must’ve been content to do the same, because when I woke again, it was to him pulling clothes from a duffle bag, bent over a chest beneath the window.
I sat up, surprised to have fallen back asleep. “What time is it?” I asked.
He straightened and shot me a lopsided grin. “Almost nine. We slept in.” The sun caught his hair from behind, and lit it in shades of dark red laced with gold. I had a sudden urge to put my hand into it, feel the thick burnished strands with my fingers. I swallowed hard.
“I guess I should get up.” Suddenly, I felt shy in my nightshirt, as if I’d come back to my senses and realized that exposing half my body to a near-stranger wasn’t exactly considered good manners. I huddled in the sleeping bag, waiting for Michael to leave the room.
“I need to check in at the store,” he told me. “But I’ll be back by noon and I’ll bring supplies for cleaning. You’ll be okay until then?”
“Yeah,” I said, doubting seriously whether I’d be okay if I stayed here alone. I already knew I’d be right behind him. I’d return Mom’s car and probably spend my morning at Mom’s shop until he came back. Enduring an inquisition, but it’d still be better than being here alone. “Um, Michael?”
He straightened and turned to face me. “Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry about barging in here last night. It won’t happen again. Just . . . I got scared. Sorry.”
His face rearranged itself into an expression I expected he must’ve used with Daniel when he was small—his eyes were soft and his lips turned up at the corners. “It’s no problem. Although,” he cleared his throat, his face hardening a bit. “Daniel will be joining us tomorrow. He might think . . .”
“Oh, no,” I interrupted. “He won’t need to think a thing. I’ll be fine. I’m going to get my own air mattress thingy today, and maybe some ear plugs or something, and I’ll be just fine in the other room.”
Michael looked a bit skeptical, his half-smile sliding sideways, but he said, “Okay. Great.”
As he pulled on a T-shirt and picked up a few other things from his bag, he spoke again. “Oh, hey. I forgot to show this to you.” He turned and crossed the room, handing me a box. It was dusty and faded, and looked like a shoebox.
“What’s this?”
“When I first got in here, I looked inside the chest there before I dropped my bag on it. This was in there. There’s a bunch of letters inside.”
“Letters?” My conversational skills were not finely tuned in the morning. Lack of sleep would do that to a person.
“Yeah.” He was looking at me as if he thought I might regain my power of comprehension if he just waited long enough. “I don’t know who from or to, I didn’t have time to look. But if you wanted to look at them while I’m at work—there could be something in there.”
“Sure,” I said, lifting the lid to find the box tightly packed with paper. It would actually give me something to focus on besides the ghosts when I got back from Mom’s place.
“I’m gonna see if I can grab a quick shower,” he said, and headed out of the room.
I used the opportunity to go back to my own room and dress, and then ventured down the wide staircase and to the kitchen, seeking the house’s second bathroom, and then coffee. There was a Keurig machine on the counter I hadn’t noticed the previous night, and I realized Michael must’ve brought it with him. A quick search through the cupboards revealed a few mismatched mugs too. I put two out and made myself a cup of coffee, and then turned to the box of old letters I’d brought down with me.
I pulled one from the box, scanning the address, which was written in swooping cursive and addressed to Private Robert Tucker, AEF, 29th Division, 58th Brigade, 115th Regiment, France. The letter was dated September 1918.
Robert Tucker? I didn’t know anything about Filene Easter’s family history, so I wasn’t sure who this particular Tucker would be to her. But a glance at the return address added a bit of insight.
Miss Lucille Tanner, Number Three, Canterbury Lane, Singletree, Maryland, USA.
I felt like I’d heard the name Lucille a few times before. Mom had some old family documents—had this been in there? Could these have been Filene’s parents? The lawyer had said that she