by Delia Ray
Mellecker searched my face in surprise. “Hey, what’s up?”
“You still want to look inside the Ransom vault?” I shot out.
“What?” His eyes narrowed and he started to smile. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not kidding. I’ve got the key.”
“Holy crap, Crenshaw!” Mellecker squawked under his breath. “You really got it? All this time I thought you were bluffing!”
“Nope.” I could feel my fists clenching and unclenching at my sides. “So you want to do this or not?”
“Of course I do.” He clapped his hand to his forehead with a delighted laugh. “Beez’s gonna flip. When can we go?”
My mind raced ahead. Once I set a date, there’d be no turning back.
“The night after Halloween,” I told Mellecker.
“Excellent!” he whispered as he banged his locker shut. I could already see him searching the tallest heads in the hallway for Beez. I let out a raggedy sigh. It was done.
I FOUND MYSELF climbing up to the attic after school that afternoon. Ours wasn’t one of those inviting sorts of attics, packed with family heirlooms, at the top of a sunlit staircase. It was just a shadowy space in the rafters that you could reach only by pulling a folded set of steps from a trapdoor in the ceiling. So I usually limited my annual trips to the attic to two—once to bring down the Christmas ornaments and once more to lug them back up again after New Year’s.
Each winter when I made those climbs, I would glance over at the three boxes full of Dad’s things and think about stopping to look inside. Then I would always change my mind. I couldn’t wait to scurry down the rickety steps and slam the trapdoor behind me. And especially at Christmas, I was never in the mood for being reminded of how much there was to miss about Dad.
But today opening the boxes felt like a mission. I needed something to take my mind off Kilgore and Jeeter—and what might happen the night after Halloween. And the more I thought about the strange lady in the graveyard, the more I began to think Delaney was right—the lady had recognized me somehow. What if it had something to do with us both being Raintrees? Maybe I could find a clue in the old family Bible. Lottie had said that’s where my grandmother first came across the Raintree name, recorded in our family tree. If the Bible was really packed away in the attic like Lottie said, I knew I’d probably find it among Dad’s things.
His three boxes were lined up under the tiny window that overlooked our front porch. I sat cross-legged in a patch of sunlight on the splintery floorboards and opened the first one. It didn’t take long for me to get sidetracked from my search for the Bible. The first carton was full of photos, piles of them scrambled together in no particular order. I began sorting through the jumble, and soon I was surrounded by small stacks of Lincoln Raintree Crenshaw (the First) at different ages.
As a chubby (make that fat) toddler.
As a boy showing off the whopper (minnow) he had caught.
A geeky teenager (nice glasses!) in a graduation cap, his proud parents on either side.
A college student in a beard (yikes) and hiking boots.
People used to say we looked just alike. I squinted down at each image, trying to see past the bad hair and goofy clothes, searching for a resemblance.
As I studied the stack of photos from the husband-and-father years, I caught myself staring at Lottie instead of Dad. There she was with flowers in her hair on the day they got married in someone’s backyard in Wisconsin. There were the three of us on a Ferris wheel. Lottie had her head tipped back laughing as she gazed up at the sky.
It made my heart sink to see how much happier she was back then. With a sigh, I gathered up the piles of photos and put them away in order, from Dad’s baby years until our backyard campout right before he died. Then I slid the carton back into its place under the window.
The contents of the second box cheered me up again. I had completely forgotten about most of the things in the weird collection of keepsakes Lottie had chosen to save—Dad’s favorite Three Stooges coffee mug, a couple of his best fossil specimens, a hunk of lava rock, and a lopsided clay dog I had made for him during my years of begging for a pet. At the bottom of the box I found a Ziploc bag with my parents’ matching wedding bands and my father’s old watch tucked inside. The battery on the watch was dead, of course, and the leather band had worn thin, but I tried it on for size anyway and spent a couple minutes checking how it looked from different angles.
