Chapter 14
FORGOTTEN THINGS
Jude strides toward a hobbled apothecary desk while I set my sights on a wardrobe, its imposing stature making up for its lackluster condition.
Third floor storage is ripe with neglect.
Cobwebs stretch between exposed rafters. Sheets hang over mystery items like moth-eaten ghosts. Dust covers everything else like peach fuzz—old trunks, broken furniture, forgotten heirlooms.
My fingers itch to explore.
I open the wardrobe’s doors and let out a soft exclamation.
It’s full of clothes straight out of the nineteenth century.
Hardly believing my eyes, I pull a dress free—a dusty rose ball gown made of silk and lace, its skirt cascading in layers of tulle.
The bodice is stiff with boning, and the fabric smells of old perfume and cedar wood. “I can’t believe this is up here.”
Languishing in the dark.
I lift it higher, but Jude barely looks. He’s too busy prying open the many small drawers of the apothecary desk, one after another.
I hold the dress in front of me, admiring my dingy reflection in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe’s door.
I imagine waltzing in the ballroom during the Hunter’s Moon Masquerade Ball.
Wearing this. I sway a little, then exchange the dress for a midnight blue cloak made of velvet, trimmed with fur.
I drape it over my shoulders. “Are there smelling salts in those drawers?”
Jude casts me a distracted glance. “Smelling salts?”
“In case I swoon?” I give a twirl.
A cloud of dust billows around me.
“These clothes should be on display in a museum.” I shuffle past a collection of Edwardian era menswear, imagining Jude in a black tailcoat with satin lapels and a cravat. He’d look like a gothic hero.
“I don’t mean to rain on your fashion parade,” he says, wresting open another drawer. “But I don’t think you’re going to find the key in there.”
“You never know. It could be hiding in one of these pockets.” I reach inside several to no avail, then force myself to turn away from the wardrobe, cloak still fastened over my shoulders. Jude is right. We came here for a specific reason.
I set my hands on my hips and give the room another scan. “If I were a key, where would I be?”
A broken mirror rests against the wall. Beside it, a child-sized rocking chair with peeling paint.
I give it a tilt with my shoe.
It rocks in a mournful, rhythmic groan.
“Have you ever seen The Changeling?” I ask.
“With George C Scott?”
His response surprises me. The Changeling is one of the more obscure horror films of the 1980s. It doesn’t involve a rocking chair, but it does involve a wheelchair with very similar vibes.
“My roommate was into classic horror,” he says with a shrug. He shuts the last drawer of the apothecary desk. “He never introduced me to Ghost, though.”
“Ghost isn’t horror. It’s romance.” I grab a sheet beside me and tug it upward with a flourish. There’s an oil painting underneath—a portrait of an elderly woman with eyes that seem to follow me as I sway back and forth. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Your boarding school. Your life there. Your roommate.”
Jude inspects a bookshelf stacked with old children’s literature. Picture books from a bygone era. “My roommate was preferable to Isabel.”
And Rafe, I’m sure.
But he doesn’t mention him.
He opens a small book with a gray cloth binding. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. “I miss the challenge. And the opportunities.”
“Like?”
“Cambridge.” He snaps the book shut.
I fold the sheet and hang it over the mirror’s frame. “Is that where you want to go for college?”
“It was the plan. Not sure they admit many students from Foggy Hollow High, though.”
Probably not. But then, no student at Foggy Hollow High has ever been a Vandenberg. I fiddle with the cloak’s clasp—hooking it, and unhooking it, then hooking it again—feeling a bit defensive for this town I love. “What other opportunities did your school offer that Foggy Hollow can’t?”
“Fencing. Archery. Equestrian training.”
“You have stables.”
“Empty stables.”
“So fill them,” I say with a shrug. “And continue on with your equestrian training. Or, teach me archery. I’ll be Little John to your Robin Hood.”
Jude frowns.
Maybe he’s not planning to be here for much longer. So what would be the point in filling his stables or teaching me archery? Or finding a key, for that matter. And yet, he searches like a man absorbed, his attention on a vintage suitcase. He pulls out a porcelain doll with no eyes.
