Autumn's Child by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

Author:Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Published: 2019-08-11T13:47:23+00:00

Chapter 11

Genevieve apologized for how much needed to be done before Grannor’s estate could be settled. The sorting, packing, and shipping would take Colleen the whole summer, but the estate would pay her.

Pay? No, she refused the money. Nice girls weren’t paid for helping their families.

And she was grateful to have the project. It kept her from thinking about Autumn and Ariel.

The big second floor bedroom was so full that it felt like an attic. Colleen found three large flat white boxes, each labeled with a woman’s first name and a date. She opened the one from 1927. Beneath layers of brittle tissue paper was an ivory satin wedding gown. She lifted it out. Gorgeous in its simplicity, the dress was made of the glowingly liquid fabric that cascaded into a scallop-edged hem. The front of the dress below the waist was badly snagged; the bride must have caught her bouquet on it. Colleen held it up to herself. The bride must have been tiny. The dress was so narrow through the waist and hips that even Colleen wouldn’t have been able to wear it. The gown from 1905 had froths of beautiful lace, trimming the skirt and the lower part of the sleeves. The dress had been cleaned but was still stained under the armholes, and the fabric had rotten beneath the stains. Colleen looked at the date again. Yes, the wedding had been in the summer. This bride had gotten hot. The third one had an overdress of beaded chiffon, and the heavy beads had pulled and shredded the light fabric.

The dresses must have been beautiful once. What a shame to put them back in the boxes. Surely a talented seamstress could have created something new from them. The first one could be made into a baptismal gown for a baby. The lace of the second was exquisite and attached to the dress by tiny hand stitches. It was as if someone had expected that the lace could be used again. Perhaps the beading on the third could be used as a trim.

But these gowns weren’t hers. They were heirlooms and belonged to her cousins. She got fresh tissue paper and refolded the dresses.

In a brass-studded, leather trunk, she found the military decorations that were to go to Will. The trunk also contained packets of nineteenth-century letters, each bundle tied with a narrow ribbon. Some of the handwriting was spidery, some of it cramped; all the ink was fading. Grannor had told her about these letters. Colleen eased a few out of their envelopes. She learned about the weather and how many jars of plum jelly the writer’s cook was putting up. Grannor had told her that there were some written from Johnson’s Island, the POW camp in Michigan for captured Confederate officers. They needed to be scanned, and the originals donated to a museum.

Would Will, Jeff, or Kim ever bother to do that? Why would they? They didn’t care about the family legacy.

What would Grannor have done

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