August 15, 1958
Evening
My dear Emmy,
As I write this, the brides box is just to the right of my bent elbow. I could reach out and run my fingers across it with my other hand if I wanted to.
There are signs of neglect on its top and the hinges have corroded to uselessness. The top doesn’t stay on unless you bind it shut, which is how Gwen found it.
And Emmy, the drawings are inside. Just like you left them.
The paper has yellowed and the sketches have faded, but I can still make out nearly every feature you drew if I look close. The images are a bit ghostly, but not unpleasantly so. It’s almost as if you have materialized from beyond the grave to return to me.
It’s as if you have given the brides back to me, not I who have given them back to you.
How like you to look after me, even after all that I did to you.
Do you want to know how Gwen came to find them?
I was right about her not telling her mum that I had come by before. She didn’t tell her. She was afraid her mother would get after her for letting me in. Her mother’s overprotectiveness is apparently an enormous bone of contention between them.
And between you and me, I think she liked having a secret that she could keep from her mum. I don’t approve of it; I’m just saying that’s what I think.
Anyway, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about me after I left. She felt bad for me, and she went back inside the crawl space in the yellow room twice, making sure the brides box hadn’t fallen into a hollow of some kind in the framing.
She was in her bedroom, Rose’s, thinking about it when it occurred to her that if our bedroom had a crawl space, maybe the one she was sleeping in did, too, and that I had just remembered the room wrong. In her bedroom, a cedar chest lines the far wall. Gwen didn’t want to move it when her mother was home; otherwise she’d hear her pushing it across the floor. So she had to wait a couple of days until her mum had to go to Oxford on business. She emptied the chest and pushed it away from the wall. And found an identical crawl space door.
The brides box was inside, on the framing of the door, just like I had placed it in our bedroom. Rose had found it and put it in her room; I’m sure that was what happened. That wardrobe was on another wall when Rose had the room that Gwen is sleeping in now. Remember how Rose liked your drawings? She must have found the brides box after we ran away, took it, and put it in her own room. I know it was her because she wrote her name on the top of all the sketches, Emmy. She wanted the bridal gowns to be hers. So she made them hers in the only way she could. And she obviously never told Charlotte.
Gwen didn’t want to tell her mum about the discovery because that would necessitate a conversation about why she went looking for it. And that was why she asked to meet me in the village to give me the box.
Oh, Emmy. She seemed so happy to be part of something wonderful that was just hers. Her mum wasn’t privy to it, so she couldn’t spoil it for her or take it from her. So like you, so like you.
I told her so.
I told Gwen she reminded me of you. And that I hoped she would change her mind and tell her mother about me and the brides box. It was our secrets that pulled our worlds apart, Emmy. First yours, and then mine.
But Gwen said her mother would have a conniption. They would have a huge fight over it, and, in the end, her mother would never leave her alone at the house again. Not at Thistle House and not in Saint Paul when they went back to the States.
I offered to come to Thistle House and explain things but Gwen told me not to. They only have a couple more weeks left before they head back to America. She doesn’t want to spend them handcuffed to her mother.
I asked her why her mother worries about her so. Gwen said she’s always been that way. She lost family members in the war, her father had told her, and it was too difficult for her to talk about it.
I feel for Gwen, poor thing.
And I feel for her mother.
Terrible things can happen to you that leave you unable to risk trusting the world with what you love; I know this better than anyone.
I don’t want to live handcuffed to my regrets anymore, Emmy.
I hadn’t really understood that was how I had been living until Gwen described it that way.
I tried one last time to convince her to let me go back to Thistle House and talk to her mum, but Gwen said her mother was in Oxford that day, apparently meeting with a long-lost half brother who had contacted her mother out of the blue.
I was jealous in an instant, Emmy, that Gwen’s mother could have a long-lost half brother suddenly crawl out of the folds of the past and reconnect with her. I told her how wonderful that was.
But she just shrugged and said it would have been nice to know before now that her mother had a half brother.
I wished her safe travels back to America and a happy life.
She seemed sad to see me go.
I was strangely sad to leave her.
It was a little like saying good-bye to you all over again.
October 22, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I haven’t had much luck finding any clothing designers or bridal shop owners interested in your sketches.
Make that, I haven’t had any luck.
The ones I have spoken to have been quite taken by the story of the brides box, and especially moved by what happened to you and me. They’ve all found it intriguing that I want to see your sketches become real dresses at last, but the designs aren’t in style, said one; the sketches are too faded to be of any use, said another; and they aren’t mine to give away or sell, said several others. Technically they are still your property, Emmy.
I wish I knew the name of the person you were to meet the day of the bombing. I remember your telling me how this was your one chance to be discovered. If I knew who that person was and where to find him or her, I would waste no time in arranging a meeting.
I can’t remember the name of the lady you worked for at the bridal shop, either. The shop is gone. Everything on the street near where the butcher shop was is gone; it’s all new buildings now.
I will keep trying, Emmy. I haven’t given up.
In the meantime, Simon and I have set a date and I am now wearing the engagement ring he tried to give me last spring.
Our wedding date is April 7.
Your birthday.