“Quick! In here, before anyone sees us,” Trixie urged her two best friends, throwing open the clubhouse door and pushing them inside, out of the bright spring sunshine. Six of the Bob-Whites had made it back to Sleepyside for their spring break, but differing schedules had meant that Brian and Jim left the day after the others arrived. Dan had pleaded a prior commitment: he was on a week-long road trip with a group of college friends.
Diana looked at Trixie in bemusement, as she locked the door and drew the curtains. Honey raised an eyebrow as their friend checked in the storage area and under the table before sitting down to begin whatever she had in mind.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” Di asked. “I didn’t know we were involved in a mystery at the moment.”
Trixie shook her head. “We’re not. It’s just that Brian just told me, just as he was leaving, that he’s just figured out that Moms and Dad must have gotten married two-and-a-half years before he was born.”
Di frowned. “That’s… very nice, Trixie. Is it supposed to mean something to me?”
“Oh, but it does,” Honey answered, catching some of Trixie’s enthusiasm. “If they were married two-and-a-half years before Brian was born, and Trixie is nearly twenty, then Mart is nearly twenty-one and Brian will be twenty-three in October, then that means that their anniversary this year will be their twenty-fifth… or is it their twenty-fourth? Or, possibly, their twenty-sixth?”
“It’s their twenty-fifth,” Trixie corrected. “At least, Brian says it is and I’m planning on taking his word for it.”
“I think you should,” Di commented in mock-serious tones, with a glance from one friend to the other. “So, why are we here? Did you have an idea?”
Trixie gave such a vigorous nod that her curls bounced. “I do have an idea, but I need both of your help with it. Moms and Dad have photo albums for all of us kids, but they don’t really have anything of themselves and Brian reminded me that there are piles of old photos up in the attic, that Moms has never gotten around to doing anything with…”
“And you thought we could do them a scrapbooking album?” Honey asked. “I think that’s a wonderful idea and great timing, since I have a pile of new products that I’m just dying to try. But speaking of time, how much time do we have?”
Trixie gave a helpless shrug. “The rest of spring break, I guess. Their anniversary’s a few days after we leave.”
Honey pursed her lips. “We might need to keep it simple, in that case. And I really wanted to try out my new glimmer mists.”
“There’s always a place for glimmer mists,” Di insisted. “A page is hardly complete without it. Or stitching. Or bling. And at least a few flowers.”
“I thought we decided on simple,” Trixie grumbled. “That doesn’t sound at all simple.”
“That just shows how much you know,” Di teased. “But the first thing we need is the photos. How are we going to get them?”
“That’s what’s so urgent,” Trixie explained, checking her watch. “Dad’s already left to take Brian to the airport. Mart is running some errands with Bobby. Moms is going out in about fifteen minutes and the house will be empty for about an hour after that. Can you both come now and help me look, please?”
“Of course,” Honey answered, sharing a look with Di. “I’ll just go home and get a few things and I’ll meet you at your house in fifteen minutes. How does that sound?”
“Great.” Trixie jumped up. “Well, let’s get moving, then.”
Fifteen minutes later, she and Di waited in the shadows as Mrs. Belden drove down the drive. As soon as she was out of sight, they darted across the yard to the house, where Trixie opened the door with her key. There was no sign of Honey.
“I’ll wait here for her,” Di offered, holding out her hand for the key. “When she’s here, I’ll lock the door again, in case anyone comes by. You go and start looking.”
Trixie nodded and did as suggested. She was in the process of clearing a flat space on which to work when she heard the faint crunch of tyres on the gravel drive. Her heart leapt, thinking that her mother had forgotten something and had returned, but soon she calmed, realising that the car she had heard was Honey’s. A few minutes later, the other two girls joined her.
“Have you found anything yet?” Honey asked, choosing a flat-topped box and setting her laptop on it.
Her friend shook her head. “I was just about to open the first box. What’s that other thing?”
“A scanner,” Honey answered. “I thought we could scan what we wanted as we went and put them back in the same place. How does that sound?”
Trixie gave her an impromptu hug. “I knew there was a reason I asked for your help.”
“Well, are you going to find any photos?” Di prompted, waving her back to the task at hand. “We don’t have all day, you know.”
Trixie nodded and opened the first box. She screwed up her nose as she poked through the photos revealed. “I don’t think this is the right stuff. I don’t even know what that is.”
Di took the one that was at the top of the pile and held it up. “Lovely. Beautiful composition.”
“But no people,” Honey pointed out. “Not what we’re looking for at all.”
Di nodded and replaced it in the box. “Next?”
Trixie set that box aside and took the next one. “Not much luck here, either. I think these are Uncle Harold’s friends – that’s him in the awful blue and orange shirt, and the girl next kind of looks like his wife. Oh! That’s Dad. I don’t know who the girl is, though – definitely not Moms!”
