Evelyn repeats the name. “Nancy Mitchell?”
Angela nods. “Yes.”
The memories rush forward, tripping over one another in Evelyn’s mind.
Nancy Mitchell, on her exam table.
Nancy Mitchell, holding the door for her on her way out of St. Agnes’s after she said goodbye to Chester Braithwaite, hugging her on the street in the setting sun.
Nancy Mitchell, who joined the Janes and became part of the movement alongside Evelyn.
Nancy Mitchell, whose bravery sparked like lightning when a traitor pointed a gun at the back of her head.
Nancy.
Jane.
Her daughter.
“Would you like to meet her?” Angela asks again.
“Angela,” Evelyn begins, overcome by the reality of what she’s about to say. “I think I already have.”
CHAPTER 31 Evelyn
SPRING 2017
12:35 p.m.
It’s nearly time.
Evelyn is in a state of high agitation, and she’s been doing her best to keep herself busy this morning. She’s washed and folded three loads of laundry since she woke up at four o’clock after an almost sleepless night. The third load was a set of towels she’d put through the laundry two days ago and didn’t need washing again. She made herself one cup of strong coffee around five, and has since switched to decaf; she doesn’t need addictive stimulants putting her any more on edge than she already is today.
Nancy is arriving at one o’clock. With Angela acting as her proxy, Evelyn invited Nancy to meet for tea at her apartment, and in the intervening two days since Nancy accepted her offer, Evelyn has thought a great deal about the ridiculousness of the invitation. One “meets for tea” with an old friend to catch up after a few months apart, discuss the politics of a wedding guest list, or plan a weekend getaway in the country. You don’t “meet for tea” to reunite with your long-lost daughter.
But in a situation this absurd and remarkable, how else are you supposed to officially reunite? What are the expectations? There is no normal way to do this. No handbook. What could Evelyn have offered Nancy, except to meet for tea?
Angela spoke with Nancy and confirmed that she was indeed the Nancy Mitchell who worked with the Jane Network, then she explained who Evelyn really was. Angela says it took Nancy a while to absorb it, believe it. They talked for over an hour. But now she knows, and she still wants to meet with Evelyn.
After changing her outfit four times, Evelyn finally decided on a pair of neat jeans and a blouse in the same shade of yellow as the booties she knitted for Jane all those years ago. She wonders whether Nancy ever saw them. She makes a mental note to ask.
She’s smoothed her grey hair and even put on a little bit of lipstick, which she rarely does. She scrubbed her entire house from top to bottom yesterday and refilled the vase on the windowsill with fresh lilacs. The smell fills the room now as she opens the window a crack to let in a whiff of the cool spring breeze. The smell of the city in springtime—mud and exhaust and flowering trees—fills her nostrils and the familiarity calms her nerves, if only a little.
Evelyn glances at the clock again.
12:40.
She breathes her nervousness out through pinched lips just like she does in her yoga classes, and heads for the door. The sound of the traffic and chatter rises as she steps out onto the sidewalk. The sunlight hits her, and she winces, but smiles. Springtime and the return of the sun is such a relief at the best of times, and today it cracks a grin into Evelyn’s usually serious features.
She doesn’t bother locking the door; she’ll only be a minute fetching Angela from Thompson’s. It’s Saturday afternoon, so there’s another person working in the shop today who’s agreed to cover Angela’s break while, at Evelyn’s request, she acts as a buffer for the reunion. Angela offered to come directly to her apartment, but Evelyn told her she wants to see the mailboxes. She needs to see the mistake that cheated her out of so much time with Nancy.
Outside Thompson’s, Evelyn stops in front of the two boxes screwed into the brick wall beside the door. The chatter of pedestrians on the sidewalk behind her, the car horns, and the screech of the streetcar all fade into the background. She pictures Nancy reaching her hand under the creaking, rusted metal flap to retrieve the unwanted junk mail and hydro bills, never knowing there was supposed to be another letter for her. It hurts Evelyn’s heart just to look at it.
While Evelyn is in quite good health for her age, she’s in the home stretch now, and there isn’t enough time left to make mistakes. And, even more critically, to fix those mistakes.
When you’re young, you get to look at time through the reduction end of the telescope. The wrong end, the generous end that makes everything appear so far away, that gives the impression that there are light-years of space between you and those magically distant objects. And then, without warning, time turns it around on you, and suddenly you’re looking through the correct end, the end you were always supposed to be looking through, if you were paying attention. The end where everything is magnified and perilously close. The end that zooms in without mercy and forces you to see the detail you should have been focusing on all along.
While Evelyn and Nancy were so close to one another for years, they never knew each other’s true identity. Evelyn has tried to think back on those memories and count them as time spent with her daughter, but it’s not the same.
She returns her gaze to the mailboxes, considering the turn of events. Even if Frances Mitchell’s letter had been delivered properly, it might have taken Nancy the same number of years to locate Evelyn, or she might never have been able to find her at all, given Evelyn’s name change. In a way, perhaps Frances’s letter being delivered to the wrong mailbox made sure that the two women were reunited. If not for Angela finding it and making the connection, maybe Evelyn wouldn’t be meeting with Nancy today at all. Maybe she would have gone to her grave never knowing that Nancy Mitchell is her daughter Jane.
Evelyn hasn’t believed in any kind of god for decades now, and she doesn’t subscribe to the concept of fate. Life is simply too cruel for those things to exist. But, like many people, she does wonder every now and then about the strange and serendipitous ways in which things sometimes seem to just work themselves out.
The sound from the street roars back into focus as Evelyn turns the doorknob and enters the shop with a jingling of bells overhead. Angela is perched on a stool behind the antique cash desk. She’s tapping a pen at breakneck speed and her eyes are bright underneath her dark bangs. She looks up at Evelyn, then at the clock on the wall. Evelyn’s eyes follow.
12:48.
“It’s time?”
“It’s time,” Evelyn replies.
Angela comes around the desk to Evelyn and pulls her into a hug. Evelyn is surprised at the affection she’s developed for the young woman.
“How you doing, Eve?”
Evelyn’s throat is stuck, but she nods and leads Angela back out the jingling door of the shop. They walk a few minutes in silence back to Evelyn’s apartment. Once she’s shut the inner door behind Angela, she lets her breath out.
“I’m really nervous, Angela. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“That’s completely understandable. Just remember that Nancy wants to see you. And you aren’t meeting each other for the first time today, as weird and wonderful as that fact is. She knows you. Her adoptive mother encouraged her to find you. This is all going to be okay. It really, really is. This is just one huge hurdle that you have to get over. Waiting for today was probably the worst part. Once she’s here… I think it’ll feel different.”