CHAPTER 6
Maggie
I am standing in my new room, looking at the new furniture, when I hear the heavy footfalls of boots on the stairs and the clunky sound of something big being carried up them. We’ve been inside the house since we arrived, and I still feel like I’m dreaming, that this is someone else’s home, and I am watching someone else’s life play out upon a stage. I turn from the unfamiliar bedstead that glistens with fresh varnish to face the open doorway. I see my trunk is being hauled up the narrow stairs. Uncle Fred said the boy from the bookkeeper’s across the street was coming at noon to take up our belongings, but instead of a boy, I see a young man. He is Evie’s age, or perhaps a little older.
“This one yours?” he says, half out of breath. He is blond, gray-eyed, and a bit chubby, and beads of sweat sparkle on his brow. He has a nice smile.
I nod toward the trunk he’s got with him. I had my choice of rooming with Willa or with Evie, but I asked if I could have my own place on the third floor. Uncle Fred apparently had thought that was an odd idea, but Mama had come to my rescue and said if she were me, she’dwant to have her own little space, too. She told me I could take an attic room if Fred could be persuaded to agree, which he did. Mine is a wide, long room with a pitched ceiling and two dormer windows. Opposite my room and on either side of the little landing at the top of the attic stairs are two long, skinny spaces with little doors that look like they were built for elves. One of the spaces is filled with box after box of funeral records. The other is crammed with crates and steamer trunks and extra dining room chairs. But the rest of the attic floor is all mine.
The man-boy struggles on the landing with the trunk despite his size and strength. I help him finagle the trunk through the narrow doorway.
“Thanks,” he says as we maneuver the trunk inside and by the bed. “You want to empty it now? I was told to bring it back down to the carriage house when you’re done with it. Your mother and sisters are unpacking theirs.”
“I guess.” I reach down to unlatch the closures.
“I’m Charlie,” he says. “Charlie Sutcliff. I live across the street. But I work for Fred Bright.”
There is something odd about the way he tells me who he is. His words and voice and even his expression make him seem like he’s Willa’s age, but his body is one that’s much older.
“My name’s Maggie,” I reply.
“I know. I remembered. Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa. And Mrs. Bright and Mr. Bright. But you call Evelyn Evie.”
I give him a sideways glance as I open the trunk and start to pull out my things. I toss my clothes and quilt and a doll that was my mother’s onto the bed. Then I grab the books and shoes and my hatboxes of ribbons and half-finished needlepoint projects and place them on the floor. Charlie helps me with some of these. Lastly, I pull out the painting of a sailing ship on a green-blue sea that was Grandad’s and that he gave me when we were getting ready to move because he knew I’d always liked it. The ship is pointed toward a faraway horizon, and little waves are curling up its sides like bits of lace.
“I like that ship!” Charlie says, as if he were my eight-year-old cousin Liam back home in Quakertown.
“I do, too.”
“Have you been to Hog Island? It’s full of ships being built, not hogs. Navy ships. Big ones. They’re for the war. They’re huge. Have you been there? To Hog Island?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “We just got here today.”
“You should go. Jamie takes me there sometimes. To see the ships. Jamie likes trains better than ships, but he takes me there sometimes because I like ships.”
“Who’s Jamie?”
“He’s my brother. He likes trains. But they don’t have trains for war. Only ships. He’s not going to the navy. He doesn’t like ships. He’s going to the army. But not until April. In April, he’ll go.”
“Jamie is older than you?”
Charlie nods. “I’m sixteen. Jamie had a birthday. He’s twenty-one now. He counts with my father in the office. But in April, he’ll go to the army.”
“He counts?”
“You know. One. Two. Three. They count.”
“He’s a bookkeeper like your dad?”
“Sure.”
The entire time Charlie is talking to me, he’s picking up each one of my books and studying their spines. It’s like he’s not reading the spines, but rather just admiring the gold and silver and ebony lettering. I don’t have near the books that Evie has, but I have some.Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and theJust So Stories, andThe Wind in the Willows, andThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and a few others.
“You like to read?” I ask.
Charlie puts down the book he’s looking at. It’sFive Children and Itby E. Nesbit. It’s one of my favorites. It’s about these children who find a sand fairy who grants them a wish a day. You’d think that would bewonderful, right? But when those children get what they truly want every day, trouble starts to pop up all over the place.
“You can borrow that one if you want,” I tell him. “It’s a good book.”
