Andi Unexpected (6 page)

I’d hoped to find another clue
linking Andora to my family. But over the next two days, Colin, Bethany, and I tore apart the attic without uncovering a single trace of her. It appeared that the trunk, the birth announcement, and the lone baby photograph were all that Andora left to this world.

I threw another wire hanger into a box with hundreds of others that would soon go to the garage sale. I had no idea who’d want to buy hundreds of hangers, but Amelie claimed someone would probably buy them. For what? Wire hanger sculptures?

Surrounded by stacks of old flowerpots, Colin sat on the floor beside the hatch and busily sorted piles of papers. I didn’t know where Bethany was. She’d said she had “things to do” that day. Whatever that meant.

Colin pushed his goggles higher up on his nose.
“We aren’t getting very far with all this.” His voice was somewhat muffled by the surgical mask.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“So we have a newspaper announcement about Andora’s birth and an old photograph of her, but that’s it. Nothing here tells us what happened to her. Searching online has been a waste of time too. So far the only thing we’ve learned from Googling your name is that there is a town in Italy called Andora; there’s nothing about Andora Boggs.”

“I know.” I tilted one of the five fans that we’d placed throughout the attic so it hit me directly in the face. Outside, it was a beautiful day; it was way too nice to spend all of it inside counting wire hangers.

“We need something more …” his voice trailed off. Taking his asthma inhaler from his pocket, he took two puffs absent-mindedly.

“What we need to do is get out of here for a while.” I thumped him on the back. “You’re probably suffering from dust poisoning or something.”

Colin looked up at me, his eyes buggy behind those gigantic goggles. “As far as I know, dust can’t poison you. It just affects your allergies, which are really just overactive enzymes trying to protect your body …”

I groaned and helped him stand up. “Let’s go.”

Downstairs, Colin removed his goggles, surgical mask, and hooded sweatshirt. Now he looked like any other normal kid standing in Amelie’s kitchen in jeans and a T-shirt. I laced up my sneakers.

“Where are we going?” Colin asked.

“I want to go back to the museum and talk to Mr. Finnigan. Maybe he can tell us something more.”

Outside I rolled my bike out of the garage, which was now packed with furniture and boxes from the attic. How had all of that stuff fit up there? As I stepped out, I heard my sister’s voice coming from the front of the house and froze. “I can paint and draw right here. I don’t need classes,” she said.

The next voice belonged to Bergita. “The classes will help you become a better artist. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I want to go back home. I miss my life,” Bethany said quietly.

“And your parents, I’m sure.”

There was silence, and then Bethany said, “I miss them more than Andi does.”

My stomach clenched.

“Why do you think that?” Bergita asked.

“Because all she thinks about now is this stupid Andora thing. Who cares about a baby girl who lived a long time ago? I mean, our parents are
dead
.” There were tears in her voice. “It’s not fair that I miss them more when they obviously loved her more. She was their protégé, the future scientist. All I can do is draw.”

“Bethany, everyone grieves differently. When my husband died, I was brokenhearted. But the day after his funeral, I started packing up his clothes so I could donate them to charity. A friend of mine was offended by that. She’d kept her husband’s things for years after he died. She thought I was terrible for discarding my husband’s stuff so soon. She thought keeping her husband’s things proved that she loved her husband more than I loved mine.”

I stepped closer to the edge of the garage, but I didn’t dare poke my head around the corner.

Bergita continued, “I don’t believe your parents loved Andi more. They loved her differently—just like I grieved the loss of my husband differently than my friend did.”

Bethany mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

Bergita chuckled. “There is a class tomorrow afternoon. Come with me just one time. If you hate it, you never have to go back.”

“I guess I have nothing better to do,” my sister muttered.

The two of them moved away from the garage, and I ran down the driveway with my bike to meet Colin.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“In the garage,” I said, leaving it at that. “Let’s go.”

A sign on the bottling company’s door said the museum was closed on Saturday afternoons. I parked my bike. “Well, it can’t hurt to knock,” I said, banging on the door.

Colin and I waited a couple of minutes, and then I knocked again—but a tad softer this time.

“Maybe we should come back Monday,” Colin suggested.

Just then, Mr. Finnigan opened the door. His face lit up as he said, “You came back!”

