Finally.
Now she had someone to whine to about her leaky roof and explore the box of secrets she’d found in the attic.
Mariska had served as the closest thing to a mother Charlotte had after both her mother and grandmother died. She couldn’t grill her own family about the shoebox—not without driving straight to the Loggerhead Inn and starting the search for this possible, mysterious aunt—so, once again, Mariska would serve as her family’s proxy. She had been waiting for the sun to come up so she could give the Loggerhead Inn a call, but for now, dumping everything on insomniac Mariska’s brain would be a welcome interim solution to her own inability to sleep.
Charlotte tapped on the window with her nail. Mariska didn’t move. She tapped again, a little louder.
Mariska looked up and jumped in her seat, her hand fluttering to her chest, her book tumbling to the floor. She rolled her eyes and rocked herself to her feet before waddling towards the front door.
Charlotte moved to meet her there and Mariska greeted her wearing a thin muumuu, squinting at her through tired eyes.
“What are you doing out in the rain? You just about scared me to death,” she scolded.
“Sorry. I saw your light on and figured you couldn’t sleep.”
“I can’t. My legs ache. Come in.”
Charlotte entered and they moved into the living room.
She looked around for the dog. “Izzy doesn’t even come out to say hi now?”
Mariska shook her head. “She doesn’t get out of bed this early for anyone. She’s like her daddy that way.”
Charlotte put her shoebox on the kitchen island and Mariska peered at it.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t recognize it?”
“No. Should I?”
“No, I guess not.” Charlotte opened the lid and retrieved the birth certificate to hand to Mariska. “What do you know about this?”
Mariska puttered back to her seat to gather her reading glasses from the table and returned to the island. She scanned the document and looked up at Charlotte, her expression blank.
“I don’t understand.”
Charlotte sighed. She knew by Mariska’s expression she didn’t recognize anything about the document. If anything looked familiar and she didn’t want to say, she’d be slipping on the strange, frozen mask she always adopted when lying or hiding something. It was as if she was afraid the tiniest arc of an eyebrow or quiver of a lip would give away everything. But, for some reason, she could never keep her nostrils from flaring in that pose. They were the true tell-tale.
Charlotte stabbed her finger at the line featuring the birth mother’s name. “That’s my grandmother’s name as the mom, but that’s not my mother’s name for the baby.”
Mariska’s forehead folded into nubby rows. “You’re saying your mother changed her name?”
“No. Look at the date of birth. That’s not my mother’s birthday or the right year.” She poked at the father’s name. “That’s not my grandfather’s name and the baby was born the year after he died.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying—”
Charlotte decided things would go faster if she left no room for interpretation. “I think my grandmother had another baby.”
Mariska gasped. “No. Estelle always talked about her only daughter. This has to be your mom.”
“It can’t be. This baby is ten years younger. Mom couldn’t look ten years older than she really was. And who pretends to be older?”
Mariska sat down on a stool. “Where did you find this?”
“There was a leak—”
“Where? At your house?”
Charlotte nodded. “When I went to the attic to find the source—”
“It’s leaking from your roof?”
Charlotte took a calming breath. “Yes. Where else would it leak from?”
Mariska shrugged in a world-weary way that implied she’d been fighting different sorts of leaks her whole life. “It could have been a window seal. Or under the door. Remember when I had that river coming through my sliders during that one hurricane—”
“Okay. Fair enough. But no, I have a roof leak. And when I went up to find—”
“I’ll give you Jerry’s phone number.”
Charlotte stopped, her mind derailed from its gear by Mariska’s comment. “Jerry who?”
“He’s the roof guy. Those other guys will rip you off. You have to use Jerry.”
“Okay. Thanks. But I’m trying to tell you—”
Mariska barreled on. “Greta used that outfit with the commercials. You know the ones you see on the local news? They came out here and charged her an arm and a leg—”
Charlotte scowled and put her hand on Mariska’s. “I’m trying to tell you about the shoebox.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Thank—”
Mariska pointed an index finger at her. “But use Jerry.”
“I will.” Charlotte decided to skip to the end of her story in the faint hope she could finish it. “Long story short, I found the box nestled in the attic insulation.”
Mariska seemed to ponder this new information. “Like it was hidden on purpose?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. Very much like that.”
“What else is in it? Nothing that explains everything?”
“No. There are bits and bobs from schools all over the place—different states, different countries…” Charlotte smiled to herself as she dug through the box, thinking she had to be the only person in the world under thirty who said bits and bobs. Growing up in a retirement community, she used a fair amount of old-fashioned slang she rarely heard from the mouths of her ‘contemporaries.’
She found the newspaper clipping and handed it to Mariska. “And there was this too.”
Mariska looked it over before looking back up at her. “The Loggerhead Inn? What does this have to do with Estelle’s secret baby?”
“I think the baby must be one of the people in the staff photo, but the paper doesn’t name them. There are three women about the right age, though.” She pointed to each.
Marisa pulled down her glasses and shook her head. “I
