Mary
Cunningham
The
Missing Locket
Book
One
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Echelon Press
www.echelonpress.com
Copyright © 2005 by
Mary Cunningham
ISBN: 1-59080-442-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005933968
All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any m
First Echelon Press
paperback printing: December 2005
First Echelon Press
electronic production: December 2005
10 9 8
7 6 5
4 3 2 1
Cover Art ©
Nathalie Moore
2005 Ari
Editor: Elizabeth
Baird
Printed in
To my granddaughter,
Brittany.
Special thanks to my husband, Ken, for his encouragement and support.
To my best friend, Diana, for always being there. Thanks to Diana and Melinda, my first editors, and to Pat and Ruben for all your help and support.
Thanks to Echelon Press and Karen Syed for seeing something special in Cynthia's Attic. It was a pleasure working with Betsy and Kat who actually made editing fun!
Special thanks to my dad, who gave me compassion and creativity. And last, but not least, to my childhood friend, Cynthia, and my "guardian angel," Gail.
Prologue
Cynthia had an
attic. Not just an ordinary attic. Cynthia's attic was magic.
Cynthia
and I came into the world just three months apart. We grew up on the same quiet, sycamore-lined
street, our friendship as close as our houses.
Fifty years earlier, our grandmothers were best friends. However, we didn't realize the extent of
their friendship until after our experience in Cynthia's attic. This is the story of one of our great
adventures...the way I remember it.
Chapter
One
1914
Her long, slender fingers lay
motionless on the keys of the mahogany grand piano as she thought about her
family…and of a precious possession.
"Will it ever be found?" she whispered aloud, her eyes
becoming transfixed on the flickering of the brass candelabra. She had been certain that by now the secret
would have been unlocked, but time was running out. There is still a chance, if only
the two young girls find the way to connect to the past...her past.
1964
"Hey, Cynthia," I yelled as I rounded the
corner of her house, squinting in the morning sun as it glared off the white
clapboards. Shoving a huge wad of
Bazooka bubble gum to the opposite side of my mouth, I managed to continue,
"Hurry up! You're the only one with
a catcher's mitt."
"Oh,
Gus," Cynthia whined, fussing with her pink chenille robe as she hung
halfway out the window, "do I have to play? You know I'm no good at softball." Craftily changing the subject, she added,
"I just got that new Beatles record today. C'mon up and listen to it."
That sure sounded tempting…but no, I
stood my ground. "You promised,
Cynthia," I demanded, kicking a big clump of dirt off the sidewalk and
back into the flowerbed. "Tell ya
what, just play for a little while and then I'll listen to your stupid
record."
"Oh,
all right." She sighed,
disappearing behind the ruffled purple curtain.
Cynthia and
I were as different as bubble gum and broccoli (except for our ability to get
in trouble without much effort). I was a
freckle-faced tomboy–skinny and sort of shy, but with enough athletic ability
to make most of the clumsy boys my age envious.
And on any given day, my copper-red hair looked
like I'd spent the entire night twirling around on top of my head.
Cynthia looked like a cherub–pretty and
petite, with beautiful blonde curls and a ponytail that was
always neatly tied with a shiny satin ribbon. Coordination was not her middle name (board
games and jigsaw puzzles were about as physical as she liked to get), but she
was always willing, with some coaxing from me, to try just about anything. Even though we'd never be
mistaken for twins, we were as close as if we were sisters, and argued
like it from time to time.
"Could
you walk any slower?" I bellowed when Cynthia
finally came ambling across the field chewing on her mitt.
"I'm
coming! I'm coming, Augusta Lee,"
she answered, her voice dripping in sarcasm.
"Oh,
there's that name," I mumbled under my breath. "She knows I hate it."
I was christened Augusta Lee after my grandfather, Augustus
Leopold. But no
one dared call me that except my mother, and then only when she was very, very
angry, as in "Augusta Lee! You
come in here and pick these dirty clothes up off the floor!" Cynthia, and anyone else who didn't want a
kick in the shins, just called me Gus.
By the time
Cynthia moseyed onto the field, the neighborhood kids had already chosen
sides. On a good day there were ten of
us–five on each team–gathered in the vacant lot where we'd play from early
morning until well into the long summer nights.
I stood at home plate,
bat on shoulder, impatiently awaiting the pitch as Cynthia meticulously brushed
clean a spot on the ground before squatting into the catcher's position. Finally, the game began.
Every now
and then one of us would hit one "out of the park," which meant
losing another softball in old Mr. Martin's yard. "If I'd wanted kids in my yard I
would've had some of my own," he'd yell whenever we'd try to retrieve an
errant line drive. Even when he was
inside, Daisy, his "lovable" Doberman Pinscher
would stand guard. I should add that, to
his credit, he'd usually return the balls at the end of the summer, but then
the whole process would start over again the next year.
