Page 17 of Crossroads Magic
An old-fashioned hurricane lamp sat on the side table beside the wing chair to my right, and more of the reproduction lamps were mounted on the wall opposite the windows.
“Wow!” Ghaliya breathed. “Nana really embraced minimalism, didn’t she?”
I turned to take in the wall opposite the windows. The central door we had come through was one of three. The other two each had a pair of steps to reach them. Both doors were closed.
At the far end, to my right, as I studied the wall, there was a very old sofa with a curved and button-pleated velvet back, and a gilt frame. The single seat cushion was flat with age, but smaller cushions were sitting up against the back, making me twitch to find a good book and lie down to read, with a pillow under my head. An old, crocheted cream-colored afghan had been hung carelessly over one arm, as if the previous user had tossed it there as she got up.
At the far left end of the room, a narrow, black-painted desk was pushed up against the wall. There were more books on it, and three shallow drawers along the front. Curved, clawed legs held it up.
An upright chair, which looked as though it belonged to the dining room, downstairs, stood beside the desk. It had been left pushed partway out. The cushion on the seat was red, matching the wing chairs.
The wall was filled with frames and shelves. Every spare inch of space had something mounted upon it. The frames weren’t anywhere close to matching. There were gilt frames, black frames that I thought might be plaster beneath the paint, and writhing with grapevines, leaves and bunches of fruit. Wooden frames, also carved with flourishes. None of the frames were modern, plain black or white plastic.
Short shelves interspersed the frames. The longest was barely three feet. All the shelves were smooth old wood, and all held up rows of books. Each book spine was old, glinting with gold text, or with leather raised over the hand binding stitches beneath.
I twitched to lift down some of those books and revel in them.
What was in the frames was…everything. There were photos—I spotted one of me, Jasper and the kids, which made my heart thud a little. Photos of the kids growing up, graduating high school, grinning in their prom finery. More frames were filled with images of people I didn’t know, that I thought might be residents of this town, friends of my mother’s. But none of them showed an image of my mother. Not even grouped with her friends.
This was her life, here on the wall.
“Your mother liked to spend time alone in here,” Benedict Marcus said, his voice low. “Especially now, in winter.”
I glanced at the doors, then at him.
“Yes,” Benedict said, pointing to the lefthand door.
“Ghaliya, do you want to stay here?” I asked her.
She pressed her lips together, glancing from Benedict to me. “Nanna’s in there?” Her voice was strained.
“Yes,” Benedict said. “It is okay if you don’t want to see her, although your mother must.”
Ghaliya glanced at me. “If you can, so can I.”
I nodded.
Benedict Marcus moved over to the two tall steps, stepped on the first and opened the door, then stepped up through it.
I followed, with Ghaliya on my heels.
There was a broad shelf beyond the door, then three more steps, with wood panels on either side. Benedict stepped up, then turned left.
I moved up into the room itself. The light was better here, but not by much. It came through a small window on the left wall. The window had no curtains or decorations, but the shelf beneath it held pots of plants and some of them had delicate small flowers in blue and purple and yellow. I had no idea what the flowers were. Only that they were pretty.
A bed sat beneath the window, with the headboard pushed up against the wall that was common with the sitting room we’d just been in. Big, old-fashioned shelves were mounted on the wall over the head of the bed, and there were more books and photo frames on the shelves.
I made myself look at the bed once more, where my mother lay.
Ghaliya gripped my hand and squeezed painfully. I barely noticed.
Thamina Crackstone nee Williams was in her seventies, I think. She had never told me her actual birthdate. She had found the reminders of age annoying and refused to acknowledge them. We had never celebrated her birthday when I was a child.
But simple mathematics and the passing of years told me she had to be seventy, at least. The woman lying on the bed did not look seventy. Was that a trick of death? I’d never seen a dead body before and didn’t know. And it felt wrong to ask the question aloud.
I made myself move closer to the bed, my heart thudding. Mom was wearing a white nightgown. At least I supposed it was, although it was longer than most I’d ever seen, and pooled around her ankles. Her feet were bare. They were long and narrow, for she had been a tall woman, too.
Her hair had been arranged to either side of her and stretched down to her hips. The thick brown locks showed plenty of grey, but there was still an amazing amount of color there. It matched my own experience with fading color. I still did not color my hair, and only had a few fine grey hairs at the front. And it had always been thick and grew long quickly. But mine was to my waist, not my hips.
