The Light of the World, page 25
Liv had thrown her for a loop. What she said seemed so probable, and yet improbable.
Magic didn’t exist in this world, at least not in the manner in which Liv described. It was a complicated concept of good and evil, a fallen alien star come to earth to wreak havoc on the worldview of an entire species. Eva wasn’t sure she could believe.
She was starting to think that she did not really have a choice in the matter. It was either she believed or she would fall victim to the same derision that had so plagued Theo. Eva was not a skeptic by nature. She wanted to believe in truth, and the light, and the good of people. There was no reason for Liv to lie to her, and what she had done with her necklace was astounding. No science that Eva could think of could explain that. It wasn’t some trick of her mind, sinking her deeper into a funk she wouldn’t be able to escape for weeks. This was real. This was true. Magic, the kind that Eva wanted to believe in as a child, did not exist in this world. And yet her grandmother’s words were seared into her mind forever.
There were some things, it seemed, that were a magic all of their own. There was a darkness in things, and a lightness, too. The choice between the two extremes had destroyed her grandmother’s life. She had lost someone for whom she cared deeply. She had lost her and she never knew what had happened to the girl she’d fallen in love with.
Eva’s heart ached just thinking about it.
The death of Catherine Monroe hurt her grandmother. It left her deeply scarred for the rest of her long life. The letter that was never sent bore with it an uncomfortable legacy of a hurt that had never had a chance to heal. Eva couldn’t help but wonder whether its delivery would have made her grandmother’s miserable existence a little better. A goodbye like that was just as devastating as never knowing.
The light was passed on when the guardian was absorbed into the seal. Her grandmother had never known that, and Eva was grateful for it. To know the fate that had befallen her beloved and to live on for so many years was surely worse than anything else.
Every newspaper report on the disappearance of Catherine Monroe had said that her body was never found. Would knowing there were no remains make it any better?
Eva spent the week at work listlessly mulling over what Liv had told her about Catherine Monroe’s death and the light of the world. It was November now, and the days were growing colder.
On Saturday, she begged off from working at the grocery store. Both her parents were in town and she wanted to spend the day with them. Her mother had found a good light fixture to replace the miserably dim hall light. They wanted to install it and Eva wanted to be there to help.
There was also the question of what else they needed to do to the apartment before the probate court hearing in January to officially start the proceedings for selling the apartment. Eva’s father had figured out that there weren’t a lot of outstanding debts in her grandmother’s name. She owned the apartment outright and had for years, so except for the hospital bills, it should be a pretty straightforward case. The Veteran’s Administration had covered most of the bills and what was left was easily payable from the bank account that had been willed to Eva’s father.
Every time Eva thought about that looming court date, a sick feeling of dread settled into the pit of her stomach. She hated that she might be out of a place to live as early as the beginning of the year. She was not yet ready to let go of her grandmother, and leaving the apartment would force Eva to move on.
She wasn’t about to tell her parents how she felt. They didn’t really like or understand her need to delve into her grandmother’s past as much as she had over the past few months. They were grateful for the free labor she was putting into the apartment, but Eva could tell that her mother, especially, wanted her back in school and away from the city.
“You’re wallowing,” her mother told her over the phone when they scheduled the visit. “You’re letting your grief get the better of you and you’re refusing to move on. Your Gran would not have wanted that.”
Eva resisted the urge to roll her eyes, her mother never looked at the full picture. Eva had not had anything to say to that. She’d hung up the phone and curled into a ball on the couch, unmoving for hours. She wasn’t wallowing in her own sadness or misery. It wasn’t that simple. Depression wasn’t some mental hump she could easily pull herself over. Things like this never were.
Her parents arrived a little after ten on Saturday morning. Her dad brought freshly brewed coffee that Eva didn’t need but wasn’t going to turn down. Her mother was carrying the light fixture. It looked absolutely awful, a big brass thing that would cast far more light than the yellowed glass of the current one.
“We brought bagels,” her father announced.
It was strange to see her parents.
Eva hadn’t seen them in close to a month, and it was weird to be around them. They were reminders of the life that she still lived but scarcely focused on. She was so caught up in the past that the little reminders of her present stood out like beacons in the night. She stood in the middle of the living room, watching as her parents moved around the space that Eva had come to think of as her own.
“You’ve done a lovely job,” her mother said as she moved through the apartment, looking at the fresh plaster on the walls and the tile work that Eva and Liv had done in the bathroom. They’d spent most of Monday working on it, and Eva had asked as many questions as she could about the light of the world while they worked. Eva was not sure if the scrutiny her mother was giving it now was because her mother did not trust her when it came to repairs, or because she was genuinely curious.
“The tiling is beautiful, Eva,” her mother said. She’d stepped into the bathroom to get a better look. She brushed her fingers over the blue, green, and white tiles that Eva and Liv had found at a salvage yard and arranged into an arching series of waves along the back wall of the bathtub. “Where did you find it?”
Eva shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t that her parents were snobs, but they were the sort to look down their noses at creative uses of salvaged materials. Liv knew a guy who refurbished bathrooms and salvaged old materials. Eva had been willing to spend more, maybe even buy the tiles new, but it had worked out that he’d had just enough for them to do the bathroom. “You don’t want to know, but it cost fifty bucks to do all of that.”