“You want this for your podcast?” He holds it up with a crooked grin, the first real smile I’ve seen on his face. And heaven help me, Jude Vandenberg has dimples.
“That is horrifying,” I say, pulling up another sheet. There’s an old phonograph underneath, perched atop a three-legged parlor table. And beneath it, a wooden crate full of vinyls. “Holy motherlode.”
I pick up the crate, set it on a nearby trunk, and flip through the albums, reading each artist aloud. “Glenn Miller. Benny Goodman. Nat King Cole.”
The floor creaks.
Jude stops behind me, so close I can feel his warmth, smell that delectable cologne. He reaches past me to flip further back. “Beethoven,” he says, his voice right next to my ear. “Puccini.”
I swallow hard.
“David Bowie,” he reads next. “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.”
“Now that’s a title I can get behind.” With a smile, I continue flipping where Jude left off. Fleetwood Mac. Rolling Stones. And then …
“Stevie Nicks!” I pluck the album from the rest. “My mom loved her.”
As soon as the words are out, my cheeks catch on fire. I just brought up my mother. In the past tense. A faux pas that turns Jude’s attention into something acute and curious, as weighty as the cloak over my shoulders.
“You live with your dad,” he says.
“Yep,” I say back, searching for an outlet so we can plug in the phonograph to see if it works. I move aside a taxidermy fox and a velvet-upholstered chair chewed by mice.
“So … where’s your mom?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” I say, all false bravado. “She took off when I was nine. At least, that’s what my dad says. And Dr. Penny.”
“Dr. Penny?”
“My therapist. After my mom left, my dad was worried about me, so I had the privilege of sitting on her couch for awhile.” I brave a look, and discover Jude standing very still, watching me—shadows beneath his eyes, that bruise along his jaw, his tie loose and ever so slightly crooked.
“I had a dream before she disappeared. The night before, actually. She got swallowed up by a black hole. Dr. Penny said it was trauma, manifesting itself in sleep. My mom was troubled. She grew up in foster care. And somewhere along the line, she became an addict. Her presence in my life was pretty unstable, so Dr. Penny’s diagnosis makes sense, I guess.
It’s just kind of weird, because after that dream, I never saw or heard from her again.
Not a phone call. Not a card or a letter. She just … vanished.”
Jude is looking at me like something has clicked into place, like suddenly he understands why I am the way I am. Annoyed, I scoot the parlor table closer to the outlet I’ve found. “What about your parents?”
“They’re dead,” he says.
My heart twists.
Jude plugs in the phonograph’s cord and flips the switch. The turntable comes to life with a quiet crackle.
It still works.
He sets the vinyl into place, lifts the lever, and lowers the needle.
Music fills the room.
The witchy aesthetic combined with Stevie’s ethereal voice has a smile whispering across my lips.
For a moment, Jude and I stare at one another.
And I want to tell him I’m sorry. That his parents are dead.
That he had to move away from his boarding school.
That he’s stuck here with a stepmother he doesn’t seem to like very much and a cousin he likes even less.
But before I can get any words out, he rubs the back of his neck and opens a nearby trunk.
It’s filled with old books and journals and several random odds and ends, including a crystal ball with a dead spider inside.
I remove it and set it aside, then pick up one of the books—The Great Gatsby by F.
Scott Fitzgerald. There’s a stack of letters underneath, bound in twine. “They’re addressed to Enoch,” I say.
“My one-eyed uncle.” Jude picks up a gold pocket compass and flips it open.
“Your one-eyed uncle?”
“Great, great uncle, if you want to get technical. He died before I was born, but my dad told me stories. His stuff must have been sent to the estate after he passed.”
A tube made of leather rests at the bottom of the trunk, spanning its length.
I pull it out, take off its tarnished brass cap, and remove a long roll of aged parchment from inside.
It resists unrolling, stiff from years in its cylindrical case.
But as it slowly unfurls, breathing fresh air for the first time in decades, names and dates begin to appear.
We have just uncovered a Vandenberg family tree.