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She makes a funny noise. “You don’t need to call me ma’am. It makes me sound old.” She glances at my small suitcase and then around the waiting area. “I wonder where they put the rest of your luggage.”
“This is all there is. I traveled light.”
Fortunately, she doesn’t question that.
Twenty minutes later, Anne steers her car into the driveway of a small two-story house.
If I were asked to describe the house in one word, haunted would take top spot. The wooden siding needs several coats of paint. White? Possibly, if the remaining bits clinging to it are anything to go by.
“I know it’s not much to look at,” Anne says, her tone apologetic. “The place belonged to my great-aunt.”
I study the house, half expecting to see the pale form of a ghost peering down at me. I shiver. “Where is she now?”
“She died ten years ago. I’m finally at that place where I can let the house go. My husband and I plan to sell it at the end of the year.”
“You and your great-aunt were close?”
“Very much so. Did Florence warn you the place needs to be fixed up? We’re planning to renovate it before we put it on the market. We just haven’t agreed yet on what specifically we’re going to do. My husband and I have very different opinions on the topic.” Anne chuckles. “But I will warn you that the house is a bit of a mess inside. Not the kind of mess that begs for a roach infestation. But, well, you’ll see what I mean in a few minutes.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Do you mind if I ask how your great-aunt died?” Will her restless spirit haunt me because someone murdered her in the house?
“She died of a stroke. But don’t worry.” Anne’s smile is somewhat reassuring. “My husband replaced her bed. It’s brand-new.”
“Thank you.” I can’t complain about living in a house where someone died. If not for Anne and her husband, I wouldn’t have a place to stay while I figure out what I’m going to do next. I have no references under my new name. I only have a bank account—thanks to my brother-in-law, Craig. “I can definitely clean up the place while I’m staying here.” It will give me something to do. Something to keep me from dwelling on the past ten years.
We climb out of her car.
“There’s a bike in the garage.” Anne points to the detached garage located farther back from the house. “It’s old and probably a little rusty, but you’re welcome to borrow it if you’d like. It has a basket attached to the front, so it’s perfect for shopping. My great-aunt loved to bike whenever possible. She practically lived on her bike until she was no longer able to ride it.”
“Thank you. That would be great.”
“The lawn mower is also in the garage.” We walk up the steps to the front stoop. “It’s manual, unfortunately. There’re also gardening tools in there.”
“When do plants start growing around here? If it’s okay with you, I’d be happy to clean up the area and plant some flowers.”
Small piles of decomposing leaves lie on the grass and winter-dead garden, but the place holds so much potential.
“In a few more weeks. It’s still too early to plant the annuals. I would wait for May to do that.” Anne unlocks the front door. “But I’m okay with you doing some gardening if you’d like.” Anne smiles at me, and I get the sense she’s going to say something else, but she just opens the door. We step inside.
The outside of the house looks sad, dejected, and the inside isn’t much better. The walls had been covered with bright floral wallpaper, but the color has faded and the paper is peeling.
We enter the living room. Dust covers the furniture, which is an eclectic mix of styles and eras that somehow works.
My husband would’ve hated it.
He would’ve also hated the chest-high piles of magazines, several rows deep, spanning the length of the far wall.
“Auntie Iris liked to be well read.” Anne glances around the room, embarrassment at the mess and her obvious love for her great-aunt tilting her lips, pinking her cheeks. “She enjoyed books but loved magazines and journals. Fashion, news, history, gardening. It didn’t matter what they were, she would read them. This is just a small sampling.” Anne nods at the collection. “The only place you won’t find them is in the garage and the bathrooms.”
“Any idea how far back they date?” I eye the stacks with curiosity and not the dismay Anne is probably expecting.
“My guess is six or seven decades. She didn’t keep all of them, but she did keep most of her favorite issues. She had a filing system, but I never figured it out. I always figured I’d one day go through them. Check out some of the articles. Have a giggle over how much things have changed since the articles were written…or maybe not changed as much as you would’ve expected. But my failing eyesight makes that more difficult now. I only read large-print books, and I use large font on my devices.” Anne points to three stacks of magazines in the corner, separate from the others. Each magazine in this collection is in a Ziploc bag. “Those in particular were Auntie Iris’s favorites.”
I check the top few magazines. Their titles and dates appear random. TheVoguedates back to the 1940s. The other two are more recent issues, if you can call anything published in the 1980s as recent. There’s nothing to indicate why these were her favorites.
I return them to the pile.
“I’m not expecting you to live with the magazines,” Anne says. “My husband figures there might be some in her collection that could be worth something on eBay. We just haven’t found time to go through them. We decided it’s up to you to figure out what you want to do with them.”
