The attic had not been opened in eleven years. Edna knew this because the last time she’d pulled down that narrow ceiling hatch was the winter after Harold died, when she had gone up looking for the Christmas tin, and had come back down without it, crying too hard to remember why she’d gone up in the first place. She had sealed it shut with her grief and left it there.
But today was different. She was eighty-three years old, it was a Tuesday in October, and her granddaughter Lily was coming to visit for the first time in two years. Lily had mentioned, casually, in a phone call, that she was studying textile history at university. Edna knew there was some old fabric from her mother’s time left up in the attic. She climbed onto the step stool—carefully, one hand on the wall—and pressed the hatch open with her palm.
The smell came first. Old wood. Cold air. Something faintly sweet, like cedar and time mixed together. Edna switched on her torch, pointed it into the grey dark above her head, and began to climb.