Smiling still, Annie took both pictures and added them to the gallery on her refrigerator. She glanced at the cat’s bowl and noticed the food was still untouched. Where could that rascal be?
She finished the last bite of banana, dropped the peel into the trash, and went into the living room. There was no little fur ball curled up on the couch.
“Boots, come eat!”
Annie looked in a few of Boots’ favorite places—the sunny window in the dining room, the overstuffed chair in the library, even under the afghan puddled on the living room couch. No Boots. Finally out of options, Annie went upstairs. A quick look around told her that the attic door was open just wide enough to allow the passage of a lithe little gray body. She’d have to be more careful about closing that door all the way. Nothing intrigued a cat more than someplace she wasn’t allowed.
Annie pushed open the door and went up the stairs. “Boots? Are you in here? Boots?”
She heard a sound—half purr, half sleepy meow—and a little gray head popped up out of a partially open drawer.
“That is not your bed, missy.” Annie marched over to the antique bird’s-eye maple dresser at one side of the attic, pretending to scold as she picked up the cat. “Bad enough you think the whole house is your playroom. You don’t need to be up here getting into Gram’s things.”
Boots purred and butted her head against Annie’s hand, begging to be scratched, and Annie obliged. “All right, flatterer, you’re forgiven. Now what were you sleeping on?”
Annie looked in the drawer and shook her head.
“Those are Gram’s hand-embroidered dish towels, you know.” She set the cat on the floor so she could open the drawer a little more and then caught her breath before an involuntary little shriek could escape her. Then she laughed. OK, so it wasn’t a real severed hand, just an old rubber one from some forgotten Halloween. Why in the world had Gram kept the silly thing, and what else was in the drawer?
Annie rummaged around a little more. A couple of Victorian-looking Christmas ornaments, some seed packets, two decks of playing cards rubber-banded together, and shoved toward the back was a packet of envelopes tied with a piece of yarn. Annie remembered that yarn. It was the variegated green she had used on one of her very first afghans Gram had taught her to make when she was a girl. She didn’t even try to think how many years ago that had been.
Boots rubbed against her ankles, demanding to be fed.
“Oh, so now you’re hungry. Well, go on.”
Annie picked up the letters and shooed Boots down the stairs and out of the attic, careful to close the door all the way behind her. As she made her way down to the living room, Annie felt her smile grow wider. The envelopes were a bit faded now, but as she flipped through them, she remembered the brightly colored inks and the exuberant curvy letters, complete with red and pink hearts to dot every letter “i.” She remembered the little smiley faces and rainbows that had been so popular when she was just out of grade school.
She remembered Susan.
Annie was fourteen that year, and she and her Stony Point friends were building a sand castle—a sand castle that was meant to be the biggest and best ever. She couldn’t help noticing the skinny girl with white-blond hair who stood at the edge of the grass watching, though she didn’t invite her to help with the building. But Gram had noticed the girl too.
She waved Annie over to the bench where she was reading. “That little girl looks about your age, honey. I bet she’d love to help you with your sand castle.”
Gram never liked to see anyone left out, and young Annie felt kind of sorry for the girl, so she went over to her.
“Hi. What’s your name?” The blond girl smiled, looking shyly at the ground. “I’m Susan Morris. I’m a good swimmer.”
“I’m Annie. I like to swim too. You want to work on our sand castle? My grandma said you might want to.”
Susan shrugged. “Guess so, if it’s OK.”
“Sure. Come on.” Annie took her to the rest of her friends. “This is Susan. She can help us.”
Soon Susan lost most of her shyness and seemed to be enjoying herself, even though Alice had assigned to her the task of hauling wet sand from near the surf. By the time the magnificent, or at least large, sand castle was built, Susan and Annie had found they had something in common. Annie visited Maine only in the summer. Susan lived in a house outside Stony Point and didn’t know many of the town kids. In a way, they were both outsiders.
Gram smiled consent when Annie asked if Susan could come back to Grey Gables with them for lunch. At the house, Annie showed her new friend her first attempts at crochet, the start of the variegated green afghan, and Gram offered to teach Susan how to make one too.