“What did you just say?”
“Caro wrote that Schiaparelli was mercenary and implied that, despite being a Communist, she was spying for the Germans.”
“Everyone suspected that. The FBI had her under surveillance the whole time she lived here during the war. I mean about Arisaig and Morar? She wrote about those towns? She mentioned them?”
“Of course. Unless you’re Tolkien, you can’t make up those names.” I expected Mat to laugh. He didn’t. “Mat?”
“I—” He stalled out. “I don’t think she was a secretary.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. She worked fabrics. Designed uniforms.”
“There was no manufacturing anywhere near those towns, Caroline. There were no fabrics in the Scottish Highlands . . . But there was demolition and paramilitary training. Could your aunt have been a spy? Impossible. She’d be the first . . . the first woman? That would make her defection huge . . .” Mat’s voice drifted away.
“Wait. What?”
“You need to stay.” His voice snapped from contemplative to directive. “You need to get over to the National Archives. I can send you what file numbers to request, but they’re a mess so you’ll need to canvas everything from the time Caro left France to that October 1941 letter. No, you’ll need to go beyond. Get files for the next year at least. Then—”
“Slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is a bigger story, Caroline. If she got training, if she was a spy, this is something new.”
“I’m trying to tell you—”
“And I’m telling you—”
We started talking over each other.
“Stop,” I cried out. “We aren’t getting anywhere. Just come and read everything for yourself. We’ll go to the Archives together.”
Mat huffed a long, loud breath. “Caroline, as much as I want this story—and maybe even to help you—I don’t have that kind of money. I already used most of the Arnim family’s deposit for my last trip to Paris and London. It’s not good business to use everything you’re paid just to do the job.”
“I’ll pay half your ticket.”
“What?” Mat scoffed. I heard typing in the background. “You want to pay over a thousand dollars? One way.”
“I need you.” I blurted the words before thinking them through. They hung between us, heavy with the past, the present, and some undefined future. Three words never felt more weighted and, in many ways, terrifying, but I couldn’t let him turn me down.
I felt his intake of breath and rushed to cut him off. “I’m hiring you. I don’t want a presentation about my family, but I need answers. I’m hiring you to research my family, with me. You just said this is a bigger story, so it’s a win-win for you.”
“I can’t write what I want if you hire me. Is that what you’re doing? Tying my hands? Because—”
“No.” The word came out strong and clear. I knew what it felt like to be backed into decisions by guilt or by trying to please another. Pick this school . . . Take this job . . . Go home to help. “What you write is up to you and I’ll sign anything you want that says that.”
I imagined him rubbing his brows together with his thumb and forefinger as if trying to ease tension in his brain. He’d done it during our chat at the coffee shop. He’d done it during long-ago late-night study sessions.
“I can only imagine what’s in those letters,” he muttered before raising his tone back to full volume. “Look, Caroline, if I want a full-time job and, better yet, best yet, a tenure track position, I need to become a voice in the public forum, an expert outside academia, because that’s what it takes now. The old ‘publish or perish’ is now ‘panel, publish, promote, or perish.’ I can’t let one article go because another may or may not be better.”
“I get it.” I slowed my breathing. “I’m not trying to trick you . . . Unless you choose otherwise, Friday remains your deadline with your current story. Just consider other possible angles.”
As I stated the words, something shifted within me. I wasn’t talking to Mat, the guy who was writing an article about my family; I was talking to Mat, my friend, my secret crush, the smartest guy in the room, and the kindest. Yes, I wanted answers for me, but I also wanted something for him. I’d hurt him our senior year—in ways I was only now recognizing. Not only that, but he’d filled my thoughts over the past forty hours as surely as my aunt and grandmother had. The cacophony of emotions jangling within me was hard to sort and harder to silence—I just knew he was a vital part of whatever this was.
“Trust me, Mat. There’s something here. Something good, for both of us. I can feel it.”
“Why did I ever call you?” he whispered over the line.
It made me smile. I recognized that tone. Mat was coming to London. “What’s that flight you were looking at?”
“This one leaves Boston at ten o’clock, connects in New York, and flies to Heathrow at 11:30 p.m. Tonight.”
“Book it.” I sounded confident, but I was shaking inside. A well of hope had opened within me over the letters, over my aunt, and now over Mat. I was desperate to hang on to it. “Please. You said you aren’t teaching this summer; you’re doing research on your own time. We only have until Friday.”
With a little more back-and-forth—and complaints that he had to kick out his dinner guests—he booked the flight.
“Thank you, Mat. This means a lot to me. It’s not history. It’s . . .” Here we came to the heart of it. The heart Jason saw right away. “It’s my family. My father needs this. So do I.”
“What if you don’t like what we find?”
We.
“It’ll be the truth.” My statement settled within me. I felt comfortable with it. “We’ve lived in lies long enough.”
Twelve
I sat stunned by what I’d done. It was both harder and easier than I imagined. I stared at my phone. It had been the medium of a revolution over the past several minutes, and I was unsure how to approach the fallout. I quickly left a message on my boss’s voicemail asking for more days. Then, still nervous, I texted Jason. Someone needed to know what had just happened.
Finding a treasure trove of information in London. I called Mat, the Atlantic writer, and invited him over. I think I can change the article.
Instantly the three dots appeared . . .
I hope you know what you’re doing.
I waited. No more dots. I hoped I did too.
I laid my phone on the table and rustled through the piles of letters before me. “I blame you,” I whispered.
After all, she was responsible for this. Caroline Amelia Waite—not only for the events eighty years ago but for those of the last ten minutes.