Chapter 4 - THE CEDAR CHEST
The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked—a slow, hollow sound that seemed to mock the agonizing silence in the kitchen.
I stared at Margaret’s sleeve, my mind racing to process the horrific scar she had managed to hide for five decades. She had always worn long sleeves. Even in the dead of July, she wore silk blouses buttoned to the wrist. I had always assumed it was just her rigid sense of propriety.
“You were burned,” I whispered. “You were inside the house.”
Margaret turned her back to me, staring out the window at her perfectly manicured backyard. “I told you to leave it alone, Sarah.”
“You told Walter the house caught fire weeks later!” I pressed, stepping toward her. “You let him believe he had nothing to do with it. But you were there. You were fighting someone inside.”
Answer one: Margaret hadn’t been standing safely on the porch. She had been intimately involved in the violence of that night, enduring a massive physical trauma to cover it up.
“I wasn’t fighting anyone,” Margaret said, her voice dropping to a hollow monotone. “I was trying to drag a body out of the sunroom before the roof collapsed.”
A cold dread pooled in my stomach. “Whose body?”
Margaret finally turned to face me. The aristocratic, untouchable matriarch was gone. In her place was an exhausted, haunted old woman.
“Go to the attic,” Margaret said, pointing a trembling finger toward the hallway. “The key is taped to the back of the grandfather clock. Open the cedar chest. See for yourself why I had to lie.”
I didn’t want to go up there. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to walk out the front door, to return to Walter and tell him it was a dead end. But the charred bluebird rested heavy against my chest. I needed to know who my mother saw strike the match.
I walked to the hallway clock, reached behind the heavy mahogany casing, and found a small, rusted brass key taped to the wood.
I pulled down the creaky attic stairs and climbed into the dusty, suffocating heat of the upper floor. It smelled of mothballs and old paper. In the far corner, illuminated by a single shaft of gray light cutting through the dormer window, sat a heavy, dark-wood cedar chest.
I knelt in front of it. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped the key twice before finally sliding it into the lock.
It turned with a heavy, protesting click.
I pushed the heavy lid open.
I expected to find the loan shark's clothing, or perhaps Arthur’s belongings. I expected a weapon, or a confession letter.
Instead, resting on top of a pile of yellowed newspaper clippings, was a child’s drawing.
It was done in cheap wax crayons. It was a crude, jagged sketch of a house engulfed in bright orange and red flames. Standing outside the house was a stick figure of a little girl with a gap-toothed smile.
My mother.
But it wasn't the drawing of the fire that made the breath catch in my throat.
It was the second stick figure in the drawing.
Standing inside the burning house, holding a bright yellow crayon square that was clearly meant to represent a matchbook, was another little girl. She had blonde hair, just like my mother, and was wearing a dress identical to Ellen’s.
Written in my mother’s unmistakable childhood handwriting at the bottom of the page were four words.
Annie made the fire.
Open two: Who was Annie? And why had my mother drawn her starting the fire?
I dug deeper into the chest. Beneath the drawing was a small, scorched pink jewelry box. I opened it.
Inside was a heavy gold pocket watch. The glass face was cracked, the hands frozen at 10:42.
Reversal: I recognized this watch instantly. It wasn't Walter's. It wasn't Arthur's.
It was the pocket watch I had seen in a photograph at Walter’s nursing home today. The one that belonged to the man holding Walter’s wheelchair in the picture.
Walter’s brother. Thomas.
I grabbed the watch and the drawing and practically fell down the attic stairs. I stormed back into the kitchen, slamming the items onto the marble island.
“Who is Annie?” I demanded, pointing at the child's drawing. “And why do you have Thomas’s pocket watch?”
Margaret stared at the gold watch, closing her eyes as if in physical pain.
“Annie was your mother’s twin sister,” Margaret whispered.
The floor dropped out from under me.
“A twin?” I gasped. “Mom didn’t have a sister. I would have known.”
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“Annie was sick, Sarah,” Margaret said, her voice cracking. “Not in her body. In her mind. She was cruel. She hurt animals. She hurt Ellen. Walter refused to see it. He thought she was just a difficult child. But I knew. I saw the way she looked at the matches.”
Cliffhanger: Margaret reached out and touched the cracked glass of the pocket watch. “Annie didn't die in that fire, Sarah. But someone else did. Someone who came into the house to silence my daughters forever.”
