Inside the last bedroom on the main floor was a flat, rectangular door in the center of the wall. It was around three feet in height and had been hidden behind a full-sized bed. At first glance it looked like nothing more than an accident that happened during the construction of the home, but upon closer inspection, Addison realized whoever put it there must have done so intentionally. The cut out was flush with the wall and had no knob or opening of any kind.
“Are you saying there’s a room behind this?” Addison asked.
Luke grinned.
“How do you get in?” Addison asked.
“Press on it.”
“What—why?”
“Just do it.”
Addison flattened her hand against the smooth texture of the wall and pushed forward. “I don’t understand. Nothing happened.”
“I didn’t either, at first. Now watch this.” Luke balled his hand into a fist and lightly punched the front of the door—twice. It sprung open. “This house of yours is full of interesting surprises.”
She suspected his statement was truer than either of them really understood at this point. “Have you been inside?”
“I poked my head in yesterday for a minute. It was too dark to see anything.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. He clicked it on. “Let there be light.”
He stepped inside and then turned, holding his hand out. Addison hesitated, twisting her nose up when she glanced inside.
“Come on. It’s nothing a shower can’t wash off,” he said. “I can almost stand up all the way. You’ll be fine.”
She took his hand, swishing cobwebs away with the other as she stepped forward. They descended several steps until they reached a cold, concrete floor at the bottom.
“It’s freezing down here.” Addison clenched both sides of her sweater, wrapping it tightly around her.
“Here,” Luke said, holding a second flashlight out. “I brought this one for you.”
She pressed a button on the side of it, rotated her body around, and beamed the light throughout the room. Except for the dirt-infested cobwebs dangling from above, the room appeared undisturbed, like a time capsule waiting to reveal its hidden treasures. The space ran the width of the house and was filled with antique trunks, old furniture, and various other items.
“I wonder why they have things stored in a room like this, instead of in an attic,” Addison said.
“More convenient, probably.” The far corner of the room was lined with several wooden shelves sitting in front of a long brick wall. Luke walked over, grabbed a bottle from a shelf, and blew the dust off of it. He coughed, then angled his light at the object he was holding. “It’s a 1940 Chateau Grand Puy Ducasse. The shelves are filled with them.”
Addison moved closer. “I guess we know why the room was built. Helen told me she’d attended several parties here.”
Luke raised a brow. “Helen?”
“My neighbor. She knew my mother as a child, and my grandparents.”
“When did you meet her?”
“Yesterday, after you left.”
“Did she tell you anything about them, or about the house?”
Addison shook her head. “Not really. She was an uptight ball of nerves actually. I don’t understand why she came by in the first place, other than to poke her nose in my business.”
Near a wall to the right was a wooden garment rod. Hanging on the rod zipped into clear, plastic bags, were several dresses. “I wonder if these belonged to my grandmother,” Addison said, unzipping one of the bags and running her hand along the fabric. “They look so expensive. How could anyone just leave them here?”
The dress rack was positioned in front of a series of haphazardly stacked boxes, and upon one of these boxes, Addison noticed a bunch of old blankets. One in particular caught her attention. Addison tugged on it, pulling it free. “Look at this,” she said to Luke. “Someone embroidered my mother’s name on this, and a date.”
He walked over, grazing against one of the boxes as he went by. The “side bump” caused a ripple effect. Within seconds, the poorly stacked boxes tumbled to the ground. “Oops.” Addison then noticed several long, black chests hidden behind the boxes. “What are those?”
Luke followed her line of sight and walked over to the chests. “They’re old trunks of some kind.” He knelt down beside one of them and flicked a piece of metal dangling from the front with his finger. It lifted up and then banged back down, making a hollow, clanking sound. “Check this out—it’s locked.”
“Can you open it?”
“Maybe, if we can lift it out of here. I need more light.”
“What about the others?”
Luke easily lifted the lids of the remaining trunks. “Unlocked.” Each contained nothing more than worn blankets, so he looked through them all and returned to the locked trunk. He wrapped his hands around the handle on the side and pulled up. The chest barely moved. “Something’s in this one, and my guess is it’s not blankets. I can’t even lift it. These trunks are heavy enough on their own. Put something in them and they’re nearly impossible to move. It’s probably the reason why they were left behind.”