Honey shook her head. “He looks very young in that one. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for at all.”
Scowling at what she had just seen, Trixie dumped that box on top of the first and moved on to another.
“Ooh! Is that your Uncle Andrew?” Honey asked, giggling. “What nice muscles. I wonder if we could get Brian and Mart to pose like that for comparison. Without their shirts, I mean.”
“He is rather like Mart, don’t you think?” Di gazed at the photo, a faint smile on her face. “Though, I can see a resemblance to Brian, too. Take a copy of it, Hon. I’m pretty sure some research is required on that one.”
“We don’t need that one.” Trixie snatched in from them and put it back in the box, only to have it snatched back again. “I don’t want to think about my uncle or my brothers that way, thank you very much.”
“Well, Honey needed something to do while you procrastinated about finding anything useful,” Di noted, grinning.
The scan finished and they returned the photograph to its place. A little further down the pile, they came across something interesting.
“Look! That’s my mother, isn’t it?” Di cried, picking it up. “I didn’t know she knew your family, but that’s her, standing right next to your Uncle Andrew.”
The three girls crowded around. In Di’s hand was a snapshot of three young men and one young woman by a lake; all were dressed for swimming. She turned it over to see whether it bore an inscription.
“That’s about a year before you were born, isn’t it?” Honey asked, in a whisper. “Your father’s not in the photo. I wonder why.”
“Maybe he was the one taking it?” Di suggested, sounding uncertain.
“Then, how would it end up here?” Trixie wondered. She flipped through the next few shots until she found another. “Look at this one.”
“He’s got his arms around her,” Honey noted, in shock. “They look comfortable, that way.”
“Now this is creepy.” Di picked up the next one. “They’re kissing.”
Trixie glanced away from it and caught sight of the next one in the pile. Her mouth dropped open. Honey’s gaze travelled in the same direction.
“Di!” she squeaked.
“I mean, I know, intellectually, that my mother probably kissed other people before she married my father, but to see it is not exactly what I was expecting, especially in your attic, Trixie.” Di seemed oblivious to her two friends, as she continued to stare at the photograph in her hand.
“But, Di…” Trixie waved a hand at the one still in the box.
“And I’m sure I never thought that I’d ever find out that my mother kissed your father’s brother.” Di was still paying no attention. “She never said anything about that to me before and, really, you’d think she might have, considering the relationship that I have with your brother.”
“I think she might just have done more than kiss him,” Trixie remarked, cringing.
Di looked up, confused. She glanced from one friend to the other, then down at the item that still held their attention. All expression vanished from her face. For several minutes, she just stared.
“Oh,” she murmured, at length, in a voice devoid of emotion.
Her fingers trembled as she picked up what appeared to be a black and white proof-shot. Someone had made a few lines on it in blue ball-point pen and the corners were dog-eared. The setting was a studio of some sort, with a draped fabric background. Two people were depicted and they were undoubtedly Diana’s mother and Trixie’s uncle. They were also undoubtedly naked. The pose was tasteful and left much to the imagination, but not enough for the three young women who were viewing it.
“I think we should think of a different gift for your parents’ anniversary and forget we were ever here,” Honey suggested, taking the photograph from Di’s hands and putting it back in the box.
Di shook her head. “I think I might need to know a little more about this.”
She started digging through the box, scattering its contents across the floor until she found a folder at the bottom. Inside were further copies of the same photograph and others from the same shoot. A number of proof-shots had lines drawn across them. Moving those aside, she found a set of photographs that were mounted, though not framed. They covered various styles and genres; the last of them matched the proof-shot that had shocked them so much.
Below it was roughly half of an assignment cover-sheet, bearing a date stamp and the professor’s comments, but not the name of the person who submitted it. The three girls read the comments, glancing back and forth to the photograph. Without a doubt, they matched.
“Just look at that date,” Di whispered. “Eight months before I was born. What does this mean?”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Honey soothed, “because if it does mean what you think it means then that would mean that your mother really should have told you, but since she hasn’t I think we can assume that it must mean something else.”
“I can’t think of anything else it might mean,” Di cried. “If it does mean… that… well, what am I going to do about Mart?”
Honey sank down onto a dusty, old trunk, heedless of her clothes. “I don’t know, Di. If it was me… well, I don’t think I’d be able to continue…”
Trixie screwed up her nose. “There must be some way to find out for sure.”
Di nodded. “DNA testing.”
Trixie shook her head. “That takes ages. I meant something faster. We need to investigate this.”
Di’s head shot up and she shook it hard. “No, you can’t. Please. I don’t think I want to know any more.”
“But, if you don’t know, then you and Mart…” Trixie trailed off. “You need to know, don’t you?”
Honey patted Di’s arm. “She’s right. You do need to know, but you don’t need to know any more details, which is why Trixie should do the investigating.”