It wasn't
an issue this time, because I struck out.
"Nice swing, Gus." Cynthia smirked, flipping the ball back to
the pitcher. I just glared and snatched
my glove up off the ground. Fortunately
for Cynthia, that day we didn't have extra players to cover the outfield, so it
was my turn to stop the occasional fly ball from bouncing into the street, or
worse yet, into Daisy's slobbering mouth.
The score was tied in the fourth inning when the pitcher's mother
abruptly ended the game.
"Becky," she called out her back door. "You promised to baby-sit your little
sister, remember?" This created a
problem since Becky had the only decent bat.
However, it wasn't too disappointing since, in spite of what I'd said
earlier, I really was anxious to hear the new Beatles record. Not only that, Cynthia's house was special.
I lived in
a house that only thirty years earlier had been the small barn behind old Mrs. Beanblossom's mansion on the corner. The rooms were barely large enough for
furniture, let alone creating mysteries or uncovering secret hiding
places. Cynthia, on the other hand,
lived in one of those great three-story "exploring houses" that had
been in the family for generations. If
you came in through the front door (which no one ever did except for Reverend
Richert and snooty Mrs. Fromley, the president of the Ladies Society League),
you'd be standing in the foyer. Turning
to the left, you could look through French doors into the music room that for
some ridiculous reason was off limits to Cynthia and me. The room was brimming with bookcases, all
kinds of sheet music from the past forty years or so, and any kind of musical
instrument you could possibly think of, most of which came from my family's
music store.
The focus of the room was an antique
mahogany grand piano that was even older than Cynthia's grandmother, Mama
Clara. The only child allowed to
actually touch this treasured instrument was Cynthia's older sister, Danielle,
who had taken piano lessons for almost ten years and who would play for
hours. As we ran through the house we
could hear the music of Chopin drifting through the closed doors.
The
kitchen, just across the hallway from the den, was small and cozy, and equipped
with the most modern appliances. Off to
one side in the breakfast nook was a brand new aqua and chrome dinette set
where I'd sometimes join Cynthia and her brother and sister for
breakfast before school. But what I most looked forward to were the days when I'd
walk into the house smelling buttery shortcake baking in the oven, and knowing
that as soon as it was done, fresh-picked strawberries and real whipped cream
would be piled on top.
On our way
up to Cynthia's bedroom that day, she turned and whispered, "I've got an
idea, Gus. Let's get my record player
and take it to the den. We can turn it
up full blast and see how long it takes for my sister to start screaming!"
"Yeah!" I grinned, taking the stairs two at a
time. Danielle was four years older, and
had about as much use for us as the
Hurriedly grabbing the record player, we
tiptoed back down the stairs, past the music room on our way to the den, being
careful not to tip off Danielle. Cynthia
headed left into the den, but I turned right, unable to resist the temptation
to stick my head in the kitchen and sniff.
To my disappointment there were no heavenly aromas coming from the oven.
"C'mon Gus," she ordered,
kneeling on the blue plush carpet in the den as she placed the record onto the
turntable. "We don't have all
day."
I
wasn't sure why we didn't have all day.
I didn't have to be home until supper.
Oh well, why argue? Cynthia was
boss at her house.
The paneled den on the sunny southeast
corner of the house, furnished with a large leather sofa and soft upholstered
chairs, always felt warm and comfortable.
More than once, I'd curled up in one of those chairs and fallen fast
asleep. But not
today, because the doors flew open right on cue. "What do you two think you're doing?" Danielle shrieked as she stormed into the room.
Well,
that didn't take long–about five seconds, give or take
a second or two.
"Take that irritating music
upstairs, and don't come down until I'm through practicing," she yelled,
stomping back down the hallway. "I
have a recital in three weeks, you know!"
It had only taken one look at her red,
angry face to tell us this was no time to argue. We quickly grabbed the records and the record
player and ran back upstairs.
"Wow! Did you see her face?"
I gasped as soon as we were in the safety of Cynthia's room with the
door securely shut.
"Yeah,"
giggled Cynthia. "My day just isn't
complete until I've made her screaming mad at least once."
"I
don't know about you," I said, catching my breath, "but in my opinion
we should stay out of her way for awhile."
"You're
probably right," Cynthia agreed, as we plopped down on her fluffy
purple-flowered spread that matched the colors of the iris bed in the side
yard.
"So…while
we're waiting for Danielle to cool down," she continued, "let's
figure out what we're going to do this summer.
I do not want to be bored out of my skull for the next three
months."
The year we
both turned twelve had started out with one catastrophe after another. My February birthday party was
snowed out by the most ferocious blizzard in almost a hundred years, and
the day before her birthday on the first of May, Cynthia got the worst case of
chicken pox Dr. Dillard had ever seen.
As June approached, however, everything seemed to have settled
down. She had a point…it looked like it
was going to be just another uneventful summer.
