"This mornin' when I was at the museum, someone broke into the house, but that's not even the oddest part. They didn't take a thing. Ransacked the entire attic and didn't even touch the rest of the house."

I glanced at Liv. There were no coincidences. Aunt Del might have been thinking the same thing, too, but it was hard to tel . She was looking a little woozy, like she was having trouble sorting through al the different things that had happened in this room since the house was built in 1820. She was probably flashing through two hundred years al at once while we sat here eating cookies. I remembered what she said about her gift the night in the graveyard with Genevieve. Palimpsestry was a great honor and an even greater burden.

I wondered what Aunt Caroline could possibly have that was worth stealing. "What's in the attic?"

"Nothing, real y. Christmas ornaments, some architectural plans for the house, some of your mother's old papers." Liv nudged my foot underneath the table. I was thinking the same thing. Why weren't they in the archive?

"What sort of papers?"

Aunt Caroline put out some more cookies. Link was eating them faster than she could serve them. "I'm not real y sure. A month or so before she died, your mother asked me if she could store a few boxes here. You know your mother with her files."

"Do you mind if I take a look? I'm working at the library this summer with Aunt Marian, and she may be interested in some of them." I tried to sound casual.

"Be my guest, but it's a mess up there." She picked up the empty plate. "I have a few cal s to make, and I stil have to finish filin' the police report. But I'l be down here if you need me."

Aunt Caroline was right; the attic was a mess. Clothes and papers were strewn everywhere. Someone must have dumped the contents of every box up there into one gigantic pile. Liv picked up a few stray papers.

"How the --" Link looked at Aunt Del, embarrassed. "I mean, how the heck are we gonna find anything in here? What are we even lookin' for?" He kicked an empty box across the floor.

"Anything that could've been my mom's. Someone was looking for something up here." Everyone dove into a different part of the pile.

Aunt Del found a hatbox ful of Civil War shel casings and round bal s. "There used to be a lovely hat in here."

I picked up my mom's old high school yearbook and a field guide to the battlefield at Gettysburg. I noticed how worn the field guide was, compared to her yearbook. That was my mom.

Liv knelt over a stack of papers. "I think I found something. I mean, it seems these belonged to your mother, but they're nothing, real y -- old sketches of Ravenwood Manor and some notes on Gatlin's history."

Anything that had to do with Ravenwood was something. She handed me the notes and I flipped through the pages. Gatlin Civil War registries, yel owed sketches of Ravenwood Manor and the older buildings in town -- the Historical Society, the old firehouse, even our house, Wate's Landing. But none of it seemed to amount to anything.

"Here, kitty kitty. Hey, I found a friend for ..." Link lifted up a cat preserved by the Southern art of taxidermy, then dropped it when he realized it was a stuffed dead cat with mangy black fur. "Lucil e."

"There has to be something else. Whoever was here wasn't looking for Civil War registries."

"Maybe they found what they came for." Liv shrugged.

I looked at Aunt Del. "There's only one way to find out."

A few minutes later, we were al sitting cross-legged on the floor, like we were in a campfire circle. Or a seance. "I'm real y not sure this is a good idea."

"It's the only way to find out who broke in here, and why."

Aunt Del nodded, barely convinced. "Al right. Remember, if you feel sick, put your head between your knees. Now join hands."

Link looked at me. "What's she talkin' about? Why would we feel sick?"

I grabbed Liv's hand, completing the circle. It was soft and warm in mine. But before I could think about the fact that we were holding hands, images started to flash before my eyes --

One after the next, opening and closing like doors. Each image cued the next, like dominoes, or one of those flip-books I read as a kid.

Lena, Ridley, and John dumping out boxes in the attic ...

"It has to be here. Keep looking." John tosses old books onto the floor.

"How can you be so sure?" Lena reaches inside another box, her hand covered in black designs.

"She knew how to find it, without the star."

Another door opened. Aunt Caroline, dragging boxes across the attic floor. She kneels in front of a box, holding an old photo of my mother, and runs her hand over the picture, sobbing.

And another. My mother, her hair hanging over her shoulder, held back by her red reading glasses. I could see her as clearly as if she was standing right in front of me. She scribbles madly in a weathered leather journal, then rips out the page, folds it, and slides it into an envelope. She scrawls something across the front of the envelope and slips it into the back of the journal. Then she pushes an old trunk away from the wall. Behind the trunk, she pulls a loose board free from the wainscoting. She looks around, as if she senses someone might be watching, and slides the journal into the narrow opening.

Aunt Del let go of my hand.

"Holy crap!" Link was way beyond remembering his manners in front of a lady. He was green, and stuck his head between his knees immediately, like he was coming in for a crash landing. I hadn't seen him like that since the day after Savannah Snow dared him to drink an old bottle of peppermint schnapps.