“I never said I wanted to know the details,” Trixie objected, covering her eyes. “I already need some brain brillo for the things I’ve already seen.”
“We could ask your mother, Di,” Honey suggested, “or Trixie’s uncle. Surely, they’d know if… Well, at least, your mother should.”
“How would I explain how I know what I know?” Di wailed. “I don’t ever want to admit having seen what I just saw.”
Trixie looked at her watch. “Well, how about if we pack up this box and check some others for the things we’re actually looking for? Surely, there can’t be anything else like this in here, can there?”
“I never would have thought there’d be anything like this here at all,” Honey answered, giving the nearest box a dubious look. “I suppose it’s worth the risk, though.”
Trixie nodded, scooped up all of the photographs and dumped them back into the box. She treated the next one rather as if it might contain high explosives, but soon relaxed, finding that they had finally found the right place. Half an hour later, they had scanned enough old photographs for their project, without finding the least hint of anything else out of the ordinary. Di had also gone downstairs and brought up a few newer photos from the albums, which had also been scanned.
“Is that it?” Honey asked, beginning to close the programs she no longer needed. “I’d better be going, I suppose, before your mother comes home.”
Trixie finished packing the last box and nodded. “That’s it. I just need to put everything back where it was to begin with and we’re finished.”
She grabbed the box that contained the nudes and paused as Honey made an exclamation. At Trixie’s inquisitive look, she explained.
“It has ‘Andrew’ written on it. Here – on the other side, where we wouldn’t see it.”
“So does this one,” Di noted, giving it a poke. “Did your uncle have an interest in photography?”
“I have no idea.” Trixie gave a shrug. “Not that I ever heard of, but he’s lived in Iowa since before I was born, so I don’t see him all that often, really.”
Honey made a small noise in her throat. “You don’t think he left because of this, do you?” She gestured to the box that Trixie still held. “Maybe he was heartbroken over Di’s mother marrying her father and he couldn’t bear to live here any more.”
“And if he knew she was… you know… and that he was responsible…” Trixie drew a breath.
“We don’t know that,” Honey pointed out, as Di squeezed her eyes shut. “And, honestly, if she was… you know… and it was your uncle’s, why on earth would she marry someone else? Why would Di’s father want to, if that was the case?”
“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he knew and didn’t care.” Trixie glanced from one friend to the other. “If he knew that he really loved her and thought he was going to lose her, maybe that was enough. Or, maybe this is all a mistake and we’ve got it wrong.”
Honey’s eyes widened. “You know, that fits a lot better. What if Di’s father really is her true father and it was your uncle who thought he was going to get the girl, only then he finds out that she’s having someone else’s baby and so he leaves town, never to set foot here again.”
“Except that he’s set foot here heaps of times,” Trixie objected, rolling her eyes. “This isn’t a romance novel.”
Honey waved the matter away. “Still, it makes a lot of sense. Maybe we don’t need to investigate, after all.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I think we do need to.” Di’s voice was low and her head bowed. “I really can’t stay with Mart if my real father is his uncle, can I? I need to know this. I just don’t want any of the squicky details.”
Trixie nodded. “Okay. In that case, we’d better get investigating. Di, you need to look around at home and see if you can find any evidence that we might need. The date of your parents’ wedding would be a good start. If you can find a way to ask your mother if she knew my uncle, that would be good, too. I’ll see what I can get out of Moms and Dad without making them suspicious. If that fails, we might need to call Uncle Andrew, but I have no idea what we’d say to him.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Honey wondered.
Trixie considered for a moment. “Not just now, though I think we’ll need you later. How about if you get on with the photo project? We can meet at your place tomorrow to work on it and report our progress.”
The three agreed to that plan and went their separate ways.
That evening after dinner, Trixie sat in the living room with her parents and younger brother, catching up after the weeks she had been away at college. Mart was upstairs in his room, sulking due to a cancelled date with Di. She had telephoned not long after he arrived home that afternoon and claimed a terrible headache. He had been grouchy ever since.
At a suitable lull in the conversation, Trixie began on her quest for further knowledge. She had thought the matter through in the intervening time and had come up with an angle of approach that she hoped would not draw any suspicions.
“Mart didn’t eat as much as usual. I’m a bit worried about him,” she admitted, glancing towards the stairs. “I hope things are okay between him and Di.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” her father answered.
Trixie frowned. “Di said something strange when I talked to her earlier. I think she was talking about her mother. You’ve known her for a long time, haven’t you? Longer than I’ve been friends with Di, I mean.”
Her mother shook her head. “Not really. I didn’t get to know her until you started school together. I may have met her once or twice before then, but that’s all.”
Trixie turned her gaze to her father, who also shook his head. “I knew her even less. I didn’t even meet her until after Diana became a Bob-White.”
“That’s strange,” she answered, frowning. “I was sure you’d known her longer than that.”