“I know the museum is closed,” I said, “but we wondered if we could talk to you about something important.”

“Is this about your mysterious Andora?” he asked.

I nodded.

Colin sneezed.

“Then do come in. I’ve thought a lot about your little mystery over the last few days.”

We sat in Number Three’s old office munching on Mr. Finnigan’s private stash of Double Stuf Oreos. Mr. Finnigan made himself comfortable behind the former ginger ale tycoon’s desk, and looked at the photograph of Baby Andora with a magnifying glass.

“This is an original print,” he said. “I can tell by the weight of the paper and its general condition.”

I dusted Oreo crumbs from my mouth. “We couldn’t find any record of her death in the attic or online. And from Bergita’s story, it sounds like my family kept her a secret until she vanished. How could a baby just disappear?”

I held back the next question that ran through my head.
How could my family let their baby disappear?

Mr. Finnigan set the magnifying glass on the mahogany desk. “Times were tough back then. Really tough. But you’re right. I don’t know how a child, especially one born in such a small community, could simply vanish. I’m sorry. I can’t offer any suggestions. This truly is a mystery.” Mr. Finnigan thumbed the photograph of Andora. “Do you mind if I hang on to this to help me with the search?”

“Do you think it will help? Can you match it with some pictures in the archives?” Colin asked.

“Maybe,” Mr. Finnigan said with a slight catch in his voice.

I looked at the photo in his hand, the only likeness of Andora that I had. “I’d like to keep it with me for now.”

Reluctantly, Mr Finnigan handed the photograph back to me. I stowed it between the pages of the casebook inside my mini backpack.

The bike ride home wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as the ride to the museum had been. My legs felt heavy with disappointment, and my eyes passed right over the neighborhood sights. Colin was quiet as we pedaled past Killdeer Middle School, and my mind went back to Andora, the trunk, the elephant block, and her photograph that Mr. Finnigan wanted to keep.

Colin stopped suddenly. I swerved sharply and just missed his back tire.

“Hey!” I said. “What are you doing?”

Colin ignored my protest. “I’ve got it!”

My heart thumped. “You’ve got what?”

“I know just what we need. We need someone old—someone who was alive in the 1930s, at the same time as Andora.”

“That would be nice, but they’d have to be pretty old now.”

“I know just the person.” He hopped back onto his bike seat. “Let’s go. We need to get home so you can ask Amelie if you can go to church with me tomorrow.”

“Ask her what?”

But he was already pedaling away.

Our bike tires spit white gravel
into the front lawn. Bergita stood on the Carters’ porch with her hands on her hips. “Colin Carter, you get over here right now.”

“What did I do?” he asked.

“I told you this morning that your parents would be here for dinner tonight. Now hurry up and get ready.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. Andi and I were—”

“You can tell me what you two were up to later. You know they hate to be kept waiting. They both work third-shift rounds at the hospital tonight.”

Colin looked at me. “I gotta go. Can you ask Amelie about church?”

“Why?”

“Colin!” Bergita called.

“I know someone there who might know Andora. Just ask, okay?”

He rolled his bike across the Carters’ front lawn.

“I’ll ask!” I called after him.

I found Amelie and Bethany in the kitchen. My aunt smiled. “You’re just in time for dinner. How does frozen pizza sound?”

“Amelie, you might want to learn how to cook now that you’re raising two kids,” Bethany said. But there wasn’t the typical edge in her voice. In fact, I could be wrong, but I thought my sister might be teasing our aunt.

I plopped down on a stool at the kitchen island. It’s where we always ate our meals because Amelie had turned Grandma’s dining room into a study.

Amelie must have also noticed Bethany’s light teasing tone. Her cheeks twitched as if she were trying to control her smile. Maybe Amelie was afraid that if she looked too happy about her niece’s joke, she’d discourage Bethany from trying to be friendlier in the future. “Maybe I should take a cooking class. We could all take one. It would be something fun we could do as a family.”

The smile quickly faded from Bethany’s face as soon as Amelie said “family.” “I don’t need to learn how to cook yet.”

I swallowed and changed the subject. “Can I go with Colin and Bergita to church tomorrow?”

Amelie dropped her pizza slice onto her plate. “Did you say
church
?”

“Yeah,” I said uncomfortably. “He invited me.”

