I stood there staring at her. Hillya had a son. His name was Rebel. He died before Emily was born. Gran… was this it? Is this why you sent me here?
“How old was he?” I heard myself ask her, but it felt as if I was a spectator watching the scene instead of being a part of it.
“Twenty. Car accident or maybe a motorcycle, I can’t remember what Mom said. Somewhere in Georgia, I believe. He was in college. I don’t remember the details. It’s been a long time since I asked Mom who he was,” Emily told me still whispering.
I managed a nod and replied, “Poor Hillya.”
She agreed and then I went back to making the granola because what else was I supposed to do. Gran knew and I now had no doubt why I was here, but did Hillya know… did she know about me?
The rest of the morning was a blur. I messed up two drink orders, forgot to give someone change, and dropped an entire tray of granola on the floor. I kept looking at Hillya, trying to find the resemblance. Then there was Emily. Our parents were first cousins. Did we truly look alike and just not see it? Others had mentioned it. Hillya never had.
By the time the lunch crowd was gone and the afternoon crowd began to slow some, I had almost talked myself into asking Hillya a few questions to see if she acted weird. She may be clueless but then she may be waiting for me to figure it out. Did she think I knew? What if she assumed my mom had told me or my gran? There was so many questions and my head felt like it was going to explode.
“You two can leave. I have an evening shift coming in and I’ll stay until they get here,” Hillya called to us as we wiped down the front while we had no customers.
“Want to go shopping?” Emily asked, looking hopeful.
“I need sleep,” I told her because this morning that would have been true. Right now, I needed to be alone. I also needed to get in Gran’s attic and see if I found anything.
Emily sighed. “Yeah, I probably do too. I think I drank too many espressos though.”
I managed a smile and went to take off my apron, heading for the back. Hillya was pulling a lemon pound cake from the oven when I walked in. I wanted to study her closer but knew I couldn’t just stand there and stare at her. If she knew I was her granddaughter, wouldn’t she have told me? I also wanted desperately to go see the photo of Rebel in her office. She sat the pound cake on the island in the middle of the room and then looked at me.
“Are you sure there is nothing more I can do before I go?” I asked her, wanting to ask her things far more important but afraid to.
She smiled at me, but I could see she was exhausted. Her eyes looked tired and I was worried about her. She shook her head. “No, I’ll be leaving soon too. Go on home and get some rest. You’ve had a busy two days.”
It was then she tilted her head to the side and sighed with a smile that I saw it. Or should I say, I saw me. It’s an odd thing. Looking at someone else and realizing you resemble them. I could see myself doing something just like that while looking at my reflection in the mirror. I had to shake myself out of this and stop gawking at the woman though.
“Uh, okay,” I said heading for the back door. “See you tomorrow,” I called out.
“Bye, Henley,” she replied and I held up a hand to wave but didn’t look back at her.
Seventeen
Rio was gone and the blanket I had thrown over him last night was neatly folded on the end of the sofa. I was glad he wasn’t here. I needed time to process first. I put my purse on the counter and went down the hallway toward the pull-down attic near the back bedroom. Stopping underneath it, I stared up at it. The fear of the ladder wasn’t what made me pause. It was what else I may find up there.
When I went to work this morning, I hadn’t known that I would find out that the answers to my father had been right under my nose for weeks. “You could have just told me, Gran,” I said aloud. If she hadn’t been preparing to die, would she have ever told me? I had spent so many summers here and not once had she taken me to meet my other grandmother, or mentioned I had a brother. Why couldn’t she just have left me a letter telling me all this? The list she left lay in her bedroom on the dresser. I wondered if it held more secrets and just how deep this was going to get.
I brought a chair from the kitchen and stood on it to reach the pull string on the attic entrance. Once I had it down, I didn’t think too long about it or the ladder would start to freak me out. Instead, I just went for it. At the top of the ladder, another string hung down and hit the side of my face. Reaching for it, I pulled and the light came on, illuminating the attic.
There were boxes stacked against the far-right wall, and Christmas decorations covered the entire left side of the space. My throat got a lump in it when I saw Gran’s Santa in the back corner. It was life-size and when you pressed its hand, it would sing Jingle Bells. It was always beside Gran’s tree in the living room.
I stepped up and stood on the floor and did a full circle. There was an old green trunk behind me and beside it was a coat rack with hats that I recognized as my granddad’s hanging on it. What looked like prom dresses were hanging on hooks on the wall behind them, covered in clear bags to protect the fabric. They had to have been mom’s.
There was a lifetime of memories up here. Were all attics this way? My fear of ladders may have caused me to miss out on a lot. I went to the boxes on the right and began searching through them. Some were labeled with Gran’s handwriting and a permanent marker. Most were not.
It took only a few minutes and some searching to find the first box of things that had been Mom’s when she was younger. Concert tickets to Hootie and the Blowfish, Boys 2 Men, and Garth Brooks, photos of Mom with friends, her first temporary driver’s license, and a blue-ribbon award for a Science Project.
The box under it had mostly photos, so I sat it aside to take downstairs with me. It was the last box I came to that held letters. Folded-up lined paper that looked like something that was passed around in class in an old movie from like the eighties. I put it with the photo box and made sure there were no other boxes that might hold answers.
Once I was sure I had everything, I went back to the ladder and took a deep breath to calm myself, before having to climb back down it while holding two boxes. Turning off the light on my way down, I managed to make it to the ground without an issue.
In the living room, I placed both boxes on the coffee table then sat down on the sofa. Opening the one with the photos first, I went through them slowly. There was a photo of my mom at her Sweet Sixteen birthday party in Gran’s back yard, standing with a younger Wanda Sellers smiling at the camera. I sat that aside. I would take it to Mrs. Wanda when I went to visit her.
Taking my time, I studied each photo for some clue or possibly a guy. It wasn’t until I got to the last four pictures that I saw him. He was tall, had dark hair, and Mom was looking up at him with love. Was this Rebel? Or was it someone else? I looked at the next photo and this one was in someone else’s house. Mom was sitting on the boy’s lap and they were kissing. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but it was the same boy.