Page 19

N ico prided himself on being the type of person who is always in control, but that seemed increasingly impossible in the presence of Ginny Heppner.

After finding her nearly passed out on the kitchen floor, he could easily have called an ambulance to whisk her away, giving him time to call in the bulldozers.

Instead, he’d designated himself her nursemaid for the day and was offering her confessions!

Still, he had a very important and somewhat delicate question to ask her, and a confession seemed a good way to approach it.

She shifted her pillow to the headboard so she could sit up against it. “What confession?”

He gazed at his shoes for a moment, hoping to give the impression he was more embarrassed than he was. “While you were asleep, I looked around the house.”

Her signature mischievous smile spread over her face. “That’s your confession? Did you look in my dresser drawers or medicine cabinet?”

He jolted back slightly as he spread his fingers in a ‘hands-off’ gesture. “Nothing that invasive. I just walked through the rooms, I swear.”

“Then you’re not much of a snoop,” she said, as she picked at a loose thread in the quilt over her lap.

Late morning sun threw a second blanket of glowing light over her, brightening her eyes and highlighting the curves beneath the fabric.

“I, on the other hand, am an expert snoop. You can read a person’s mind and health history just from their medicine cabinet alone. ”

“Remind me never to invite you over.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I already know what’s in yours.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Really? Please enlighten.”

“For starters, very little. But let’s see…

” She tilted her face toward the ceiling, giving him a fine view of her long, arched neck as she began rattling off the list. “Naproxen for when you overdo it in the gym, athletes foot cream for the same reason. Some extra strength throat lozenges…” She brought her gaze back to his, but gave him a distant, appraising look, as if trying to decipher the final ingredients of a soup she’d just been served.

“Shaving cream, of course. And you seem pretty stressed, so, a bottle of Tums.”

His eyelids widened slightly at the mention of Tums, and he looked away. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him sullen about being so predictable.

She pounced with more enthusiasm. “I’m right, aren’t I? Down to the item?”

He took his time rubbing his lower jar. For good measure, he rubbed his neck too, though it wasn’t sore. “It’s a roll of Tums, not a bottle. And you missed the dental floss.”

She smacked her fist into her palm. “Oh, dental floss! Of course. The more expensive, stretchy kind, right?”

“Maybe I should look in your medicine cabinet.”

She gave him an ‘off you go’ wave in the direction of the bathroom. “Help yourself but be careful opening it. Might want to stand back a bit.”

He blinked a few times, trying to conjure an image of the creature or concoction lurking in the medicine cabinet of the Queen of Dumpsters, waiting to jump out at unsuspecting victims. Did he really want to know?

Definitely not. Besides, she was in a good mood.

It was time for his real question. “I’ll give that a pass, but I am curious about something else.

My brother said there wasn’t anything left in the house when you were sent to clean it, but there must have been a few things, eh? ”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Someone had emptied it to the wallpaper, and even some of that was missing. Why? Do you like my decor?”

“I can’t say it’s my style, but it has a certain…retro charm.”

Retro didn’t begin to describe it. Time warp was more accurate.

Even as he’d unlocked the front door and dashed into the kitchen, something had snagged in the periphery of Nico’s mind.

Some bizarre little knowing began knock-knocking on his awareness with quiet determination.

The feeling had grown as he’d stepped into her room, Ginny light as a feather in his arms. Moving back through the house a few minutes later to take care of the dogs, the sensation became like an out-of-body experience, a déjà vu of déjà vus.

It was nothing, he told himself—just the adrenaline rush of finding Ginny on the floor, coupled with the fact that he had grown up there.

Eventually, the thing he was seeing—yet not quite seeing—could be ignored no longer.

It hit him like a bolt of lightning: the house’s entire décor was a recreation of his childhood .

Every rug, every piece of art, every lamp and stick of furniture looked the same and sat or hung in the exact same place.

In a daze, he’d taken himself on a tour of the tiny two-bedroom home, comparing its details to his memories.

Not everything was a perfect match, but everything was eerily close.

The navy-blue living room rug had smaller white flowers scattered across it than his mother’s version.

