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She nodded in the direction of the workshop and continued toward the back. Cullen excused himself and came up behind her. “Everything all right?”
“May I have one of the slats from the crate the trunk came in? And another look at the letter?” She was almost out of breath.
“I thought we were going to . . . never mind.” Cullen knew that when Luna got a bee in her bonnet, there was no stopping the buzzing. He walked toward a wall where he kept packing materials and handed her a slat from the crate that had encased the trunk. “Letter is on the workbench. Now scram.” He gave her a gentle, brotherly shove.
As Luna strode past the couple, she smiled. “Sorry. Sibling stuff.” They smiled back at her.
Luna placed the letter and the piece of wood on the table next to her easel. She sat down, closed her eyes, and placed a hand on the two items. Luna had a particular interest in psychometry. It was the ability to feel vibrations emitted by an object. The laws of physics assert that everything is made up of energy, with subatomic particles moving at different rates of speed, regardless of whether it is a solid, liquid, or gas. She would argue the scientific aspects whenever she was questioned. Most people got the science part; it was the reading part that left them somewhat skeptical. That is, until she would ask to hold something that belonged to them and would proceed to tell them things there was no way she could have known. Just like with Ellie when she told her about the coffee cake. The coffee cake that Ellie’s mother would make for their birthdays when she was a child. And the darkroom in the basement of Ellie’s childhood home. It took a lot of concentration to do it with a modicum of accuracy. It was like unraveling the molecular structure of an item and reading the energy. Crazy stuff. She wished there was a simple description or clarification.
When she was really pushed for an explanation as to why she believed that what she did was possible, Luna would discuss electromagnetic fields. “Take photons, for example. Light. You can’t touch it, but you can see it.” If that didn’t shut them up, she would continue with the Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson particle theory. Eventually, their facial expressions would go blank. They either pretended they understood by nodding like a bobble-head, or they were genuinely interested. It was more often the former than the latter.
She sniffed at the wood. Nothing. She hadn’t been expecting to get anything from it, but it was worth a try. Perhaps the owner of the trunk also owned the wood. She set it aside and placed her hand on the letter. She felt a rush of heat as her face became flushed. She felt a short spark of terror. It was followed by abandonment, then loneliness. Whoever wrote the letter had been through something horrifying and was now feeling abandoned and alone. She shot up from the chair and began to draw. She closed her eyes while her hands made a dozen pointed marks in the shape of an upside downvon the page. Then she drew a stick figure of a boy. She got a shiver, opened her eyes, and took a step back. She had no difficulty interpreting the marks on the paper as flames, based on the burnt smell of the trunk. You didn’t need to be a genius or a psychic to figure that one out. The stick figure had to be the person who wrote the letter, no? Or could it be their son?
Luna checked the clock again. It was almost four. The center was closing in an hour, and they would have their brainstorming session. Luna felt a burst of energy. She knew in her gut this had to do with a young boy. She wasn’t sure his age, but she believed she was on the right track. But right track to where? It all remained to be seen.
Luna began to clean up the café, washing the porcelain cups and plates and emptying the coffee grinds into a bin.
She took what was left of the pastries and crumbled them up for the birds. Alex was bringing Wiley inside, Ziggy and Marley strutting behind.
Luna watched Chi-Chi glide across the landscaped interior of the atrium. She looked like a beautiful lotus flower floating on a pond. Luna wished she could move with such grace. But no. Even though she could recover a stumble with ease, Luna could be a bit of a klutz at times. Maybe it was from when she was a kid. Hanging around with her slightly older brother carved an easy path to become a tomboy. She still had a bit of that in her.
When they were young, Luna and Cullen would spend endless afternoons scouring the woods for the perfect tree to climb. She and Cullen would sit for hours playing I-Spy games. It wasn’t unusual for Luna to have several conversations with the wildlife, too. Those were wonderful, peaceful, beautiful days. Not that her life wasn’t wonderful, peaceful, and beautiful, but there was an innocence back then. Innocence. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Luna sighed. She was very happy that she and Cullen remained close.
Luna continued to watch her graceful friend move closer. Luna couldn’t imagine Chi-Chi tripping or stumbling over anything. Instead, she envisioned Chi-Chi gliding over any obstacles in her path. It wasn’t surprising that Cullen was rather taken with her, even if he wouldn’t dare admit it out loud.
“E ka san.” Chi-Chi addressed Luna with the usual Yoruba Nigerian afternoon greeting. Luna replied in kind. She enjoyed exchanging salutations in other languages, and often used “Ciao,” the Italian greeting, when ending a phone call.
As Alex and Wiley approached, Luna squatted to greet her pooch. “Hey, pal!” She gave Wiley a big hug. He nuzzled her in return. “Thanks, Alex. You are a gem!”
“Any time. He’s such a good dog,” Alex replied. “See you tomorrow.”
Chi-Chi squatted and spoke to Wiley in Yoruba. “Ti o dara aja.” Luna swore he understood what she was saying as he nuzzled Chi-Chi in return.
“Even Wiley is multilingual.” Luna snickered and scanned the café to be sure everything was in place. She snatched the drawing from the easel, the letter, and the wooden slat, then shut and locked the sliding front doors. The three of them entered Cullen’s showroom from the adjoining entry. “Hi-di-ho!” Luna’s voice sang through the showroom as Cullen greeted them with a big smile.
Ellie was coming through the main entrance of Cullen’s place with Ziggy and Marley wagging their tails behind her. “Hi-di-ho to you,” Ellie chimed back. “So where is this mystery project?”
“This way.” Cullen turned toward the workshop with Luna, Chi-Chi, Ellie, Wiley, Ziggy, and Marley in tow. For their size, Ziggy and Marley easily maneuvered between the refurbished pieces of furniture and antiques without thumping their tails on anything.
In the workshop, Ziggy, Marley, and Wiley spotted the plush blanket Cullen kept for Wiley. After circling the blanket several times, the three dogs chose their spots and made themselves comfortable in a big doggie heap. Chi-Chi couldn’t help but repeat what she had said a few minutes ago. “Ti o dara ajas.” Ellie looked at her quizzically.
“It means ‘good dogs,’” Chi-Chi explained.
“Wiley already knows how to speak Yoruba,” Luna said with a straight face.
Earlier that afternoon, Cullen had moved the trunk away from the wall and made enough room for everyone to circle it.
“That surely has a distinct odor,” Ellie noted.
“It must have been very close to a fire,” Luna said. “Close enough to pick up the smell but far enough to survive it.”
“And you don’t know where it came from?” Ellie knew she was asking a rhetorical question.
“No. Luna, you have the letter?” Cullen asked.
“Yep. I also tried to get some vibrations off it.” She handed Cullen the roughly drawn sketch. “I believe those pointy objects represent the fire. The stick figure seems to be a young boy, but I couldn’t zero in on the age. I also got a sense of terror, abandonment, loneliness.” She shrugged.
“Maybe it was someone’s son who died in the fire?” Ellie suggested.
