Secrets of a Charmed Life, page 31
Dr. Diamant assures me that with all that I have told her about you, you would have forgiven me. That you did forgive me.
I think maybe if we end it here, perhaps I can learn to believe it. Maybe not as quickly as Simon would like, but if I know anything about time, it is that it stretches to walk with you when you grieve. The rest of the world may zoom past at breakneck speed, but when you are learning to live with loss, time slows to the pace of your breathing.
I will never forget you, Emmy.
But I need to release you.
Your sister always,
Julia
August 15, 1958
Emmy,
I can hardly believe what has happened.
Gwen found the brides box.
She found it.
In Rose’s old room.
She called me this morning as I was getting ready for work.
I am stunned beyond words.
She wants to meet me in Stow to give it to me. I don’t even care that she doesn’t want me to come back to Thistle House.
I have called in sick to work. I begged Simon to let me use his car.
He wants to come with me but I told him no. We can’t both call in sick.
And I want to go alone.
Emmy, after all this time. I am bringing home your brides box.
August 15, 1958
Evening
My dear Emmy,
As I write this, the brides box is just to the right of my bent elbow. I could reach out and run my fingers across it with my other hand if I wanted to.
There are signs of neglect on its top and the hinges have corroded to uselessness. The top doesn’t stay on unless you bind it shut, which is how Gwen found it.
And Emmy, the drawings are inside. Just like you left them.
The paper has yellowed and the sketches have faded, but I can still make out nearly every feature you drew if I look close. The images are a bit ghostly, but not unpleasantly so. It’s almost as if you have materialized from beyond the grave to return to me.
It’s as if you have given the brides back to me, not I who have given them back to you.
How like you to look after me, even after all that I did to you.
Do you want to know how Gwen came to find them?
I was right about her not telling her mum that I had come by before. She didn’t tell her. She was afraid her mother would get after her for letting me in. Her mother’s overprotectiveness is apparently an enormous bone of contention between them.
And between you and me, I think she liked having a secret that she could keep from her mum. I don’t approve of it; I’m just saying that’s what I think.
Anyway, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about me after I left. She felt bad for me, and she went back inside the crawl space in the yellow room twice, making sure the brides box hadn’t fallen into a hollow of some kind in the framing.
She was in her bedroom, Rose’s, thinking about it when it occurred to her that if our bedroom had a crawl space, maybe the one she was sleeping in did, too, and that I had just remembered the room wrong. In her bedroom, a cedar chest lines the far wall. Gwen didn’t want to move it when her mother was home; otherwise she’d hear her pushing it across the floor. So she had to wait a couple of days until her mum had to go to Oxford on business. She emptied the chest and pushed it away from the wall. And found an identical crawl space door.
The brides box was inside, on the framing of the door, just like I had placed it in our bedroom. Rose had found it and put it in her room; I’m sure that was what happened. That wardrobe was on another wall when Rose had the room that Gwen is sleeping in now. Remember how Rose liked your drawings? She must have found the brides box after we ran away, took it, and put it in her own room. I know it was her because she wrote her name on the top of all the sketches, Emmy. She wanted the bridal gowns to be hers. So she made them hers in the only way she could. And she obviously never told Charlotte.
Gwen didn’t want to tell her mum about the discovery because that would necessitate a conversation about why she went looking for it. And that was why she asked to meet me in the village to give me the box.
Oh, Emmy. She seemed so happy to be part of something wonderful that was just hers. Her mum wasn’t privy to it, so she couldn’t spoil it for her or take it from her. So like you, so like you.
I told her so.
I told Gwen she reminded me of you. And that I hoped she would change her mind and tell her mother about me and the brides box. It was our secrets that pulled our worlds apart, Emmy. First yours, and then mine.
But Gwen said her mother would have a conniption. They would have a huge fight over it, and, in the end, her mother would never leave her alone at the house again. Not at Thistle House and not in Saint Paul when they went back to the States.
I offered to come to Thistle House and explain things but Gwen told me not to. They only have a couple more weeks left before they head back to America. She doesn’t want to spend them handcuffed to her mother.
