Page 98 of The Shop on Royal Street
“Is everything okay?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“We need you to come up here.”
We.“All right.” I looked behind me, then at the stairs, as if choosing between a hungry alligator and a pack of rabid dogs, before slowly climbing the steps. I didn’t turn around, regardless of the doctor’s eyes I felt following me.
CHAPTER 31
I followed Beau to the top of the stairs, then stopped. A single door sat open in the middle of the hallway, a wedge of light cutting into the darkness. I looked up at him, hoping he could guess the words I was too polite to say out loud.
“Mimi’s in there. She’s been waiting for you.”
With a hand on my arm he indicated that I should walk ahead of him, but he knew better than to propel me forward, knew that would be the one thing that would make me bolt.
Gripping my phone, I headed toward the door, then paused at the threshold. The room was much like I’d last seen it, with the rows of shelves and the curio cabinet filled with Frozen Charlottes. Except this time Mimi sat in the Queen Anne chaise in the middle of the room, the Murano glass chandelier above dusting her with pale blue light. On the low table in front of her sat a little girl’s jewelry box, just like the one my little sister, Sarah, had on her dressing table. When the lid was opened, a ballerina in a tutu twirled in a circle while “The Blue Danube” played.
Mimi’s hair was down, lying in a single gray braid over her shoulder, a dark lavender flannel housecoat tied over a high-necked whitenightgown. As I entered she smiled, as if this were a normal room and I was coming for tea, her odd dual-colored eyes watching me intently.
“Hello, Nola. Have a seat.” She indicated the two cane-backed chairs for Beau and me to sit in.
I carefully sat on the edge of the chair closest to the door. “I hope you weren’t sleeping.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m afraid I don’t sleep much, so no worries.”
I slid a glance to Beau, but he was looking closely at a baseball glove on the shelf nearest us, snapping the rubber band on his arm. Remembering how the room had been locked when I’d discovered it, I’d wanted to ask him if Mimi allowed him inside. Then I remembered Melanie, and how she avoided places like cemeteries and antiques shops and just about any place where dead people might congregate and bombard her with requests. Places like this room, stuffed with the remnants of so many different lives. And if forced to come inside, she would have been singing an ABBA tune at the top of her lungs.
I looked down at my own rubber band on my wrist, recalling what Beau had told me about why he wore his.I snap it when I need to be reminded that fear can’t win. That whether or not I’m afraid isn’t important. What matters is that I don’t allow it to get between me and my objective. And then I remind myself that the rain always stops.He raised his gaze in an unasked question, and I snapped my rubber band in response in unspoken solidarity.
About a thousand questions flipped through my brain like cards in the old-fashioned Rolodex my grandmother kept on her desk at Trenholm Antiques. Except mine weren’t filed alphabetically, and most of the cards were half empty. I randomly settled on the first two. “What is this room? And why was my hairbrush in here? I know it was mine, and then you put it back in my backpack so I would think I’d just misplaced it. But I know what I saw.”
“You’re right,” Mimi said. “I did borrow your hairbrush. For the same reason I have my granddaughter’s music box here. For the same reason all of these objects are in here.”
I looked at Beau, wondering if he knew what she was talking about. But his face was drawn, his eyes serious. His fingers plucking faster at the band on his wrist.
“Don’t worry,” Mimi continued. “Beau didn’t know, either. He’s always thought this was a storage room for the shop’s inventory overflow and was happy to avoid it. Except these items will never be sold in our store. Most will be returned to their owners. Like your hairbrush.”
I looked up at the shelves again, spotting the baseball glove, a set of headphones. A pair of roller skates. I turned to see the back of the room, the corner near the Mardi Gras gown, and my blood froze. A mangled tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers on the handles and a flattened front wheel lay on its side next to a small yellow cardigan. The sweater had been folded neatly, making visible an embroidered puppy on the front left, just above a jagged hole and a crusty brown stain.
I faced Beau, remembering the first episode I’d listened to of his podcast,Bumps in the Night and Other Improbabilities. He’d been denouncing a psychic ability. I couldn’t remember the exact name, but I remembered that it was the ability to touch an object to gain insight about the person associated with that object. Beau had given it zero ghosties in flat refusal that such a thing was possible. I clenched my eyes as an icy shiver shook my body.
“It was a hit-and-run,” Mimi said quietly. “Her parents were hoping I could see the car or a face through their little girl’s eyes. Unfortunately, sometimes the channels of communication are too blurry and I have to keep trying, sometimes even over a period of years. But I will keep an object as long as the family members wish me to hold on to it so I can keep trying.”
“Psych—” I stopped, unable to remember the rest of it.
“Psychometry,” Mimi finished for me. “That’s the official term. I’ve just known it as the special gift I was given at birth. My family tree is festooned with generations of relatives with different psychic powers.It always presents itself in various ways. We had two ancestors burned at the stake as witches, so who knows what their gifts actually were? My son, Beauregard—Buddy—had the same gift. It could have been as strong as mine but he spent a lifetime fighting it and pretending it wasn’t there, so it faded over time. And of course, there’s Beau.”
She smiled at him. “As I’m sure you are already aware, he has a very powerful psychic gift. One that he has been denying for most of his life because it frightens him. Beau has never learned how to channel to his heart and head his access to lost souls, or even to winnow out the ones he doesn’t want to allow in. So he’s learned instead to deny his gift completely.”
Beau frowned, keeping his focus on the snapping of his rubber band.
“So, why did you take my hairbrush?” I had another realization. “And Thibaut’s hammer—Christopher was there the day that it disappeared. Did he help you?”
“Christopher understands and appreciates my gift. He helps me when I need him. I wanted to make sure that Thibaut was a good person—and he is. And you, Nola, are a strong person, with a good heart and an open mind. But I know of your struggles. I smelled the gin when I held your hairbrush. I needed to make sure that we could welcome you into our inner circle.”
“I never said I wanted to be let inside—”
Mimi held up her hand. “You didn’t have to. I could see your loneliness the first day I met you. Even standing in a crowded room, you were like a little girl with her nose pressed against a store window, looking at all the things you couldn’t have.”
I stood, bristling with righteous anger and ready to leave. Beau grabbed my hand, holding me back. “Please don’t leave. We both need to hear this.”
