Chapter Thirty-Two
Charlotte
As Charlotte was cleaning out her desk, the phone rang, a jarring sound in the tiny cubby.
She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Charlotte, it’s Annie.” She was breathless, as if she’d run a marathon. “He’s here at the information desk. You’ve got to come at once. He’s here, asking for you.”
All sorts of terrible images flew through Charlotte’s mind at the panic in Annie’s voice: that Leon had escaped from the Egyptian authorities and was after them, or another Ma’at goon was out for revenge. “Calm down. Who? Who is asking for me?”
She heard Annie take a deep breath.
“Henry,” she said finally. “Henry’s here. He’s waiting for you.”
Charlotte registered nothing but the path directly in front of her as she made her way to the Great Hall. She still couldn’t believe Henry was at the Met.
After decades apart, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to behave. Pummel his chest with her fists? Offer to shake hands? The last time they’d seen each other had been the most traumatic experience of her life, and now he’d shown up out of the blue. She resented that he had the element of surprise. That was what she’d been counting on by going to Geneva—having the upper hand—but at the very least, Henry was on her home turf. The Met was her domain, not his.
She stepped clear of the tourists and spotted Annie and, standing next to her, Henry. He carried himself much the same, the only difference a slight stoop to his shoulders and a heaviness about his eyes. This was the man who she’d once shared all her secrets, hopes, and dreams with. They’d created another human being together and marveled over their baby’s ears and toes. He was obviously older, his hair gray instead of brown, but in looking at him, she saw the ghost of his younger self, which shimmered past the age spots on his temples and the folds around his eyes.
At first, Henry appeared stuck, like the marble floors had turned to quicksand, but then he took a step forward. “Charlotte. My God. It’s you.”
They stood a yard apart, surveying each other, Henry shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, as if he wanted to take her into his arms. Charlotte remained where she was, stiff, her body turned to ice. If he dared to approach her, she was sure she’d crack into pieces. This was the man she’d married, the man she’d carried a child for, the man who had run away and disappeared into the ether. Until now.
“Follow me,” Charlotte said to Henry. She turned to Annie. “Thanks for the call. I’ve got it from here.”
Annie nodded and stepped back, her eyes worried.
Charlotte took Henry to the most private place in the museum, the rooftop, where visitors weren’t allowed.
“You planning on pushing me off?” Henry quipped as they stepped out onto a large, unoccupied balcony. Charlotte hadn’t seen him for just over four decades, but she knew from his tone that he was only half joking. Good. Let him wonder whether or not she was unhinged. She wasn’t sure herself, at this very moment.
“Figure I’d give myself the option,” she answered back.
Neither of them smiled.
In the watery winter light, their days in the desert seemed like another lifetime. Charlotte’s stomach felt like it was full of rocks, her head reeled. She noticed Annie emerging from the shadows of the doorway but didn’t mind the intrusion. The girl held back, giving them some privacy while keeping a wary eye on Charlotte, her presence a comfort to what was sure to be a difficult conversation.
“What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked Henry. “After forty-one years. Forty-one years. Now you show up?”
“Friends in Cairo phoned me to say there had been some kind of a raid, that the gallery was shut. I tried to reach Heba with no luck, and then I learned that Mona had been arrested here in New York. I was sick with worry and flew out immediately. She wouldn’t tell me what was going on, other than to say that the person responsible for her arrest was Charlotte Cross, from the Met. She added that she was fairly certain I’d know who that was.”
The way the names of Henry’s new family so easily tripped off his tongue made Charlotte sick with jealousy and resentment. She had been there first. Hers and Layla’s should be the names on his lips, not those of these two strangers. He’d created a whole other life after ruining hers, and now he thought he could share his concern for their well-being with her as if she were some random bystander?
He must’ve read the fury in her face. He reached out helplessly with his hands. “I didn’t know you were alive. You have to believe me, Charlotte. I thought you’d died in the shipwreck.”
“Did you bother to look for me, even?”
“Of course. It was chaos, no one knew what was going on. What happened?”
She shook her head, remembering. “It was terrible.”
“Tell me.”
The words came out slowly. “They brought me to a hospital at first, but I was out of my mind with worry, and I was screaming, I couldn’t stop screaming. They gave me some kind of sedative, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a psychiatric hospital. I was in and out for days, weeks, maybe, before I was able to pull myself together and face what happened. They said you were never found.” She couldn’t say Layla’s name out loud. She wouldn’t say it. He didn’t deserve to hear it.
“Please believe me, I tried,” implored Henry.
She cut him off, hating the distraught look in his eyes. “But there were extenuating circumstances, weren’t there? You and Leon had to flee the country, that’s why we left in such a rush, right?” She waited, but Henry didn’t deny it. “Maybe, if you weren’t on the run, you would have found me eventually. Leon said it was your idea to smuggle antiquities out of the country in the first place.”