“I’m impressed,” Her mother said. “Were they on sale?”
“After a fashion, yes.”
Eva’s father stuck his head into the bathroom. “Anyone want bagels?” He glanced around at the bathroom. “This looks great.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Eva smiled at him.
They left the bathroom for the kitchen and ate in relative silence. It was punctuated with a few questions from her mother about what to do with the remainder of her grandmother’s things that were still in the storage closet. “Mostly it’s junk. I think you’re okay to throw it out, Eva.”
“Yes, but Eva did find those papers in there. Maybe we should do it together?” Eva’s father chewed his bagel thoughtfully.
“I could just pull out the trash and leave the papers.” Eva glanced between her parents. “I can tell the difference between important papers and junk, guys.”
“I have no doubt that you can, Eva.” Her mother’s tone was clipped and cool. “But the point is that you have trouble letting go of anything, and it’ll be faster if I’m here to help you do it.” Eva exhaled. She knew what her mother was thinking: People like Eva could not be trusted to know how to let go, so how could her grandmother’s junk be any different?
Eva bit back her reaction and chewed her bagel. It wasn’t worth arguing with her mother about something that they would never agree on. Like the marks on her skin, these wounds were ones that Eva inflicted on herself a long time ago.
A few minutes later, Eva’s father disappeared into the storage closet to collect a screwdriver and step stool. “Can you run down and turn off the breaker, Claire?” he asked as Eva’s mother came back into the room.
Eva piled their plates into the sink and rinsed the cream cheese from the knife.
When the door closed, her father leaned against the door frame. “Salvage yard?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Eva nodded. “Salvage yard.”
He flashed her a thumbs up. “It saves us a buck, but probably best not to mention it to your mother.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Eva laughed. “I figured Gran would approve.”
“The design is really something,” Her father agreed. “Where did you get the inspiration?”
“I worked with Olivia.” Eva followed him from the kitchen and into the living room. He took the light fixture from where they’d left it on the couch and started to fiddle with the plastic bag that contained the screws needed to hold it in place. “She’s Mr. Schultz’s assistant at the bookstore.” Eva’s cheeks felt heated. “She’s, um, a bit of an artist.”
“I can see that she is.”
Eva moved to pick up the box of diaries from the coffee table. “Did you find anything out, about that?” he asked, pointing at the box.
Eva realized just how complicated the answer to that question really was. She could not just sit down and tell her parents all about the great secrets that she’d discovered. The light of the world was a completely different story. Could she even talk about that at all? Liv had said that she could only ever tell one person about the light of the world. Eva did not want to betray her confidence by sharing it with others. Still, there was no harm in telling a little bit of the story to her parents. She had been holding back until she was certain of everything that had happened to Catherine Monroe.
She knew now that there was no sense in waiting. Wren’s fate was not the sort of tale that could ever be told. She could tell him most of the story. The light of the world could be left out, a little lie of omission. “Yeah, actually, I did.” Eva picked up the box and set it on the stereo. “Gran had a really good friend or maybe a girlfriend, the diaries aren’t that specific, and she went missing and was declared dead in the mid-’30s. From the sound of it, they were really close. We found a letter in a collection of documents from the girl—her name was Wren Monroe—to Gran that was never delivered. It was a goodbye.”
Eva’s dad stared down at the light fixture in his hands. There was something drawn about his worn features and a look of resignation that Eva hadn’t been expecting.
“Did you know?”
He sighed deeply. “I’d always wondered if it was a long-lost love. I just never thought it’d be a girl.” He let out a rueful laugh. “She always told me to hold onto your mom and never let her out of my sight when I was younger, but I used to think that that was just because she thought Claire would cheat on me or something.”
It was funny to think about how much Eva’s grandmother had disliked her mother when Eva’s parents had started dating when they were two professionals working in the city. Eva’s mother told absolutely hilarious stories about the strange rituals that the “crotchety old bat” would make her go through just to prove her worth as a potential romantic interest for her son. She’d always insisted that Eva’s mother acted like a relic from another age entirely around her.
“Maybe it had to do more with love?” Eva suggested. “She saw how much you loved her and didn’t want you to go through what she’d been through?”
“Christ, though, she disappeared?”
“If you read her diaries, it sounds as though she was pretty convinced Wren was murdered. She was the one who pushed the cops into investigating back in the day. They didn’t do a great job, if the records we’ve found are at all accurate.”
“A missing girl back then?” Eva’s father shook his head. “I’m not surprised.” He looked at the stepstool. “This isn’t going to be high enough. Shoulda brought a step ladder.”
“Yeah, because I’m sure that wouldn’t have looked weird on Metro North.” Eva reached out and touched the warm flannel of her father’s shirt. “Are you really okay with this, Dad?”
“What’s there to be upset about?”
“I just told you that at one point in her life, Gran was in love with another woman.”
