“While I was running here, I wondered if I should go to London.” I looked between them. “There’s still that trunk of letters. Maybe I’ll find something that can soften the narrative, something to make all this not so horrible for him. To make me not so horrible.”
“That’s a lot to hope for.”
My jaw dropped. So did Jason’s.
Gabriela covered her mouth in surprise. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you may not find anything to redeem or soften this, and you have to be able to accept that. You also have to believe what this man wrote.” She handed me my phone. “That good can come from tragedy. It’s in every line here. You must see how illogical it is for you to be held captive by this, much less feel responsible.”
“It doesn’t feel illogical.”
“Go.” Jason cut across us both. “If you need me, call.” He stood, lifting Carolina high above his head just as I had done earlier. “And tell Mom I say hi.”
Gabriela smiled then bit her lip. “Just don’t tell your dad until you’re back.”
Six
The plane touched down at five in the morning on Sunday, London time. The sun was just breaking across the sky, piercing the gray with sharp strands of pink golds. It’d been six years since I’d been there and that was only for twenty-four hours.
I was a senior in college at the time. I flew over with Dad; Mom was already there. They’d been divorced three years by then and, I gather, she’d crossed the Atlantic six months earlier to care for Grandmother, her ex–mother-in-law, in her final months—as odd as that sounds. Odder yet, Dad hadn’t visited his mother at all.
I remembered walking up the stairs to the London House’s front door that morning and not knowing what to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said when Mom answered the door. Nothing more. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was sorry my grandmother had died, sorry my dad had never come over, sorry for the weight my mom carried, or sorry that I—as Dad had purchased the tickets—was flying out with him the next day and leaving her to handle everything alone. Again.
Now, as I thought back, I wondered if my sorry had been based on my own doubts that, facing the same situation, I might not have given six months to my mother.
“Me too,” she replied cryptically and pulled me into a hug. “I understand better after these months.”
Her voice was sad and resigned, and hinted at a greater story. Rather than continue, she ushered me into the hallway. And, in the chaos of those twenty-four hours and then because she never moved back to the States following that trip, I forgot to ask.
I grabbed a cab outside Heathrow and headed to Eaton Square in Belgravia and to the London House. Before I could collect my thoughts or work out an approach, I once more found myself standing at the base of the five steps wondering what to say and do. Turning, I watched the sun dapple the trees of Eaton Square Gardens, opening through the wrought iron gate across the street, and wished I could head that direction.
Twisting back, I stared up at my family’s “London House” as it had stood for two hundred years, shouldered on one side against the massive row of matching homes and wrapping around the corner on the other, the masthead to a long white ship. The broad blue front door was now painted a high-gloss black.
I could not step forward.
Four deep breaths and I forced myself to step up and ring the bell. Time moved faster than my ability to lay a plan, and the door swung open.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Caroline?” She stepped onto the landing and pulled me into a hug. She held me tight and I felt myself melt into her. I breathed her in. A mixture of jasmine, lily, and something fresh and green enveloped me.
“I came to visit you.”
“I see that.” Her voice tripped across notes in a half laugh, half question. She glanced behind me. “No luggage?”
“Just this.” I lifted my shoulder bag. “I’m only here for a couple days.”
She stepped back. “This is getting curiouser and curiouser. Come inside, my little fly.”
Mom always did that when we were very young. When everything else felt grim and gray, or Dad launched into a litany of book quotes—dark ones from Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or Dante—to make his point, she’d take a different tack. She’d wield the same tools, but with a lighter touch. She never made Dad wrong, but she lifted us up. I had not noticed until her counterbalance was gone—and that was long before she actually left.
As she closed the door, my jaw tipped open. The London House was unrecognizable. Gone was the foreboding and dark home of my memory. I gaped inside a front hall that was light, bright, almost joyful, and hinted at more airy beauty beyond. It knocked me off balance. It changed everything.
She smiled with excitement. “I take it you like?”
“I like.” My eyes scanned the front hall, ceiling to checkerboard marble floor and back up again. “You did this?” I blinked, unsure how so much light could come from . . . “How?”
“I spent three years and twice the amount I should have, but this house deserved it. And it was a good project for me. And a wonderful use of Margaret’s money.”
“Has Dad seen it?”
“Of course not.” Mom scoffed. “He’d never willingly come here. When your grandmother left it to me? I can’t imagine that sits well, but it’s his legacy, Caroline, and yours.” She pulled at my arm. “Come see. I have so much to show you. Then we’ll get to why you’re here . . . I can’t believe you are. I’ve imagined this . . . First let’s stop in the kitchen and I’ll put on some coffee.”
Mom was red, flustered, and flapped her hands. She seemed eager to see me. Delighted even. She spun on her heel and waved for me to follow.
We walked through the front hall to a set of back stairs that had been widened in her renovations. What had been small, cramped stairs with uneven rises, leading to a dark kitchen and a warren of rooms surrounding it, was now a showpiece. Well-lit, broad wood stairs, stained dark brown, curved downward and led to an equally dark floor, stained in a chessboard fashion mirroring the marble floor above. But this iteration of the game board was dark upon dark. Deep brown–stained wood checkered against a deeper black. The effect was striking against the kitchen’s fresh white and blue. White marble counters. White lacquered cabinetry. Glass doors revealing beautiful white-and-blue china, blue glassware and serving dishes. It was also flooded with morning light as the kitchen’s entire rear wall was comprised of three sets of glass French doors leading to the walled garden.
“It’s spectacular. Where’d you get this table?”
Standing in front of the doors was a rough wood table with seating for at least sixteen. It was smooth and irregular as if hundreds of years of cooking and cleaning had worn their stories into it.
“It was in a storage closet aside the garage. I expect a couple hundred years ago, it was the kitchen’s main counter and cooking space and, rather than throw it away—because nothing in this house ever got thrown away—someone shoved it into a closet that was once part of the stable. You know, that back west corner?”
I shook my head.