Addison grabbed the handle on the other side. On three, they both pulled upward. “It’s too heavy. My fingers are slipping.”
“I have an idea,” Luke said. “There’s a clear path from us to the bottom of the stairs. Let’s see if we can slide it over. I’ll grab a board from upstairs, and if we can lift the trunk onto it, we can pull it out of here.”
“Won’t it ruin the bottom?”
“It might. I guess you need to decide how badly you want to know what’s inside this thing.”
Several minutes and a great deal of huffing and puffing later, the trunk arrived in the bedroom, intact, except for its scraped bottom and sides. Luke took the lock in his hand and inspected it. “I should be able to get this off with some bolt cutters.”
He left the room, returning a minute later.
“You just carry those around with you?” Addison asked.
Luke grinned. “I never know when they’ll come in handy.” He placed the end of the cutters near the lock and lifted up on the handles. When he squeezed back down, the lock broke off like it was made of nothing more than soft, pliable dough. “Well, it’s your house and your trunk. Do you want to do the honors?”
“I don’t know why, but I’m nervous.”
“Would you like me to do it?”
Addison nodded.
Luke lifted the center latch and they peered inside.
“Photographs?”
“Loads of them from the looks of it,” Luke said.
“But pictures aren’t heavy.”
Luke smacked the side of the trunk. “It’s this old thing that carried all the weight—not what was inside of it. It’s more solid than the others.”
Addison put her hands in, scattering the photos around. “Wait, I feel something else.” She dug her hand in deeper, yanking the object upward until it was freed. “It looks like a wedding album.”
The white book had a padded, pebbly feel to it, like textured vinyl. On the front cover were the words, “Memories of Our Wedding,” in shiny, foil letters. Addison opened it. On the first page was a large photograph.
“Do you know who they are?” Luke asked.
“This woman is my grandmother,” Addison said, pointing at the photo. “So the man standing next to her must be my grandfather.”
“You’ve never seen him before?”
“I never knew him, or her, really.” She stared at the picture, mentally disagreeing with her neighbor’s assertion that she looked like her grandmother. Although striking, Addison saw much more of her own features in her grandfather. They shared the same bone structure, their eyes wide and narrow like a cat, his deep-set dimples mirroring her own.
“I don’t mean to pry, but why didn’t you know them? Did they die when you were very young?”
Addison told Luke about the one and only time she’d seen her grandmother and about finding out she had passed away years later.
“And your grandfather? What about him?” Luke asked.
“My mother said he left when she was a girl. Apparently she woke up one morning and he was gone. She never saw him again.”
“Makes you wonder what happened—why your grandmother left this place, why your grandfather left home.”
Addison picked a photo out of the box. “Maybe these pictures will give me some answers, or at least some indication as to who they were.”
Luke patted her knee, then stood up. “Well, there’s a lot of work to be done, so I’ll leave you to it.”
For the next hour Addison sifted through the photos, creating piles on the floor next to her according to the dates penned on the back of the photographs. Some of the photos dated back to the 1920s and ‘30s, leading Addison to assume the couple in those photographs was her great-grandparents. But the bulk of the photos were of her grandparents, and her mother as a baby. The pictures depicted a vibrant, happy couple—not a relationship that ended as abruptly as it seemed. They appeared content, often seated arm in arm, their faces relaxed and calm. What happened to you two?
Another hour passed before Addison reached what she thought was the last layer of photos. She scooped them up, bending over the top of the chest to make certain there weren’t any she had missed. But instead of a rusty bottom—what she expected to see—she saw a long, white box. She set the photos to the side, gently removing the box from its resting place. She lifted the lid. Folded in half was a vintage party dress. It was tan and had a sheer white overlay. Hibiscus flowers adorned the front, but even more than that, scattered all over the dress were splotches of reddish-brown stains. She leaned in, trying to make sense of the marks on the dress. What were they? How did they get there? And why had someone stored the dress with such obvious stains? She brushed the tips of her fingers over one of the stains, and the room went black.