In her beloved books, she knew the ending came with a happily-ever-after, for the most part. At least, in the books she loved best.
The scent of pine and that unique aroma of “old unvisited place” thickened along with the heat as they climbed the stairs, and the strangeness tickled the edges of her imagination. An adventure? She shook the thought away. No, finding a deed.
At the top of the steps, to their left, the angled attic roofline stretched the length of the bookshop. The dusty floor was littered with various boxes, from cardboard to wooden chests, some pieces of old or broken furniture, a clothes rack with black bagged garments hung in a row, and one shelf running the full length of the space.
“No clowns,” Robbie whispered from behind.
She shot him a glare.
“Can you imagine playing hide-and-seek up here?”
Her faux-annoyance melted into a chuckle. “You really are the biggest kid in the world.”
“Actually.” His index finger rose again. “I was one of the shortest guys in my class at school. If I’d just had two more inches.” He winced and shook his head. “Height matters, Clara. Even if the girl doesn’t care, the guy does.”
“You make up for it in personality.”
He stood a little taller, matching her height, and tilted his chin out as if she’d given him the compliment of the ages. “Okay, that helps.” He shrugged. “A little.”
She chuckled at his pun as he nudged past her into the room.
“Why is it that your dad didn’t go through these things years ago?”
Clara scanned the cluttered space. “Mom says that Granny Blackwell had set up the business so well, that all he needed to keep the everyday workings of the bookshop going was in the office downstairs. This place just kept gathering storage.” She ran a hand over an old rocking chair. “Right after Granny died, the economy started a downward shift and Dad had to do some extra editing work to keep things afloat, so the attic was the last thing on his mind.”
“Oh right. That’s when he started writing his kids’ books.”
“Yep.” Tears tingled at the bridge of her nose at the acknowledgement. “He found his new dream, I guess, and it worked for him.”
New dream? The idea prodded an unsettling discomfort, like an itch just out of reach. After a year of finding her rhythm taking care of the bookshop and her mother, could she even consider having her own dreams?
“What would your dad care for an attic full of—” Robbie waved a hand toward the room. “This, when he had imaginary worlds to create.”
“And a bookshop to run.” She followed behind him to an old rolltop desk situated halfway between the stairs and the far window. “I remember Dad saying that some of Granny Sadie’s things were in an old desk up here.”
“Great, you check that out.” He walked in the opposite direction toward a box of old-fashioned toys poised on a shelf across the room. “I’m going to explore in this direction.”
The old desk opened with hesitant budges, scraping wood on wood to reveal a conglomeration of various nooks and crannies filled with papers, trinkets, and other paraphernalia reminiscent of another time.
The first papers she uncovered were simple receipts for bookshop repairs, some dating back to 1959. She shook her head with a grin. Her father had been notorious at keeping paper trails, even as a late teen. “You never know when you might need to prove something important,” he’d quoted after his grandmother, the mysterious Sadie Blackwell.
Boy, did she feel the sting of that truth now.
A small tin revealed a collection of beautiful pens, all engraved with the Blackwell name. She ran her finger over the gold lettering of her father’s name carefully scripted onto one of them, and with a steadying breath, she slipped the pen into her pocket…just to have him a little closer.
A green-covered ledger showed a beautiful calligraphic hand, carefully marked within the rows from a date as early as 1954. Could that be her great-grandmother’s writing? Simple, with small curls at the ends of the words. A strange sort of emotion swirled through her chest, as if she had some connection with this woman she never really knew. Clara’s only tangible connection was a photograph of Granny Sadie holding her as a newborn, but her father had shared countless stories of his kind yet courageous grandmother.
Otherwise, not much was known about Granny Sadie’s younger life, except she’d once worked as a maid at nearby Biltmore and basically created Blackwell’s bookshop by herself. A powerful energy came from the memories her father shared about this woman, and the mystery of how she became who she was spurred a niggling curiosity. What sort of woman—a single mother at that—began her own business at a time in history where few women owned much at all?
In the far back of the desk stood a long, rectangular wooden box with a notched lid. Clara drew it forward, her movements resurrecting the scent of cedar. After a few attempts, the lid slid open to reveal some age-worn papers carefully folded inside. The first few appeared to be some communication between Sadie Blackwell and a Mr. Long regarding the use of the building as a bookshop. Dates placed them in the autumn of 1916.
Clara’s breath whispered between her closed lips. 1916!
“Clara.”
Clara jumped at Robbie’s voice, so close. When had he moved to her side? “Yes?”
“I found something you might want to see.”
He held out a small metal chest, about the size of a boot box, the glint in his hazel eyes undeniable.
“The deed?” She kept her gaze on