I hit the jackpot in the last box. The Bible was buried underneath a mishmash of geology research papers. I grunted as I carefully lifted it onto my lap. It was heavy, with a tattered spine and an ornate cross stamped in peeling gold on the leather cover. My chest tightened as I turned to the family record in the back of the book—line after line of entries, listing the names of my ancestors, along with when and where they were born and when they died, all the way back to the 1800s. Someone—probably my grandmother—had filled out my name and birth date in graceful cursive script at the bottom of the list. I glanced up at the entry for Dad. His death date was missing. My grandmother hadn’t been alive to fill it in, and Lottie must not have had the heart.
I scrolled my finger toward the top of the page, scanning each entry. My grandmother had been a Wickham before she got married. “Wickham … Bell … Hollingsworth,” I whispered to myself as I backtracked through the record, whispering each new name I spotted. “Barnes … Caldwell …”
Where was the Raintree we were supposed to be named after? I combed back through the entries to double-check. But besides Dad and me, I couldn’t find a single one. I let out a growl and heaved the Bible back into its box. I should have been studying for my American Studies test tomorrow instead of searching for imaginary ancestors.
As I reached for the papers that went on top of the Bible, I caught sight of Dad’s old address book buried in the pile. I quickly skimmed through the worn pages, smiling faintly at his messy scribbles. Dad’s handwriting had been worse than mine. A pang went through me when I got to the J’s. Jeeter, with his phone number at the cemetery office and his home address, was listed right in the center of the page. Was this some kind of sign that I was supposed to return Jeeter’s call and hear what he had to say for himself? Not a chance, I thought, with the last words he had said to me still echoing in my head. Get out of here, Linc. Just go home.
I was flipping past Jeeter’s name when an envelope fluttered from between the next pages. I let out a startled breath of air. The envelope was addressed to my grandmother—Ellen Crenshaw in Verona, Wisconsin. I squinted at the return address. It said 266 Fulton Lane, Iowa City, Iowa.… What if this was the mysterious letter that Lottie had told me about? The one Dad had discovered when he was in the midst of cleaning out his parents’ house and trying to decide among job offers around the country. I slipped the thin sheet of stationery out of the envelope. Just like my mother had described, the typewritten note was odd in every way—from the stiff apology in the beginning to the curt initials at the end:
I apologize for breaking my promise and writing to you. But I’ve been tormented with worry ever since your letters stopped coming. Please let me know if all is well.
A.R.
My thoughts were still whirling when I heard a loud creak on the stairs.
“Linc?” It was Lottie, standing at the top of the ladder. I jerked up straight.
“What are you doing up here?” she asked.
When I didn’t answer at first, she ducked her head under the low rafters and picked her way toward me, past the box of Christmas ornaments and a stack of shutters. I could see her face fill with dismay and something else—was it anger?—as she stood under the peak of the roof surveying the piles of paper, the mug, and Dad’s rocks and other treasures spread in a messy circle around me.
“What—” she started to ask again, her voice breathy with disbelief.
I cut her off. “Look what I found, Lottie! It’s that letter you told me about! I found it in Dad’s old address bo
ok.” Lottie was still staring at me with a baffled expression, so I kept trying to explain.
“Remember? The one that convinced him to move to Iowa? Whoever wrote this letter signed it ‘A.R.’ See?” I held up the letter and pointed to the initials with a giddy laugh. “I’ve got so much to tell you, Lottie! A lot of crazy stuff happened yesterday. But first of all, you know how my friend adopted a grave with the name Raintree on it for our project, and I was joking about finding a long-lost relative in Iowa City? Well, maybe my idea wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Maybe this R stands for Raintree. And now that we have an address, we can find out for sure.” I thrust out the letter so Lottie could see for herself. “If Dad hadn’t had his heart attack, he probably would have done the same thing.”
Lottie didn’t reach out to take the letter like I expected. Instead, she winced and blinked her eyes shut as if she had walked into a spiderweb. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Linc,” she said. “And you should have asked me before you came up here and started rummaging through these boxes.”