I asked her why her mother worries about her so. Gwen said she’s always been that way. She lost family members in the war, her father had told her, and it was too difficult for her to talk about it.
I feel for Gwen, poor thing.
And I feel for her mother.
Terrible things can happen to you that leave you unable to risk trusting the world with what you love; I know this better than anyone.
I don’t want to live handcuffed to my regrets anymore, Emmy.
I hadn’t really understood that was how I had been living until Gwen described it that way.
I tried one last time to convince her to let me go back to Thistle House and talk to her mum, but Gwen said her mother was in Oxford that day, apparently meeting with a long-lost half brother who had contacted her mother out of the blue.
I was jealous in an instant, Emmy, that Gwen’s mother could have a long-lost half brother suddenly crawl out of the folds of the past and reconnect with her. I told her how wonderful that was.
But she just shrugged and said it would have been nice to know before now that her mother had a half brother.
I wished her safe travels back to America and a happy life.
She seemed sad to see me go.
I was strangely sad to leave her.
It was a little like saying good-bye to you all over again.
October 22, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I haven’t had much luck finding any clothing designers or bridal shop owners interested in your sketches.
Make that, I haven’t had any luck.
The ones I have spoken to have been quite taken by the story of the brides box, and especially moved by what happened to you and me. They’ve all found it intriguing that I want to see your sketches become real dresses at last, but the designs aren’t in style, said one; the sketches are too faded to be of any use, said another; and they aren’t mine to give away or sell, said several others. Technically they are still your property, Emmy.
I wish I knew the name of the person you were to meet the day of the bombing. I remember your telling me how this was your one chance to be discovered. If I knew who that person was and where to find him or her, I would waste no time in arranging a meeting.
I can’t remember the name of the lady you worked for at the bridal shop, either. The shop is gone. Everything on the street near where the butcher shop was is gone; it’s all new buildings now.
I will keep trying, Emmy. I haven’t given up.
In the meantime, Simon and I have set a date and I am now wearing the engagement ring he tried to give me last spring.
Our wedding date is April 7.
Your birthday.
November 1, 1958
Dear Emmy,
No news to report on the sketches.
I found a seamstress willing to make one of the drawings a reality—I’ve actually found several who make custom dresses all the time, for a pretty price—but the one I like best is not interested in being part of launching a line of wedding dresses with your name on them. She will make a dress for me from one of your designs, but it won’t be to sell in a boutique somewhere. It will be for me to wear.
I am discovering that if I want your drawings to become real wedding gowns, I will need a treasure chest full of money to fund the project myself and then peddle them to bridal shops door-to-door.
I don’t have a treasure chest full of money.
Gramps isn’t a rich man, but he’s done well. I can only hope I can convince him to help me do with your sketches what you would have done with them.
But first I will have to tell my grandparents about the brides box.
And what I did.
Julia
November 9, 1958
Dear Emmy,
Gramps said no.
Simon and I took the train to Woodstock and had tea at Granny and Gramps’ house this afternoon. Gramps said he was sorry but neither he nor I know anything about the bridal gown business. We don’t have the know-how, the instincts, the connections.
He said it would cost thousands of pounds to have your drawings made into dresses, provided I could find a suitable seamstress able to read the faded sketches, and then I would have to traipse around London on foot, carrying them from store to store, hoping some shop owner would want to buy a gown that was in style twenty years ago, designed by an unknown who has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gramps can’t see the value of plodding across London with an armload of wedding dresses no one to date has expressed any interest in.
He also commented that the designs aren’t truly mine to do this with. They belong to you. I don’t have your permission and I’m likely not going to get it.
Gramps and Granny were both appreciative of my desire to make things right between you and me, but they don’t think I’ve anything to regret. You and I both made mistakes that day. Mine were less egregious, perhaps, but that’s not the point, Gramps said. The point is, London was bombed a few hours after you and I arrived. The war is the true destroyer of your dreams, not I. So it’s not up to me to restore what the war shattered.