“No, that’s not true. Leon had been doing it long before he convinced me to join in, during that summer we worked at the Egyptian Museum. He said it would be better to get the antiquities into the hands of a buyer who would take care of them, not the Egyptian Museum, where they’d be stuck in crates in the basement and never seen again. But that’s all nonsense, I realize now.” He thrust his hands into his pockets. “To be honest, I was desperate to make something of myself, prove to you and your parents that I was worthy of you. My salary was a pittance, and on top of that we were starting a family. Meanwhile, I was struggling to pay the rent on the apartment in Cairo. I kept wondering how on earth I could afford to take care of a wife and daughter.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in your eyes. I figured the money would give us a head start and your parents would see that I was a good husband, a good provider.
“The night of the shipwreck and for the next two days I scoured the hospitals until one of the doctors told me to stop pestering them, that you were most likely dead. I was in shock. I went to the airport and took the next plane out using the forged documents Leon had given me. I’m so, so sorry.” He was pleading now. “I wrote your parents a letter a few months after the accident, telling them how much I loved you and how sorry I was for their loss. I wanted them to know that I thought of you every day.”
Charlotte’s head spun as she tried to digest this new information. “You wrote to my parents?”
“Yes. Your father wrote back, saying that they were in mourning and requesting that I never contact them again. I’m sure they wanted nothing to do with me, which I understood, of course.”
That couldn’t be right. “In mourning?”
“Yes. In mourning. So you can imagine my shock hearing your name from Mona.”
It was no surprise that Charlotte’s parents would want to keep Henry as far away from her as possible. After all, he was the man who’d ruined their daughter. And it wasn’t the only instance that important information had been kept from Charlotte. Her mother had burned the letter from Mr. Zimmerman offering her a job, and the only reason she’d known was that she’d overheard their exchange. Otherwise, her life might have taken an entirely different trajectory, as it also would have if they’d informed her of Henry’s correspondence.
Henry had tried to contact her. She remembered her mother’s words on her deathbed. She’d said a man had been looking for Charlotte; she’d apologized for having interfered. It was Henry, all that time. “They lied to you. I was alive.”
“As was I.” Henry inhaled hard. “My God. Charlotte. All these years, lost.”
Charlotte collected herself as best she could, unable to process the latest revelation. There were still more questions to be asked.
“So you stayed in Geneva?”
“I started a small gallery. Although I financed it by selling some of the smuggled goods, I vowed from then on I would be aboveboard in my dealings.”
“How honorable of you,” she said dryly. “Was it in Geneva that you acquired your new family?”
He flinched. “Heba, who was living in Geneva at the time, came on as my business partner, and we fell in love and then she became pregnant.”
Which meant Mona was Heba’s daughter. She wasn’t Layla.
Charlotte had the sensation of falling off a cliff, only to find herself suspended in midair. “Mona is not our daughter?”
Henry blinked. “No. Of course not. To be honest, it made me sick, the idea of having another child. It brought up so many memories, and eventually I told Heba that I’d been married before. That I’d had a daughter before. She was furious, and moved back to Cairo to open a shop while I stayed in Geneva.”
Which explained why Heba didn’t admit to knowing Henry/Darius after being shown the photograph in the Farid Gallery. No doubt Charlotte’s presence had dredged up all kinds of resentment and hurt.
“Although the galleries shared the same name,” continued Henry, “we ran them as separate entities—Heba insisted on that. Mona visited me during the summers and I tried to be a good father, but it was hard from that distance. Then, after she married Karim, she became more strident about her Egyptian heritage, about the corruption in the antiquities trade. She became even angrier at me.”
“How did she know Leon?”
Henry grimaced, as if the memory hurt physically. “Several years ago, I went to Cairo and took her out to dinner. We ran into Leon, who, unbeknownst to me, was working with Ma’at by then.” There was a short pause. “To think the same man who’d served prison time for smuggling antiquities out of Egypt was now involved with an illegal organization trying to smuggle them back in . In any event, it kills me that I was the reason for their connection.”
“And at one point, you went to Luxor to confront him.”
“Yes. I knew Mona was putting herself in danger and I tried to warn her, which resulted in a blowup in the lobby of the Winter Palace Hotel. I confronted Leon at his apartment and told him to keep away from Mona, which didn’t do much good at all. Now Mona’s gone and taken Heba down with her. It should be me in that Egyptian jail cell.”
Henry’s bad decision all those years ago had wreaked disaster after disaster. At the same time, Charlotte’s own parents had lied to her, taking away her chance of closure, although any rage directed their way was wasted. They were long gone, having taken the secret to their graves.
As for Henry, he would remain tortured the rest of his life. There would be no peace for Henry.
But maybe there would be for Charlotte. It was time.
“What about Layla?”
“What about her?” Henry genuinely looked confused.
“What happened after you went up to the top deck of the ship?”
“You don’t know? Of course you don’t. I explained it in my letter.” He walked to the edge of the rooftop and then back to Charlotte, his fists clenched. “The letter that your parents never showed you. What a heartless thing to do.”
“Please. Tell me now.”