Her mother smiled. “Sleepyside may be a small place, but it’s not that small. We don’t know everyone in town.”
Trixie nodded and sat back to ponder those answers. It seemed that this avenue of research was closed.
“What did you find out?” Di demanded, when the three girls met at the Manor House the next day.
“Practically nothing,” Trixie admitted. “My parents claim to have not known your mother, except through your association with me.”
Di frowned. “They said that? Could your uncle have had a relationship with my mother without your father knowing, do you think?”
Trixie scrunched up her nose. “I don’t know, but the thought of them keeping it a secret is kind of strange.” She shook her head. “So, what did you find?”
Di flourished a piece of paper. “Look at this: my parents got married eleven months before I was born. Eleven. I can’t even begin to think how they could get married and then my mother pose for that photo afterwards.”
“Some couples are like that, I think,” Honey mentioned, her face turning pink. “Maybe they had an open marriage.”
“That is just the most disgusting thought.” Di screwed up her face in distaste. “I’m never going to ask them if they did, no matter what we find out.”
“Well, did you find out anything else?” Trixie asked, eager to change the subject. “Did you have a chance to talk to your parents?”
Di sketched a gesture of indifference. “I couldn’t talk to my mother alone. In front of Daddy, she didn’t seem to want to talk about anything even vaguely connected with her early days in Sleepyside – she came here when she was about eighteen, I think. I couldn’t help thinking it might be a sign of a guilty conscience, only I felt guilty for thinking that.”
“Maybe she was just being considerate to your father, since maybe there were things from that time that he doesn’t want to be reminded of.” Honey made the suggestion in tentative tones. “They might have an agreement not to talk about those things.”
“You’re going to have to try again,” Trixie recommended. “See if you can get her alone tonight and if she’ll talk when no one else is listening.”
With a sad smile, Di nodded and talk turned to their project.
When they met the following day for a girls’ day out, Diana was looking dejected.
“What happened?” Honey asked, taking her arm and giving it a comforting squeeze. “Are you okay?”
Di shook her head. “I had a fight with Mart. And I had no luck with my mother. And now I’m sure my mother’s hiding something and maybe I’ll never get Mart back, and I’ll be alone forever and ever and it’ll all be because I couldn’t find out this one thing.”
“There’s still hope,” Trixie told her. “We still have a few leads, and even if we didn’t, there was always that DNA test you were talking about.”
“How does that help me with Mart?” Di demanded. “He thinks I was out with someone else. He has no idea that I suspect he might be my biological father’s brother’s son.”
“Cousin,” Honey corrected, after a moment’s calculation. “Your biological father’s brother’s son would be your cousin.”
“I can’t kiss a cousin,” Di whispered. “Not the way that I want to kiss Mart. And if I see Mart, I can’t not kiss him.”
“Then, we’ll have to tell him.” Trixie bit her lip. “Do you want me to do it, or will you do it yourself?”
“I can’t,” Di answered, still whispering. “Please, can you do it?”
Trixie nodded. “I’ll go, right now. You two can go do some shopping or something.”
“Retail therapy sounds like just what we need.” Honey nodded in agreement with her own logic. “Come on, Di. Let’s get our minds off of this whole horrible situation. We can pick up some more glimmer mist, too; I think we’re going to need it.”
“Thanks, Trixie,” Di told her, with tears coming into her eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
A short time later, Trixie was banging on Mart’s closed bedroom door.
“I know you’re in there,” she called. “There’s something I need to tell you, so you’d better just let me in.”
“Go away,” he grumbled. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“That’s true. You’re going to hear it anyway, though, so are you going to let me in, or do I have to shout it to the whole neighbourhood?”
The door flew open, revealing a rather dishevelled Mart with a thunderous frown on his face.
“Thank you,” she told him, pushing past him and closing the door behind herself. “I know you’re upset. I know that you feel like you have a right to be. I also know why Di’s been reluctant to see you and it’s not what you think.”
“Really.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I suppose you understand what I’m feeling, too, and want to advise me on what I should do next.”
“What you should do next is come to the attic with me and see what we found the day before yesterday.” Her expression softened. “She was shocked and so were Honey and I. I think you will be, too.”
“What could you have possibly found in the attic…” He trailed off. “Okay. Show me and let’s get it over with.”
She nodded and led the way up to the next level. She pointed to the boxes. “We wanted to surprise Moms and Dad with an album of pictures of them for their anniversary, but we looked in these boxes by mistake.” She pulled one down, showing the label ‘Andrew’.
“What did you find?” Mart’s voice was soft and his eyes searched his sister’s face.
In answer, she chose the correct box and opened it. With care, she removed the upper layers of photographs to reveal the incriminating ones below. She cringed as her brother gasped in shock.
“It gets worse,” she whispered, showing him the assignment cover sheet. “Just look at that date.”