Simon was sitting next to me the whole time, stroking my hand under the table and saying nothing. I wanted him to say, But Emmy’s designs are really good. Or I’ll drive Julia around London so she won’t have to tramp across the West End on foot with an armload of dresses. Or even just, Don’t we owe it to Julia’s sister to at least give her dresses a chance?
He didn’t. We left soon after that.
What was the good in finding Emmy’s sketches if not to do something with them? I asked Simon on the way home.
He said maybe the finding was just for me. Maybe I was meant to find the brides box now because I happen to be in need of a wedding dress.
Pick the one you want for you, Simon said. Wear one of your sister’s designs to your own wedding. Wouldn’t that be the good in finding them?
I suppose he’s right.
I laid out all the sketches on my kitchen table tonight after Simon dropped me off. The most faded ones I put back. A couple others just weren’t right for my body shape.
Of the seven that were left, I picked the one I used to call the button dress. Remember it, Emmy? You had tiny pearl buttons going down the front, all the way to the floor. And a high, fitted waist. Lacy sleeves you can see through, a heart-shaped neckline, and a swishy skirt with a lace petticoat underneath.
I wonder if you ever imagined that someday your little sister would wear one of your dresses.
Perhaps Simon is right. Perhaps finding the brides box so I can wear one of your designs is what you would have wanted.
I am eager to take it to the seamstress who said she will make one of the dresses for me. I know what Gramps will say when I tell him my dress is to be custom made and might cost a little more than he thought he wanted to spend. He will say he doesn’t care. The dress is for me, for my wedding.
It’s for my happy ending.
One of us should have one.
I guess it will be me.
At least, as happy as I can make it.
Julia
November 19, 1958
Dear Emmy,
The seamstress who agreed to make the button dress for me told me she’d like to change the skirt to a tea length and drop the tops of the sleeves to off the shoulder. She said the style of the button dress is terribly outdated.
I wanted to throttle her.
Instead I told her I liked the original design just the way it was.
She said, You do know no one is wearing this style of wedding dress anymore?
And I said that wasn’t true because I was wearing it.
But I know now why I can’t seem to generate interest in your sketches, Emmy.
I’m too late.
I waited too long to look for the box.
Julia
December 2, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I had my first fitting today. I nearly cried when I tried the dress on, even though it’s only partially sewn.
It’s so beautiful, Emmy. So incredibly beautiful. April seems like such a long way off.
Granny came with me to the fitting and she started to cry.
See how talented my sister was, I said to her as she blotted her tears away.
It’s a wonderful dress, Granny said.
The seamstress just clucked something like Every bride looks like a princess in a wedding gown that she loves.
When I came home, I could feel the dress still on my skin. Your dress, Emmy. I still feel it on me, caressing me. Holding me.
I think I can be happy marrying Simon in the dress that came from the very heart of you. I think you would want me to be happy marrying him.
Snow is falling outside my window now, diamond white in the spreading dusk.
I feel you here with me, Emmy. It’s as if you are looking down on me from heaven, for surely that is where you are, and the snow is a gift you’ve been allowed to give me so that I can mark this day.
The brides box is sitting on the table here next to me and it occurs to me that I shall marry only once.
I have no need of the other sketches in the box.
I have your forgiveness. I see it in the snow outside my window and I felt it earlier when your folds of white caressed my trembling body.
Across from me, my little coal fire is whispering condolences.
And something else.
I see it now, how I can hold you forever and also let you go.
The happy fire is sighing in agreement, the little beggar. It is eager to play its part for me.
The journal I will keep to remind me, should I ever need to be reminded, that you and I did indeed find each other again, within the seams of my wedding dress.
Good-bye, dear sister.
I will love you always.
Julia
Forty-one
KENDRA
WHEN I look up from Julia’s journal, Isabel is asleep on the sofa. Her head is bent forward on her chest and a gentle wheeze floats across to me every time she exhales.
For several long minutes I am torn between waking her and letting her sleep.
I am dying to know how Isabel got her hands on the journal. She had to have been reunited with her sister. Had to have been. How else could she have come by it? I turn my head toward the window as the thought occurs to me that perhaps Julia is in the garden with the rest of the family.
