“What’s all the racket?” she demands.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Gavin says. “We’re trying to find Jacob Levy.”
“And you can’t knock like normal human beings?” she asks. “You have to beat down the door?”
“He’s not answering,” I tell her miserably. I take a deep breath. “Does he still live there? Is he still . . . ?” My voice trails off, but what I’m meaning to ask is whether he’s still alive. It’s a terrible thing to wonder.
“Calm down,” the woman says. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know him. Now if you could kindly keep it down, I’m trying to watch my shows.”
The door slams before we can say anything else. I feel weak in the knees, and I lean against the wall for support. Gavin settles in beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder. “We’re going to find him, Hope. He’s here. I know it.”
I nod, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. What if we’ve come all this way, only to find that we’re mere months too late? I glance out the window at the end of the hall again, taking in the beautiful view as tears cloud my vision. Below us stretch a few short blocks of Manhattan, ending in the green tip of Battery Park. Beyond that, across the deep blue water of New York Harbor, lie Governors Island to the left and Ellis Island to the right. I wonder whether that’s where Jacob and my grandmother first arrived in this country. Just beyond Ellis Island is Liberty Island, where I see the Statue of Liberty, holding her torch high. It gleams in the sunlight, and I think for a minute about the freedom it represents. What must it have been like to enter into this country for the first time, via Ellis Island, passing such a strong symbol of everything this nation stands for?
And then, just like that, something clicks into place and my jaw drops.
“Gavin,” I say, grabbing his arm. “I know where he is.”
“What?” he asks, startled.
“I know where Jacob is,” I say. “The queen. The queen with the torch. Oh my God, I know where he is!”
Chapter Twenty-five
Overnight Meringues
INGREDIENTS
2 egg whites
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites on high speed with a hand mixer until soft peaks form.
3. Add the sugar, 1/8 cup at a time, beating continuously. Continue to beat until peaks are stiff and stand up on their own.
4. Reduce mixer speed to low and beat in vanilla.
5. Fold in chocolate chips gently with a wooden spoon.
6. Drop by the teaspoon onto baking sheets covered in parchment paper. Try to make sure each mound has at least one chocolate chip. Mounds should easily hold their own shape.
7. Place pan in oven and immediately turn off heat.
8. Leave overnight. No peeking allowed! When you wake up the next morning, open the oven; the meringues will be done and ready to serve.
Rose
It was July of 1980, and Rose sat, eyes closed, in the living room of the home Ted had built for her. It was hot outside, so hot that even the salty sea breeze wafting in through the windows wasn’t enough to cool her off. On days like this, she longed for Paris, for the way that even in the heat, the city seemed to sparkle. Nothing sparkled here but the water, and that just seemed to Rose a cruel temptation. It taunted her, reminding her that if she only got into a boat and headed east, eventually she would be home, on the distant shores of the country of her birth.
But she could never go back. She knew that.
She could hear raised voices in the front room. She wanted to get up and tell them to stop fighting, but she could not. It was not her place. Josephine was thirty-seven now, old enough not to be told what to do by her mother. Rose had already failed in protecting her daughter, in instilling in her the things a good mother should. If she had it all to do again, the choices she would make would be different. She hadn’t realized when she was younger that fate could be decided in a moment, that the smallest decisions could shape your life. Now she knew, and it was too late, too late to change a thing.
Ted came into the room then. Rose heard his heavy, confident footsteps and smelled the faint, sweet odor of the cigars he liked to smoke on the front porch while listening to Red Sox games on the radio.
“Jo is at it again,” he said. She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her in concern. “Don’t you hear her?”
“Yes,” Rose said simply.
Ted scratched the back of his head and sighed. “I don’t understand. She loves to fight with them.”