“This can’t be happening,” Mart moaned. “There has to be some mistake.”
“We’re trying to find out about this,” she told him. “So far, we know that Di’s parents had been married for a few months at that date. And I asked Moms and Dad, too. They both said they didn’t know Di’s mother until after she and I became friends. It’s just that with this hanging over her head, Di feels like she can’t…”
“Treat me in the manner to which we have become accustomed?” he finished for her. “I totally understand.”
“So, can you stop being angry with her? Please?”
He nodded. “I’m going to help, though. I need this cleared up as soon as possible. Today, preferably.” He frowned for a moment, then his face cleared. “I’m pretty sure that Uncle Andrew did at least one photography class while he was at college. I’m going to call Dad and ask, though. It would be a lot less suspicious if I asked than if you did.”
Trixie nodded, a rueful grin on her face. “I’m not sure how that helps, though. He can’t have been the one to take the picture.”
“Maybe it was one of his classmates, though. In any case, he needs to be asked, if we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Okay, then. I’ll leave that to you.”
“I’ll find out,” he promised. “I need to. And tell Di I’m sorry and that we’ll talk later, okay?”
Later that day, Mart and Trixie met at the clubhouse for an exchange of information. Once the door was closed, Trixie turned on her brother with an enquiring look.
“I was right,” he told her. “I called Dad and told him I had a question about photography and that I wondered if he’d ever done a class in it. He said that he hadn’t, but Uncle Andrew had. So, I called Uncle Andrew and asked him some questions about aperture, the details of which I will omit, for the sake of brevity, then led onto some questions on his class.”
“And?”
“And he admits doing a class, with a friend, whom he did not name. He also admits that there might still be some of his things in the attic at home.” A slight frown crossed his face. “He didn’t seem to want to answer questions about nudes.”
“Did he say anything that helped?”
Mart shrugged. “He mentioned that he and the friend did a lot of work together. I got the impression that the friend was male. Other than that, I don’t really know anything new.”
Trixie sighed, pushing back her curls. “That doesn’t get us very far, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. But it does give me a good excuse to search further in the attic, which I intend to do at the first available opportunity. According to Uncle Andrew, there might be a book or two up there which I might find helpful.” He smiled. “So, did you have any successes?”
She shook her head. “I’m meeting dead ends at every turn. Di’s going to try to talk to her mother again tonight. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re going to try next.”
Her brother looked away. “I was hoping we could clear this up right away. I miss her.”
“I know,” Trixie answered. “I’m doing my best, but no one seems to want to talk about this.”
“It’s like they all feel guilty, or something,” he muttered. “I don’t feel good about this at all.”
Trixie nodded. “Well, maybe tomorrow will be a better day.”
“Trixie!” she heard a fierce voice whisper. “Get up here!”
She looked away from the door of the bathroom, which she had been just about to enter, to see Mart peeking out from the base of the attic stairs. With a quick glance to see that she was not being observed, she darted in his direction and padded up the stairs after him.
“What is it?” she whispered in excitement. “Did you find something?”
He gestured to a quantity of papers that were spread out across the available flat surfaces. She bent over to examine them, reading the dates as Mart pointed to them. Once she had reached the end of the stack, she turned an enquiring gaze on him.
“You don’t see, do you?”
“What am I supposed to see?” she asked.
In answer, Mart jabbed at the papers. “Did you notice these years? These are Uncle Andrew’s college papers. They run from six years before Di was born until two years before Di was born. By the time the class in question was run, Uncle Andrew had graduated.”
“So? Maybe he did an extra class the next year for some reason.”
He shook his head. “After graduation he moved to Iowa, so if he’d done the class after graduation, there’s no way that anything from it would be here. He took the class in his Senior year. I found the notes for it. And some of his assignment work. He was really good, too.”
Trixie frowned, trying to put it all together. “If he didn’t live here when the class was run, then that photograph – and the assignment sheet with it – shouldn’t be here, either.”
“Okay, so I don’t have an answer for everything, but I think it’s something to think about, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s a good find, Mart, but I think we’re going to need some more to figure this out. Maybe there’s something else up here to find, if you keep looking.”
“Fine, I’ll keep looking,” he grumbled. “You’d better keep working, too.”
“I will,” she promised. “And I’ll catch up with you again later.”
“Any luck, Di?” Trixie asked, in a low voice, when they met that morning.
Di waved a hand back and forth. “Sort of. I got my mother alone this morning after breakfast and asked her a few questions about her and Dad, on the pretence of thinking about Mart and me. She didn’t seem at all concerned about the idea of me being serious with him, which makes me think that maybe I’m worrying for nothing, because if what we were suspecting was true, then surely she would object, wouldn’t she?”
“I would hope so,” Trixie answered, screwing up her nose. “Ew!”
