“She can’t tell up from down since Sophia left,” he told them. He opened the box which sagged on one side. A layer of dust coated the top.
Hattie drank her lemonade and gazed around the kitchen. Jude stood and moved next to Grimmel peering into the box.
“All the newspaper clippings are in here, and a few family keepsakes.” He held up a pair of worn baby shoes that were likely once white. “These were Tim’s, then mine, and lastly Sophia’s. We were a family of hand-me-downs.”
“Aren’t they precious?” Shirley asked, holding her wooden spoon far away so as not to drip red sauce near the box.
Jude handed them to Hattie who stared at them as if they might come to life.
“She wore these,” Hattie murmured.
“This too,” Grimmel said, pulling out a tarnished barrette adorned with a little gold butterfly. “Only when our mama made her. I’m not even sure why I saved it. Sophia would laugh at me. She could be a sentimental little fool, but she would have thrown this away just to ensure it never ended up in her hair again.”
Hattie took the barrette gingerly and smoothed her fingers over the clip. She held it to the light streaming through the window and tilted it back and forth.
“I tucked most of the clippings in this old bible to preserve them. Guess I was trying to put Sophia’s fate in God’s hands. Not sure he was listening though. When they found her all those years later, I felt like somebody had stabbed me in the guts. Same time, I was so happy I knew where she was and that she was okay. I went up to that asylum five or six times and they never let me see her, not once!” His voice grew louder as he remembered, and Shirley put a hand on his shoulder.
“It was terrible, truly,” she agreed. “Pushed poor Tim right over the edge.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to Tim?” Jude said, sitting down and opening the bible, a sheaf of newspaper pages tucked inside.
Grimmel frowned, glancing at Hattie as if he reluctant to share bad news in front of her.
“It’s okay,” she told him softly. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”
Jude looked at her surprised. It was unlike Hattie to even notice that someone was tiptoeing around her, let alone acknowledge it. It wasn’t the first time in the previous few days that Jude had noticed a change in Hattie. She hadn’t pinpointed it yet, but something had transformed in her little sister’s demeanor, a new awareness.
“He got into the drink. Not long after Sophia left,” Grimmel said. “It was real hard for our family after Rosemary’s murder. People talked, Mama couldn’t sell our vegetables in town and Tim had to drive her two counties away to a different market. He’d been runnin’ the tractor on our farm and on Chapman’s farm next door - they let him go. He’d been seein’ a girl in town who broke things off lickity split.”
Shirley took Grimmel’s hand and held it tight.
“Once the drink got hold of him, he didn’t care no more. About five years after Sophia left, he moved up north. Then he started shiftin around a lot. He’d come back and crash with Mama for a month and then off he’d go again. He wasn’t a mean drunk. In fact, he was real nice, cried a lot. Thirty years to the day after Rosemary’s murder he put a gun in his mouth.”
Jude cringed, and Hattie let out a little gasp.
“I am so sorry,” Jude whispered.
Grimmel nodded, kissing his wife’s hand, and gently pushing her back towards the stove.
“I’m okay, honey. You can finish up. I don’t want to take responsibility if your heavenly pasta sauce gets burned.”
Shirley smiled and kissed his cheek.
“Did he have black hair?” Hattie asked, cocking her head at Grimmel. “And a funny little cowlick that sticks up no matter how often he spits and presses it down?”
Grimmel stared at her, blinking several times.
“And a scar in the center of his left eyebrow?” Hattie touched her own eyebrow with her fingertips.
“I stepped on a rake when I was six and it clocked him right in the face. That cut bled for two days, I swear,” Grimmel whispered, watching Hattie not with fear, but a curious awe.
Shirley too had turned from the stove to gaze at Jude’s little sister.
“I see him sometimes,” Hattie told them. “He’s never spoken to me, though.”
Jude glanced between Grimmel and Hattie - again wondering what excuses or apologies she should make, but Grimmel did not look skeptical.
“Your mama had that gift, Hattie. My daddy always believed her. When I was a boy, her stories scared me, so I listened to Tim and my ma who called it nonsense. Only later we all realized it was true, after Rosemary, it’s hard to question somethin’ like that.”
“I think I’ve always known Mama was alive because I’ve never seen her, not even a hint of her. She would have come to me, I begged for her a thousand times and she would have come,” Hattie said.
Jude in an uncharacteristic show of affection scooted her chair closer to Hattie and wrapped her in a hug.
“Thanks, Jude,” Hattie said, nuzzling her face into Jude’s shoulder. “You smell like cinnamon.”
“It’s my gum,” Jude told her.
“I wanted another daughter,” Shirley told them wistfully. “Sisters. I have three.”
Grimmel hugged his wife, taking her spoon and trying to lick it. She snatched it away.
“We have guests, no licking the spoon.”
He grinned and shook his head.
“Sophia kept us plenty busy,” he told them. “But we did hope for one more. Not God’s plan for us, but that’s okay.”
“Of course, now that you girls are here…” Shirley said, her back to them as she stirred the pot of sauce.
“They’re both over eighteen, Shirley. We can’t adopt them,” Grimmel told her, rolling his eyes at the girls who both laughed.
“Not legally, but we’d love to visit, often,” Jude said and oddly she meant it. Never one to get too close - she felt comfortable with Grimmel and Shirley in a way she had never experienced at Gram Ruth’s. It was so much like her own childhood she wanted to curl up on their couch and never leave. She saw a similar look of ease on Hattie’s face.
“What happened to the Sheriff who worked Rosemary’s murder? Is he still in town?” Jude asked, popping the bubble of nostalgia that seemed to form in the room. “Hal Jones?”
Grimmel frowned. “Sceezy old bastard. He never even considered another killer. Case closed, just like that.” Grimmel clapped his hands together startling all three of them.
“Honey,” Shirley told him, “let’s not get your blood pressure on the move.”
He nodded and let out a big breath.
“Doc says I need to stop gettin’ stressed. Slaps me with a blood pressure cuff every time I go in there and it’s always bad news. Our daddy died of a heart attack. Your mama ever tell you girls that?”
Jude shook her head.
“She didn’t talk much about her family. A few times she told us stories, but always in this abstract way. She had brothers, but never offered your names,” Jude explained.
“And did you find that strange?” Shirley asked, setting place mats on the table.
“I can help,” Hattie offered, taking a stack of plates Shirley had put on the counter and dispersing one to each mat.
“Yeah,” Jude admitted. “I kept a notebook when I was younger and wrote all kinds of quirky things like that in it. I liked to believe I was a detective.”
“Makes sense you’d become a journalist then,” Grimmel said, smiling.
“Oh,” Jude paused realizing she had not told them the truth. “Technically I’m not a journalist, not the writing kind anyway. I’m a photo journalist and a photographer. I work with the newspaper, but only freelance. I told the journalist story to explain why I was looking into Rosemary’s murder.”