Page 21 of Lost Memories (Secrets of Mackinac Island 1)

Chapter Ten

Elise and Penny torethrough Allison’s wardrobe, donning various high-waisted jeans, big, puffy-sleeved blouses, and high heels that hadn’t seen the light of day since 1981 (the year of Elise’s birth). Elise and Penny fell into easy banter and laughter as they arranged the clothing into piles: definitely keep, absolutely maybe, and never in a million years. When they’d finished, Penny rubbed her stomach and glanced at the clock.

“Did you know it’s almost six-thirty?” she asked, her voice high-pitched with shock.

“No way,” Elise said.

“I’m starving,” Penny affirmed.

“Ha. You and your brother have this ability to eat through everything, don’t you?”

“It’s a talent,” Penny said as she slowly stripped off her grandmother’s wretched turquoise sweater, which they’d never seen before and hoped they would never see again. She tossed it in the “never in a million years” pile, then smacked her palms together. “I guess we could order pizza?”

“Perfect,” Elise said. She blinked at the strange piles they’d created, suddenly overwhelmed with the amount of work this all would become. “Let’s head downstairs and let these moth-balls tend to themselves for a while.”

Elise and Penny changed into normal clothes, then retreated to the living room below. Penny collapsed on the couch, tucked her knees beneath her chin, and swiped through the pizza services in the area.

“What do you want, Mom?” she called, as Elise wandered from the living room, down the hallway, and toward the little office, her mother had kept for herself.

“Um. Something with cheese? Lots and lots of cheese,” Elise called back.

“Okay. No meat?”

“No. Maybe olives?” Elise called.

“So weird,” Penny muttered, just loud enough for Elise to hear.

“Whatever,” Elise said with a laugh.

When she reached the office, she found it in a state of chaos—as though Allison had been in the midst of personal organization when she’d died. A number of the bookshelves had been taken down, and their books had been stocked in boxes below. A laptop lay on the desk, uncharged, and a portrait of Elise’s grandparents in the sixties hung on the wall.

“Okay! The pizza is ordered!” Penny called from the living room, just as she snapped on the TV.

“Cool! Thanks a lot,” Elise returned.

Still, there was something about the panicked nature of the office that kept her there. When Elise had lived at the house, she’d spent lots of nights in this very office, doing her homework or writing scripts. Back then, the place had been much more organized—the books on their shelves, the pencils in their appropriate canisters, the rugs vacuumed.

Had her mother been searching for something?

Elise stepped toward a box near the window and leafed through the books within. Charles Dickens, Shakespeare—this pile was clearly associated with Elise’s own schooling years. The next box was more of the same—classic books likeI Know Why the Caged Bird SingsandThe Heart is a Lonely Hunter, books that should have been on their shelves but instead lingered here, as though Allison had wanted to move them elsewhere.

Elise continued to search through the boxes. One entire box was filled with old art supplies and sketchbooks, which her mother had dated from the eighties. It was a strange image to Elise: her mother painting these watercolors while her baby slept nearby. Why hadn’t she kept it up? It wasn’t as though she’d been terribly good—her art form was purely performative—only that it was something she’d clearly enjoyed that she had given up.

Why?

Elise continued to tear through the boxes, feeling strangely manic.

Finally, after what seemed like one hundred books and seven different boxes, Elise stumbled over a pile of worn books, with her mother’s handwriting filling every single page.

Diaries.

Elise had found her mother’s diaries.

She stepped back. She felt as though she stared too directly at the sun. The diaries were laid in the bottom of a box that had several French-language textbooks on top. Had her mother hidden them on purpose? Had her mother forgotten about them? In all her years, she’d never witnessed her mother writing in a diary.

Elise dropped to her knees next to the box.

She wasn’t necessarily the kind of person to believe in “fate.” After all, she was a writer, which meant she couldn’t just label things as “meant to be” and expect the story to work.

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