“I can’t remember the last time I went to church,” my aunt said. “Maybe back when you were a baby, Andi.”

Bethany eyed me over her pizza. “So you move out to the country and find religion?”

Before our parents died, Bethany and I had regularly attended church back home. I think Bethany used our parents’ death as an excuse not to go now. She hadn’t been to church in a while. And eventually I’d stopped attending too because everyone treated me like the poor little orphan. Maybe in Killdeer it would be different.

“So what if I have?” I snapped. “Our parents died, and you turned into a brat.”

“Andi!” Amelie gasped.

Bethany pushed back from the counter. Her jaw was clenched.

I felt a twist in my gut.
Did I say that because I’m hurt she told Bergita that she misses Mom and Dad more than I do?
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

My sister wouldn’t look at me while she put her plate in the dishwasher. My heart sank. I’d just ruined all of the progress we’d made while working in the attic together. She’d never forgive me.

“I’m going to
my
room,” Bethany said.

Amelie tapped the counter with her blue fingernails. “Andi, we’ll all go to church tomorrow.”

“Not me,” Bethany said, inching her way out of the kitchen.

Amelie frowned. “Yes, you will—unless you’d rather stay home and mow the lawn?”

Bethany stomped out of the room.

The next morning, Amelie, Bethany, and I piled into the back of Bergita’s minivan. Bergita and Colin rode up front. As we headed for the College Church, I thought to myself that a university was a pretty strange place to attend church; but according to Amelie, Michael Pike Senior wanted the chapel built on the campus. And the College Church still held Sunday services even after Michael Pike College had evolved into Michael Pike University.

Bergita smiled in the rearview mirror. “This is the church I attended as a child, Andi. The one where I got in trouble while snatching those cookies.”

Separated from the surrounding dorms, classroom buildings, and library by lush green lawns aptly named The Green, the church building was made of gray-purple stone, a unique color I’d seen repeated throughout the campus—even on the newer buildings. I couldn’t identify it, so I asked Colin why the stones looked that color.

“It’s quartzite,” he said. “Quartzite starts out as sandstone, but then it changes due to the heat and extreme pressure caused by the rock’s proximity to volcanic belts or earthquake fault lines.”

Bethany stared at him. “Do you read the dictionary for fun?”

Colin blushed.

I would have to add geology to my list of sciences to investigate. In the short time that I’d known Colin, I’d learned that he has a wealth of knowledge. He claimed it was from watching
Jeopardy
every night with Bergita, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he read a lot of books too.

As we walked from the parking lot to the church, its stone steeple strained toward the heavens, as though trying to reach the highest cirrus clouds above. The dark outline of the heavy iron bell stood out against the late June sky.

Before we entered the church, Amelie pointed at a tiny brick building that looked like a little house behind the church. “You were asking about Great-Grandpa Patterson, Andi?”

I looked in the direction she pointed.

“See that little building over there? It’s just an office now, but they used to use it as a guesthouse for special speakers who visited campus. Nowadays the speakers stay in a hotel. But at the time when your great-grandfather taught here, he insisted that guest speakers have a nice place to stay on campus. Since it was his idea, they named the house after him.”

We walked over to the building.

“Don’t be too long,” Bergita called after us. “We’re late already.”

Mounted on the side of the building, a plaque said, B
OGGS
G
UESTHOUSE
, 1950.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s our name.”

Amelie grinned, and even Bethany looked a little impressed.

The inside of the church building didn’t appear modern in the least. The odor, a musty mixture of old wood, ancient books, and furniture polish, accosted my nostrils. It smelled like the inside of every historical landmark I’d ever toured during school field trips. From the beamed ceiling to the flagstone entry, everything seemed preserved as though I had stepped back in time. But this would have been much further back than the time of the first Andora—a time of footmen, horse-drawn carriages, and corsets. The thought of corsets made me happy that I didn’t live during that era and could wear jeans and a T-shirt to school.

Bergita led us to a pew near the back. The way she chose the seat made me think it was her regular pew. Several people greeted her on the way in. I sat between Colin and Bethany. Bergita and Amelie sat on either end.

Bethany shook her head at me. “You could have dressed up a little for church, Andi.”

“I did,” I whispered back.