Resentment prickled up inside me. “Why? Dad’s stuff belongs to me just as much as it belongs to you.”
Her gaze landed on the Ziploc bag lying on the floorboards next to me. “Those are our wedding rings. I put them up here for safekeeping because I didn’t want them touched,” she said in an accusing voice. “Wait, where’s your father’s watch?”
“Here it is,” I said weakly, holding up my wrist for her to see. “I thought that … that maybe it would be okay if I wore it once in a while. It’s a little too big for me, but I could poke another hole in the wristband.”
“No!” Lottie cried out.
“Why?” I asked with shock rising in my throat.
Lottie’s eyes were wild. “Because,” she stammered, “because he always wore that watch, even before I met him, until they took it off and gave it to me when he died … and I don’t want to be reminded.”
I looked down at the Three Stooges mug that had made me smile a few minutes ago, and I thought of how good it had felt when I had taken Delaney to see Dad’s grave. “Is that such a bad thing?” I asked in bewilderment. “Being reminded once in a while?”
“Yes,” Lottie said in a strangled voice. Her face twisted. “All this”—she flung her arm out at Dad’s boxes—“it just hurts too much.” She swiped her sweater sleeve across her eyes, fighting back tears. “It’s not healthy to keep living in the past, Linc. We have to move on.”
I scrambled to my feet, scattering Dad’s address book and papers across the floor. “How can you say you’re moving on, Lottie? You’re not moving on. You’re stuck!” I kicked at one of the papers under my foot in frustration. “I’ve been stuck too. I mean, no wonder! There wasn’t a chance to say goodbye or anything. Dad’s here one day and then, poof, he’s gone. We didn’t even have a funeral because … because … I’m not even sure why. I just remember you telling me he would have hated all the fuss. Well, it was you, Lottie! You’re the one who didn’t want the funeral. But you can’t keep trying to make things better by pretending Dad never existed.”
“Be quiet!” Lottie snapped. “You have no right to talk to me that way. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of making everything work on my own.” She lunged forward and snatched up the Ziploc bag that was lying nearby with the wedding rings inside. When she stood up, her face had frozen into a cold mask. “I want you to put everything back exactly the way you found it,” she said. “Right now.”
I saw her glance at Dad’s watch still hanging on my wrist. I yanked it off and pushed it into her hands. Then I bent down and started shoving things into the open boxes. The letter from A.R. had landed at my feet. I found its envelope nearby.
Lottie was already making her way down the ladder. “Wait!” I called out, holding up the letter. “Didn’t you hear anything I said? Don’t you want to find out who wrote this?”
Lottie stopped with her hands gripping the highest step. I could barely see her face in the shadowy light, but I didn’t need to. I could hear the hollowness in her voice. “I don’t see the point, Linc. Finding who wrote that letter won’t bring your father back.”
Of course he’s not coming back! He’s dead! I wanted to yell into the dark peak above me as she disappeared through the trapdoor. But what about you, Lottie? What’s your excuse?
But I bit my tongue. Obviously nothing I said, no matter how blunt, could chip through the layer of ice that had grown over my mother like a second skin.
I finished repacking the boxes. In two minutes the bits and pieces left over from Dad’s life were closed up again under the cardboard lids—all except for one. I folded up the letter and tucked it into the pocket of my jeans. If Lottie wouldn’t go with me, I’d have to find A.R. on my own.
THE NEXT MORNING I told Delaney all about what had happened in the attic. I made her late for science class, but she didn’t even seem to care once I showed her the letter I had found. “Wait a minute,” she said, ignoring the other kids scurrying into the classroom. “So you think A.R. might be the lady from the graveyard?”
“I guess it’s a possibility.” I shrugged. “If she never got married, her name would still be Raintree.”
