Jan 22, 2019 6 min read

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¦ CHAPTER NINE

The mystery

The story so far: Aunt Sarah has discovered Sally in the attic, where she seems to have just awakened from a dream about the Sally in the past.

Her aunt, when she spoke, did not sound so much angry as puzzled. “Mrs. Niminy Piminy?” she said. “But how could you know? Oh, I see!” she said as her eyes lit upon the little book that still lay open on the floor. “You read about her in the diary, I suppose. But come now, Sally, you’ve dawdled here quite long enough. It’s past time for lunch, and you have all these things to put neatly away. And just look at your clothes over there in a pile, all wrinkled and dirty. What would your mother say? Hurry now and take those things off.”

Yes, thought Sally, getting unhappily to her feet, that sounds more like Aunt Sarah. And yet, she didn’t sound nearly so angry as Sally had feared. And somehow, she wasn’t quite so afraid of her. Besides, the happiness of her dream had stayed with her.

After Sally had put everything back into the trunk, with her aunt’s assistance, and was changing back into her own clothes, Aunt Sarah asked, “What made you come up here, Sally? It seems to me that I asked you not to.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sally. “I was looking for Elizabeth. The doll in the picture.”

“That doll was lost a long time ago,” said her aunt.

Sally nodded. “I know. On Christmas Eve. I read about it in the diary.” How funny, she thought, to be talking to Aunt Sarah like this, just as if she was anybody. “But I thought probably the other Sally found her after that.”

“Well, you ought to have asked me,” said her aunt. “I could have saved you a lot of trouble. The doll was never found.”

“Never?” Sally’s voice echoed her dismay around the attic. The very dust seemed to droop, lose spirit.

Her aunt shook her head. “Never,” she said.

“Oh, that’s terrible!” cried Sally. Tears misted her eyes, and she sniffed and brushed them away.

“Terrible? Why?” snapped her aunt.

“Because,” said Sally, “the poor other Sally must have been so sad. She loved Elizabeth.”

Her aunt did not say anything for a moment. Then, “Sad?” she said. “I expect she was. But she got over it. People do. They grow up.”

“I wish that Elizabeth wasn’t lost,” said Sally.

“No good wishing, Sally. All that’s over and done with,” said her aunt. “Shadow!” she called suddenly.

Sally could hear Shadow bumping around somewhere behind the trunks.

“What are you up to, naughty boy?” Aunt Sarah asked fondly, looking down at him. “Shadow loves to push things down in that space where the roof slopes down. The ceiling doesn’t quite meet the floor,” said her aunt, pointing, but Sally was not thinking about Shadow.

As Sally followed her aunt down from the attic, she was thinking to herself that maybe it wasn’t over and done with. Her dream had seemed so very real that she couldn’t feel that it was all over. And if Elizabeth had been lost in this very house, then why shouldn’t she be found in this very house? Maybe I can find her, she thought.

At least she was going to try.

They ate lunch at the kitchen table. Sally swallowed a bite of her sandwich. “It’s a mystery!” she said. “How could Elizabeth get lost, with everyone there in the room? How could she disappear from the top of the Christmas tree? Where could she go?”

Aunt Sarah sighed. “I’m sure I don’t know. She simply disappeared. That’s all.”

“Where could she have gone?” Sally insisted, almost forgetting that she was talking to Aunt Sarah. “Dolls can’t walk.”

To her astonishment, Aunt Sarah smiled. “The other Sally, as you call her,” she said, “used to think that Elizabeth was a little bit magic. But no one ever found her-no one’s even thought about it for years and years.”

“Could she have been caught in the branches? Maybe she fell, and when they threw the tree out-oh, but that would mean she really was gone-“

“I expect they thought of that,” said Aunt Sarah. “Yes, they searched that tree needle by needle, or probably they did.”

“Then maybe she is here!” cried Sally. “But how do you know?”

“You know things in a family,” said Aunt Sarah, standing up and beginning to clear the table.

Sally, without thinking, began to help her as she did her mother at home, scraping the dishes and stacking them next to the sink. “Shall I dry the dishes?” she asked.

“You’ll find a towel in that drawer over there.”

Sally opened the drawer. Inside she found a neat pile of folded dish towels and a gingerbread-boy cookie cutter.

“That’s a very old cookie cutter,” said her aunt.

“Yes,” said Sally. “Sometimes my mother lets me help her make gingerbread boys.”

“Does she?” said Aunt Sarah, turning on the faucet. “You like that, I suppose?”

Sally nodded and dropped the cutter back in the drawer. She took out a towel and began to dry the dishes. Neither of them spoke until the dishes were all done and put away.

Sally was thinking, however. About Elizabeth. About the attic. Maybe there was a clue up there. Maybe if she looked very carefully, she could find something.

Summoning up all her bravery, she asked at last in a rather faltering voice, “I wonder-if I could go back to the attic?”

Her aunt turned from the cupboard into which she was placing the last of the dishes. “Still dreaming about Elizabeth, are you? Well, perhaps tomorrow. Right now I think you’d better go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine.”

Well, thought Sally, as she and Shadow were going down the back steps to the tangled old garden, it’s better than nothing. Aunt Sarah had said “perhaps.” But it was going to be awfully hard waiting for tomorrow!

NEXT WEEK: A friend