As I ponder this, Isabel stirs awake, sees that I have closed the journal, and she sits up abruptly.
“Oh! I must have nodded off. What time is it?”
I glance at a clock on the wall behind her. “Just a bit after two thirty.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
She takes the journal gently from my outstretched hand. “You’re the first to read it in many years.”
“How did you get it?” I hear urgency in my voice.
She smiles knowingly. “Do you mean, did Julia herself give it to me?”
I nod, wanting very much to hear that this is exactly what happened.
Isabel runs her hand across the top of the journal. “She did.”
Relief floods me. “Thank God,” I whisper, and her smile widens.
“Yes, I’ve God to thank for refusing to let me continue with my stubbornness.”
“How did you find each other?”
Isabel thinks about her answer for a moment. “Gwen brought us together, you might say.”
“She finally told you about Julia coming to the house that day, didn’t she?” I say, sure that this is what happened.
“I guess that is one way of looking at it. The short story is Julia handed the journal to me, from where you are sitting right now. The long story is a bit more complicated than that.” She settles into the sofa cushions behind her and I settle into mine. “We’d been back in the UK for nearly a year, Mac, Gwen, and I. We decided to stay at Thistle House after Mac joined us that first summer. He and I needed a quiet place to rebuild our marriage, and since Gwen’s best friend back in the States had recently moved to the West Coast, Gwen was amenable to staying and trying the high school here. I soon had other reasons for wanting to stay, which I will get to. But I still lived as though Emmeline Downtree had never existed. I still went by the name Isabel. I didn’t see any great need to shatter the myth, and being back at Thistle House after so many years was rekindling old aches that I thought Isabel could handle better. The only person who deserved to know the truth was Gwen, and what was the point in finally confessing to her that not only was I living my life with a borrowed name, but I had also abandoned my seven-year-old half sister on the day the Germans bombed London and she was likely dead because of me? I was looking for ways to bond with Gwen rather than distance myself from her, and since Mac hadn’t taken the news well when I finally told him the truth about who I was, it was easy to decide that nothing good would come from dredging it up for Gwen, either.
I think maybe if we end it here, perhaps I can learn to believe it. Maybe not as quickly as Simon would like, but if I know anything about time, it is that it stretches to walk with you when you grieve. The rest of the world may zoom past at breakneck speed, but when you are learning to live with loss, time slows to the pace of your breathing.
I will never forget you, Emmy.
But I need to release you.
Your sister always,
Julia
August 15, 1958
Emmy,
I can hardly believe what has happened.
Gwen found the brides box.
She found it.
In Rose’s old room.
She called me this morning as I was getting ready for work.
I am stunned beyond words.
She wants to meet me in Stow to give it to me. I don’t even care that she doesn’t want me to come back to Thistle House.
I have called in sick to work. I begged Simon to let me use his car.
He wants to come with me but I told him no. We can’t both call in sick.
And I want to go alone.
Emmy, after all this time. I am bringing home your brides box.
August 15, 1958
Evening
My dear Emmy,
As I write this, the brides box is just to the right of my bent elbow. I could reach out and run my fingers across it with my other hand if I wanted to.
There are signs of neglect on its top and the hinges have corroded to uselessness. The top doesn’t stay on unless you bind it shut, which is how Gwen found it.
And Emmy, the drawings are inside. Just like you left them.
The paper has yellowed and the sketches have faded, but I can still make out nearly every feature you drew if I look close. The images are a bit ghostly, but not unpleasantly so. It’s almost as if you have materialized from beyond the grave to return to me.
It’s as if you have given the brides back to me, not I who have given them back to you.
How like you to look after me, even after all that I did to you.
Do you want to know how Gwen came to find them?
I was right about her not telling her mum that I had come by before. She didn’t tell her. She was afraid her mother would get after her for letting me in. Her mother’s overprotectiveness is apparently an enormous bone of contention between them.
And between you and me, I think she liked having a secret that she could keep from her mum. I don’t approve of it; I’m just saying that’s what I think.
