Annaliese locked her bedroom door, daring for the first time to break one of her father’s strictest rules. She pressed her back against it, doubled over, and trapped Throckmorton in a ferocious squeeze underneath her folded arms.
“Why is everything such a deep dark secret?” she blurted, choking on her words. “Why does Evan have to be so mean? Why is Father always so angry? Why won’t anybody ever tell me the truth?”
Annaliese’s anguished feelings traveled like a fast-moving thunderstorm—shaking shoulders, great gulping sobs, and a brief but violent shower of tears.
And then the squall was over.
She flipped Throckmorton onto her pale pink bedspread, where he landed on his stomach. His head drooped over the ruffled edge, giving him a bird’s eye view as she pulled the golden crocodile-leather suitcase out from under her bed.
Annaliese lifted the flat hinged lid and set the stays.
Bailey, who’d followed them out of Evan’s bedroom, trotted over and sniffed the suitcase as if it was prey.
The agitated bloodhound whacked the bedcovers with his rigid, wagging tail.
Whop!
Throckmorton slithered—swish!—into a pool of blue-green silk. A wave of gold fringe splashed in his face.
Much to his surprise he was lying on the same shimmering shawl that Teddy had once held up to the light.
“Oh my gosh!” Annaliese exclaimed, quickly positioning Throckmorton upright inside the lid.
Piece by piece, she held up her discoveries: a garnet-red blouse, a swishy skirt with skinny pleats, a wide leather belt with an ornate buckle, and a pair of lace-up leather boots with worn-down heels. She tried on a flannel hat with a wide brim, stroked the fingers of a deerskin glove, pressed a cotton camisole to her nose and breathed in its scent.
A few of the pieces were stained, others wrinkled or torn. Inside the richly-lined suitcase, the clothing seemed common and out of place.
Annaliese buttoned the wine-colored blouse over her dress. She stepped into the skirt, rolled up the waistband and cinched it with the belt. She slipped on the boots, tightened the laces, and tied them with a double knot.
More so than ever, Annaliese’s resemblance to Olivia—the moody eyes, dimples, and driftwood-colored hair—was unmistakable. And yet Throckmorton had never heard anyone—father, aunt, uncle, or cousin—ever say, “Why, Annaliese, you look just like your mother.”
Suddenly, Throckmorton’s mind flashed back to the day when he’d seen Olivia for the first time.
On the morning of Annaliese’s christening, Great-Grandmama Easterling had placed Throckmorton’s newly sewn body between layers of crisp tissue paper inside a rectangular white box. The tissue, he recalled, had tickled his nose.
Later, a young woman with deep-set eyes—Olivia—lifted the tissue paper off his face. She fingered his embroidered nose, black button eyes, and smiling red mouth. She pulled a small parchment scroll, tied with a skinny blue cord, out from under his arm.
“Ah, the birth certificate,” she said to Great-Grandmama, who stood nearby.
Olivia untied the cord, unrolled the scroll, and read his name aloud: “Throckmorton S. Monkey.”
Olivia looked up at Great-Grandmama. “Oh, Ethel, he’s wonderful!” she said. “Annaliese will love him; she’ll always love him.”
Love . . . always . . .
Words that had filled his heart with hope.
From that day forward, Throckmorton assumed his post in Annaliese’s hand-carved cradle. Day and night, he kept watch. Whenever Baby Annaliese opened her eyes, he smiled down on her.
After a while, Olivia came to the nursery less and less often. A hired nurse began working around the clock. And then one day, Throckmorton overheard Madge tell the nursemaid that Annaliese’s mother was gone for good.
The news devastated Throckmorton. He could still hear the vicious gossip: Everyone knew the marriage wouldn’t work . . . his mother was furious . . . the P sisters fit to be tied . . . a foreigner . . . so young, so poor . . . no one in the family liked her.
Why had the judge married someone so different from himself? Throckmorton couldn’t help but wonder.
“Look at this, Throckmorton!” Annaliese now exclaimed.
Abruptly, Throckmorton returned to the present moment.
While he’d been ruminating, she’d dug deeper into the pockets of Olivia’s suitcase and pulled out a comb, hairbrush, and silver hand mirror.
Annaliese traced an ornate oval engraved on the mirror’s backside. “O, for Olivia,” she sighed. “Just think—my mother looked into this very same mirror.”
Annaliese gazed at the beveled glass with undisguised longing in her eyes. Then, in a hushed and lonely voice, she asked the mirror image:
“Where are you?”
“Why did you leave?”
