Read Online Shifting Shadows by Sally Berneathy - Free Book Online
Authors: Sally Berneathy
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rusted. Nevertheless, it still led to the backyard.
She moved to the window and looked out, through the gray, misty morning onto a scene of large trees just beginning to bud. A stump rested where her elm tree with the swing had stood. She turned back inside, feeling as though she’d just lost an old friend.
Across the room she saw the door that led to the narrow back stairs. It looked familiar and welcoming. She crossed to it, opened it and gazed up. The stairs were as dark, forbidding and perversely inviting as ever.
A warm feeling washed over her, and she smiled as she thought of the many times she ’d climbed those stairs to the attic, to what she’d always considered her private room. After she’d discovered her own baby furniture stored up there, she’d insisted it was her dolls’ room and had gone there to play in spite of the heat in summer and the cold in winter. Then she’d continued to go up there as a teenager to write in her journal. Even after she’d married, she’d left the journal there, sneaking up on her visits home to write in secret.
She gripped the door handle tightly, excitement surging through her. The journal! Would it be where she ’d hidden it?
She stepped back, clenchi ng her fists, fighting the insanity of that thought. Of course it wouldn’t be there. The journal didn’t exist. Elizabeth Dupard didn’t exist. Perhaps she’d read a book, a story from a hundred years ago, and the head injury had caused confusion between fiction and reality.
But— she allowed some of the excitement to return—she had incorporated a real person, Rachel Waller, into her story. If she had created a memory of hiding something in the attic, maybe it was because Analise had hidden something in the attic, the something that had been pulling her upstairs last night. She started up but hesitated on the second floor.
Papers. That’s what Analise had hidden. But not in the attic, in the third bedroom. She almost laughed aloud. She remembered!
She dashed down the hall and yanked open the door then stepped back, her heart sinking. The room bore no resemblance to the bedroom she remembered. It housed a baffling array of items including a big wooden desk, metal cabinets, tables, a small bookcase and strange machines. Stacks of papers covered everything. She almost backed away, confused and intimidated, but instead she forced herself to enter, to sit in the chair and pick up a pile of the papers. This was a link to Analise...her office, she realized. All these things were familiar to her, hidden somewhere in the depths of her memory.
Most of the documents seemed to deal with the antique shop she ’d seen in the picture on her dresser, the antique shop she apparently owned. Many were receipts for repairs she’d had done to the house. Then she found an envelope addressed to Analise Parrish, postmarked Tulsa, Oklahoma, from Carl and Elaine Parrish. Hesitating, feeling as if she were invading someone else’s privacy, she pulled the letter from the open envelope.
“ Dear Analise,” it began. She flipped to the bottom of the second page. “Love, Mom and Dad.”
Analise ’s parents were both still alive though they lived far away in another state.
Tears filled her eyes as she read the breezy, newsy letter, as the picture of the smiling, blond woman who ’d written it took shape in her mind. Analise’s mother—her mother—was very different from Mama. She was younger, more independent, more like a friend than a mother. But Analise adored her. She knew that, and for the first time, she found Analise inside herself—a small part of Analise, but the rest must be there somewhere.
H appiness mingled with sorrow as she accepted this as the final proof that Elizabeth had never existed, Mama and Papa had never existed.
She read Analise’s letter again, searching for more pieces of her life, but none came. Finally she put it aside, sorted through more items, picked up a large brown envelope and pulled a
She moved to the window and looked out, through the gray, misty morning onto a scene of large trees just beginning to bud. A stump rested where her elm tree with the swing had stood. She turned back inside, feeling as though she’d just lost an old friend.
Across the room she saw the door that led to the narrow back stairs. It looked familiar and welcoming. She crossed to it, opened it and gazed up. The stairs were as dark, forbidding and perversely inviting as ever.
A warm feeling washed over her, and she smiled as she thought of the many times she ’d climbed those stairs to the attic, to what she’d always considered her private room. After she’d discovered her own baby furniture stored up there, she’d insisted it was her dolls’ room and had gone there to play in spite of the heat in summer and the cold in winter. Then she’d continued to go up there as a teenager to write in her journal. Even after she’d married, she’d left the journal there, sneaking up on her visits home to write in secret.
She gripped the door handle tightly, excitement surging through her. The journal! Would it be where she ’d hidden it?
She stepped back, clenchi ng her fists, fighting the insanity of that thought. Of course it wouldn’t be there. The journal didn’t exist. Elizabeth Dupard didn’t exist. Perhaps she’d read a book, a story from a hundred years ago, and the head injury had caused confusion between fiction and reality.
But— she allowed some of the excitement to return—she had incorporated a real person, Rachel Waller, into her story. If she had created a memory of hiding something in the attic, maybe it was because Analise had hidden something in the attic, the something that had been pulling her upstairs last night. She started up but hesitated on the second floor.
Papers. That’s what Analise had hidden. But not in the attic, in the third bedroom. She almost laughed aloud. She remembered!
She dashed down the hall and yanked open the door then stepped back, her heart sinking. The room bore no resemblance to the bedroom she remembered. It housed a baffling array of items including a big wooden desk, metal cabinets, tables, a small bookcase and strange machines. Stacks of papers covered everything. She almost backed away, confused and intimidated, but instead she forced herself to enter, to sit in the chair and pick up a pile of the papers. This was a link to Analise...her office, she realized. All these things were familiar to her, hidden somewhere in the depths of her memory.
Most of the documents seemed to deal with the antique shop she ’d seen in the picture on her dresser, the antique shop she apparently owned. Many were receipts for repairs she’d had done to the house. Then she found an envelope addressed to Analise Parrish, postmarked Tulsa, Oklahoma, from Carl and Elaine Parrish. Hesitating, feeling as if she were invading someone else’s privacy, she pulled the letter from the open envelope.
“ Dear Analise,” it began. She flipped to the bottom of the second page. “Love, Mom and Dad.”
Analise ’s parents were both still alive though they lived far away in another state.
Tears filled her eyes as she read the breezy, newsy letter, as the picture of the smiling, blond woman who ’d written it took shape in her mind. Analise’s mother—her mother—was very different from Mama. She was younger, more independent, more like a friend than a mother. But Analise adored her. She knew that, and for the first time, she found Analise inside herself—a small part of Analise, but the rest must be there somewhere.
H appiness mingled with sorrow as she accepted this as the final proof that Elizabeth had never existed, Mama and Papa had never existed.
She read Analise’s letter again, searching for more pieces of her life, but none came. Finally she put it aside, sorted through more items, picked up a large brown envelope and pulled a
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