Paperquake (9 page)

Violet could only stare in wonder. Then the light moved and the bench and birdbath vanished into darkness. Greg walked over and picked up one of the bundles of old papers.

"Here, Baby. Will you hold the light while I toss this junk outside?" He passed her the flashlight and started heaving the newspapers up and out the door. "It's a fire hazard, having them down here. Hand me that old suitcase, too, will you? Wait—is it heavy? Don't strain yourself."

The suitcase
was
heavy. "I want to look inside, Dad," Violet said.

"Well, let's get it outside, first." Greg lugged the suitcase to the door and lifted it outside. "We can leave the bricks and boards for now, I guess," he said, flashing the light all around the small space again. Then he boosted Violet out of the cellar and climbed after her.

Violet knelt on the concrete to examine the battered brown suitcase. Her heart was thumping rapidly in her chest. She knew, she just absolutely, positively knew for certain, there was something for her inside. She hesitated, wondering how to get rid of her father. She didn't want to share Hal more than she already had.

But her father was kneeling by her side. He lifted the suitcase by its handle, fumbled with his fingers for the clasp, and the metal tabs popped open. "So much for stolen pirate booty, huh?" Greg laughed, lifting the lid. "It's not even locked."

Violet leaned forward to see. Packets of old sales receipts held together with rubber bands filled the suitcase. Beneath them were ledgers—bound books full of handwritten numbers and lists. Greg removed one of the ledgers and flipped through the pages. "And I was hoping for gold and rubies! This is an account book for an old shop." He showed her the first page on which someone long ago had neatly penned
Albert Stowe, Milliner.

"What's a milliner, Dad?"

"Someone who makes hats. So this was a hat shop. And look at the date. 1903."

"Wow, that's old." Violet reached for another ledger and opened it. "
Fourteenth June 1904,
" she read. "
Eighteen yards red silk ribbon. One-quarter inch, twelve bolts green satin cord. Twenty feathered birds in brown, ten in blue.
"

"Why would a hat shop need birds?" she asked.

"For the hats. You have no idea how elaborate fashionable women's hats were at the turn of the century." Her father laughed. "Feathers and ribbon and lace, little baskets of fruit and berries—and little stuffed birds galore. All piled a mile high."

He stood up and dusted off his pants. "These things might be of interest to a historical society or maybe the library archives. I'll look into it later. But now, let's close it all up and get back inside to help your mother."

"I'll be in in a few minutes," murmured Violet, leafingthrough the account book.

"It's chilly out here."

"No, really. I like it out here in the garden."

"Garden? You have better eyes than I have, Baby." But her father left her with an indulgent smile. As soon as he'd gone back inside, Violet tipped the entire contents of the suitcase onto the concrete.

There
had
to be a letter!

She shook each of the ledgers, looking for an envelope tucked inside. Several loose sheets sailed out and her heart thumped in anticipation. But each time she was disappointed when the page proved to be only another sales receipt or list of hat-making goods needed by Albert Stowe, Milliner. The last ledger had been torn in half, right down the middle. The stiff cardboard cover with Albert Stowe's now-familiar label was the same as on all the other ledgers. But the whole second half of the book, including the stiff cardboard back cover, had been ripped away. Violet pawed through the last few packets of receipts but found no trace of it. She flipped through the torn ledger. It, just like the others, listed fabrics, laces, and decorative baubles (birds, gold leaves, beads, bunches of cherries—even a banana). It listed the amounts of various materials, and in some cases the prices as well. But just as she was about to toss the book back into the case with the others, Violet stopped in surprise. The last page was not a list of goods for the hat shop. It was a letter written in brown ink, the handwriting full of curlicues and flourishes.

Hadn't she known it would be here?

But on closer inspection she saw it was not written by Hal at all. This handwriting was in a similar style, but the words were smaller, tighter on the page, and more neatly formed. And it wasn't really a letter at all. Violet read it eagerly nonetheless.

 

May 10, 1906

Oh, Diary—

For so long I have been wounded by the irony of it all. Small wonder, then, that I have been driven to desperate measures. My daily agonies were truly enough to drive anyone mad. Do you think perhaps that is what happened? Would madness provide the excuse I need if ever I am brought to task? The facts remain unalterable. I have done a terrible thing. She is dead and I am wracked with guilt. She is dead, and all her prophecies of doom are gone with her to the grave.

