Excerpt

Alexandra Northam

Fifteen Years Ago

"It's past time you stopped traipsing after your brother," Grandma Louisa says, looking at me over the wire-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose. She smells like vanilla and sugar from the homemade cookies we have cooling on wire racks in the kitchen.

I pull my gaze away from the third-floor attic window where I'd been longingly watching my twin brother, James, stacking firewood with Grandpa outside.

James, wearing a blue plaid flannel jacket, picks up fresh split firewood after they fall to the ground after Grandpa Edmund uses an axe to chop the freshly cut oak trees into perfect fireplace sized logs. Although both of them have shed their coats and rolled their sleeves up to their elbows, their breath comes out in white plumes.

The clatter of the logs falling to the ground echoes up to the third-floor attic of the Northam Lodge.

Grandma's had me tied to the house all morning. I'd much prefer to be outside with James and Grandpa instead of in this dusty attic looking through trunks of old stuff.

"Grandma," I say. "I'm not traipsing. James and I are… exploring."

"Yes, well." She peers at me over her glasses. "This lodge will fall to you one day and you need to know its history."

Another echo of logs falling to the ground outside is followed by the deep ominous sounding bongs counting out the hour from the grandfather clock standing in the foyer below.

I focus on Grandma now. Grandma Louisa is old. At least sixty, but I don't usually think of her as old. Stern perhaps, but not old.

"Why me?" I ask. "Why not James, too?"

Grandma puts a hand gently on mine. "Because you're a girl. I know you're only ten, but time flies and things happen."

"But James. And Isabelle and—"

Grandma waves a hand and lifts the lid on the big oversized trunk on the floor in front of her.

"You're the oldest," she says. "And the oldest has to be responsible for the others."

"James is my twin," I say, then I add patiently. In case she's forgotten. I remind myself that even though I don't always think of her as old, well, she is. "We're both ten." Maybe Grandma is just confused.

"Your brother has the wanderlust like your parents." She reverently removes a layer of white tissue from the open trunk.

"What's wanderlust?" I ask.

Grandma sits back and looks at me. "Where are your parents now?"

"I don't know," I say. "Somewhere in Europe."

"Exactly. Your mother, bless her heart, found the perfect mate in your father."

Confused and not a little bored by the whole conversation, I turn and look outside again.

Grandpa is letting James hold the axe. Grandpa has never let one of us hold the axe before.

"You need to learn about the history of the lodge. And the railroad that was the reason it was built," Grandma is saying. "They built a railroad that opened in 1876. It was quite the celebration."

"Were you there?" I ask, turning back to her.

Grandma looks over at me with an odd expression on her face. "Hardly," she says. "That was over one hundred fifty years ago."

"Then how do you know what it was like?"

"Because my great-grandmother, who was there, told me all about it."

"Is there a video?" I ask.

"No, Dear," Grandma says patiently. "That was before there were videos."

"Oh." Unable to imagine a world without videos, I look back outside. James and Grandpa are cleaning up now, getting ready to come back inside. Grandma promised we could have cookies when they finished chopping firewood. "Can we—? Your telephone is ringing."

Grandma raises her head. Listening. "I need to run down to my sitting room and answer it," Grandma says, getting up off the little stool where she's been sitting.

"Do you want me to go?" I ask, knowing I can be there a lot quicker than she can.

"No. I'll get it."

I start to get up and follow her, but then something in the open trunk catches my attention. A sparkle.

But then it's gone and I'm certain I imagined it.

Wondering if it's some kind of magic, I lean over the trunk and look inside.

The only thing inside, though, is a stack of oversized books. One of the books has gold lettering on it. 1876.

Didn't Grandma say something about 1876?

I pull the big book out of the trunk and balance it in my lap. It feels heavy and light at the same time.

I carefully open the cover.

Guest Registry.

1876.

I turn the page.

The lodge has a book like this on the counter downstairs where guests sign in. They use a computer, too, to keep track of guests, but Grandma says the book is tradition.

The rows of names in this book are faded. Row after row.

I flip through the faded pages.

Then stop.

And blink.

One name darkens as I stare at it.

Arthur Hollis.

The name is signed in a sloppy scrawl.

I don't recognize the name. Not that I would. My grandparents have a few friends who visit them from time to time.

But their friends don't sign the guest registry.

A door slams downstairs, pulling my attention from the book. Grandpa and James talk animatedly as they come back inside.

I look back down and the name that I'd seen only moments before is no longer visible.

Leaning close, I squint at the rows of names. It's there, but like the other names on the register, it's faded.

Arthur Hollis.

Puzzled, I close the book and slide it back into the trunk.

Hopping up, I leave the trunk open and hurry down to have homemade cookies—cookies I'd helped bake—with everyone else.

As I hurry down the stairs, I leave my grandmother's ominous words and the very odd glowing guest registry behind.

The name Arthur Hollis is nothing more than a distant memory.