Zoey nodded.
“Okay.” I made another note. “We have a plan. Do you have any pictures that might help me?”
“I’ve got some castles in my coloring books,” Sophie said.
“And we’ve got some real books with pictures, too.” The girls dragged out a half dozen or more books from their bookcase, along with a couple of DVD covers. We sprawled together on the floor, a girl on either side of me, and they took turns pointing out what they liked most.
Their enthusiasm was contagious. Ideas bubbled in my mind, and I rapidly scribbled them on the construction paper.
“How’s it going?” asked a masculine voice about thirty minutes later.
I looked up to see Matt standing in the doorway. To my relief, he’d lost his angry face.
Sophie jumped up. “Daddy, this is going to be so cool! She’s gonna paint a tower and a window and a moat and a drawbridge!”
“Sounds like a lot. We’d better let Hope tell us how much she can do in the limited time she has.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Don’t worry. I won’t start anything I can’t finish.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest you would.”
That was pretty much exactly what he was suggesting, but I decided to let it go. “I’ll sketch out a few ideas, and bring them over tomorrow. Then the girls can tell me what they like and what they want to change, and we’ll go from there.”
“Hey—want to see my princess dress?” Sophie asked.
“Sure.”
She ran across the hall to another bedroom and returned with a yellow Belle ball gown.
“I have one, too,” Zoey said. “Plus I have a princess gown dress my mom made, but I’m too big to wear it now.”
“I’d love to see it,” I said.
Matt cleared his throat. “Peggy has it. She’s getting it professionally preserved.”
“How nice.” And how sad, I thought. Were memories ever just one or the other?
“Here’s a picture of our mom.” Sophie pointed to one of the framed photos on the dresser.
“She’s very beautiful.” I sheepishly glanced up at Matt. “I was admiring photos of her before you got home.”
“We’re gonna look just like her when we grow up, because she looked just like us when she was our age,” Sophie said authoritatively.
“Yeah,” Zoey confirmed. “My gramma has a photo of Mommy that was taken when she was my age.”
“Actually, Hope’s grandmother took that photo,” Matt said.
I turned to him. “Really? I didn’t know Peggy and Griff had lived in Wedding Tree that long.”
“They had a home on the other side of town when Christine and Jillian were growing up, then they moved to Houston for Griff’s job. They moved to their current house when he retired a few years ago.”
“And Jillian?”
He shifted his stance, as if the question made him uncomfortable. I wondered what the situation was between them. “She got a job at the local middle school when they moved here. She has her own place about a mile away.”
“I can understand why they’d all want to move here. I spent every summer in Wedding Tree when I was a kid, and it’s a great town.”
“Did you know the people who used to lived in this house?” Sophie asked.
