They climbed the stairs and emerged into a cedar-scented attic, where Remus flipped on a light switch to illuminate a single bulb that hung from a cord from the pitched, exposed-beam ceiling. But they didn’t stop there, either. Instead, they walked past many generations’ worth of clutter—an antique sewing machine, a dressmaker’s dummy, wooden steamer trunks, teetering piles of magazines with curled and yellowed edges, stacks of old board games—toward a small, wooden ladder-like staircase that rose into a dark space over their heads.