Write the Story Installments

A Family Mystery Uncovered

WORD BANK: Sunday, secret, wallpaper, swap, sister, curiosity, island, notebook, marathon, demand

My feet hadn't touched the driveway yet and tears welled in my eyes.  I was a snotty, angry, sad mess.  Tess, my sister, unlocked the door ahead of me and I took my time climbing the four front steps.    The old 1900's victorian folk facade stood exhausted yet cozy and well cared for. It hadn't seen children running across the floors for over a decade and had barely seen company in the last five. But it still smelled the same and everything was exactly where mom had left it. The flowers in the windowsill were drying out and burning in the bright Georgia sun but the watering can sat anxiously beside them. 

Mom was gone.  Somehow that still had not set in.  I felt a great amount of regret and guilt as I realized that this was the first time I had visited the house we grew up in since I moved to Atlanta.  I hate that I hadn't made the trip more often but there was nothing that I could do about it now.

Upstairs the beds were made neatly in what used to be my bed room and in Tess's room, mom never filled the rooms up with other hobbies or old junk... this was still our home if only we had let it be.  At the end of the hall stood the tall mirror that I remember checking my Sunday bests in.  And above the mirror was the door to the attic.  Tess had inherited the house and she was dead set on raising her family there.  It was time to start the cleaning out process so that her and her husband could move in to it.  She was expecting their first baby in the next several months, there was no time to waste.

"Are you ready for this?"  I asked her, looking up at the attic door.  I was half tempted to say who needs an attic any way, not wanting to have to go through all the dusty stuff.  The thought of going up there overwhelmed me.  

"Come on up." Following her up the steps the rickety rungs squealed with excitement.  The ailing framework of the house was splintering with age and releasing dank and heavy breaths, and the darkness weighed a metric ton over hundreds of neatly stacked and conveniently labeled boxes.  I braced myself at the top and noticed the single light bulb in the crest of the roof.  With only an inch or two's length of chain pull and I being the tallest of the two I gave it a yank.  

"We are going to need flashlights..." My eyes explored what they could.  

"Where do we even start?"  Tess picked up the corner of a white linen sheet draped over a handcrafted cedar chest and dropped it back down to look at me in the dim yellow light.  

                                                                                           ~

A week and a half long marathon and we've made it to the final section of attic.  I dig into a box marked office and tear the tape off.  

Old photo frames, a retro stapler, file folders, a calculator, handwritten receipts long faded and discolored, a mostly used yellow legal pad and a stack of black and white speckled composition pads rubber banded together filled the box.  

Tess starts rifling through a shelf housing a dozen or so rolls of tattered wallpapers most of which we recognize from being plastered to walls around the house at one time or another.  Some of the patterns bring back childhood memories.  The last week or so have been filled with story after story of growing up in our household and shenanigans we would often find ourselves in.  

I begin flipping through a shoebox of sorts overfull with a mishmash of crumpled papers.  Some were obviously written in pencil and much of the words had rubbed off.  I start to toss the whole thing when Tess holds up a short roll of chair rail wallpaper and a brown, flaky parchment escapes from the center.