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under the picture you’re looking at. The underneath picture is probably just as beautiful as this one, but he needed it as a base to build this one on, so it’s okay that you don’t get to see it. It’s enough to know it’s there.
    I’m sure God can see it. I wonder if people in heaven can see it, and if maybe one day I’ll get to see it, too. I wonder if cats can see it. They look at things with those funny slanted eyes, and I’ve always thought they must see things we don’t.
    But there I go, off on a mental tangent. My mother used to scold me for getting distracted, saying I needed to stay on task.
    When I’d told Gran one summer that I sometimes got in trouble at home and school for daydreaming, she’d given me a big hug. “That’s the sign of a creative mind.” She told me that when she was a girl, her mother had called her a flibbertigibbet. The word had made me laugh and had become something of a secret code between us.
    I pulled my gaze away from the print and looked around the room. The furniture—a matching oak highboy with an attached mirror, a blanket chest, and two night tables with lamps on either side—was covered with a fine film of dust, but Gran’s bed was as neatly made as ever, so neat you could bounce a quarter off the old white chenille bedspread. Her terrycloth slippers peeked out from under the bed, and I was certain I’d find her pajamas folded and tucked under her pillow.
    I hadn’t been in her closet since I was a child. I used to love to play in there, to try on her shoes, to put on her dresses. Her closet was large and cedar lined, and it smelled like an old forest. Remembering what Eddie had said about it, I walked across the room and opened the door.
    â€œHoly Moses,” I muttered. The cedar scent was still there—but instead of space under the clothes where I used to play, every square inch was taken up with boxes—boxes stacked on the floor and on the shelves above the hanging clothes, boxes reaching up to the ceiling.
    The hanging rods were jam-packed with clothes that would probably bring a fortune at a vintage store. I personally loved vintage clothing—I was a regular at several vintage stores in Chicago—so I rifled through the hangers. They were so crammed together that I could barely move them. A filmy swatch of fabric way at the back caught my eye. Curious, I wrangled the hanger free and pulled it out.
    â€œOh wow,” I murmured. It was a pale blue peignoir set—a sheer float of a robe that went over an equally sheer nightgown. The floor-length gown was embroidered with strategically placed clusters of rhinestone-encrusted white flowers. I held it up in front of me. I had never seen anything so lovely, so ethereal. What a shame that people didn’t wear things like this anymore! I wondered what year it was from. My guess was the forties or early fifties.
    Before I stopped to think about it, I pulled off my sweats and slipped the nightgown over my head, then, carrying the robe, headed for the cheval mirror in the bedroom.
    Holy cow—I looked like Lana Turner, minus the styled hair and makeup. The gown fit as if it had been custom made for me, with embroidery strategically placed to cover my naughty bits. I twirled around, admiring the back. Embroidered flowers formed an optical thong, then gracefully trailed down my leg. I had to hand it to the designer—he was a master of peekaboo.
    It was gorgeous. It was sexy as sin. It was the kind of thing a woman would wear on her honeymoon, back in the days when wedding preparations involved sultry French words like
trousseau, peignoir, negligee
. I let out a sigh. Such magical words from another era.
    I wondered what occasion Gran had bought this for. Or had it been a gift? I’d seen pictures of Gran as a young woman, and she’d looked a lot like Katharine Hepburn. She’d had the same tousled, shoulder-length hair, the