the maps, reviewing each one, studying each line, memorizing everything.
“Matilda?”
She held a finger to her lips.
The last map.
“All right,” she said softly, more to herself than to me.
She put the maps back into the satchel.
“Make sure they are in the same order.”
“They are.”
Matilda retied the string and placed the leather satchel back behind the wardrobe, attaching it to a small hook I hadn’t noticed before. “Help me move it back,” she said, gripping the side of the cabinet.
Together, we moved the wardrobe back into place, lifting it as much as we could to keep from making noise again.
“There may be something else. We need to keep looking,” Matilda said, turning her attention to the desk. She began rifling through the drawers.
I turned back to the bed.
A thick goose-down quilt covered the small frame, and a single feather pillow sat propped up at the head. The wooden frame was similar to my own, a simple structure with shallow-carved adornments and stained a forbidding brown. I leaned in close and sniffed the quilt—my nose buckled, and a loud sneeze forced its way out.
“Bram!”
I covered my nose and tried to hold back the second one, but it came with more force than the first.
“Somebody will—”
I sneezed a third time, my eyes filling with tears. When a fourth began to tickle at my nostrils, I found the strength to stop it as Matilda came towards me and smothered my face in a handkerchief. I waved her off and stepped back, my eyes locked on the quilt. When I began to lean in close again, she tried to pull me back, but I shook her off. This time I didn’t inhale; rather, I gleaned a better look. The quilt was covered in dust. Not a thin layer, but the kind of dust you find coating forgotten furniture in an attic. Dust like this didn’t just appear; it accumulated over time due to disregard and neglect.
“How often would you say Nanna Ellen remakes our beds?”
Matilda thought about it for a second. “Every Saturday, without fail.”
“Then why not her own?”
The question hung in the air, for neither of us had an answer. “For that matter, where does she sleep, if not in the bed?”
She had a wooden chair at the desk. With a stiff back and arms, it wouldn’t allow for so much as a slouch. I could not imagine anyone attempting to sleep in it.
“Maybe she sleeps on the floor,” Matilda offered. “My friend Beatrice once told me her father sleeps on the floor all the time due to a nagging pain in his back. The wooden floor is the only surface that provides relief.”
“I don’t think Nanna Ellen has a bad back.”
“Where, then?”
The dust on the floor was thickest at the bed.
I don’t know why I noticed it; maybe because I was simply looking down. At the bed frame, it wasn’t just dirty; the dust was piled high against the base. It looked as if someone had swept the room repeatedly against the bed rather than to the center of the floor, where it could be picked up. It reminded me of the mounds of dirt washed against the side of the house by rain, climbing against the walls in an attempt to enter. Wasn’t that the goal of dirt? To get inside and reclaim what is ultimately the property of the land?
I reached down and lifted the corner of the mattress.
Nanna Ellen’s bed was constructed in the same manner as my own. Under the blankets and sheets was a mattress stuffed with goose or chicken feathers, no more than five inches in thickness. This was a luxury for most, one we were quite grateful for. Pa’s position granted access to some of the finer things, and while my parents did not splurge on much, proper bedding was something they fervently believed in. They felt that without a good night’s rest, we would fail at our next day’s endeavors, and that that failure would, in turn, lead to the lackadaisical inertness