Anyway, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about me after I left. She felt bad for me, and she went back inside the crawl space in the yellow room twice, making sure the brides box hadn’t fallen into a hollow of some kind in the framing.
She was in her bedroom, Rose’s, thinking about it when it occurred to her that if our bedroom had a crawl space, maybe the one she was sleeping in did, too, and that I had just remembered the room wrong. In her bedroom, a cedar chest lines the far wall. Gwen didn’t want to move it when her mother was home; otherwise she’d hear her pushing it across the floor. So she had to wait a couple of days until her mum had to go to Oxford on business. She emptied the chest and pushed it away from the wall. And found an identical crawl space door.
The brides box was inside, on the framing of the door, just like I had placed it in our bedroom. Rose had found it and put it in her room; I’m sure that was what happened. That wardrobe was on another wall when Rose had the room that Gwen is sleeping in now. Remember how Rose liked your drawings? She must have found the brides box after we ran away, took it, and put it in her own room. I know it was her because she wrote her name on the top of all the sketches, Emmy. She wanted the bridal gowns to be hers. So she made them hers in the only way she could. And she obviously never told Charlotte.
Gwen didn’t want to tell her mum about the discovery because that would necessitate a conversation about why she went looking for it. And that was why she asked to meet me in the village to give me the box.
Oh, Emmy. She seemed so happy to be part of something wonderful that was just hers. Her mum wasn’t privy to it, so she couldn’t spoil it for her or take it from her. So like you, so like you.
I told her so.
I told Gwen she reminded me of you. And that I hoped she would change her mind and tell her mother about me and the brides box. It was our secrets that pulled our worlds apart, Emmy. First yours, and then mine.
But Gwen said her mother would have a conniption. They would have a huge fight over it, and, in the end, her mother would never leave her alone at the house again. Not at Thistle House and not in Saint Paul when they went back to the States.
I offered to come to Thistle House and explain things but Gwen told me not to. They only have a couple more weeks left before they head back to America. She doesn’t want to spend them handcuffed to her mother.
I asked her why her mother worries about her so. Gwen said she’s always been that way. She lost family members in the war, her father had told her, and it was too difficult for her to talk about it.
I feel for Gwen, poor thing.
And I feel for her mother.
Terrible things can happen to you that leave you unable to risk trusting the world with what you love; I know this better than anyone.
I don’t want to live handcuffed to my regrets anymore, Emmy.
I hadn’t really understood that was how I had been living until Gwen described it that way.
I tried one last time to convince her to let me go back to Thistle House and talk to her mum, but Gwen said her mother was in Oxford that day, apparently meeting with a long-lost half brother who had contacted her mother out of the blue.
I was jealous in an instant, Emmy, that Gwen’s mother could have a long-lost half brother suddenly crawl out of the folds of the past and reconnect with her. I told her how wonderful that was.
But she just shrugged and said it would have been nice to know before now that her mother had a half brother.
I wished her safe travels back to America and a happy life.
She seemed sad to see me go.
I was strangely sad to leave her.
It was a little like saying good-bye to you all over again.
October 22, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I haven’t had much luck finding any clothing designers or bridal shop owners interested in your sketches.
Make that, I haven’t had any luck.
The ones I have spoken to have been quite taken by the story of the brides box, and especially moved by what happened to you and me. They’ve all found it intriguing that I want to see your sketches become real dresses at last, but the designs aren’t in style, said one; the sketches are too faded to be of any use, said another; and they aren’t mine to give away or sell, said several others. Technically they are still your property, Emmy.
I wish I knew the name of the person you were to meet the day of the bombing. I remember your telling me how this was your one chance to be discovered. If I knew who that person was and where to find him or her, I would waste no time in arranging a meeting.
I can’t remember the name of the lady you worked for at the bridal shop, either. The shop is gone. Everything on the street near where the butcher shop was is gone; it’s all new buildings now.
I will keep trying, Emmy. I haven’t given up.
In the meantime, Simon and I have set a date and I am now wearing the engagement ring he tried to give me last spring.
Our wedding date is April 7.
Your birthday.