The metal teakettle was the same butter yellow but stood a little taller than the one Vince had burned his fingers on as a kindergartener.

The blueberry bunches dotting the bathroom walls were now hand painted, when as a child they had been part of the wallpaper.

The only notable divergences were the workbench and desk in the second bedroom (instead of the twin beds Vince and he had slept in), the queen bed in Ginny’s room (instead of the twins his mother and Aunt used), and the living room chairs which, though they were orangish in color, were squat and ugly—not at all the stately floral wingbacks currently holding court in his mother’s room at the nursing home.

Had he fallen through a time portal? Had Ginny communed with Aunt Celia from the grave? How could this be?

Ginny’s smile was twenty-four karats as she gazed around her bedroom.

Nico looked around too, noting how the large, framed print of Seurat’s pointillist Sunday Afternoon at the Park , the dark wood dresser with gold-tone drop pulls, and the lavender quilt Ginny was now smoothing with her fingers, were nearly identical to his memories.

“Yes, it’s so homey, isn’t it? I love retro, and I love re-using old things.

” She gave him a sheepish grin. “But I’m no good at interior decorating. I had some help.”

“You have a decorator friend?”

She giggled. “I guess you could say that. Do you want to meet her? She’s under the bed.”

Visions of whatever monstrosity dwelled in Ginny’s medicine cabinet replayed in his mind, only larger and lurking under Ginny’s bed this time. “Uh…”

She twisted her body sideways, arms outstretched, in an apparent attempt to reach under the bed herself, but immediately sat back up, the freckles of her face rearranged from pain. “Oof, no, my ankle doesn’t like me doing that. But it’s right there. Just reach under the bed skirt. You’ll feel it.”

He reached down and began to put his hand under but then stopped.

Ginny’s smile was open and encouraging, but he’d been fooled by that very same smile before—to the tune of over two thousand dollars for a new movie projector.

Was this all some elaborate trick? Was there a bear trap under there, ready to snap his fingers clean off?

She pursed her lips, giving him a ‘don't-be-ridiculous’ look. “It won’t bite. This isn’t Hogwarts.”

In the end, his curiosity got the better of him.

He had to know how she’d managed to do this.

He reached a hand under the bed and moved it about until his fingers touched something solid.

At the exact same speed with which his fingers wrapped around the object and slid it out, the realization of what it was dawned on him.

For months, he’d planned to give the house one final going over before it was lost to progress, but Ginny had thwarted him.

Finally, the opportunity had landed in his lap, and he’d been so startled by the house itself, he’d completely forgotten his search.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered, because Ginny had already found it—his mother’s long-missing, and presumed lost forever, family photo album.

Grasping the album with slightly shaking hands, Nico’s out-of-body sensation kicked in hard.

Relief and sadness coursed through him in equal measure – relief for having found it, sadness for what it meant to him.

It appeared undamaged. A mottled brown, faux leather cover over standard-sized album sheets, the unassuming word “Photos” embossed in faded gold on the front.

Ginny noticed the mood change. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Of a sort , he thought. He paused a moment to collect himself before answering. “Where did you find this?”

“It’s kind of a funny story. I’d been in the house for a month or so, and I was surprised to discover that the kitchen booth seat wasn’t also a storage cabinet, because most of them are.

When I looked closer, I saw it had at one time been used for storage, because there were dents where hinges used to be, but the lid was nailed shut. ”

Nico started in his chair. “There were actual nails? Where?”

“On the underside edge.”

“But…people would have seen those.”

“They were very hard to see because they’d been recessed, puttied, and painted over.”

Nico frowned. No wonder he and Vince hadn’t been able to find the album in all their searches. His mother had gone to great lengths. “I see. And this album was inside?”

“Yep. Plus, a wedding dress and lady’s shoes, and a man’s suit and shoes. The suit is sort of standard, but the dress is exquisitely hand beaded. I had them both professionally boxed up. They’re on the top shelf of my closet if you want to see them.”

He swallowed hard. His parents’ wedding clothes. He didn’t know she’d kept them, but of course she would have.

“So…you used these pictures to decorate the house?”