"Well,"
I stated, "I say we do something that will keep us out of the house. I refuse to spend another vacation being
yelled at by your sister and pestered by your stupid brother."
"So,
what do you want to do?" she asked.
"Well…we could get the gang together
and have a softball tournament," I suggested hopefully.
"No! My leg's still sore from that foul ball you
hit today, not to mention the fact that I broke a nail," she snapped,
waving her index finger in front of my face and stopping it dead center just
inches from the end of my nose.
"Wait,
I've got it," she exclaimed.
My eyes
uncrossed just in time to see her jump exuberantly off the bed. "Let's investigate the attic! I heard my mother complaining to Dad about
how much junk was up there and that they simply had to clean it out next
week, so I think we should look around up there before they get rid of all the
good stuff."
Chapter
Two
We'd explored almost every inch of
her house, but amazingly the attic was the one place we'd never ventured. After a short discussion and some nervous
giggling, Cynthia and I walked across the hallway and stood before the attic
door.
Cynthia
slowly twisted the knob and the door creaked open, sending a ghostly whoosh
of cold air down the stairway.
"Uh…maybe
this isn't such a great idea," I whispered, peering up into the
unknown. I felt as if someone had just
slid an icicle down the back of my shirt.
"Oh,
Gus! You big coward! Nothing's going to get you. I've been up there hundreds of times. Well, at least three times…maybe…with my
dad."
"Well
then, why aren't your feet moving?" I sneered,
noticing that Cynthia wasn't getting any closer to the first step leading to
the attic. But
if we were going to find out what exciting and mysterious treasures were up
there, one of us had to lead the way.
"C'mon," I sighed.
With
Cynthia close on my heels, I silently tiptoed up the wooden stairs, being
careful not to disturb anyone or anything that might be waiting to jump
out at us from above. A strange feeling
came over me as soon as we reached the top, almost as if we'd entered a
different world.
"Why's
it so warm up here?" I complained, peeling off my
favorite Hoosier sweatshirt and tying it around my waist. It was almost June, but that particular
afternoon had been cool and damp. Warmth
and comfort, however, replaced the coldness we'd felt when we first opened the
door. A sunbeam streaming through the window
on the opposite side of the attic bounced off the uneven floor, creating a
blinding shaft of light in the middle of the room that seemed to shoot straight
through the roof.
"It
may be warm," acknowledged Cynthia, "but this place gives me the
shivers."
"Yeah,
me too." I laughed, nervously
glancing around. With all the cobwebs
hanging from the ceiling, it didn't take much to envision being just one
frightful step away from walking into the clutches of a huge Black Widow
spider.
Since my
imagination was already working overtime, I added much too loudly,
"Wouldn't this be a great place for our next Halloween party? No decorating needed!"
Cynthia's look said that real
spiders and cobwebs had to be about the worst idea for party decorations, but
two rusty tricycles that'd been shoved into one corner soon distracted
her. "I haven't seen this thing in
years," she answered.
"Bet I
can beat you across the attic," I challenged.
"Oh, yeah?" she answered. "Bet you can't!"
After hurriedly brushing off some of the
dirt and cobwebs, we jumped on the tiny tricycles and took off across the
floor. Knees sticking up under our
chins, dodging boxes and pieces of old furniture, we raced in a cloud of dust
to an imaginary finish line.
"You're not going to mention this to
anyone, are you?" I asked, carefully swinging my
long, skinny legs over the handlebars.
"Don't be silly!" Cynthia laughed. "Why would I want anyone to know we've
been racing around on these kiddie toys?"
"Speaking of kiddie toys," I
snickered, pointing to the far end of the attic, "is that Little Cynthia's
baby carriage?"
Cynthia gave me the look and
huffed, "I'd be careful if I were you, Gus. My mom has pictures of the
two of us sitting in that carriage, and believe me, you do not
want me passing them around at school next fall."
Opening my mouth to say something really smart, I decided this might be one time to keep it
shut. I had this image of sitting in the
carriage with my silly-looking baby face, the little tufts of red hair adorning
the top of my head, as I mugged an idiotic, toothless grin for the camera.
While I casually turned to continue
searching the attic, Cynthia's tone softened as she looked at the carriage and
laughed, "Yeah, Mother said we used to sit in there and 'talk' for hours."
"We still do," I added
cheerfully, "but I think we've outgrown the carriage by a few years."
After opening boxes and doing some basic
snooping around, we were just about to give up finding anything exciting when
Cynthia said quietly, "Look at that, Gus."
Behind a
dense curtain of cobwebs...behind an antique table and lamp...behind a stack of
faded suitcases...appeared the top of a huge, dust-covered old trunk. After carefully moving a hand-blown glass
lamp without breaking it, and dragging the antique table to one side, we pushed
the suitcases away and there it was–the biggest trunk I'd ever seen! Bigger than my grandma's old steamer trunk.
