“So you’re saying the characters are real? That what’s written in them actually happened?”
He hadn’t bothered to hide his skepticism and it annoyed her. “I think they might be, yes. The books dovetail perfectly as far as narrative goes, but the voices are completely different. One is written by a man, the other by a woman, but they tell the same story. A love affair that clearly ended badly. The writing is so tortured and raw. Beautiful, actually, but ultimately sad. Both of them determined to acquit themselves of blame for whatever happened between them. They’re quite extraordinary.”
“A love that ended badly? Sounds anything but extraordinary, if you ask me. Interesting premise, though, telling it in two books. A clever way to double your sales.”
“I thought that, too, at first, but my gut tells me that isn’t what this is. I think it really happened. All of it, just like it’s written. I just don’t know who it happened to.”
“And you thought I might?”
“It was worth a shot. I thought maybe you’d seen the books growing up or might even have read them.”
“I don’t read much fiction, actually. No, that’s not true—I don’t read any fiction.”
“I understand. I just thought your father might have mentioned them at some point, or that you might have some idea how they’d found their way onto his shelves.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you there. I won’t pretend to understand why you care about something that may or may not have happened between people who may or may not have existed, but I wish you luck with your sleuthing.”
“Right, then,” Ashlyn said, acknowledging his wish to end the conversation. “Thanks so much for returning my call. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
She hadn’t actually expected Ethan to solve the mystery with a single phone call, but she couldn’t help feeling deflated as she hung up. Unless Ruth came through with something on the illustrious Goldie, her chances of finding out what really happened between the lovers were practically nil.
Maybe Ethan was right. Maybe the whole thing was ridiculous and she should let it go before she became any more distracted. The books were already taking up hours that would be better spent in the bindery. But even as she acknowledged the wisdom of abandoning this strange new obsession, she felt the pull of it. Of them—whoever they were—and their unfinished story, beckoning her to read on.
Forever, and Other Lies
(pgs. 11–28)
September 5, 1941
Water Mill, New York
I arrive at the farm two hours early and pull up to the courtyard behind the stables. I’m early on purpose, to get myself planted and remind myself that today we’ll be on my turf—and that I’ll not let you have the upper hand. I was caught off guard last night, surprised to find you milling about the Whittiers’ drawing room with your aging amour glued to your side. But I’m prepared now for whatever game you might be playing. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed.
I check my watch for what must be the hundredth time, regretting last night’s rashness with every fiber of my being and wishing I’d had the sense to make some excuse when you invited yourself. At least I summoned the wits to refuse your offer that we drive out together, opting instead to borrow one of my father’s cars. No one asked where I was going when I left the house, and I didn’t volunteer. I’m lucky in that way. When no one cares about you, they don’t wonder where you are or when you’ll be back.
Another look at my watch. I’m edgy after the long drive from the city, still questioning my decision to come at all. I could have phoned you this morning and begged off, blamed it on the weather or a forgotten appointment. Goldie’s number would have been easy enough to track down, and she would almost certainly know how to reach you. But it would have felt like surrendering, and I find I’ve surrendered quite enough of myself lately. To my father, my sister, Teddy. I refuse to add you to the list. And so I’m here, waiting under the eaves, watching the rain fall, and waiting for the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.
I’ve always loved Rose Hollow, even on rainy days. I love the wide-open feel of it and the clean blue sky, the sprawling house of weathered gray stone with its chimneys and dormers and climbing roses. And farther out, past the stable and the apple trees, the rolling green ground where it rises up and then falls away, creating the shallow bowl where my mother used to take me sledding when I was little.
She used to love it here, too, away from the noise and the grit of the city. I’m like her in that way. In many ways, really. More than I knew back then and more than makes my father and sister comfortable. But it does me good to come, especially now that no one else does. It belongs to me now, by default if not by deed, though being here sometimes makes me sad. Perhaps that’s why my father stopped coming. Memories he can’t bear to own—of the days before he sent my mother away. I remember, though. Even if he wishes I didn’t.
I remember Helene—Maman, as I called her when we were alone. How she smelled of lilies and rainwater and spoke like a duchess with her soft French lilt. How her eyes—amber-brown like my own and always so sad—would close when she prayed. Strange prayers she taught me to say, too, with strange words that felt too big for my mouth. How she would thumb through the album of old photos she kept hidden under her mattress, the stories she would tell, stories meant only for us. And I remember how she was punished for all of it when my father found out—and how it eventually broke her.
Even now, my throat aches with her memory. She was too tender for a man like my father, too fragile for the kind of life he expected her to live. Shut off from her family in France and isolated from her friends in the States, she’d been left to flounder alone after the births of each of her children, mired in loneliness and depression. And the guilty abyss after the brother I never knew wandered away during luncheon at a friend’s home and stumbled into a pond. Ernest, dead at age four.
All of it had left her brittle, prone to weepy, sometimes debilitating bouts of melancholia, a character flaw my father had been unable to forgive. Tears are a waste of time, he used to say. A sign of weakness, of failure. He meant it, too, as I learned firsthand when I turned on the tears in response to his edict that I get myself engaged by year’s end.