Page 108 of Dreams of Falling
Bennett smoothed down a fold in one of the ribbons, the scrapes on his knuckles making my heart squeeze again. I pressed my fist against my chest, as if that could somehow cure my reaction, not yet wanting to be distracted.
“Definitely written by two different people,” Bennett said, sliding back against his chair.
My gaze traveled between Bitty and Ceecee. “So if Mama wrote the first one, who wrote the other? Who would need forgiveness?”
“Could be the same person who’s been tending the martin houses,” Bennett suggested.
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “I think that was Mama. Shemust have known the legend about Carrowmore and the martins—that it would only be there as long as there were martins on the grounds.” I frowned, trying to think not of the frail woman in the hospital bed, but of the little girl who’d lived at Carrowmore for the first two years of her life, and lost her mother so young. The house was her only connection to the woman she barely remembered.
The silence in the kitchen was almost deafening as the two older women avoided looking at each other and Bitty’s fingers continued to twitch. I was exhausted, as I’m sure we all were, and I knew we all needed to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut down. The self-examination I’d been forced into earlier in the evening wouldn’t allow it. I had twenty-seven years of obliviousness to make up for.
I felt a hand on my forearm and looked up to see Bitty watching me closely. “Stop,” she said, indicating the nail I’d been flicking back and forth. “Please.”
“I’m sorry.” I withdrew my hand to my lap. “I broke it on the cigar box...” I stopped, recalling something else Gabriel had said. How my mother had painted the cigar box and shown him the secret compartment. And how she’d just recently made additions to the mural in his shop. I recalled what she’d written in the e-mail to me, the one she’d never sent.I need to talk to you about something important. About something I found out about Carrowmore and the night it burned. I can’t talk about it with Ceecee or Bitty. Just you.
I stood suddenly, my chair almost crashing to the floor. Bennett caught it and grimaced at the sudden movement, making my heart squish again. But I was too focused on what I was thinking to stop now.
“The photos Mama said she had for me. I think I know where they are.” I almost ran to the back door, aware of the three of them following me. The back-porch light lit my way to the detached garage. I threw open the door and flipped on all the lights. They were small, leaving the outer edges of the interior in darkness, the hulking shadows of the stacked desk drawers huddled against the walls. My granddaddy’s desk sat in the middle of the space, its thin legs casting shadows across the concrete floor like a spider, waiting to pounce.
I sat down on the ground in front of it, wishing I’d brought aflashlight. As if reading my mind, Bennett reached into his back pocket for his iPhone, then squatted next to me, shining the phone’s flashlight into the dark hole where a chair would go.
“Thanks,” I said, giving him a brief smile. I remembered all the times he’d been there for me, reading my mind, it seemed, always having what I needed. And because his face was so close to mine, I leaned forward slightly and kissed him gently on his swollen lips.
Despite his injuries, he pulled my face to his and gave me a real kiss. The kind of kiss that created fireworks behind my closed eyelids, that made me forget everything except for his lips on mine, and made me wish we were somewhere more private. I sat staring at him, my limbs rubbery, my breaths coming very fast.
“That hurt, but it was worth it,” he said, wincing slightly as he grinned. “Promise me that there’s more where that came from.”
“Maybe,” I said, my voice thick. Clearing my throat, I turned my attention back to the desk. “The cigar box had a hidden bottom, with a secret spring.” I slid my hands around the bottom edges of the desk, pressing every time I thought I felt an indentation in the wood. “Mama discovered the hidden bottom in the cigar box, and I think that might have given her the idea that the desk had a hidden compartment, too.” I continued to run my fingers over the old wood, now sanded almost completely smooth.
Bennett remained by my side, patiently holding the light and moving along with me.
“Really, Larkin. Can’t this wait till morning?” Bitty said, her voice dry and raspy. “We’ll have more light.”
“I agree,” Ceecee chimed in. “I’m tired, and I can only imagine how tired you must be, Larkin...”
A loud click echoed in the room as my finger depressed a small outline behind which the second drawer would have been. I met Bennett’s eyes, and he seemed as excited as I was.
“Bingo,” he said, his smile lopsided.
He lowered the light to illuminate a narrow cutout in the wood. I stuck my finger around the edge and pulled, the panel falling into my hand. An envelope dropped to the floor in front of me, scatteringphotographs. I looked down, saw a photo of me wearing a tiara and red sparkly shoes, holding hands with my mother, both of us making faces at the camera. Ceecee and Bitty stood slightly to the right, their bodies cut out of the picture, bright smiles on their faces.
I looked back from where the pictures had fallen, spotting a narrow shoebox-sized compartment hollowed out inside the fake back of the desk. My gaze returned to my mother’s face. Something was joggling my memory.
The beam disappeared as Bennett shone the light back in the compartment. “There’s something else,” he announced.
I followed the direction of the light and saw what appeared to be a folded piece of paper pressed against the back of the opening. I pulled it out, feeling the fine linen stationery between my fingers. I flipped it over and read aloud the single word written in bold, black cursive:Ivy.
“What does it say?” Ceecee asked, leaning over me.
“It’s addressed to Mama.” I reached my hand into the compartment one more time to make sure I had everything, then stood carefully, holding on to the envelope of pictures, the photo, and the letter. I felt Bennett’s hand on my elbow. “Let’s look at these inside. Better lighting and we’ll all have a chair.” I looked down at the photograph again. “There’s something I want to check.”
In the kitchen, Ceecee began pouring glasses of sweet tea while I went into the dining room, searching for another photograph. The one of the two men in Myrtle Beach, pretending to be prisoners in the city jail. I went through the album on the sideboard twice, but it wasn’t there. I began walking around the dining room, looking on the chair seats in case it had fallen. I was about to give up when I spotted a white square of paper on the floor beneath the sideboard, a corner hidden by the rug.
I squatted and picked it up. It was the photograph I’d been looking for, the two young men wearing similar expressions. Much like the ones my mother and I wore in the photo I’d found in the desk.
On the way back to the kitchen, I took Ceecee’s wedding photo from the mantel. I placed everything on the kitchen table, the unopened letter addressed to my mother in the middle.
“Who’s the letter from?” Bennett asked, sliding it closer to me.
