The House of Hidden Things

II: Visiting Family

"Welcome to Porthcrawl, Dr. Whitfield." His voice held a nervous, truculent edge. He pulled open the door and led me inside.

The room was light and warm, the stained glass throwing bright patterns onto the carpeted floor. Before me, the greatest of the windows curled along the wall to the sunroom, vines carved around dark wood in thick swatches of green.

I take a small step forward, passed a single made bed and kitchenette. A few sun worn picture frames rest around the room between potted plants. Some of me, some of my mother. Harder to make out photographs are ones of my grandparents together. Sometimes when I catch my self looking at old pictures of my family I see my grandmothers face, not my own, especially in pictures of her as a young adult. I had never looked much like my mother.

In the other room, I could hear the shuffle of feet, the whisper of voices coming from the other half-open doors. The clock on the mantel ticked.

I set my bag down on the circular table at the rooms centre, the glass inlaid with geometric shapes. I picked up one of the small frames, touching my fingers to the smooth glass.

Dr. Burke had paused in the hall by the door, hovering. I glanced at him before setting the frame down, moving through the room trying not to touch anything else, listening to the door shut.

"Hello? Grandma?" I hear nothing. I could smell lavender and first hints of rain coming from an open window somewhere out of sight and just a touch of baking dough. It was all so familiar it made my heart ache. It came with a realization of just how many years had gone by, what those years felt like as opposed to the blank number I had given the physician, how much time those years actually took up.

"Charlotte, is that you?" A small voice inquires from the sunroom. I barley recognize the soft sound of her voice. My grandmother steps around the glass table, a rosy tint to her cheeks. She wore her grey hair long with the front pieces pulled back. Deep wrinkles set at her mouth and eyes; features we used to share. "Look how grown you are."

"I'm sorry I'm late," the words tumbled softly out of my mouth before I knew it and I was so glad because saying anything else felt wrong. I could feel the guilt and the truth of those words hanging in the air a movement too long before my grandmother took hold of my hand in her cold, small ones and squeezed gently.

"I'll be having none of that. You're here now." She said, sternly. Still smiling. "Come sit with me."

The bright light of the balcony was warm, welcoming, reflecting back from a silver tray, caught in the creamy beiges of potted plants. The windows from up close were almost perfectly curved and under it was four perfectly made sun chairs, facing a silver tray platted with cookies.

I stand idly in the middle of the sunroom, waiting for my grandmother to settle in her seat, a small tremor in her knees and arms. A beige blanket is dragged over her knees and settled there. Even if the sunroom let in most of the warmth, Agatha's hands had been cold enough that I wanted to grab the blanket folded neatly on the bad and set it over her shoulders to make sure she was warm.

Sixteen years. I hadn't come back in sixteen years and now the women who used to read me bedtime stories and chase me around the garden was too old to settle into a chair without needing help.

"I kept all your pictures, the ones from the papers, you know? My favourites are from your graduation. You have the same smile your grandfather did when he finished school." She says, so softly clutching at her fingers. "That expression never left after getting his Ph.D. It only grew as time went on. You look just like him in those photographs. "
She doesn't show me any but I remember the one she included in one of her letters. It had fallen from the folded envelope and I hadn't grabbed it in time for my cat to bat at it.

"I get that a lot," I confess to her, watching her eyes dance against rosy cheeks. The comparison was something I was never proud of hearing other say to me. Another thing left to me from my family.

"Your mother must be so proud of you," Agatha continues. "Is she coming was well? It would make me so happy to have you over for dinner. I know your grandfather would be delighted if you came to visit."

She said it so lightly that I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. I watched her smile at me, feeling very small and exposed, and the ache in my chest was now a real pain. Deep and sharp.

"Grandma," I say, stopping to swallow between words, "Mom's not coming to visit."

Her rosy cheeks loose a bit of light as she frowns, pulling her hands into her lap. She looks towards the sunroom arches as if her daughter would be standing there, placing her keys on the table, whistling the piano tune to used to hum around the house. As if she'd been running an errand and turned up a little later then she said she would.

I never got to ask her what the name of the tune was before she died. I never got to ask my grandfather any of the questions I had for him before he died, long before my mother.
I took a deep breath, waited a moment and asked "Can I try a cookie?"

"Of course, dear." I made them for you." A shaky hand comes loose from the tight grip on her lap and she pushes the small silver tray across the table, setting the reflections on the metal dancing around the room. "I put extra chocolate in them, the way you like so you can have them with tea. I have a box on the counter for you. I don't want to you to not be eating, alone in that house."

"I'm not alone." I tell her, picking a cookie from the top of the tray. "I brought Medora with me to fill the empty spaces." The old greying ginger cat had been a gift from her one birthday, years after I had visited my grandmother for the last time. A yellow box had showed up out of the blue with a note on it and a large bag of food.

The cat hadn't been keen on living with me when she first arrived and she wasn't keen on living with me in a large empty house, either.

"Good. She'll keep the house in order. It makes far to much noise when there isn't anything else for it to do and a cat makes plenty of noise. "You'll see." Agatha sagged into the back of her chair like a weight had fallen on her by just thinking about the manor house. "You'll see when you go. The creaking doesn't stop. Just ask him, he'll tell you."

"Ask who about the house?"

"No dear. Ask him about the creaking." She said with finality. She stares at me, her hands working over one another. Her grip tightening on a finger, the same way mine do when I'm working through something. The same way mom's fingers used to.

Some part of me noted that it's probably where the habit came from.

She stays that way for a long time before her eyes stray from mine and back down to the tray on the table. I took another deep breath and asked, "Grandma?"

"The house shouldn't be making any noise," she whispers.

"Alright," I agree keeping my voice as low as her whisper. "I'll ask about the creaking. I'll ask him and he'll tell me about the noises. We'll make sure it stops."

"You'll see." Her voice, level now. Loud in the same way the quiet had been before. "You'll see when you get there."

The plastic of the temporary visitors pass digs into my side, as I move towards her, grabbing her hand in mine to give it a light squeeze. Agatha's rosy cheeks turn up at me in a smile.

All traces of her distress wiped clean.