Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Willow sat down cautiously on the heavy walnut chair by the secretary desk, finding the latch that allowed her to carefully lower the lid to its horizontal position.
The space it revealed was neatly organized, if smaller than she had expected: a thick stack of slightly yellowed paper to the left, a pile of books to the right.
Tilting her head sideways, Willow could see that all six of them were by Abel R.
Douglas, author of the novel she’d fallen asleep over the previous night; Widow’s Walk was not among them, though Weather the Storm was.
A sheet of paper, the same size and weight as the notes with which Willow was familiar by now, sat neatly in the center of the writing surface:
nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream --WBY
and, on the reverse side:
a gift of memory, the mother of the Muses … --Pl
WBY … that’s probably Yeats? Willow thought curiously, taking out her phone to search. Yes, the first quote was Yeats. The second … Plato.
Curious, Willow thought. After folding the page and tucking it into her pocket, she closed the desk and continued her exploration of the small room.
A little cedar chest sat next to the bed, a small box clearly intended for a child’s treasures. One of the hinges had worked most of the way loose and was held precariously in place by a mismatched screw. Willow gently lifted the lid.
A small photo album, exquisitely made and leather-bound, lay just inside; Willow sat on the bed, opened it, and paged through quickly.
The first photos were black-and-white, sepia-toned antiques from the early twentieth century; the images moved through time to the drugstore snapshots of later years.
Resisting the urge to examine it more closely, Willow gently set it aside.
Next, she found an ancient doll wrapped in a baby blanket.
The doll’s body was sewn from leather so old it threatened to crack or dissolve at the slightest movement, sewn to the smooth bisque head; a few decaying threads attached the fragile porcelain hands and feet to the stiff leather of the limbs.
The doll was clothed in a simple white shift, perhaps sewn by the little girl it had belonged to; the blanket, too, had been crocheted by inexpert hands, the labored effort of a young girl wanting to keep her beloved doll warm in winter.
Willow suddenly wondered what the doll’s name was.
She gently set it down on the bed beside the photo album, then bent over the chest again.
Beneath the doll, she found a small stack of books—old, battered, and much read.
Little Women sat on the top, with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre beneath it, and Middlemarch.
At the very bottom, turned 180 degrees so one had to remove all the books to see it, sat a lurid-looking title called A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee.
Willow grinned, recognizing the trick immediately—when she was younger, she, too, had put a row of “appropriate” books in an obvious spot on her bookcase, spines out, while tucked behind them were the Stephen King and V. C. Andrews novels her mother would never have permitted at Willow’s age.
In one corner at the very bottom of the chest was a small cardboard box; Willow took it out and carefully lifted the lid.
Nestled against faded red velvet sat a gold locket, about an inch high, on a length of pink ribbon.
It was engraved with a set of initials, three letters so elaborately interlocked that it was impossible to read them in the still-new morning light.
Willow’s hand hovered over the locket, as though waiting for some unseen being to object; none did.
She cupped it gently in her hands, sliding a careful fingernail into the crack between the two halves of the lock and feeling the little snick as it opened.
From one side of the open locket, a young man in uniform looked out at her; on the other, a sad-faced woman held a baby. Willow quietly closed it and laid it back into its box.
Someone had wanted Willow to find this room, to find the locket. Someone shy, someone who loved shadows but disliked shoes. She took a deep breath and spoke hesitantly.
“Annabel?”
The room was silent; nothing moved.
“Annabel? This was—is—your room, isn’t it?”
For a split second, Willow thought she saw a girl—no, it was a woman, no longer young, a sea of silver-white hair flowing loose around her face and shoulders—sitting on the window seat, wearing an old-fashioned nightdress.
She hugged her knees to her chest, gazing out at the bay as Willow had minutes before.
Turning her face to Willow, she smiled, a smile full of tears and years and joy and pain …
and then there was only the wavy glass of the window and the sun shining into the little room.
Willow swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you, Annabel. You might have saved my life tonight. And … thank you for showing me your room. It’s beautiful.”
All was quiet; Annabel did not respond. Maybe she had gone, Willow thought; maybe she had never even been there, was just a figment of Willow’s exhausted imagination.
Willow stood, replacing the books and doll in the little cedar chest. She hesitated, photo album in one hand and locket in the other.
Not knowing if there was anyone there to listen, Willow said awkwardly, “I hope it’s okay; I’d like to take these with me.
It will help me—help us—find a solution, and follow the quest… ”
A faint giggle from the window seat; then a rush of dizziness came over Willow. When her head cleared, she was sitting on the bed again. The locket was no longer in her hand but around her neck.
Annabel’s sense of humor was a little unsettling.
Willow swallowed hard. “Okay then … thank you. I’ll bring them back, I promise.
” She tucked the pendant inside her hoodie and turned to leave, but paused in the doorway and looked back.
“I’m sorry for your loss. For all your losses.
If there is anything in my power I can do to help you, I promise I will do it. ”
The air in the room shimmered, as though in approval, and went quiet again.