“So, anyway, you remember my telling you that she’d said that she knew from when she was ten years old that she would marry my father? Well, the thing she never told me before is that it took him rather a lot longer than that to know.”
“Boys can be a bit slow that way,” Honey remarked, with a side-long glance at Trixie.
“Don’t I know it,” Trixie grumbled. “If Jim was any slower, I might have to take matters into my own hands.”
“You did take matters into your own hands,” Di corrected, giggling. “Unless you have a definition of the word ‘matters’ that I don’t know.”
Trixie grinned and her face flushed pink. “I meant in the future.”
“So, back to the point,” Honey suggested, waving her hands at Di. “Did you get any more clues?”
Di nodded, smiling. “It was all so romantic. Mummy said that she and Dad went to school together without anything much happening at all, then she came to Sleepyside and left him behind. She was taking some classes at the community college and working as a waitress, when she met a nice, young man who was at college with Dad and who came from right here in Sleepyside.”
“That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” Honey asked. “It must have just been meant to be.”
“I think so, too.” Di beamed at Honey, who was being rather more sympathetic than Trixie. “So, Mummy went on some dates with this other man and she liked him very much, but still had a hope deep down that one day Dad would notice her. Then, one day, Dad saw her together with his friend and started getting jealous. When Mummy noticed it, she broke up with the other man and started dating Dad instead. They were engaged in three months’ time, but it took another year and a half until they could afford to be married. They didn’t even wait for Dad to graduate – he still had a year left at college and money was really tight and, of course, I came along a few weeks after he graduated, but they’ve always been so happy together and didn’t I tell you it was romantic?”
“It’s a beautiful story,” Honey agreed, as Trixie rolled her eyes. “I’m sure we were wrong and there must have been some mistake.”
“How do you explain the photos, then?” Trixie asked, raising an eyebrow in enquiry. “If Di’s father was so jealous, he would never have allowed his wife to pose like that, would he?”
“No,” Honey admitted, slowly. “That does still seem strange. But, maybe the date was wrong, or the assignment cover sheet really belonged to something else. Maybe your uncle took a photo of someone else that was similar to that, but the cover sheet got mixed up with that photo somehow.”
Trixie huffed in impatience. “How could that possibly happen?”
“I don’t know. Strange things happen all the time,” Honey answered. “Maybe there is no answer to this.”
Trixie shook her head. “There must be an explanation and I know that we can find it. I just don’t know yet how we’re going to do that.”
Di frowned. “Maybe you should ask your uncle. If my mother doesn’t want to talk about it – and she really doesn’t seem to want to talk about herself with any other man than my Dad – then maybe he’s the only one who can tell us what happened.”
For a moment, Trixie considered the matter, then she nodded. “I think I might ask Mart to make that call. After all, he’s already been told by Uncle Andrew to look in the attic.”
“That makes sense,” Honey agreed. “Let’s see what he says before we do anything else. In the meantime, I think we’d better get on with our project. Those photos won’t scrapbook themselves, you know.”
Rather than allow Mart to make the next move alone, Trixie decided to stand by and listen as he made the call. The connection was made, their uncle came to the phone and Mart began his enquiry.
“I took your suggestion and had a look in the attic,” he began, then paused to listen for just a moment. “Yes, I found them. I also found something else which I wondered if you’d forgotten about. There are some photos of you and a young woman. They’re of a – uh – delicate nature, I guess you could say.”
There was another pause. “No, I didn’t think so, especially since I thought I recognised her… Yes, I do think we should be talking about this… I think it’s important that you tell me… Because she’s my girlfriend’s mother, that’s why. My very serious girlfriend. I think I have a right to know what that was all about.”
Mart held the receiver away from his ear for a moment, as the voice on the other end became loud enough for Trixie to hear.
“Calm down. That’s not what I’m asking at all.” Mart wiped a hand across his face. “What I want to know is why the assignment cover sheet that’s with it is dated eight months before Di was born.” After another pause, Mart gave the exact date, then a further pause ensued. “Yes, I know that you must have been in Iowa then. That’s what seems so strange about all this. So, do you have an explanation?”
For the next couple of minutes, Mart listened and made the occasional noise of assent. At the end, he asked, “And what was the name of your friend.”
The answer to that question caused Mart’s jaw to drop. “You’re kidding me… Okay, fine. I believe you. I’m not sure I like this whole situation, but it’s better than I was hoping… Okay. Thanks, Uncle Andrew. Goodbye.”
“What is it?” Trixie demanded the instant the receiver was safely in its cradle. “What did he say?”
“That his friend didn’t finish the class.”
“And?” Her voice rose in frustration at this answer.
“And he did it again sometime later, after Uncle Andrew had gone.” Mart let out a sigh. “It seems that the two of them had an agreement that they’d be each other’s models for the required nude shots. The other man never submitted his the first time he took the class and so he didn’t bother to do new ones when he redid the class. He used the ones he’d taken a year or two before.”