She snorted. My fashionista sister had purposefully chose her outfit this morning—a ruffled skirt and top—while I wore jeans and sneakers. But I’d replaced one of my usual science camp T-shirts with a green button-down shirt.

The pipe organ labored on in the choir loft. Its long heavy tones made me drowsy. My eyes drooped and were half-closed when the call to worship began. The congregation stood and read from the folded
bulletins that the ushers had handed to us as we entered the church.

Colin elbowed me in the ribs, and I glared at him, rubbing my side. Colin’s elbow was particularly sharp. He ducked his head. “Do you see that lady in the front row?”

“Where?” I stretched my neck, trying to spot the woman in question.

“You’ll see her better when we sit down. She’s Miss Addy, the person I want you to meet. I bet she’s old enough to know something about Andora. Bergita says she’s older than dirt.”

“I guess that would qualify.” I stood on my tippy toes. Half a dozen older adults were standing in the direction that Colin had nodded, but none of them fit his description.

The hymn ended and we sat down. A woman in a canary yellow suit read a passage from the Old Testament.

“First row. Blue hair,” Colin hissed.

Miss Addy’s shoulders barely cleared the top of the pew. Her hair was gleaming white and styled in an elaborate array of pin curls. Despite my distance from her, I could see her bright pink scalp through the curls.

Bergita poked Colin in the side. “Hush up.”

We didn’t say anything more after that.

After the service, we filed out with the congregation onto the front lawn. Colin and I hovered by the door waiting for Miss Addy to emerge. Amelie chatted with someone who looked like a professor, and
Bergita gossiped with some friends. Bethany was nowhere in sight.

Miss Addy stepped outside, squinting at the sunshine and supporting herself with a sturdy dark wood cane. She stopped and shook the pastor’s hand. The pastor’s face opened in a fake smile. Miss Addy punctuated her statements to him with a stomp of her cane. After a few minutes spent critiquing his sermon, she carefully made her way down the stone steps. As soon as she hit the brick walkway, Colin moved in. I followed.

“Good morning, Miss Addy,” he said.

She squinted at him. “Colin, the Carter boy,” she said to herself. “Where are your parents? I saw Bergita inside but not your mother and father. Don’t they have time for Sunday services?”

Colin swallowed. “They had to work at the hospital today.”

“On the Sabbath!” she gasped and shook her head. “That’s horrible. I’m glad your grandmother has enough to sense to bring you in spite of your parents. Children should grow up in church. There’s no other acceptable way.” She spotted me hovering behind Colin. “And who is this?”

Colin stepped out of the way, and I grimaced. There went my human shield.

“This is Andi Boggs, Amelie’s niece.”

“You’re the child who lost her parents in that plane crash down in the tropics, aren’t you? I thought there were two of you.”

“I have an older sister named Bethany. She’s here too,” I said.

“That’s good. We don’t see much of your aunt.” Her small, dark eyes bore into me. “What is your name again?”

“Andi.”

She shook her head. “Andi’s not a fit name for a girl. Parents today think they have the license to name their children whatever they wish. Ridiculous. You hardly hear any good solid names anymore. I miss names like Ruth or Mary or Rebecca. It’s all Apple, Mango, and Pear these days. What, do people think they are making a fruit salad instead of naming a child? My land, everyone has a strange, off-putting name. It’s shameful.”

“Andi
is short for
Andora.”

Miss Addy let out a puff of air. “What did you say?”

“My full name is Andora Boggs.”

“Oh, well, that’s … better.” Her hand fluttered to the floral scarf around her neck. “Well, I must find Mrs. Chesterton. She promised to take me home. They won’t let me drive anymore, you see.” She lost her grip on her cane, and it fell to the ground.

I bent to pick up the cane and handed it to her. “Does that name mean something to you? Is there something you can tell us about the Andora Boggs who was born in December 1929?”

Miss Addy’s eyes widened. “Andora? No, I … sorry, I really must go now. I hope to see you and your aunt here at church more often. Good day.” She whirled around without another word and scurried away faster than I would have thought possible, holding her cane just above the ground. She never looked back.

I glanced at Colin. “Well, we know one thing for sure.”

Colin frowned. “What’s that? She didn’t tell us anything.”

“You’re wrong. Her reaction told us a lot. I’m willing to bet Miss Addy knows exactly who Andora was. But for some reason she doesn’t want to talk about it.”