“What?” She set down her cup.
“I read it on the plane. It’s what Churchill told some guy when he started Britain’s first real spy division in World War II. He was ‘to set Europe ablaze.’”
“This sounds dangerous.”
“It feels dangerous.”
To come here, to pursue this search, meant breaking another cord with my dad. So few tied us together, I feared that breaking this one might sever us completely.
“You’d better start at the beginning.”
And so I did . . .
When I finished, she pushed away from the table and set a kettle on the stove. “No more coffee for me or I’ll get jumpy.” She pulled a tea tin from the shelf. “I hoped that afternoon would set your father free. I’d never understood why he was so closed, aloof. I thought it was a British thing and he’d warm up, and when we first met, he wasn’t so much that way with me.” She glanced at me. “Or when Jason was young. He was warmer, more giving. There was an endearing eagerness about him. But even then it felt like work and not his natural disposition. Then Amelia died and perhaps we both stopped trying.” She looked straight at me. “Not perhaps. We did stop. I’m so sorry, dear.”
“I’m not here for that.” I pulled my head back, just as I’d seen my father do countless times, unable to tread where she was leading. “I want to talk about that afternoon.”
Mom nodded. “I think every fear he had got named that day.”
My name.
I pressed my lips tight to keep from saying it. It would sound churlish, childish, and self-centered. But it was how I felt and—calling to mind the look he threw me as I left the drawing room that long-ago afternoon—I realized I’d felt that way for twenty years.
Mom sighed as she crossed the kitchen to me, tea in hand. “It wasn’t her name so much, but the reality of her. It was the lie they told and the fear behind it. That lie took on a life of its own and formed their family—our family, in a way. Caroline changed from a bright spark, one he chased to bring his mother joy when nothing else could, to a shadow from which no one was ever going to escape.”
Her words drew me back to my Friday meeting at the coffee shop. Mat had said something about the fact that how we absorbed and translated history mattered and that it was never objective. The emotions we brought to it changed it. At the time, I associated his comments with world events; now they struck close to home. Aunt Caroline’s betrayal changed us all. My failure changed us all.
Mom continued, “When one approaches death, I suspect life looks different. Your grandmother’s perspective certainly changed. She was racked with guilt those final months—for not being bold, for not being more forthright with her sister, for not forgiving her husband, for feeling trapped and weak and unable to break free, and for lying to your dad and sending him away. For so much. It was heartbreaking and she was all alone.”
“You were here.”
“I was alone right beside her,” Mom whispered. She then flashed a smile as if hoping the emotion would follow the action. “But you’re here now.”
“I need to see the letters, Mom. Do you have them?”
“I do . . . all of them.”
Seven
Mom refused to give them to me right away. She looked over her teacup and stared at me while delivering her edict.
“What do you mean, not yet?”
“This might not be as easy as you think. Rest for a couple hours. We’ll go for a long walk and grab tea at the Orangery. Then we’ll get them from the attic.”
“Is this a joke? I just told you my flight home is Tuesday.” I pushed back, a little annoyed that she was playing a protective and concerned mother now.
“Then you’d better head upstairs for your nap quickly.”
I opened my mouth to protest again. But she had the letters and I had only forty-eight hours.
As I walked back up the flights of stairs, I recognized something small unfurling within me. There was something novel, enticing, and comforting about being taken care of. I supposed we never grow out of that longing—and, I had to admit, the prospect of a nap, food, and finally getting to walk through a London park was compelling.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and collapsed onto the bed while Mom’s comment about how this was the lie that formed our family played on a soft repeat. It sounded dramatic, yet I suspected she was right.
A rap on my door sat me up straight.
“Are you awake?”
“I don’t think I slept.”
She stepped into the room. Her shoes made soft squeaks on the floor. “It’s noon. You slept.”
“Four hours? I’ve wasted time.” I tossed back the covers and threw my legs over the edge of the bed.
“Not at all. Grab some comfortable shoes and let’s get going. It’s about a two-mile walk.”
We headed up Belgrave Place into Knightsbridge and entered Hyde Park at the Mandarin Hotel. It was bustling and sunny and glorious. Black cabs zipping down the streets, smartly dressed pedestrians in Belgravia, fast-paced tourists in Knightsbridge, and a more relaxed early summer Sunday scene once we hit the park—kids ran along the paths, riders on horseback trotted the outer dirt-and-gravel path, and blankets dotted the grass as far as I could see.
“You’ll love the Orangery. They refurbished it and Kensington’s rear gardens a few years ago. The architect, the same one who designed Britain’s World War Two Normandy memorial, did a beautiful job retaining its history while bringing it into the present.”
I scanned the room as the hostess seated us at a corner table next to a tall arched window. Mom was right. While I didn’t know what it had been, what it was was spectacular. I felt like I had stepped into a Regency novel with delicate food to match the pristine high walls with their ornate top moldings, arched doorways, and floor-to-ceiling windows you could step through if you needed to beat a hasty retreat or get to an assignation in the gardens beyond.
I dropped my napkin into my lap, wondering at the small world nature of it all. The past. Respect. Translation. Adaptation. The things we reform; the things we let go.
I hoped I could do as well.
After lunch we walked home. Few words were spoken. I wondered if Mom felt as I did—that we were about to pass a point of no return. Our mood reminded me of walking into class on the day of a law final. No one ever spoke. What was ahead absorbed our focus, charged the air around us, and held our futures in its grasp. It was either that, or Mom and I simply had little to say to each other after so many years.