It took—I have no idea how long it took . . . But eventually my mind settled and drifted back to the London House.
Jason was a college freshman that fall and had a couple weeks of classes before winter break. Had he been with us, he would have taken me to the shops, the sites, the parks, and the museums. Who goes to London and doesn’t see the Tower, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, the Princess Diana Playground, Piccadilly Circus, or take in a West End show and eat dim sum for lunch in Chinatown? At eighteen, Mom and Dad would have let him go and they would have trusted him to take me. It would have relieved them of the burden.
Alone, I explored—and on day four, I found the attic.
The narrow stairs opened into a large room. On day one, Mom called it the nursery and said kids, including my dad, played, learned, lived, and slept up there with a nanny until they were about five years old. Then, also according to Mom, they got sent away to school.
Behind this front room was a short hallway with doors on either side. Maids’ quarters, she told me, and bedrooms for the family’s children. She said my grandmother and her twin sister had slept there when they were girls, and their father and his siblings before them. I felt sad as I realized that without siblings, my dad would have stayed up there all by himself.
Mom hadn’t taken me through the small door at the end of the hallway that first day, and that was where I headed that fourth afternoon.
It was a storage room, wood-paneled like Grandfather’s study, but the similarity ended there. The wood lining his room was smooth and polished. The mahogany so dark and shiny you could see your reflection, and so smooth that when I ran my hand down the wall I was reminded of Mom’s silk dresses. I did the same here and came away with a fine coating of splinters as if I’d rubbed the cactus that sat in Jason’s window well. I brushed my hand against my jeans and most of them fell away. A few dug deeper.
There was a series of dormer windows along both sides of the room that let in the low afternoon sun on one side and the gray of evening on the other. I walked to one and stepped up on something to see outside. Looking down I surveyed the gravel courtyard behind the house and the side garden. Looking across I could see where the buildings ended at the entrance to Kensington Gardens. Mom promised we’d walk there, but we hadn’t yet.
That’s when I felt my breath hitch—both then and now. Back then I realized I’d never visited the gardens, at least not on that trip.
At three o’clock this morning, I realized I was headed toward a moment I had never allowed myself to revisit. A moment I had willfully forgotten.
I smoothed out my breath and exhaled long and slow. It was time . . .
The room overflowed with furniture, boxes, knickknacks, and who knows what else. Lifetimes were stored in that dark space, much of which was draped in white sheets. The object that served as my perch was covered as well. I stepped down and pulled away the sheet and watched the dust dance like fairies in the slanted sunlight as it sank again to the floor. A large trunk sat before me. It had gleaming brass corners and the leather was scratched and worn smooth.
The lock was loose. I jiggled it and it released. The lid tipped far enough to rest against the window ledge, allowing me to dig through books, sets of white gloves, dried flowers, pictures, letters tied with ribbon, two dolls—one with creepy glass eyes that opened when I held her upright—and jewelry. There was a leather sleeve with a large gold locket inside. I opened it and found two girls. Beautiful girls. I knew I was looking at my grandmother and her twin sister, Caroline. The one who’d died young. The one for whom I was named.
Something was wrong with the picture and I dropped cross-legged onto the floor to study it. They didn’t look like girls. They looked Jason’s age or older. And even though the pictures were black-and-white, I could tell one of the girls wore dark eyeliner and her lips were a deeper tone than her sister’s. Makeup, I thought. She was glamorous and, again, I was reminded of those old movies with Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, and Myrna Loy that Amelia, Mom, and I had watched together.
I rested the locket beside the trunk and reached for a packet of letters. They were tied with a black ribbon, frayed thin and soft by time and use. I pulled one letter from the center and shifted to the light to read. The writing swirled in loops and dips. Whoever had written it had much to say and I couldn’t read a word of it. The letters crashed into each other and danced across the page in tight lines. But three things were clear—then and early this morning.
The date . . .
October 7, 1941
My grandmother’s name . . .
Dear Margaret,
And my great-aunt’s signature . . .
Love,
Caro
Having recalled that, the rest washed over me. I couldn’t have stopped the onslaught of remembrance if I wanted to. It wasn’t distant. It was yesterday. It was now. And Dad was right—it changed everything.
I had raced down and down and down again before sliding across the marble hall and into the front room. Dad and Grandfather were there and I remember being surprised, then worried I was late for dinner.
“Look, Grandmother. I found a letter to you.” I held out the page. “It’s from your sister, Caroline.”
Mom laughed. It was light and clear and indulgent. “Sweetheart, I hardly think a little girl wrote a letter that long. Why don’t you . . .”
Her words drifted away as I handed her the open locket. Confused, she looked to my grandmother, but Grandmother was focused on me.
She reached for me and her hand trembled as she wrapped it around mine. It was cold. Icy like my hands get today when I’m anxious or nervous. Although hers were bone thin and gnarled at the knuckles, she gripped me tight and I couldn’t pull away.
“Margaret?” Mom shifted toward her. “What is this? You’re both much older in this picture and the letter is dated 1941.”
“I wouldn’t go to Paris with her. Maybe if I had . . . or lived with her here . . .”
“What do you mean? In 1941? Paris?” Dad towered over us. Grandmother stared at him, almost through me, as if Mom and I had vanished.
“She betrayed us . . . I had to lie. I loved her”—she glanced to my grandfather then back to her son—“more than anyone, and we shared everything. But in the end, it seems, we both had our secrets.”
Grandmother’s voice softened with a faraway quality. “I was bold and fearless, until I wasn’t. Then she was. We were always opposites, from the very beginning. As we grew she became the brightest spot in any room. Me the wallflower, no one noticed. Then she left.”
“Left? But, Grandmother—”
Mom wrapped an arm around me to signal silence.
Grandmother sat looking at my dad. “I told you she died as a child, but she grew, and she joined the Nazis in France. She had a lover we never knew about and we never saw her again.”