It’s sturdy enough, by the look of it, aside from a few loose bricks.
No snakes or spiders or bears.
Oh, my.
“Looks like underground storage,” Kane muses when he reaches the bottom, swinging the light around. He’s so tall his head almost brushes the ceiling. “Or maybe a fifties bomb shelter? They were popular, even in little towns like this.”
“Gramps wasn’t much of a prepper. It’s weird that it’s here.” I swipe a finger along the rough brick.
Slightly damp, but not as bad as I thought it would be.
The beam swings again, revealing a small, unfinished statue on a long table beside the stairs. The only thing in the room.
My pulse slows.
“You recognize that?” he says.
It’s like a massive workbench with a lamp and an old leather chair pushed in front of it. Of course the lamp doesn’t work, and neither does the small switch on the wall Kane tries for the overhead light.
At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing.
There are drawings of tiny shoes.
A small box of round objects, either clay or stone. Tools for sculpting, I think. A few round things that vaguely look like shoes, but small and indistinct, no bigger than my palm.
Then on the other side—a bigger statue.
People.
It’s a couple locked in a loving embrace.
“Hold up. I think…” I step closer, and Kane hands me the flashlight. “I think that’s Gramps?” Despite being incomplete, I recognize my grandfather’s younger profile in the clay. “Holy crap. Was this my grams’ workshop?”
“Could be. You said she painted, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, and I knew that. But nobody ever said a word about her sculpting.” I trace the unfinished model gingerly.
This isn’t some deep dark secret, no, but it feels like I’m closing in on some hidden truth.
“They look happy,” I whisper. Then I look at the pile of little clay statues again and frown. “The little shoes, I don’t get. They were in that painting we found in the attic, too, what looked like baby shoes. I wonder if it’s part of a bigger project Grams was working on…”
“Is this what your granddad wanted? The stuff he left you?”
“Maybe?” There’s hope in my voice, but I’m not convinced.
Not yet.
If these odd, unfinished statues are the big finale, it feels unsatisfying.
The letter made it sound like there was a lesson here, something clear and obvious, a little like the doozy he left Ethan.
The couple statue looks beautiful, despite being abandoned.
Or I might just think that because they were my grandparents. On its own, it doesn’t offer much insight into his life.
It doesn’t enrich my world.
At the end of the day, it’s just a pretty sculpture, and the unfinished shoes are hardly even that.
