The Crime of Fashion Series
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THE BRESETTE TWINS
Curious Evangeline and her exasperating but loyal brother Raphael are the precocious twelve-year-old Bresette
twins. They star in my new novella for younger readers,
The Children Didn't See Anything, now available from Amazon as a
Kindle
Edition e-book.
The Children Didn't See Anything
First in Ellen Byerrum's stories of the Bresette Twins
Where do stories begin? Sometimes
they begin with an indelible image, one that sticks in your mind for years.
Like the first dead
body I ever saw. I was ten years old, and my brother was eleven. We were running up and down the hallways at my grandparents’ country
club in Chicago when I noticed a black-haired woman in a pink suit and a pink hat, sitting peacefully on a round pink brocade sofa.
She was pretty in pink, and I liked pink, so I stopped to stare at her. We thought at first she was just sleeping—but she wasn’t.
She was dead.
My brother and I never told any adults what we’d seen. It was too shocking! And too fascinating!
So at the funeral my slightly deaf grandmother whispered loudly, “Thank goodness the children didn’t see anything!”
The precocious Bresette twins, curious Evangeline and her stubborn brother Raphael, began with that same image, a dead woman
in pink on a pink sofa. But soon the twins came to life and took over. (Especially Evangeline. She rules!) They took the story in
very unexpected directions and made it all their own.
I love it when my characters come to life for
me, it makes writing a joy. And I hope you enjoy the Bresette twins as much as I do.
My grandparents' big old-fashioned country club was later restored to its historic grandeur and turned into a public cultural
events center. My brother and I used to play in these beautiful gardens. They were slightly grander (okay, light-years grander) than
our backyard at home.
This hall is where my brother and I saw the dead woman sitting on the pink sofa. We were busy chasing each other up and
down the hall, so we witnessed her death only after the fact. We didn't realize she was dead until someone draped a towel over her
face. After that, we had to see everything.
It was great fun as a child to explore these long hallways. Our occasional visits to the country club were among the more elegant
moments of my childhood. But children always need to explore their surroundings, elegant or not, and sometimes kids make the most
surprising discoveries.
This round pink sofa, also known as a "pouffe" or a "borne settee," is similar to the one where the dead woman in the pink suit was
sitting. I think you might encounter this kind of sofa today only in grand old hotels, New Orleans "fancy houses," European palaces,
and certain old-fashioned country clubs. And in my new novella for younger readers, The Children Didn't See Anything.
The Children Didn't See Anything is available from Amazon as a
Kindle Edition e-book.
