Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost Read Free Book Online Page B

it lay.
    At the bottom of a narrow stairwell to the third floor Vern paused. She made no move to go up. A trapdoor at the top was closed. She tilted her head as though listening to something, which drew Amy’s attention. She stood beside her sister and listened too but heard nothing. Her younger sister ignored their reluctance, pushed between them, and climbed right up the steps. She lifted the trapdoor and it fell back with a report so loud that Amy jumped.
    â€œKatie,” Vern started, “I swear one day, you’re going to poke your nose in someplace it doesn’t belong and get it cut right off.” She glanced at Amy as if for confirmation of this, and Amy nodded. But by then she was looking up Kate’s skirts as her sister stepped out of view. Her footsteps echoed down from the empty room—emptiness so much more noticeable when it was a different room than you were in, thought Amy.
    â€œAmelia, go see to her,” Vern instructed.
    â€œMe?” Her eyes cast to the ceiling just as a loud screech issued from above—not the sound of a voice, but of something being dragged on the floor. “I’ve no interest in going up there. It’s trespassing.”
    Vern sighed. “No, it isn’t. It’s our house, stupid girl. Lavinia’s anyway.” She climbed the steps far enough to stick her head through the opening. “Kate, what are you doing? Oh. Oh, my goodness,” and she climbed the rest of the way up.
    Amy had an active fear of being left alone, a complementary fear to her resentment at being left out of things, which manifested as suspicion whenever she found the other two girls conferring without her. They had secrets, and she knew it, even though they denied this and always provided an explanation for whatever they’d been doing. Her fear and suspicion compelled her up the tight stairwell after them. If they had entered some cursed chamber, she would go to her death alongside them rather than let them discuss her secretly in the afterlife.
    Amy had thought that what the house lacked so far was mostly character: The walls were bare, the floors bare, the rooms stripped of any hint of the former occupants. Now she discovered that its character had been put into storage in the cramped little attic.
    The low ceiling sloped sharply toward the rear, ending perhaps two feet above the floor. The bricks of the fireplace chimneys intruded into the middle. To either side of them, all manner of furnishings had been crammed. Kate and Vern were seated on a big mahogany sofa with a serpentine back, which had been dragged out from under the low ceiling. There were more stenciled Hitchcock chairs identical in design to the one below, a shell cabinet, cast-iron fenders for one of the hearths, lamps, a mahogany dresser with lots of scroll and foliage work carved into it and a swivel mirror on side pins at the back, and another chair that she quickly identified as a Boston rocker. On the dresser stood an eight-day clock. Her sisters held a frame between them and were looking at it. As Amy stepped from the stairs, Vern turned it around to show her. She said, “Oh, my,” and drew closer, finally taking her place on the sofa beside her sisters. “Is that one of those—”
    â€œDaguerreotypes. Yes, it is,” said Vern.
    They had seen a few of these in Boston, but never expected to encounter something so novel here. Daguerreotypes had only existed for a few years, and almost the only people who had them were well-to-do. At one time or another they had all wished they had a family portrait of their own like this, one that included their mother.
    The young couple in this one looked stiff and nervous, intimidated no doubt by the camera itself if not by the interminable time they had to sit rigid in their finery. The man wore a tight-fitting tweed suit. His dark hair was slicked down and one front lock curved across his forehead; his short beard had been trimmed