She is dead, but I am not. And Hal must never know how we have come together. Indeed, I shall endeavor all my life to ensure he never discovers the truth

 

Violet sat there on the concrete, staring down at the strange diary entry. Hal's name jumped off the page at her. The person who wrote this knew Hal. Had "
come together
" with him. What did that mean? Who had written these words?

The October wind gusted between the houses, fluttering the pages of the ledger. The ragged edges of torn paper attested to the fact that whoever ripped out the other pages had been in a hurry. This page had been left behind by mistake.

She shivered as she read the diary entry again, her eyes freezing on a sentence they had glided over before:
She is dead and I am wracked with guilt.
Who had died?
I have done a
Terrible thing.
Had the person who wrote this killed someone and then regretted it? Written about everything—and then tried to destroy the evidence?

And where did Hal fit in?
May 10, 1906.
That was just after the huge earthquake, the one she was supposed to be researching for her science paper. Violet couldn't remember the date of the 1906 quake but thought it had been sometime in April.

As Violet sat there lost in thought, she started trembling. Gradually she realized that wasn't trembling, but the earth itself was. She leaped up, clutching the ledger, just as her mother ran out onto the back step.

"Baby!"

The trembling subsided. Violet and Lily stared at each other in silence across the yard, as if speaking might set off another quake. Then the fear in the pit of her stomach welled up, and Violet covered her face. "Mom—help—" The words came out as a groan. Behind her closed eyes she saw the flicker of flame, the shadow children moving away from twisted ruins—

"Come inside now." Lily's voice was sharp with anxiety. "Put that filthy old book down and hurry. Dad's ready to leave."

Violet lifted her head and swallowed, hard. She replaced the ledger carefully with all the other ledgers and receipts in the suitcase.

"Leave that old case. It's too heavy for you, darling. Dad will deal with it."

Violet obediently rose to her feet. Then, her back turned so her mother wouldn't see, she crouched back down and ripped the diary entry right out of the torn ledger and stuffed it into her pocket. She followed her mother into the shop, her thoughts tumbling around in her own private quake.

"Listen, did you get the hair sample?" Beth asked on Monday morning when the two girls met as usual at the corner of North Street to walk to school together.

Violet nodded wearily. She had lain awake the night before for what seemed like hours, tensing against imaginary earthquakes. Then, having finally fallen asleep, she'd woken several times, sure she'd felt her bed moving. Now she pulled the plastic bag containing the lock of Rose's hair out of her backpack and showed it to Beth. "I've only got Rosy's. But Jazzy's hair is exactly the same." Her urgency to look more like her sisters had been overshadowed by her unease. She tried to inject her smile with some of her earlier enthusiasm as they walked along.

Inside the drugstore on the next block, Violet's attention was immediately caught by the headlines of the newspapers lined up in racks by the door:

 

SWARM OF QUAKES RATTLES BAY AREA
SCIENTISTS PREDICT BIG ONE STILL TO COME
BAY AREA ON EDGE

 

She tried to push the stark words out of her head as she and Beth hurried to the aisle of shampoos and cream rinses, gels and mousses, sprays and perms. At the far end were the boxes of hair color. Swatches of artificial hair hung from a plastic rack with tags identifying the color. Violet removed the chunk of Rose's hair and held it up to the samples. "What do you think?" she asked Beth. "Golden Cornhusk?"

"Too blond," said Beth. "How about Wheatberry Sunset?"

Violet compared colors. "That's closer," she agreed. "But kind of red."

They examined the other swatches and finally agreed that Medium Honey Ash was the closest match. Violet paid for the box of hair color out of her allowance, then she and Beth hurried on their way.

"We'll go to my house and do it right after school," Beth said. "Maybe I should go back and get some for myself."

"You have gorgeous hair." Beth's hair was vibrant red and curled naturally into corkscrew ringlets on hot days.

"I don't think so. But I'll wait to see how yours turns out before I do anything drastic." Beth looked both ways before starting across the busy intersection. "Anyway," she said, looking back over her shoulder at Violet, "let's hear about the 'mysterious developments' you mentioned on the phone."

Violet hesitated. Before she'd found the diary entry, she had been looking forward to showing Beth Hal's letter. But she hadn't told even her sisters about the latest find. She felt almost as if the diary entry and Hal's two letters were secret messages-from the past, seeping inexplicably through layers of time, just for her.