“Aren’t you ever coming back?”
Annaliese’s questions were like sharp little arrows stabbing Throckmorton’s heart.
From down the hall, Throckmorton now heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. Bailey snapped to attention.
Annaliese’s bedroom door handle jiggled. “Annaliese, I’m ready to leave for London,” called the judge. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”
Uh-oh—now what?
The door rattled in its frame. “Annaliese, are you in there?”
Annaliese pressed the suitcase lid shut.
Throckmorton’s limber body bent in half; his lips kissed his knees.
Gadzooks!
He’d been buried alive . . .
Annaliese gave the suitcase a hard shove. Throckmorton felt his satin-lined casket shimmy as it skimmed across the wood floor underneath Annaliese’s bed.
The pounding got louder.
“Open this door! Right now! I mean it!”
A few seconds later, Throckmorton heard Judge Easterling’s voice strike like a thunderbolt. “Annaliese, where did you get those clothes?”
“They’re mine.”
“They are NOT yours.”
Throckmorton imagined how furious the judge must look—his fisted hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers, nostrils flaring, lips tightened and hard.
“Annaliese,” he said, “I asked you an honest question and I expect an honest answer: Where did you get those clothes?”
“I found them.”
“You kids were in the attic, weren’t you? You know better than that!” he ranted. “Who let you in?”
Silence.
Throckmorton cringed.
“That’s where you found the sock monkeys, isn’t it? Did you find anything else?”
“No, Father. I didn’t.”
“Take them off NOW! They are NOT yours—and I NEVER want to see you wearing them again.”
“Yes, Father.” Annaliese’s voice trembled.
“And no more locking the door!”
Slam!
Lying alone in the sea of Olivia’s clothing, Throckmorton sniffed her once-familiar, long-lingering scent—a strange mixture of talcum powder and wild roses, sweat, cinnamon and salt air.
He asked himself the question he’d asked so many times before: Why, oh why had she left them all behind?
If only he could wriggle out of the jaws of this golden suitcase, he’d crawl into Annaliese’s lap and tell her everything he knew about her mother.
How Olivia liked lard sandwiches, pickled herring, and playing the harmonica. Or how she had trained a neighborly albino squirrel to eat apple cores out of her hand.
No more secrets. No more silence.
Soon, the suitcase shifted. The lid lifted, and a shaft of afternoon sunshine slashed across Throckmorton’s face.
Annaliese fished him out, holding his body against her stomach as if he, and only he, could stop the pain. Bailey nuzzled up against them. The dog drool moistened Throckmorton’s tail, but this time he forgave the old hound.
After a few moments, Madge stormed into Annaliese’s bedroom. A sour expression scrunched the maid’s ruddy face. “Where’s the clothes the mister said you can’t wear anymore that’s going to the poor?”
Annaliese marched into her closet, yanked an armful of sweaters off a shelf, and shoved them into Madge’s waiting arms.
“These ’ere look brand new,” Madge groused.
“Take them, please,” Annaliese said in her well-practiced “good girl” voice.
Madge hesitated. Her mouth opened and closed but no words came out.
“Take them!” Annaliese ordered.
“Listen ’ere, Little Miss Rich Girl . . . I heard you bawling in here before—just like when you were a baby . . . a bad baby . . . Waa, waa, waa!” mocked the maid, her thieving hands on her rocking hips. “No wonder your mother . . .”
“Get out! NOW!” Annaliese yelled. “Before I . . .”
Annaliese grabbed her own hairbrush off her dressing table and made out as if she might throw it.
The disgruntled maid scurried off.
“I wish Father would fire that fish-faced old cow!”
Throckmorton seriously doubted that he would. In Judge Easterling’s presence—Presto!—Madge always changed from churlish to charming.
Annaliese lifted Olivia’s hand mirror up to her scowling face. “I’m sick and tired of being a good girl!” she spewed.
She stripped the two rosy-red ribbons off the ends of her perfectly plaited hair and removed the rubber bands. With clawed fingers, she combed the crinkled strands. Then, with one furious shake of her head, she gave her long hair permission to fly free.
Next, she placed a pair of shiny, patent leather shoes in front of Bailey’s snout and ordered him to chew.
Yikes, yikes, double-yikes!
Throckmorton had never seen Annaliese act like this before . . .
But the angry little girl wasn’t finished.
With ragged snips of a sharp shears, she cut—one, two, three, four—sashes off her pretty pastel dresses.
And later, in the library, when no one was watching, she threw the strips of fancy fabric into the fire’s flames and patiently watched them burn.