November 1, 1958
Dear Emmy,
No news to report on the sketches.
I found a seamstress willing to make one of the drawings a reality—I’ve actually found several who make custom dresses all the time, for a pretty price—but the one I like best is not interested in being part of launching a line of wedding dresses with your name on them. She will make a dress for me from one of your designs, but it won’t be to sell in a boutique somewhere. It will be for me to wear.
I am discovering that if I want your drawings to become real wedding gowns, I will need a treasure chest full of money to fund the project myself and then peddle them to bridal shops door-to-door.
I don’t have a treasure chest full of money.
Gramps isn’t a rich man, but he’s done well. I can only hope I can convince him to help me do with your sketches what you would have done with them.
But first I will have to tell my grandparents about the brides box.
And what I did.
Julia
November 9, 1958
Dear Emmy,
Gramps said no.
Simon and I took the train to Woodstock and had tea at Granny and Gramps’ house this afternoon. Gramps said he was sorry but neither he nor I know anything about the bridal gown business. We don’t have the know-how, the instincts, the connections.
He said it would cost thousands of pounds to have your drawings made into dresses, provided I could find a suitable seamstress able to read the faded sketches, and then I would have to traipse around London on foot, carrying them from store to store, hoping some shop owner would want to buy a gown that was in style twenty years ago, designed by an unknown who has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gramps can’t see the value of plodding across London with an armload of wedding dresses no one to date has expressed any interest in.
He also commented that the designs aren’t truly mine to do this with. They belong to you. I don’t have your permission and I’m likely not going to get it.
Gramps and Granny were both appreciative of my desire to make things right between you and me, but they don’t think I’ve anything to regret. You and I both made mistakes that day. Mine were less egregious, perhaps, but that’s not the point, Gramps said. The point is, London was bombed a few hours after you and I arrived. The war is the true destroyer of your dreams, not I. So it’s not up to me to restore what the war shattered.
Simon was sitting next to me the whole time, stroking my hand under the table and saying nothing. I wanted him to say, But Emmy’s designs are really good. Or I’ll drive Julia around London so she won’t have to tramp across the West End on foot with an armload of dresses. Or even just, Don’t we owe it to Julia’s sister to at least give her dresses a chance?
He didn’t. We left soon after that.
What was the good in finding Emmy’s sketches if not to do something with them? I asked Simon on the way home.
He said maybe the finding was just for me. Maybe I was meant to find the brides box now because I happen to be in need of a wedding dress.
Pick the one you want for you, Simon said. Wear one of your sister’s designs to your own wedding. Wouldn’t that be the good in finding them?
I suppose he’s right.
I laid out all the sketches on my kitchen table tonight after Simon dropped me off. The most faded ones I put back. A couple others just weren’t right for my body shape.
Of the seven that were left, I picked the one I used to call the button dress. Remember it, Emmy? You had tiny pearl buttons going down the front, all the way to the floor. And a high, fitted waist. Lacy sleeves you can see through, a heart-shaped neckline, and a swishy skirt with a lace petticoat underneath.
I wonder if you ever imagined that someday your little sister would wear one of your dresses.
Perhaps Simon is right. Perhaps finding the brides box so I can wear one of your designs is what you would have wanted.
I am eager to take it to the seamstress who said she will make one of the dresses for me. I know what Gramps will say when I tell him my dress is to be custom made and might cost a little more than he thought he wanted to spend. He will say he doesn’t care. The dress is for me, for my wedding.
It’s for my happy ending.
One of us should have one.
I guess it will be me.
At least, as happy as I can make it.
Julia
November 19, 1958
Dear Emmy,
The seamstress who agreed to make the button dress for me told me she’d like to change the skirt to a tea length and drop the tops of the sleeves to off the shoulder. She said the style of the button dress is terribly outdated.
I wanted to throttle her.
Instead I told her I liked the original design just the way it was.
She said, You do know no one is wearing this style of wedding dress anymore?
And I said that wasn’t true because I was wearing it.
But I know now why I can’t seem to generate interest in your sketches, Emmy.
I’m too late.
I waited too long to look for the box.