“That happened to a lot of people back then, Eva. It was conform or be ostracized. It isn’t like today. She was just doing what she needed to do to survive. Even if it made her miserable.” He pressed his big, warm hand against Eva’s smaller palm. “Don’t worry about me, Eva, okay? This is something I’ve had suspicions about for years. She was my mom, she still loved me. Her loving a woman when she was just a girl doesn’t change that, okay?”
Eva nodded.
“All right, I need you to shine one of those nice flashlights you’ve got up at this light fixture. We’ll take it down and your mom should be back up soon.”
As if on cue, the power cut off.
Chapter 23
Bonds
Eva was grateful to her father for not reacting poorly to the story of her grandmother’s adolescent love affair with another girl. He’d taken it in stride, or at least he’d seemed to, and Eva was happy that the rest of their visit had gone off without a hitch. There were no little tiffs with her mother and they got through the few projects they had to do together quickly.
The three of them sat down and made a list of what they thought the next few improvement projects on the apartment should be. Eva wasn’t sure that she could tackle replacing the chipped polyurethane flooring in the kitchen by herself, so they were going to look into a contractor to do that, but painting the kitchen seemed to be the next major step in the apartment’s journey.
After debating paint colors for close to an hour at the hardware store, they were unable to come to a decision and her parents’ train would be arriving soon. They had to go all the way back to New Haven, so they were hoping to catch the express train out of Grand Central. Eva walked them down to the subway station.
“Seriously, Eva, I’m proud of you for figuring everything out,” Eva’s father said as he hugged her tight. His coat was bulky against the November chill. “Your Gran would be, too.”
“Call me when you get in?” Eva asked.
Eva’s mother kissed her cheek. “I promise we will.”
They left in a hiss of hot subway air. Eva adjusted the scarf around her neck as she went back up the stairs to the street. She shivered despite the steam that rose from the subway vent beneath her feet. The bookstore was just up the road. Guilt gnawed at her. She wanted to apologize to Al for basically throwing him out of her apartment earlier that week. She checked her phone. It was late enough that Theo might have gone upstairs for the night. Maybe she wouldn’t have to see him.
And Liv was sure to be there.
A small, happy smile drifted across Eva’s face at the thought of Liv. The secret, the press of their hands together, and the brush of Liv’s lips were promise enough. Eva loved the warm, content feeling that filled her every time she and Liv were close enough to touch each other.
Liv had gone back to work with Theo as though nothing were wrong. She never told Eva exactly what she’d said to Theo in order to excuse herself, but he was far too wrapped up in his own work to pay her much mind. Liv was in the process of making copies of every relevant document in the Talbot Collection as Kelvin at the Brooklyn Historical Society had asked for them back.
She didn’t know how Liv could stand in the shadow of a man who was so obsessed with the light of the world. Eva felt ill at ease, knowing that if the truth ever were to come out, he could become incensed.
Liv shrugged off Eva’s worries. “I don’t think he’ll be able to connect the dots back to me.”
“Unless he catches you,” Eva said dejectedly, but Liv just laughed. Her breath was hot on Eva’s cheek. She was far too close, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Pretty sure I can run faster than him.” She winked at Eva and drew back. Her cheeks were flushed a gentle pink.
They both laughed then. Laughing was easiest. Anything else would have been too much, too complicated. Liv’s fingers lingered on Eva’s cheeks and the urge to whisper “kiss me,” knowing that Liv would, was overwhelming. There were so many things that Eva could not say to Liv. Everything between them was growing more and more complicated by the day.
Eva stood before the bookshop window, her breath fogging on the glass. The faded sign creaked in the wind above her head. Eva could see Al leaning over his laptop. He was tapping the screen and smiling. Eva swallowed back her guilt and pulled the door open. The bell jingled, echoing in the dark store.
Al looked up, startled. His lips quirked up into a half-grin and Eva smiled back. His sweater sleeves were rolled up above his elbows and he had a Rangers hat perched almost precariously on top of his dreads. The chance to rib him for it was almost too good to pass up.
She stood in the stacks, not quite daring to go back to the workshop without Al as a shield. She ran her fingers down the spines of books that had become timeless, listening to him as he finished up with a phone call and powered down his laptop.
“Are you going to hide in the classics section all day?” Al asked. He was standing at the end of the aisle with his arms crossed over his chest. She wondered if he was mad at her, but his serious expression faded quickly into an easy grin.
Sticking her tongue out at him, she drifted back toward the front of the store. The place was mostly empty. They could be silly without having to pretend to be professional.
“Do you even watch hockey?” Eva asked.
Al pulled his hat from his head and stared at it for a second. “So that’s what this team plays. I coulda sworn I’d heard of them before.”
Al was ridiculous in so many ways. She grinned at him. “They do play in town, you know.”
“Really?”
“For sure. Swear it on my mother.”
“You don’t even really like your mother, Eva.”
Eva hummed. “Point. Fine, I swear it on Liv’s honor as a researcher.”
Al’s lips drew into a thin line before relaxing. He ran a hand over his hair, fiddling with the locks and setting the one strand that was sticking straight up with the rest of them. He gestured with his head toward the back room. “What’s up with her, by the way?” His voice was pitched low.
