“I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t be,” Liza says with a shrug. “It’s sort of the story of my life.” She turns back to the vase of roses, then reaches for a sprig of eucalyptus. “True love may exist for other people but not for me.”
“If my mother were here, she’d tell you to perk up and stop being a pessimist. Cheer up, Charlie.”
Liza sighs.
“She believed in true love, even if she didn’t have it with my father. Even as a child, I could sense that her heart longed for someone—or something—whether real or imagined. It was as if she was…I don’t know…sort of lost in a daydream, if that makes any sense. I guess I always wondered if—”
“His name was Edward,” Millie says, clearing her throat from behind the counter.
Liza and I turn around, confused.
“The man your mother loved. She was head over heels for him from the very moment she set eyes on him.”
Even though I always knew that my parents’ marriage wasn’t quite the storybook variety, I suppose a part of me had hoped I was wrong, that maybe they did love each other, very much, despite their differences. As weird as it sounds, believing that I came from a union forged by love gave me some sort of comfort, security, even. But now I want the truth more than a fictional sense of comfort, so I listen with a lump in my throat, waiting for Millie to continue.
“They didn’t have much time together,” she says. “But they were the best days of Eloise’s life.”
“How…did they meet?”
“At the Royal Automobile Club, on Pall Mall in St. James’s.”
I feel time stop. I know this place, but why?
“Wait,” I say. “The Royal Automobile Club. That’s where Daniel is taking me for dinner…tonight!” I pause, considering the fact that I’m about to visit the place where my mother’s heart changed forever.
“He gave her his jacket,” Millie says, continuing her reverie with such detail, it was as if the memories had been taken from a page in her heart. “I’d never seen finer fabric.” She pauses. “He was devilishly handsome, and warm—one of those people that has a way of harnessing the attention of an entire room when they walk in.” She smiles to herself. “Your mother shared that trait.”
“So, what happened? Why didn’t it work out?”
“Val, this part of your mother’s story might surprise or even shock you.”
I nod cautiously as Millie proceeds. “They were victims of the most tragic timing. By the time Edward professed his love to her, it was…too late. She was expecting a baby—with your father.”
I connect the dots quickly with a heavy heart. This child my mother carried wasn’t me, of course, but rather a sibling that must have passed long before I came to be. “So she…” I can barely say the words.
“She lost the baby, yes,” Millie continues. “And it shattered her already broken heart and put a tremendous strain on your parents—both of them.”
There it was, the truth my mother had kept hidden in the deepest layers of her heart all those years. She was unhappy because she married the wrong man.
“Why didn’t she just go home, then,” I ask, “and find the man she really loved?”
“By then, it was too late. He’d married someone else, and even if he hadn’t, Eloise could never leave Frank—not after what they’d been through. Loyalty ran thick through her veins. She did what she thought was best. But it came with a hefty price—her happiness.” She sighs. “But then you came along, and, honey, you lit up her whole world.”
I turn the thought over in my mind, feeling the earth momentarily shift. If she’d chosen the other man—Edward—she would have been at peace, and I would have been…
Millie places her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know this must be very hard to hear, but don’t you see the beauty in it, too?”
I shake my head. What beauty? I only saw pain.
“You, my dear, were your mother’s greatest love of all.”
I lean my back against the edge of the counter, taking in the gravity of Millie’s words. I want to believe her, but I struggle. “If that’s true, tell me this: How do you leave the person you love most?”
Millie opens her mouth to speak but no words come out, because maybe there is no explanation, or maybe there’s more to the story that she’s simply not telling me.
I shake my head, wishing I could make sense of it all, wishing my mother were here to explain, to tell me something—anything—that might justify her abrupt departure from my life. If she couldn’t give me the answers I needed, could this man she loved?
“Millie, is…Edward…still in London? Did they reconnect when she moved back here?”
“Yes, and no. He is in London, but I’m afraid they never had that chance. By that time, he was married, with a family.” Her eyes look distant. “It wasn’t an option.”
I nod, craving more information about the man who held my mother’s heart. “What was he like, I guess, besides what you already told me?”
“Well,” she begins. “I know he was a successful businessman, and a devoted father. Years after Eloise moved to California with your father, I once saw him pushing a pram in Regent’s Park.” She smiles to herself. “Eloise told me about an…interesting tattoo he had on his shoulder.”
“A tattoo?”
“Of a violin.”
I cock my head to the right. “Did he play?”
Millie shakes her head. “It’s quite clever, actually. Your mum said he got the tattoo so he’d ‘always have music in his ear.’？”
* * *
—
“You hanging in there, doll?” Liza asks as we head upstairs to my flat together.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just…a lot to take in.” I sink into the sofa, and she slides in beside me.
“I know,” she replies. “I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, when I was twenty-three, I found out that my mother had been having a ten-year affair with one of my teachers from primary school. Mr. Hartley. I just couldn’t make any sense of it. I mean, the man used to trim his nose hairs at his desk.”
I laugh.
“Seriously, he’d use the scissors from the craft box and just get in there. It was so gross. To this day, I don’t know what my mum saw in him.” She smiles, but her expression turns serious again. “Listen, Val, there’s something else about…Edward, that Millie didn’t say because she doesn’t…know.”
“What do you mean?”
Liza takes a deep breath. “Before Eloise passed, he…visited her, on several occasions. Right here.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“Because I saw him coming up and down the stairs. He brought her takeaway, flowers—carried her out to the park, even.” She searches my face. “One day when I came to check on her, she told me that his name was Edward, and that she’d met him a lifetime ago. She looked so happy.”
“Liza, why didn’t you tell me?”