And yet Beth was her best friend. She always told Beth everything.

"Well," she said slowly now, "I have something to show you."

"Come on then!"

Again she hesitated. "Not now, it'll take too long and we're almost late." She ran across the street and jogged along toward school, Beth panting at her side.

"Tell me!"

"After school, at your house. Promise!"

Violet had no inkling then that by the time she was at Beth's house after school, there would be something even more compelling to show.

 

"Listen up, people, we're here!" boomed Mr. Koch as the school bus stopped in front of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. He looked at his watch. "I want you all on your very best behavior. Have your notebooks open at all times and your pens working. Now we'll walk quietly inside and wait for the docent to lead us on our tour." He bounded out of the bus ahead of everyone else and led the line of students inside the Academy.

Violet and Beth hurried to catch up with him.

The museum was crowded, but their guide, a poised, fair-haired woman in a blue suit, was waiting for them. She led them away from the lobby and into the darkness of the first exhibit hall. Violet had been to the Academy before with her parents and sisters, but several new exhibits had been opened to the public since she'd last come. She wandered, her interest engaged, listening to the guide talk about rocks. There were semiprecious gems and geodes to look at. There were fragments of meteorites and even some moon rocks.

When they came to the earthquake simulator, the guide stopped. "This should be of special interest to those of you who might have felt our own big rock—our earth—move these past few days," she said.

"Who
wouldn't
have felt the quakes?" whispered Beth to Violet. "You'd have to be dead not to notice them."

Violet nodded, a shiver prickling the hairs at the back of her neck. She could do without seeing this exhibit.

The guide showed them the delicate instruments that measured seismic activity, and pointed to the computer printout for the last few quakes. "You can see how steady the stylus was, then how it veered sharply up and down here."

Violet was pushed to the front of the crowd to look into the glass case. Reluctantly, she gazed down. Sure enough, there were the abrupt dips, up and down on the page, for Friday's quake and for Saturday's. The tremble on Sunday morning was recorded only as a small blip in the lines. The lines reminded her of the EKG machine she'd been connected to in the hospital for her heart surgery. It had measured the delicate variations in her heartbeat just as this instrument measured the movements of the earth.

Violet stepped away so Beth could see, and watched the guide lead several of her classmates onto the earthquake simulator—a raised walkway with waist-high railings along both sides. A brief film flickered on a large screen and informed them that they would be experiencing a 5.0 earthquake, with lateral ground movement only. In a real quake, the man in the film explained, the ground would move up and down as well as back and forth. But for safety reasons, the museum exhibit would reduce actual shaking by using only one movement.

"Cool," said Beth. "I want to try it out." But there wasn't enough space for her on the platform. The guide told her to wait for the next group.

Violet held her breath and watched the platform shake. Her classmates clutched the railings and laughed. Noises boomed from loudspeakers to simulate the roar of the tectonic plates grinding against each other below the surface of earth.

"Come on, Vi, we're next!" Beth tugged Violet to the platform.

"No, thanks. I take my quakes real or not at all." She gave a short, carefree laugh, but her palms were sweating. No way was she going on that platform.

Violet darted away before Beth could say another word. She headed for the exhibits about outer space. But before she reached them, a soft light from a special display alcove caught her eye. The alcove was sectioned off with a twisted red velvet rope. She stopped to peek inside and found herself looking in on what seemed to be an old-fashioned sitting room, with a wing chair in the corner next to a round-topped wooden table. A cut-glass bottle of amber liquid—was it supposed to be brandy?—sat atop the table, along with an ashtray and carved pipe. The soft glow in the alcove was cast by a flickering lightbulb in the lamp fastened to the wall above the desk. Violet guessed it was supposed to be gaslight. A calendar, askew on its nail in the wall above the desk, read "April 1906," with the eighteenth circled in red. An ornate clock lay on its side on the mantel, its hands pointing to 5:12. On the desk lay an uncorked inkwell, tipped out over a piece of creamy paper, yellowed at the edges, half of the message obliterated with a large brown inkblot. The impression was that someone had been writing a letter right when an earthquake struck. The impression was heightened by the jagged pen line careening off the page. As a special touch, the pen lay on the floor next to the overturned chair.