Julia
December 2, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I had my first fitting today. I nearly cried when I tried the dress on, even though it’s only partially sewn.
It’s so beautiful, Emmy. So incredibly beautiful. April seems like such a long way off.
Granny came with me to the fitting and she started to cry.
See how talented my sister was, I said to her as she blotted her tears away.
It’s a wonderful dress, Granny said.
The seamstress just clucked something like Every bride looks like a princess in a wedding gown that she loves.
When I came home, I could feel the dress still on my skin. Your dress, Emmy. I still feel it on me, caressing me. Holding me.
I think I can be happy marrying Simon in the dress that came from the very heart of you. I think you would want me to be happy marrying him.
Snow is falling outside my window now, diamond white in the spreading dusk.
I feel you here with me, Emmy. It’s as if you are looking down on me from heaven, for surely that is where you are, and the snow is a gift you’ve been allowed to give me so that I can mark this day.
The brides box is sitting on the table here next to me and it occurs to me that I shall marry only once.
I have no need of the other sketches in the box.
I have your forgiveness. I see it in the snow outside my window and I felt it earlier when your folds of white caressed my trembling body.
Across from me, my little coal fire is whispering condolences.
And something else.
I see it now, how I can hold you forever and also let you go.
The happy fire is sighing in agreement, the little beggar. It is eager to play its part for me.
The journal I will keep to remind me, should I ever need to be reminded, that you and I did indeed find each other again, within the seams of my wedding dress.
Good-bye, dear sister.
I will love you always.
Julia
Forty-one
KENDRA
WHEN I look up from Julia’s journal, Isabel is asleep on the sofa. Her head is bent forward on her chest and a gentle wheeze floats across to me every time she exhales.
For several long minutes I am torn between waking her and letting her sleep.
I am dying to know how Isabel got her hands on the journal. She had to have been reunited with her sister. Had to have been. How else could she have come by it? I turn my head toward the window as the thought occurs to me that perhaps Julia is in the garden with the rest of the family.
As I ponder this, Isabel stirs awake, sees that I have closed the journal, and she sits up abruptly.
“Oh! I must have nodded off. What time is it?”
I glance at a clock on the wall behind her. “Just a bit after two thirty.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
She takes the journal gently from my outstretched hand. “You’re the first to read it in many years.”
“How did you get it?” I hear urgency in my voice.
She smiles knowingly. “Do you mean, did Julia herself give it to me?”
I nod, wanting very much to hear that this is exactly what happened.
Isabel runs her hand across the top of the journal. “She did.”
Relief floods me. “Thank God,” I whisper, and her smile widens.
“Yes, I’ve God to thank for refusing to let me continue with my stubbornness.”
“How did you find each other?”
Isabel thinks about her answer for a moment. “Gwen brought us together, you might say.”
“She finally told you about Julia coming to the house that day, didn’t she?” I say, sure that this is what happened.
“I guess that is one way of looking at it. The short story is Julia handed the journal to me, from where you are sitting right now. The long story is a bit more complicated than that.” She settles into the sofa cushions behind her and I settle into mine. “We’d been back in the UK for nearly a year, Mac, Gwen, and I. We decided to stay at Thistle House after Mac joined us that first summer. He and I needed a quiet place to rebuild our marriage, and since Gwen’s best friend back in the States had recently moved to the West Coast, Gwen was amenable to staying and trying the high school here. I soon had other reasons for wanting to stay, which I will get to. But I still lived as though Emmeline Downtree had never existed. I still went by the name Isabel. I didn’t see any great need to shatter the myth, and being back at Thistle House after so many years was rekindling old aches that I thought Isabel could handle better. The only person who deserved to know the truth was Gwen, and what was the point in finally confessing to her that not only was I living my life with a borrowed name, but I had also abandoned my seven-year-old half sister on the day the Germans bombed London and she was likely dead because of me? I was looking for ways to bond with Gwen rather than distance myself from her, and since Mac hadn’t taken the news well when I finally told him the truth about who I was, it was easy to decide that nothing good would come from dredging it up for Gwen, either.
