I pushed Stephanie’s words away. “Mom’s in the kitchen,” I said. “And Daniel and Joseph went to go watch someone remove an alligator from a pool.”
Noah’s brows rose above the dark lenses.
“I know.”
He sighed. “I suppose I’m going to have to wait.”
“For?”
Noah glanced at the kitchen. Not a peep from my mother. He shook his head. “Fuck it.” He reached into his back pocket and handed me a piece of paper.
No. Not a piece of paper. A picture. A faded color photograph of two girls; one blond and vibrant, wearing Noah’s half-smile, and the other— “Holy shit,” I whispered.
The other was my grandmother.
36
NOAH,” MY MOTHER SAID, EMERGING FROM THE kitchen and wiping her hands on a towel. “We missed you.”
I stuffed the picture in my back pocket as furtively as I could.
“Thank you for having me,” Noah said. “I have something for you, from my parents—”
Mom smiled and shook her head. “Totally unnecessary.”
“It’s just in the car, I’ll go get it,” Noah said. He left and I ran to my bedroom and hid the picture before my mother saw it or I spilled water on it or it spontaneously burst into flame.
When I came back, Noah and my mom were talking in the kitchen.
“So where in London did you used to visit?” he asked her as he stirred what I thought might be salad dressing.
“Oh, you know, the usual.” She shrugged from the sink. “Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, that sort of thing.”
“Your mother grew up there?”
A hundred points for Noah Shaw. I almost mimed a high five.
Mom nodded.
“What did she do?”
“She was a student,” she said, her voice clipped.
“That’s so interesting—what university?”
My mother set the salad bowl in front of Noah. “Cambridge.”
Our eyes locked.
“Darwin College,” she went on. “She was in school for her PhD, but she never finished. I think that always bothered her. All right, you two,” she said, grinning at us. “Thanks for helping, you’re free to go.”
This was the one time ever in my life that I would rather be talking to my mother than taking my boyfriend to my room.
“It’s no trouble,” Noah said. He apparently felt the same way.
My mother dusted her hands off. “I’m finished. There’s nothing more to do. Go on,” she said, waving us away and shutting the conversation down. It would happen that she’d extend a grand gesture of trust when what I really wanted was more answers from her. But Noah and I had been dismissed and if we didn’t leave, she might get suspicious.
Once we were alone in my room, I closed the door almost all the way, turned to Noah and said, “Holy shit.”
“Well put.”
I was completely overwhelmed, and backed up onto my bed. “Where’d you find it?”
“A random box of my mother’s things.”
I rubbed my forehead. “So they knew each other.”
“Seems that way. Where’s the picture?”
I went to my desk and took it out from the drawer, then handed it to Noah. “How did you know it was my grandmother?” I asked him.
He looked up at me, clearly perplexed. “Seriously?”
“Yeah . . .”
“You don’t see the resemblance?”
I glanced over at the picture again. Something bothered me about it, but it wasn’t that.
“When was this taken?”
He flipped the photograph over. “1987.” He paused. “My mother would have been in university,” he said. “At Cambridge.”
“Wait,” I said as an idea dawned. “Your parents went there together, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Noah said slowly.
“Can you ask your dad? Maybe he remembers this.” I indicated the picture.
“He won’t talk about her.” Noah’s voice went flat.
“But—”
“He won’t,” he said again. Then, “I could try Ruth, maybe. She was there also.”
One look at him told me I wouldn’t get any further, not unless I pushed, and I wasn’t sure if I should. Not about his family.
I looked back at the picture in my hands. Then wandered out of my room and into the hallway. Noah followed. I glanced down at the photograph and up at my grandmother’s portrait that hung on the wall and then I realized what was off.
“She looks exactly the same,” I said.
Noah’s eyes followed mine. It was a long time before either of us spoke.
“They couldn’t have been studying there at the same time,” I said, once we were back in my room. I sat back down on my bed. “My grandmother would’ve been living in the States when your mother was in school.”
“But she used to go to London every year when your mum was growing up. Maybe they met on one of those trips?”
“I guess, but they seem kind of . . . familiar, don’t they?” I said, staring at the photograph. “Like friends.”
“Everyone seems that way in pictures.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Why take a picture with someone you barely know at all, then? It’s weird.”
Noah’s eyebrows knitted together. “Is it possible she may have gone to London more than your mother knew?”