My legacy of lies | twilight | COMPLETED

Ch. 8 | Madame Claire

I arrived at Madame Claire's an hour before I had to meet Liz and Alice at their shop to help out for the day.

"I don't want my fortune read," I said to Jeff. "Tell your mother I have some questions about my grandmother's house and the family. Strange things are happening, and I need her advice."

A few minutes later the door opened at the top of the stairs, and the old woman beckoned to me. Before I reached the entrance to the second floor apartment.

She led me to the same room I had been to last time, and walked to her chair, gesturing toward the chair across from her.

I perched on the chair nervously, tucking my hands under my legs.

"You have questions." She said.

I nodded. "I'm not sure where to begin."

"Strange things have been happening at the house," Her voice was low, almost soothing. "What kind of things?"

"Well, objects are being moved. The bible, for instance. It was missing from its place in the kitchen, and grandmother became convinced that someone had stolen it. Later, she found it in the library but instead of just being happy she found it, she was terrified and sad."

"And she found it on a shelf in the library?" Madamn Claire asked.

"Yes, just left to the fireplace."

She lifted her head up slightly, "Tell me more. "

Feeling a little more comfortable, I rested my hands on the table. "This morning we found that a picture had been moved from the front parlor to the music room. Grandmother started getting weird again - paranoid, as if someone were doing this to her, as if I were doing it."

"A painting," she repeated.

"A landscape," I said. "A picture of a mill."

Miss Claire didn't make a sound, but I saw the buttons on her dress move and catch the light as if she had quickly sucked in a breath.

"Yesterday a clock was missing from grandmother's desk."

"A small clock... an old one," she murmured.

"Yes. It has a picture painted on it's face, roses and-"

"Was it found on the hall table?"

I blinked. "How did you know?"

She sat back in her chair. "I used to work there as a young girl. That is where it used to be kept. The Bible always sat on a shelf by the library's hearth. The mill painting hung over the Chinese chest in the music room."

"You mean things are being moved back to where they were years ago? To where they were when you worked there?"

She nodded her head slowly, rhythymically.

"But then why would Grandmother blame me? How would I know where those things were kept? I don't see how Edward would know either, unless Grandmother told him."

Miss Claire's eyes closed, then drifted open again. She looked past me as if she were looking for another world. She stared for so long I turned around to see what was there. Nothing extraordinary - a flowered sofa, a table piled with baggies, her herbal stuff.

"The clock belonged to Katherine," She said, I frowned slightly as I remembered her calling me that when I first met her, "Your aunt."

"My - who?" I frowned, wondering what she was on about.

"Your Grandmothers big sister. She died a long time ago." She sighed, "she insisted on placing the small clock in the hall. She hated that big grandfather clock."