This is the seventh part in a series, so if you have not already done so, you might want to read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI before continuing.
After giving her brother the address, Madison decided to continue exploring the house. She picked up her whiskey glass and took another sip as she made her way from the living room into a hallway that led to the master bedroom.
Inside, she found a massive four-poster bed complete with bed curtains. It was like something out of a Dickens novel. It was even neatly made, and Madison wondered if her aunt had made the bed herself or if she had someone she paid to take care of that for her. Had she been a neat freak?
Thinking now about what she had seen so far of the house, it wasn’t freakishly tidy, but it definitely tended more towards orderly than chaos.
Madison ran her hands over the thick, embroidered coverlet. One look at the pillows at the head of the bed and Madison knew she wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon. And if the mattress was anywhere near as comfortable as the living room couch, it was equally capable of casting a sleeping spell on Madison.
Rather than giving in to temptation, she moved on to the master bathroom, which had both a shower and a massive bathtub, surrounded by scented candles and a variety of bath salts.
Making her way out of the bathroom, Madison found the giant, walk-in closet, which was right next to the bathroom.
She flicked on the light to find rows of hangers with blouses, blazers, pants, skirts, and dresses. There was an entirely separate section that was nothing but printed T-shirts, completely at odds with the business-casual side of her wardrobe. Upon opening some of the shelves near the T-shirts, Madison found rows and rows of denim pants and sweatshirts.
So, Aunt Alison had been a T-shirt-and-jeans kind of girl when she didn’t have anyone to impress. Something about that appealed to Madison. It was probably just the fact that her own mother had never let her wear anything like that. Her closet had been all pinks and florals until she had started to earn her own money, at which point she promptly started buying her own clothes.
Moving onto the accessories, there was a solid shoe collection and a decent purse collection. Neither could compare to her own mother’s collections, but they were all much higher quality. In fact, Madison could probably make a fortune just by selling the shoes and purses. Even used there had to be at least a few thousand dollars’ worth of leather here.
Then she found the drawers that contained the jewelry the letter had mentioned.
Pearls took up two entire shelves.
Then there were the emeralds, diamonds, rubies, jade, and gold.
Madison picked up a gold filigree ring set with an emerald and a diamond on either side of the emerald. She had no idea if the jewels were real or not, but based on the quality of everything she had found in the house so far, she felt pretty safe guessing they were real.
She tried putting the ring on, but it only fit her pinky. She held her hand out to admire it and decided she liked it there. It felt like it belonged there.
She closed the drawer and made her way out of the closet, out of the bedroom, and back down the hallway.
She found another bathroom that was clearly meant for guests. It was nothing but a toilet with a lavender-scented candle sitting on the tank, and a sink with lavender-scented hand soap.
Across from the half-bath Madison found a full-on library. She almost dropped her glass of whiskey.
The walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Every shelf was crammed with books. There was even a rolling ladder attached to a bar below the ceiling to make the books on the top shelves accessible. Madison had never seen anything like it in real life.
Up against the window was a beautifully carved mahogany writing desk with the kind of desk chair Madison had seen in plenty of corner offices in downtown skyscrapers in her term as an office temp.
Scanning the bookshelves, Madison saw everything from business books to romance to fantasy and science fiction.
She stopped when she recognized her aunt’s name. There was an entire shelf of books with her aunt’s name on them.
Madison picked one up at random, studied the cover for a minute, then started reading.
She started to pull out the desk chair, but as she did so, she noticed a giant floor pillow, surrounded by smaller pillows on the floor. She hadn’t seen it at first because it was in a corner adjacent to the door, so her attention had been drawn to the bookshelves and desk ahead of her when she walked in, rather than looking to the pile of pillows off to one side.
Madison stretched herself out on the floor pillow, a couple fluffy throw pillows propping up her head as she started reading.
To be continued…