“So, the assignment date was right, but it didn’t match the date of the photo.” Trixie let out a sigh of relief. “That’s great. But who was the man? And how did the photo end up in our attic?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Uncle Andrew’s friend decided that he really liked Uncle Andrew’s girlfriend and… kind of stole her from him. He didn’t want to keep a photo of Uncle Andrew with the girl who was about to become his wife…”
“You mean, it was Di’s father?” Trixie squeaked. “Di’s father took photos of Di’s mother and Uncle Andrew in the nude, then decided he’d marry her, so he gave the photos back to Uncle Andrew?”
“And he didn’t really want them, either, so he stuck them in the attic with some of his other things the next time he visited.” Mart’s features reflected his distaste.
“If neither of them wanted them, why didn’t they just throw them out?” Trixie wondered, covering her face with her hands. A moment later, she straightened. “Unless he was in love with Di’s mother and heartbroken about being dumped. Maybe that’s why he’s never married.”
Mart hooted with laughter. “Where did you get that idea?”
With a rueful smile, Trixie joined him. “I think I’ve been listening to Honey and Di too much; they’ve been thinking up all kinds of explanations for everything we uncover.”
“Let them,” he replied, then picked up the phone once more.
“Who are you calling?” Trixie asked.
A slow smile crossed her brother’s face. “The lovely Diana. I need to tell her the good news – and make a place and time to meet her.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” she answered, walking away.
“Dad?” Trixie asked at breakfast the next morning.
He looked up from his newspaper. “Yes.”
“The other day, when I asked you about knowing Di’s mother years ago, you said you didn’t.” She took a slow breath before continuing. “Mart told me yesterday that Uncle Andrew mentioned to him once that he’d dated Di’s mother in college. Didn’t you know that?”
For a moment, her father frowned, then an astonished expression graced his features. “I never made the connection before, but I suppose he did.”
“How could that be?” Trixie wondered. “Didn’t you recognise her?”
“Of course I knew her as someone I’d seen around, but I didn’t connect her with Andy. There’s no real reason why I should – they didn’t date for very long and I don’t think it was at all serious.” He shook out the pages of his paper and returned his attention to it.
“Not very serious,” she muttered to herself.
“Did you say something?” he asked, but Trixie shook her head.
The three girls met at the Manor House again that morning to work on their project. As they did so, Trixie shared what her father had said that morning. She had called Honey the previous evening to talk over Mart’s discoveries, but trusted that he had shared them in full with Diana.
“I’m not sure that I would pose nude with a man that I wasn’t serious about,” Honey noted, shuddering. “I don’t think I’d want to with a man that I was serious about.”
“You mean, if Mart did a photography class and needed nude models, that you and Brian wouldn’t volunteer?” Di asked, with such wide-eyed innocence that it had to be fake.
Honey blushed and laughed. “Definitely not. He’d have to find someone else – Dan, for example, and his girl of the moment.”
“I can’t believe that my mother would pose nude with a man that she wasn’t serious about. Do you remember all those talks she gave me about respecting my body?” Di asked, shuddering at the remembrance. “I thought I was going to die from embarrassment if she tried that even once more, and just look what she did when she was about my age.”
“Maybe it was from personal experience,” Honey suggested and the three of them giggled. “She’d hardly say, ‘I know it’s very tempting to pose for nude photographs when you’re young and beautiful, but believe me, you’ll come to regret it later,’ would she?”
Di shuddered. “I’m glad she didn’t say that.”
Trixie began to gaze off into thin air.
“You’ve thought of something.” Honey’s voice broke into her musings. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “I was only wondering what happened to the photos that Uncle Andrew took. If the ones that your father took are in our attic, does that mean the ones Uncle Andrew took are in your attic?”
“If they are, I’m not going to look for them.” Di covered her eyes with her hands. “I have no desire to see my father in that kind of pose. It was bad enough seeing my mother! And who did he pose with?”
“I’m not sure that I’d want to know that,” Trixie answered, cringing. “Maybe we’ve investigated this case enough.”
Di nodded, frowning. “There is one thing that’s still bothering me, though. Do you remember the photos that we found first? The ones with my mother and your uncle together? You remember one of them had a date written on the back? How do we explain those? My parents must have been married then.”
Trixie thought for a moment. Finally, she decided, “We’d better ask Mart whether he found anything more in the attic that might help with that. He said he’d keep looking, but he never really told me what else he found.”
“He was going to be at home this morning, wasn’t he?” Di asked.
At Trixie’s nod, Honey grabbed the cordless telephone handset off a nearby table and started dialling. She had a short conversation with Mart, then ended the call.
“Let’s go,” she directed. “He says that there’s something up there that might help us.”
