Such a terrible question, but Helen posed it with forthrightness. Rose could remember sitting on her bed in Leeds, waiting for letters that never arrived, thinking, I am supposed to go to school and study? I am supposed to go to the cinema and enjoy it? “I have no idea,” Rose said.
Helen didn’t say anything, and then: “My father died.”
“What?”
“My father died.” She repeated the words patiently. “Two weeks ago. A boating accident, in Hawaii.”
“Oh, Helen, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Rose moved close to the girl, bent down so that she was at eye level. She wished she had known; why hadn’t the administration told her? It made her angry that she hadn’t been told.
“It’s okay,” Helen said, chewing on the end of a limp strand of hair, not looking at Rose. “I’m okay. I hadn’t seen him in so long anyway.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Still in Hawaii. She’s staying there for now. She doesn’t want to come back. She doesn’t want me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Rose insisted, despite what she knew of the family.
Helen shrugged and smiled, the sort of sweet-sad smile that children give adults who lack understanding of the situation, a look that Rose could recall employing herself. “She hasn’t come back. And I’m still here.”
“Well, I’m here too,” Rose said. An absurd thing to say, because where was she but in a chilly classroom with a dusty blackboard and wrinkled likenesses of Dickinson and the Bront?s and spelling lists tacked up on the walls? What did she have to offer? She needs her mother, Rose thought, infuriated—if she knew anything, she knew this to be true. But here they both were. Rose herself might have been a paltry substitute for what Helen needed, but she hoped in the moment for her presence to be enough.
That night, at home, two aerograms awaited Rose. The first, from Mrs. Cohen, contained not unexpected news: Mr. Cohen had passed away two weeks earlier. He had been ill with lung cancer for more than a year. “The funeral was simple, as he would have liked,” Mrs. Cohen wrote. “He remembered you fondly, and I hope you will do the same for him.”
“I should have gone back,” Rose said to Thomas. “I should have seen him more often.” Why couldn’t she have been kinder, after all he had done?
“He knew how you felt,” Thomas said.
“I’m not so sure.” With a sigh, she turned to her brother’s letter. Gerhard spoke about meeting with distributors in Edinburgh and his hopes that the crocuses in his garden would be blooming before long. “Isobel wants me to tell you she is horrified by what she reads about the South, and Harry wants to know when he can come to California to meet Betty Grable,” Gerhard wrote.
“The other day at Kings Cross, I had the most extraordinary experience. I saw a thin middle-aged man staring at me. I kept thinking, why is that old gentleman looking at me?, when he turned and I saw that he was my age—not old at all—and he said my name.” Gerhard went on to say what Rose already knew: that Kurt Epstein lives in Los Angeles, that he works in the entertainment industry. “I told him you were there and he immediately asked for your telephone number. He claims to remember you from when we were children. How surreal and wonderful it was to see him again. Like time collapsing on itself. I do hope he calls.”
“What does Gerhard say?” Thomas asked.
“He wrote about his garden,” Rose said. “He is so focused on his crocuses.”
A week later, when Dotty Epstein called, talking about the Sacher torte she made and a well-known actor who would be coming by this Sunday, and how Rose must join them, Rose answered right away. “We will be there,” she said, thinking of both Mr. Cohen and Helen Peale.
Kurt and Dotty’s house on Cliffwood looked like a smaller version of the main Eastgate building—Spanish style with red roof tiles, creamy stucco, flowers spilling over the brick walkway. Rose and Thomas headed to the front arched door, nearly twenty minutes late. Traffic had slowed them down, but really Rose’s own tardiness was to blame. She had taken longer than usual to get ready, finally settling on a tweed pencil skirt and a cream-colored sweater set.
“I bet not one person here has read Thomas Hardy, except for you,” Thomas said, squeezing Rose’s hand reassuringly. Just last night he had said to her, If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.
“You haven’t read Hardy.”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
The door swung open. “Rose Downes! Thomas Downes! Come in, come in!” Dotty Epstein was even bigger and more declarative in person—her voluptuous frame, the colorful pattern of her dress, the large sunglasses in her hand. She gave Rose a noisy kiss on the cheek.
“You look positively darling. What a charming skirt and top.” Dotty’s tone indicated she thought Rose’s outfit sweet in much the same manner that a child wearing bloomers was sweet—charming in its oddity, its essential irrelevance. They passed a blur of rooms—“billiards, study, living room,” Dotty said, ticking them off with her well-manicured hand. “Powder room on the left. We are going outside because today is beautiful and I will not be denied.”
Rose and Thomas followed Dotty through the sliding glass doors and out into the rich sunshine. Rose hadn’t brought her sunglasses—it hadn’t occurred to her that they would be outside—and she stood blinking, her eyes adjusting before she could make out in detail the white gazebo situated by the kidney-shaped pool, the water silver in the dazzling light. A dozen or so people milled about, men in light-colored suits and women in bright full-skirted dresses that rustled with the slightest movement.
“Kurt must be around here somewhere,” Dotty said. “Kurt?”
A man emerged out of the cool shadow of the gazebo, a tall but narrowly built man in a pale summer suit. When he saw Rose, he clapped his hand to his mouth. “Gerhard’s little sister! Is that you?”
“It is indeed,” she said. It was odd; he was no one she recognized, but she felt a little woozy at the sight of him. He had thick brows accenting his expressive dark eyes, a chipped front tooth that only seemed to add to his allure. He was handsome, undeniably so, nothing like the few boys she remembered from her Viennese youth.
“Ah, you don’t look like your brother—lucky for you—but I swear, I remember your face. I haven’t seen you in more than twenty years, but I do remember your face!” He laughed as he said this, grasping her right hand between his two. They were cool, despite the sun.
“I find that hard to believe. I was eleven when I left.”
“There are many things that are hard to believe,” he said, letting go of her hand. He smiled at her then and there was something intimate about that smile, directed just at her, that made her say: “I’m afraid I don’t remember you.” She knew she sounded prickly, but she felt the need to defend herself.
“You are forgiven,” Kurt said, and laughed again. “The world is a small place after all.”
“Kurt, this is Mr. Thomas Downes. He is an engineer at Douglas. Aviation.” Dotty paused meaningfully. “A top engineer. Working on jet travel.”
“Is that so?” Kurt said idly.