It was terrible at first, after you left. Losing you that way, without any real goodbye, seemed unbearable. I thought briefly about tracking you down, of making some hideous scene until you begged my forgiveness. And then the story broke and I realized forgiveness was no longer possible.
It took a few days—Germany and Italy had just declared war on the US and Europe was all anyone could talk about—but eventually, other papers picked it up and the thing caught fire. In the space of two weeks, my father’s world came down around his ears. He was hounded almost entirely from business, then lost the rest of his fortune trying to salvage the remains. He was also banned from his club, shunned by the very men he had courted so carefully over the years. If that was your intention, you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.
I suppose I should have felt some sense of culpability for my role in bringing down the House of Manning, but I felt none. Instead, I got on a train and headed west, desperate for anonymity. I found it, too, using my mother’s maiden name. You could do that then, go to some new place and reinvent yourself. No one ever asked for proof of anything in those days. You just gave them a name and that was who you were.
I lived quietly there and made friends. One very special friend, from whom the war had taken everything. She was kind to me when I had stopped believing in kindness and blessed me with a gift I’ve been trying to repay ever since. But those are private things, memories to which you have no right. And so I will skip ahead.
For the first time in my life, the idea of family—of true family—had become very important to me. When the war ended, I started writing letters, trying to locate my mother’s family. The men were all gone, buried or scattered by the war, but I managed to find my mother’s sister, Agnes, and several cousins who had fled across the border to Switzerland to escape the occupation. When France was liberated, they returned to their vineyard. My aunt and I wrote letters. They were agonizingly slow in coming and difficult to read when they did. They had lost so much. The land was a ruin, the house stripped bare, but they were determined to resurrect the vineyard and I knew I needed to go.
I needed to belong to them, to belong to their story, and in almost no time at all, I did. Being there, in the home where my mother grew up, surrounded by the people she loved, was like getting a piece of her back. I learned the prayers she wasn’t allowed to say, learned the names she was told to forget. Her traditions—the ones she was forced to deny—became my traditions too. Her language, my language. Her faith, my faith. Now, years later, it’s how I keep her memory alive, by honoring the woman whose memory you tainted with your story.
While in France, I also learned about the work the OSE—the ?uvre de Secours aux Enfants—was doing to find homes for displaced children. There were so many, all with nothing and no one. It was heartbreaking to see. And a reminder that there were worse things than a lost love. And so began my life’s work.
You said something once that I never forgot. You said people like me never accomplish anything meaningful because we don’t have to. All anyone expects from us is that we dress well and throw a good party. It stung at the time, because I knew you were only half teasing. Well, I have done something meaningful. Not because I had to but because I chose to. And when my aunt passed away and I returned to the States, I continued that work.
As for marriage, that was never in the cards for me, which is not to say I’ve been lonely. Far from it. My life has been full and rewarding. I never once thought of trying to find you. At least not seriously. The part of me that believed in such things—in heroes, and sunsets, and happy endings—died the day your story appeared in that rag.
You’ll think me bitter, and I was for a time. A very long time. I felt I had paid a higher price for our recklessness than you—as the woman invariably does—and I wanted to punish you. But there’s no point, really, in keeping score. We’ve gone on with our lives, totted up our wins and losses. You’ve no doubt made mistakes. And I’ve certainly made mine. You were the first, but there have been others. Some, I’ve managed to forgive myself for. As for the rest, I continue to atone. But I have learned this. In every wound, there is a gift. Even the self-inflicted ones.
You smashed me to bits when you left, carved my heart into tiny pieces, but chance put me back together again. I learned that I could bear the memory of your face after all. I will never be completely free of you. Your voice, your smile, even that little cleft in your chin will never be far from my thoughts. My cross and my consolation. At least I can say I didn’t walk away empty-handed.
As for the suitcase, I have no idea what might have become of it. Perhaps your landlord sold it or gave the contents to his wife. I’ve never given it much thought. Perhaps because they were never really my things. They belonged to another woman—to Belle, the woman you left behind. But that woman no longer exists. She became someone else that day, and she got on with her life.
M—
FIFTEEN
ASHLYN
The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books
October 27, 1984
Marblehead, Massachusetts
It was a glorious day for a drive. Chilly and clear, with the bright autumn sun shining through gold-leafed trees. Ashlyn had closed the shop at one and eaten a sandwich in the car on the way to Ethan’s. They had opted to take his Audi and she was perfectly happy to let him drive.
Marian had been right about needing a good map. It had taken them a little over an hour to get to Marblehead, but once there, they found the jumble of narrow roads and even narrower coastal side streets tricky to navigate. It didn’t help that many of the street signs were either obscured by foliage, weathered beyond reading, or missing entirely, but eventually they managed to find Hathaway Road, which traced along a rocky, crescent-shaped cove and offered a breathtaking stretch of silver-gray sea.
The house stood on a high granite bluff, an impressive three-story Cape of softly weathered gray and white, with a columned portico, a cluster of red brick chimneys, and a pair of eyebrow dormers that gave the house a vaguely face-like appearance.
Ashlyn hugged her tote to her chest as Ethan pulled up the drive. Inside, the books were tucked safely in their clear plastic sleeves. She’d be giving them up today and the thought made her sad, but they belonged to Marian—if she wanted them. And in a way, it felt right, like they were finally coming home.
Ethan shut off the car and opened his door. The sound of the sea rushed in with the breeze, the distant pull and rush of waves against the rock-strewn shore. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Marian answered the bell almost immediately, as if she’d been hovering nearby. Ashlyn ventured a smile as the door pulled back. It wasn’t returned, reminding her that despite Marian’s invitation, their intrusion into her life was an unwelcome one.
She was surprisingly tall, almost willowy in a tailored pantsuit of charcoal-gray silk. Her blouse was the color of daffodils and the cleverly knotted scarf at her throat gave her a crisp, tailored air. Minimal makeup, single pearl studs, and a sleek chestnut chignon rounded out her Town & Country ensemble. She looked like money. Or at least what Ashlyn always imagined money to look like. Polished and beautiful, untouched somehow by time, despite her sixty-plus years.