“But this note sounds more like something a secret boyfriend would write, doesn’t it?” Delaney ran her fingertip under the lines of neat cursive. “ ‘I apologize for breaking my promise and writing’? ‘I’ve been tormented with worry ever since your letters stopped coming’?”
I found myself nodding. Then I remembered how serious and straightlaced my grandmother had looked in those pictures up in the attic. “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “My grandmother didn’t really seem like the type to have an old boyfriend hidden in another state. She was more of the …” I floundered for the right description. “More of the farm lady type.”
Delaney laughed as she handed back the letter. “Well, there’s only one way to find out, right?” she said. “We’ve got to go to Fulton Lane.”
“Really? You’ll go with me?” I wanted to fling my arms around her in gratitude. “You think we could go today after school?” I asked in a rush. “I checked the map last night. It’s not far and we could catch the city bus.”
Delaney thought for a second. “I guess I could call Mama at lunchtime and ask.”
Delaney’s lab partner poked her head out of the science room. “Hurry up,” she said in an urgent voice, reaching for Delaney’s arm. “We’re dissecting owl pellets today, and we need to get going.”
“Oh, Lordy,” I heard Delaney say as the girl pulled her around the corner. “I’m not sure I’m ready for an owl pellet first thing in the morning.”
I didn’t see Delaney again until American Studies class. Since we had a big test that day, there wasn’t time to talk, but she gave me a cheerful nod on our way into the classroom and whispered that she’d meet me by my locker after school.
But for some reason Delaney’s mood had turned somber by the time we boarded the crosstown bus that would drop us off near Fulton Lane. I knew something had to be wrong. She didn’t say thank you when I paid the fare for both of us, and she began staring out the window before the bus had even pulled away from the curb.
I peered around her curtain of blond hair so I could see her expression. “Is everything still okay with your mom?”
She nodded, watching the streets flash by. “She’s doing fine.”
“Are you worried about leaving her by herself this afternoon?”
“No, Daddy’s with her. He’s taking her to her checkup at the hospital.”
“So nothing’s wrong with the baby?”
Delaney shook her head with a small, impatient sigh.
“It’s just that you’re kind of quiet. I thought maybe something had happened.”
She swiveled around to face me. Her eyes were wide, glassy pools. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about the Ransom vault when we were in the cemetery?” she demanded.
I opened my mouth to answer, but no wo
rds came out.
“You told me you were gonna tell Jeeter the truth and give the key back,” she rushed on. “Then today when I was leaving American Studies, I heard Beez bragging about how y’all are planning to open the vault the night after Halloween. And Amy was asking if she could go too.”
I groaned and clapped my hand across my eyes. “Oh, no! I told those guys that they needed to keep this quiet.”
“So it’s true? You’re really going? Then why’d you lie to me the other day? Why’d you say you were taking the key back as soon as you could?”
I glared straight ahead, as if I could bore a hole into the seat in front of me. “That’s what I meant to do. Until Kilgore and Jeeter decided they wanted to kick me out of the cemetery. Forever.”
“Wait,” Delaney said with a muddled shake of her head. “What in the world are you talking about?”
I told her the quick version of what had happened in the cemetery office after she and her mother had left me in the parking lot. Although I’d had two days to mull things over, it still stung to say the details out loud. “He kept saying how weird I was,” I muttered.
Delaney’s brow furrowed. “And Jeeter didn’t stop him?”
“Nope. He didn’t even try.” I thumped the plastic seat with my fist. “That’s why I don’t feel bad about using that key. It’s not like we’re going to damage any property or steal anything. We’ll take one look in the vault and lock it up again. Then I’m going to drop the key off on the doorstep.” I leaned back against the seat. “My parting gift.”
We watched another round of passengers climb on board at Third Street. When Delaney spoke again, her voice was prim. “So is Amy really going with you?”
“Amy?” I scoffed. “Are you kidding? I might as well bring along a couple of reporters and a camera crew.” Delaney sniffed and focused on her hands in her lap, trying not to look pleased.