Violette points to the boxes. “Have fun, kids. I’ll bring refreshments in around eleven, unless you get lucky and find what you’re looking for right away.”
“This may take us all day,” Lucie says, eyeing the stacks.
I roll up my shirt sleeves. “We’d better get started, then.”
Grabbing the top box, I lower it to the floor before hauling down one more. Lucie and I open and unpack them. Books, photo albums, vinyl disks, sheet music… No ledgers.
We repack and move on to the next pair of boxes.
Mine contains nothing but magazines and clippings. Lucie’s is a hodgepodge of notebooks and small items. While she leafs through the notebooks just in case, I pick up the next box. More old magazines.
“What can I say? Gran was a hoarder,” Lucie comments, glancing at the contents of my box.
This is the first time she’s addressed me since last night. It’s absurd, but her speaking to me again makes me feel like I just won the Monaco Historic Grand Prix.
The next box I open is full of plastic bags with fabric samples.
“Mom keeps them in binders,” Lucie says. “It’s smarter. Makes it easier to sort through and find what you need. But Gran was messy.”
“Creative people often are.”
She shifts her gaze from the box to my eyes. Another first since after the kiss.
“True,” she concurs. “Gran made sure she stored the fragile antique fans in optimal conditions. The rest just went over her head. Cataloging, indexing, and filing? ‘Pff!’ she’d say. ‘Who has that kind of time?’.”
“What about bookkeeping?”
“Luckily, Mom did it. She doesn’t mind.”
I open the next colorful bag.
“Don’t bother,” Lucie says. “Messy as she was, Gran would never put a receipt in a bag with samples.”
After rummaging top to bottom to ascertain that the box contains nothing but fabric, I close the box.
“If you come across another one like that,” Lucie says, “don’t waste your time on it, just move on.”
“You got it, Boss!”
She quirks an eyebrow atboss.
I ape her expression. “Your turf, your rules.”
She finishes her box, closes it, and sets it on top of our growing “done” stack.
After half hour of sifting through old, yellowed photos and bank statements, Violette delivers a much-welcome tray with coffee and water.
“Time for a break!” She sets the tray on the floor and turns to leave when a group photo in Lucie’s hands draws her gaze. “I had no idea that picture was in a box! It belongs in our family album or framed on the wall.”
“Certainly not,” Lucie protests.
I scoot closer to get a better look at the picture.
It’s a group of five. Four of them are adults, a couple in their early fifties and a couple of thirty-somethings. The fifth one is a grinning tomboy about seven or eight with a football under her arm, uneven pigtails, and missing front teeth. She has Lucie’s laughing eyes.
“Who’s to blame for that gap?” I ask Lucie. “The ball or the tooth fairy?”
Violette giggles. “You’re funny, you know?”
