Free Family Matters by Kitty Burns Florey

slept in the ground-floor bedroom; a prowler in the attic wouldn’t wake him. Next door, in the guest room, Mrs. Foster lay lumpy and fully clothed on the bed, snoring. Betsy shut the door on her.
    The attic was stuffy but cool, with a hint of mice. Was it a smell, or the suggestion of tiny movements in the walls? Betsy stood at the head of the stairs and sniffed in her childhood. She used to escape up here; she remembered the loud rain on the roof. There was her old wicker doll carriage, covered with dusty transparent plastic. There was probably a doll in it—maybe Samantha, that once-loved child. She didn’t look. Bad luck if Samantha should be gone.
    Her grandmother’s cedar chest was pushed under the eaves. It bore her initials, carved within a wreath of leaves—H.P.R.—and it was thick with dust that hadn’t been disturbed for years. Gingerly, Betsy lifted the top, expecting mice, and found a pile of salmon-pink girdles. Ah, underwear, at least. She pawed through the chest. It was full of old clothes, some of them her own—cotton blouses, yellowed nylon slips, a bag of white linen collars, camisoles, baby things, and on the bottom the underwear, well-worn long johns of all sizes. Under that: nothing.
    She dumped it all back in haphazardly (the ghost of Helen stood over her, frowning) and went to the desk. It was Frank’s as unmistakably as the cedar chest was Helen’s: a massive oak piece, handsomely carved. It stood in the middle of the floor near the chimney, with canning jars piled on it. These, too, were Frank’s; he used to supervise the hot, August canning sessions, stripped to his undershirt, seeding tomatoes—the produce from his backyard garden—by squashing them in his hands. The canning jars contained dead flies. Betsy rolled back the sloping top of the desk. Inside, it was dustless and full of papers. There were twelve pigeonholes, two small chambers with doors, two secret compartments that she knew of—he’d shared with her one day their secret mechanism, the two pillars that could be pulled forward when a bit of carving was rotated. Patiently, Betsy thumbed through everything. It was mostly old tax records, bank statements, paid bills, correspondence from lawyers and accountants. She checked all twelve cubbyholes and went through all the drawers, perversely saving the secret compartments for last. And, of course, each of the compartments contained a tied-up bundle of letters. Betsy flipped through one of them without untying it; the letters were addressed to her grandfather, and whosever they were, why ever they were saved, they were written in a strong, angular hand, not her great-aunt Marion’s wispy, artistic script, with its loops and flourishes.
    Betsy picked up the other package. There they were, loops and flourishes all over them. Her first reaction was pleasure in the continued workings of Violet’s memory. Her second was disappointment. The very fact of her finding the letters seemed to insure that they were harmless. They weren’t even hidden terribly well; the trick pillars were an open secret to all of them. Presumably, Frank had stored them there after Helen’s death. If they had told all, surely he would have destroyed them. In fact, if they revealed anything useful, Helen would not have hung on to them. On the other hand … the date was there—1922—and “Mrs. Frank Robinson” at the Spring Street address. Violet had it all correct. Heavy in her hand, the letters held some sort of promise, after all. You never know: that’s what Violet would say.
    Betsy hurried downstairs with the package. All was still, and within her circle of light even Violet now slept. Betsy’s presence had been enough to make her sleep, and smile in her sleep, her head back and awry. Betsy leaned over her. It’s how she’ll look dead. But the thought didn’t touch her—Violet with her high color looked