“Why haven’t we opened this closet before now? And with everything else in the house so neat, why did Nanny Lucy let this become such a mess?” Flynn threw the quilt tops over to the side. “I see a suitcase, but I’m not even going to try to put all this stuff back. We’ll box it up for the garage. Do y’all think she might have put her memories in the suitcase? It looks ancient.”

Nessa rushed down the hall and grabbed up all three quilt tops. “We’ve all got a messy room or drawer somewhere in our places. Mine is a drawer in the kitchen. Evidently Nanny Lucy had a messy closet. This is fantastic. I’ll take care of all this after we see whatever is in the suitcase. I can get these quilted by the time I go to my first craft fair.”

“I’ve never seen it opened, so it never registered to me that there was a closet at the end of the hall,” Flynn said.

“You’re welcome to all of it.” April kept eating her cake.

“I can’t believe we’ve been here a whole week and never opened that closet door.” Flynn groaned when he pulled the suitcase off the shelf. “This thing weighs as much as a baby elephant.”

April remembered the day she had gotten curious and opened the door. She had been about ten years old, and things had spilled out into the hallway that time, too. She had crammed it all back into the closet, but a couple of days later, Nanny Lucy had figured out that someone had been in her things.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Nessa told April.

“I kind of have.” April nodded. “I peeked in the closet once. I can still feel Nanny Lucy’s glare boring holes in my soul when she figured it out. She said that this house was my Garden of Eden. She said that she provided for me, clothed me, and made sure I had a place to sleep. She reminded me that she took me to church so I would know God, but that closet and her bedroom were like the tree of good and evil, and I was never to touch either one ever again. Then she beat the hell out of me for disobeying her about never opening that door and sent me to my room for a whole day. I could only come out to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t get dinner or supper, to teach me to leave her things alone.”

“That was harsh,” Flynn said.

“That”—April covered her face with her hands for a moment—“was minor compared to some of the other things that happened here.” She removed her hands, but she didn’t make an attempt to go help Nessa.