She managed to get up to the third shelf. Her fingertips brushed the box, but how was she going to grab hold of it without letting go? She jumped back down.
‘I’ll go get a stool from inside,’ Georgie said.
A few minutes later, she reappeared holding a kitchen stool. ‘Dad asked me what I was doing. I told him I was cleaning out the garage.’ She snorted. ‘As if.’
Meg climbed onto the stool and reached for the box. It felt fragile in her hands, as though the bottom might collapse. She passed it down to Georgie, who put it on the floor. She waited until Meg had her feet back on the ground before she took off the lid.
At first glance, it didn’t look too different from Georgie’s grandparents’ belongings. Random objects. Nothing special. Meg picked up a hairbrush, turning it over in her hand.
Georgie reached for a woollen jumper, embroidered with tiny roses, and held it up, modelling it. ‘Mmm, nice,’ she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
It wouldn’t have been fashionable even thirty years ago. Meg couldn’t imagine her mother wearing it. Underneath where the jumper sat there was a notebook with a gold embossed cover. Meg’s heart fluttered. A diary? She opened it and read the name written inside the cover. Anna Elizabeth Mitchell. The writer had a heavy hand so that the letters made indentations in the page. Meg ran a finger gently over the words as though it was Braille. She could feel Georgie watching her.
‘Does it look like your mum’s writing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Meg said. ‘Kind of.’
She turned the page. A quote from Tolstoy.Everyone thinks of changing the world. No one thinks of changing himself. Anna had written‘or herself’in brackets on the next line.
She turned the page again.
There was fog on the lake this morning. Sunlight beamed through the branches of the red gums and it was so beautiful I felt like I might cry. I took a photo of it in my mind so that I’ll remember it forever.There were no quotation marks, no name. Anna’s own words, Meg supposed.
She flicked ahead, skimming the next few pages, then stopped abruptly when she saw words she recognised.
A wave of emotion swelled in Meg’s chest as she heard Stevie Nick’s soulful voice singing ‘Landslide’. She knew it well. Sometimes, Jenny would play it on repeat as silent tears ran over her cheeks.
‘Why do you listen to it, if it makes you so sad?’ Meg had asked her once.
‘Not all pain is bad pain,’ Jenny had said, a faraway look in her eyes. Meg had added the moment to the list of things she didn’t understand about her mother.
Her thoughts raced as she ran her finger over the lyrics. What did this mean? Could it be a coincidence? What were the chances?
Georgie had stopped checking boxes. ‘What is it? Did you find something?’
‘This …’ Meg said. ‘These words, they’re lyrics from “Landslide”. Fleetwood Mac. You know it?’
‘Yeah, my mum loves it.’
‘She does?’
Georgie nodded.
‘So does mine,’ Meg whispered.
‘You think …’
‘I don’t know.’ Meg shrugged, struggling to judge where coincidence ended and truth began. ‘It doesn’t prove anything.’
She flipped the page, but there was nothing else.
‘That’s pretty.’ Georgie reached for something Meg couldn’t see. She held up a gold locket on a fine chain. She studied the engraving. ‘Scales. That’s the symbol for Libra, I think?’
‘Don’t know.’ Meg wasn’t into star signs. ‘Is there anything inside?’
Georgie opened it, but it was empty. ‘Sorry.’ Her phone beeped. She passed the locket to Meg and reached for the phone. ‘I really do have to go.’
‘Do you mind if I stay a bit longer?’ Meg asked. ‘I just want to look through the rest of this.’
