised myself, no matter what, I’d always keep you safe.” He shook his head. “Last night, I thought you’d cool off and come right back home, but you didn’t. When I found your hat in the mud by the bridge, I . . .” He looked up at Trina, tears welling in his tired eyes. “Do you know what it’s like, even for a split second, to think . . . ?” But then his voice cracked and he looked away. “When you’re older, you’ll understand.” He stood up and paced the floor.

  Trina was listening, but there was only one thing on her mind: the truth. “But why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  Her dad sat down on the floor across from her and pulled a bit of cheese from her chin. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. I didn’t think of it that way. All I wanted was for you to stay my happy little girl.” He reached out and squeezed her small fists in his big calloused hands and looked her in the eyes. “I love you. And I promise I’ll never lie to you again.”

  Trina blinked back tears. “I love you too, Poppo. And I’m sorry I ran away. I just wasn’t thinking for myself.” She glanced over at Augustine. “But I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  “I know. I just didn’t think you would grow up so fast.” He smiled faintly.

  “And I’m old enough to know the truth about my mother.” Trina tried to sound strong. “Is she ever coming home?”

  His grip on her hands tightened. “You have to understand, Trina. Your mom and I . . . You . . .” He shook his head. “We’re never going to be a family like your dolls or the Roys.”

  Trina’s anger eased. Poppo had been listening. He had listened to everything she ever said about whole families. “Then at least tell me what happened. And tell me the truth.” She took her hands out of his. “I need to know what happened.”

  Her dad swallowed. Hard. “She . . .” He gripped his knees. “Left.”

  “I know that, but why?”

  His face reddened as he continued. “I’d taken a big job on Lake Michigan building a log cabin.” He shifted his eyes to the fireplace, as if he were watching a sad movie on TV. “Turns out she hated the woods. And then one day she went into town to get groceries . . .”

  Trina leaned forward. “And?”

  “She didn’t come back.”

  Her mother had run away. Just as she had. But Trina came back; her mother didn’t. “Why? Didn’t she love me? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, Princess.” He looked down and picked at a chunk of mud on his jeans. “It was what I didn’t do.” Raising his eyes to hers, he said, “It was nothing you did. You were only six months old the first time she left.” He shook his head. “I had no idea how I was going to take care of a baby all by myself.”

  A baby? The first time? “I thought I was three years old when she left.”

  “That was the fourth time and the last time she left.” When he swallowed, his eyes welled with tears. “That’s when she wanted to take you with her.”

  Trina felt a glimmer of hope. “You mean she wanted me?”

  The question clearly took her dad by surprise. “Of course she did. But she talked about moving to New York. She talked about making it big.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She had lots of ideas, but I don’t think she knew what she wanted out of life.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But I knew what I wanted. I fought hard and I won. Once the divorce was final and I had custody of you, I packed us into the truck and kept moving.”

  There it was. The truth. Like a cement wall in the middle of an obstacle course. She either had to climb over it or give up. And she couldn’t give up now. “You didn’t want her to find us again, did you?”

  He looked down at the floor as if he’d been caught in another lie. “I fell for her every time she came back, and I knew I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t handle her walking out and then coming back a few months later like nothing ever happened. And I couldn’t bear what it did to you.”

  Now Trina was the one standing up and pacing. She walked to the mantel and looked at her souvenirs. She gave her snow globe a good shake and watched the fake snow drift around the fake mountains. She picked up her sea glass, which was just broken glass tumbled smooth by lake water. Everything she had was fake. She picked up the stack of postcards, wondering what her mother would say if she really sent her a postcard.

  She thought of the party. “What if I wanted her to come back? Would she?”

  Her dad shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Trina stared out her window at the fallen tree. Its leaves were already drooping. She turned away and caught a glimpse of herself in the tall mirror. Her knees and her face were still covered in mud. “Does she have another family? Is that why?”

  “I doubt it. She didn’t want to be tied down. She wanted her freedom and fancy things. Things I’d never be able to give her. Cars, clothes, jewelry, houses . . .”

  Trina ran her hand along the carvings in the tall mirror. “Would Goldenrod be fancy enough?”

  “Oh, Princess, I’m not sure anything could ever be good enough for her.”

  Trina was reeling. If only she could live in Augustine’s fantasy world, she would make up a new story and skip all the hard parts. She didn’t want to hear another word about her mother, but at the same time she wanted to know everything. “Where is she? And I mean for real this time.” She watched her dad in the mirror. He was standing up, staring into the dollhouse.

  He shrugged again
. “I don’t know. New York, Los Angeles. I’m not sure. Last I heard she was some kind of TV producer.”

  “Really?” Trina gasped excitedly. “In the United States?” Compared to Antarctica, New York and Los Angeles were practically right next door. But in a way, knowing her mother had been living close by was worse. One visit, even a hundred visits would have been easy for her to make. But she had never visited. Not even once. Trina crawled up on her bed. Her stomach hurt and she wanted to hide under her covers. “You mean I could’ve known her all these years?”

  “Oh, Trina. This is what I was afraid of.” He sat down next to her and pulled her close. “It wouldn’t have been like that. She was so . . . unpredictable.”

  Trina pulled away. “But people can change, can’t they? Look at Miss Kitty. She was almost nice last night.”

  Her dad stood up. “Miss Kitty was scared.”

  “Maybe Mom was scared. Maybe if she met me now, she’d change her mind. I’m all grown-up.” Trina got down from her bed and picked up her notebook. She ripped out the page that had her mother’s invitation on it and folded the frilly-edged paper in half and finally into eighths. “We’re having a costume party at Goldenrod to celebrate the harvest moon. I’m going to invite the whole town, so I decided to invite Mom too. I made her this invitation.”

  Her dad was pacing again. “Since when do we celebrate the harvest moon?”

  “Since forever. It’s a tradition at Goldenrod. The old newspaper said so.” She kicked her foot against the coffee can. “I think this money belongs to the whole town, not just me, so I’m going to use it to pay for the party.” For Goldenrod, but she didn’t tell him that part.

  The floor squeaked a little and the room was quiet. Her dad had wandered to the window and stood gazing down at the tree. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his bandana and wiped his face. “I can’t believe the tree missed the house. Not even a scratch. Missed your friends’ bikes too.”