A few minutes later, the four were trooping up the attic stairs. Mart led the way to the item he wanted, a wooden box with a metal clasp on the front. He pulled it from its place and set it where they could all see.
“Negatives,” he explained, flicking the catch and opening the lid. “They’re all in date order, labelled and a lot of them have notes.”
“There’s so many of them,” Trixie noted with a groan. “How are we going to find what we want?”
Her brother shook his head. “If you want to know, you can be patient and find out. But let’s start with the one that you had a date for. It should be easy enough.”
With gentle fingers, he moved through the sleeves until he reached the right date, one of the very last in sequence. He pulled out a bundle marked ‘My Graduation Party’ and unfolded the plastic sleeve, holding it up to the light of the nearest window.
“Here.” He pointed to one frame. “Was it something like that?”
Di peered at it, her brow wrinkled. In a moment, her expression cleared. “Yes, that’s it. Look! I think this next shot has my father in it and he has his arm around Mummy. I’m sure that’s not your uncle – you can tell by their clothes.”
Mart smiled. “That explains that one – someone else took the shot with my uncle’s camera. The others can probably be explained, too. Maybe the photos in the box were just out of order. How about if we go back to the time when your mother was dating my uncle and see if we can find the others there.”
It took rather longer to find them, since there were a great many negatives associated with that time, but their patience paid off. The photos of Diana’s mother and Mart’s uncle were shown to have dated from a year prior to the one with the date written upon it. They were just about to close the box, satisfied with the result of their investigation, when Trixie found a sleeve that piqued her curiosity.
“What’s this?” she wondered, pulling it out.
“Just the negatives from the nude shoot,” Di answered, closing her eyes. “I’ve seen enough of them, thank you very much. You can just put them away right now.”
“These aren’t your father’s negatives.” Trixie gasped. “These are Uncle Andrew’s negatives.”
Di squeaked and put her hands over her eyes, as if the images might leak through her closed eyelids. “Don’t want to know. Don’t want to know,” she chanted. “Put them back quickly, please, Trixie.”
Trixie and Mart, however, were both transfixed.
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Mart murmured, still staring. “That can’t possibly be…”
Di transferred her hands to her ears. “Don’t want to know,” she repeated.
Honey leaned in closer to see what the fuss was about. She frowned, trying to imagine what the image would look like in reverse. Her mouth dropped open and she covered it with her hand.
“If you don’t want to know, Di, maybe you should go downstairs and we’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes,” Honey suggested.
Di moved her hands back to her eyes and peeked between her fingers to see Honey’s expression. “I’ve changed my mind,” she declared. “If it’s as shocking as all that, I think I need to know.”
There was a pause, where the other three traded glances, silently debating on who should break the news. In the end, Honey lost the battle. She put a hand on Di’s arm and gave it a soft squeeze.
“It looks a lot like your mother,” she explained. “She must have posed with both of them.”
For several moments, Diana digested this piece of information, then burst into laughter. The nervous tension broke and the others joined in, more from relief than amusement.
“It’s no wonder that Mummy didn’t want to talk about this,” Di managed to say a short time later. “This is something about her that I never needed to know and it’s all your fault, Trixie. The next time you ask me to help with something in your attic, the answer is No.”
Trixie shrugged. “If I’d known that our attic held such horrors, I’d have never suggested it in the first place.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Honey added. “How about if we go back to my place now and finish up the album. We don’t have a lot of time left.”
Trixie nodded and the two started down the stairs, pretending not to notice that Di and Mart had stopped to kiss.
A few days later, just as it was time to leave, Trixie and Mart presented the finished album to their parents. In spite of having glimmer mist, stitching, bling and flowers on every single page, Honey and Di had managed to make it simple and stylish, but not overly feminine.
“I know it’s a little early,” Trixie explained, “but since none of us except Bobby will be here on the day, you’d better have it now.”
“Thank you so much,” her mother exclaimed, pulling both of them into a hug. “However did you manage this?”
“Honey and Di helped a lot,” Trixie admitted. “And it was kind of Brian’s idea. Mart was surprisingly helpful, too.”
“Surprisingly?” he repeated, giving her a bit of a bump. “I was exceedingly helpful.”
She nodded and smiled at him.
“Where did you find some of these photos?” her father asked, gazing at one of the early pages in the album in bemusement. “I don’t recall having ever seen this one before.”
Trixie glanced at the photo and up to her father’s face. There was something in his expression that caused her to feel uncomfortable.
“They were in the attic,” she replied.
“You didn’t find anything else… out of the ordinary, did you?” he wondered.
Trixie shared a glance with Mart. “Nothing that we couldn’t explain away.”
He nodded, seeming relieved.
As they walked outside with their bags a short time later, Mart whispered in Trixie’s ear, “Whatever he’s hiding, I’m not going to investigate it.”
Trixie fervently agreed.
The End