"You
don't suppose it's really a coffin with a body in it, do you?"
I whispered, wide-eyed.
"Are you nuts?" She laughed.
"That's crazy, even for you, Gus.
Besides, don't you think a dead body would smell in this heat?"
"Yeah,"
I laughed sheepishly. "Guess I just
got caught up in the moment…you know, with the spiders and cobwebs and
all."
"Well…do
you w
"Yeah…okay,"
I said, determined to run like heck if a zombie jumped out!
Cynthia and
I knelt down in front of the trunk and tried to lift the lid.
"Man! This is heavy," I groaned, struggling to
lift one side while Cynthia pulled with all her might on the other. Finally the rusty hinges gave way and the lid
slowly creaked open.
Peeking
inside, we saw that it was filled with all kinds of
old clothes, hats, and…
"Eeeeeekkk!"
I leaped to my feet. "It's alive!"
I was
halfway down the stairs when I heard, "You mean this old fur?" Cynthia snickered, dangling it in the
air. "I don't think it's been alive
for several years, Gus."
Feeling silly, I walked slowly up the
steps and across the attic floor to the trunk, only to have Cynthia shove the
old thing right in my face. "Here,
Gus! Be careful! It might bite and give you rabies!"
"Ah...choo! Ah…ah…choo!"
I sneezed over and over and over from the dust
flying off the fur.
"Stop
it, Gus," Cynthia said disgustedly.
"You're blowing boogers all over everything!"
"Well, excu-u-u-use
me, but this stuff smells moldy! I'll
bet no one's been in this trunk for a hundred years!" As my sneezing fit started winding down, I
noticed Cynthia peering into the trunk at a dress that was
neatly folded on top. She pulled
out a faded ballerina costume and shook dust everywhere.
Oh,
oh, here I go again! "Ah…ah…ah…CHOO!"
Fortunately, she was too busy admiring the dress to yell at me
again. After dabbing tears from the
corners of my eyes with the tail of my rumpled shirt, I noticed the costume was
a light pink with tarnished gold braiding around the neck. Next, Cynthia pulled out a pair of ballet
shoes that appeared to have tiny pieces of dull glass glued on them. "This outfit is too big to be
mine," she said, holding up the dress, "and I'm sure it doesn't
belong to Danielle because no one would dare drag her away from her precious
piano long enough to take dancing lessons."
"Well,
one thing's sure," I said, "even as dirty as this dress is, it still
looks like nothing a mere mortal would wear, but more like something belonging
to a fairy princess."
I guess the
image of looking like a princess was far too much for Cynthia to resist,
because she quickly put on the costume and slipped into the ballet shoes.
"Where's
a mirror when you need one?" she said, stomping her foot in frustration.
I didn't
need a mirror to see how silly she looked in the dress. It was hanging nearly to the floor,
especially since Cynthia was a couple of inches shorter than most girls our
age. But in
spite of that–like magic–she began dancing! Not like the Cynthia I'd seen stumble more
than once during the ballet lessons our mothers had insisted we take for over
three years, and not the Cynthia who'd fallen awkwardly off the stage during
our last recital. This Cynthia
danced across the floor, leaping high into the air with the grace of a prima
ballerina.
"Wow," I said with a little
envy in my voice, "I've never seen you dance like that at our ballet
lessons!"
"Well, you weren't the most elegant
dancer in class either," she said, still twirling around the room.
She had me
there, but I still couldn't believe she managed to stay on her feet.
The envy and the questions soon
disappeared when she finally stopped leaping about the room, took off the
dress, and tripped while slipping out of the ballet shoes. We both laughed, probably more from relief,
because everything seemed to be back to normal with Cynthia's return to her old
clumsy self.
"Well, that was kinda weird," I
said quietly, as we made our way back down the stairs. We laughed, but I noticed we were both
strangely quiet and didn't mention Cynthia's newfound "talent" for
the rest of the day. Instead, we just
went back to playing the games that twelve-year-old girls usually play, and
didn't talk about the attic for the rest of the week.
I don't
know what made us decide to go back up to the attic. Maybe curiosity, maybe boredom–probably a
little of both. When we climbed the
stairs and stepped into the attic the second time, things seemed a little
different. For instance, looking down at
the floor I noticed the dusty footprints we'd made previously had
disappeared. It was almost as if we
hadn't been there at all because the tricycles were once again back where we
found them, covered with cobwebs, just like before. The air, which had been so warm and inviting,
was now very cold and still, even though summer had finally arrived and the day
was hot and muggy. I started getting the
creepy feeling that we should turn around and go right back down the stairs,
but after the "fur incident," I didn't want to act scared. How different that day, and our lives, might
have been if I'd only known how scared Cynthia was, because then we would've missed
out on the greatest adventure of our lives.