The Inheritance. Janice Carter
her first stroke she said she wanted to be able to see the rose from her bed. Keep an eye on it, she used to say.” Sophie snorted. “Jack used to think Miss Ida didn’t trust him to give that plant its proper care.”
“Well, she could certainly get a good view of it from her bed,” Roslyn said, standing at the wooden headboard and peering out the bay window.
“Miss Ida was much shorter than you,” said Sophie. “She could only see it if she had a lot of pillows behind her. We tried to move the bed, but even Jack and his brother had a hard time getting it to budge.”
Roslyn glanced down at the double bed. “It’s huge,” she said. “I love the way the headboard comes up so high and then curves back like that.”
“It’s called a sleigh bed,” said Sophie. “Handmade right here in Plainsville.” She lumbered across the room to the mirrored vanity and tall bureau standing next to it. “Might as well start with the drawers,” she said. “Why don’t you take the closet? We may need some help getting this stuff downstairs.”
“Jack will be here about eleven,” said Roslyn. “I’m sure he’d help.”
“Oh?” Sophie’s only response, but Roslyn sensed the woman was waiting for an explanation. “We have to settle some things,” she finally told her.
Sophie cast her a knowing glance, but Roslyn ignored her, opening the closet door. “This is so strange,” she murmured, “to be handling things owned by a person I never even met. It doesn’t seem right.” She stared into the closet. On a shelf above the rack of clothes sat a rectangular wooden box. She pulled it down.
It was a rich mahogany shade, its edges neatly dovetailed and the lid locked with an ornate silver clasp. “How beautiful,” she murmured, running her hand along its smooth, polished surface.
Sophie looked up from the bureau. “Your auntie loved that box. It was always by her side. I think she kept a diary or something in it. After she died, I put it in the closet to keep it safe.”
“Is there a key?”
Sophie’s face was blank. “Yes. I’ve seen it somewhere. Just can’t remember where. Would you rather tackle the back bedroom and leave the closet to me?”
Roslyn was grateful for the suggestion. “Yes, I’d rather do that. Thanks, Sophie.” She replaced the box on the closet shelf, eager to escape from the task that had brought back too many memories of cleaning out her mother’s flat after her death last year.
Although there was now only a double bed in the rear bedroom, Roslyn could see how twin beds might have been tucked into each gabled alcove. And except for the bed, there were two matching sets of everything, all painted white—vanities with attached mirrors, bureaus and, in opposite corners, two identical child-sized rocking chairs. Two scruffy braided rag rugs lay on the hardwood floor.
A perfect bedroom for twin girls, she thought. The gabled alcoves—one jutting out from the rear wall and the other from the side wall—housed small windows trimmed with Swiss eyelet curtains that were no longer crisp and white. Two larger windows between the gables offered spectacular views of the woods and fields behind the house. Roslyn looked out the window closest to the side gable to see the end of the drive and the garage where Jack had parked his truck yesterday.
In spite of the brisk April wind, she opened the window to ventilate the bedroom, then pivoted slowly, deciding where to start. There were two other doors in the room, to the right of the main one. Two walk-in closets for the little princesses? She was beginning to picture a room decorated in pastel accessories and frilly trimmings. Hard to imagine the stern grandmother she’d known growing up in such a room. She bet the closets were jammed with stuffed animals and dolls.
But they yielded only stacks of cardboard boxes. Roslyn began at the top of the pile, expecting to find inside the souvenirs of childhood she’d imagined. Instead, one box after another revealed musty magazines, children’s books and even old calendars. No sign of treasured mementos. Someone had mentioned that her aunt had collected things. If so, Roslyn thought, where were they?
Still, she persevered. Some of the boxes contained carefully wrapped vinyl long-playing records; others, neatly folded newspapers. The contents of the second closet were even less interesting: old cookbooks, recipe cards and envelopes of discount coupons that had expired years ago. But at the bottom of the last box in the closet, turned upside down as if to conceal its discovery even longer, was a cardboard-framed black-and-white photograph of two girls. The little princesses.
One sat in a rocking chair; the other stood behind to the right, with an arm draped lovingly over her sister’s shoulders. They were identical from the tip of their sculpted blond curls to the toes of their shiny patent shoes. Their lacy dresses came to just below the knee. Each girl was holding the stem of a single rose bloom.
Roslyn turned the photo over to ease it out of the cardboard frame. Someone had written, in spidery script, “June Rose and Ida Mae, June 12, 1915, fifth birthday.”
“Find something interesting?”
Roslyn craned her neck. Sophie was standing in the doorway with a tray of cold drinks. Roslyn held out the photograph, which Sophie took after placing the tray onto the vanity.
“Oh, my,” she said, then flipped the picture over to read the inscription. “Aren’t they just the perfect little—”
“Princesses.”
Sophie looked down at Roslyn and grinned. “I’d never have thought of Miss Ida as that, but you sure can see it in this picture. Where’d you find it?”
“At the very bottom of a box. You know, Sophie, it’s obvious that my aunt was a pack rat, saving a ton of useless stuff. But where are all the things from her childhood? I mean, even my mother, who wasn’t at all sentimental, saved some favorite stuffed animals and baby clothes of mine.”
Sophie shook her head, handed the photograph back to Roslyn and sank down onto the edge of the bed. “Miss Ida talked a lot about her family and all the antiques and treasures in this house, but she never once said her sister’s name aloud. I knew from what other people in town told me over the years that there was a twin sister living in Chicago and that there must have been a falling out between the two.”
“Must have been some falling out,” murmured Roslyn, “for her to get rid of the memory of that twin so completely.”
“I guess it’s hard for you to find out all this, seeing as how that twin was your very own grandmother.”
Grandma Dutton’s solemn face appeared in the room. Hard to reconcile that face with one of those little girls, Roslyn thought. And which one would she have been? She peered closely at the photo.
“Trying to decide who’s who?”
Roslyn glanced up at Sophie, whose smile was a mix of humor and sympathy. “Just curious,” she said.
“Well, the writing starts off with June Rose, so maybe she’s the one standing just to the left. Assuming that the order of the names matches the left to right order of the picture.”
“Perhaps, though it hardly matters, does it? They were so identical in looks.”
Sophie pursed her lips. “Maybe it mattered to them,” she said.
Roslyn studied the picture a moment longer, wondering what it might have been like to grow up as a mirror to another person. Would you feel you could never escape that other face? She almost shuddered at the thought.
The rumble of a truck engine broke the silence. “Jack!” Sophie announced, pleasure ringing in her voice. She heaved herself off the bed and grabbed the tray. “We’ll have our snack down in the kitchen,” she said, bustling out the door.
Roslyn stared at the picture in her hand, mesmerized by the dimpled faces smiling so expectantly at the camera. Five years old and so much to look forward to. But something happened to ruin that closeness. What had come between two identical twins to make