Chapter Thirty-Four
Charlotte
Egypt, 1979
Death, to the ancient Egyptians, was not an end; it was a continuation of the life already lived. In the underworld, the spirit ultimately faced judgment by Osiris, its leader. After offering up a list of denials of wrongdoing, the truth of the matter was tested: The spirit’s heart was placed on one side of a scale, and a feather—the symbol of truth and justice—was placed on the other. If the scales were balanced, the eternal life of the person’s spirit would be much like that of an abundant earthly life, surrounded by riches, servants, and plenty of food and drink. Those who failed the test had their hearts fed to Ammut, “the Devourer”—a beast that was part crocodile, part lion, and part hippo—and their souls cast into darkness.
For the past forty-one years, Charlotte had believed her daughter was no longer on this earth. If the ancient Egyptians were right about the afterlife, it meant that Layla’s innocent heart weighed the same as a feather, and that her spirit would enjoy the same pleasures she’d experienced during her time on earth—sitting in the garden behind the house in Luxor, laughing at the bees leaping from flower to flower, feeling loved and safe. The pain of her loss had been so visceral that sometimes it brought Charlotte to her knees, but it had helped to imagine Layla in the spirit world, dancing with Hathorkare.
Yet as Charlotte, Henry, and Annie walked along a dirt path on the edge of the Nile, the tiny spark of hope that Layla was alive had turned into a conflagration; it was as if Charlotte’s heart itself was on fire, the anticipation almost too much to bear. She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Just ahead, a square fisherman’s hut covered in bougainvillea and surrounded by palms rose out of the sandy soil, exactly as it might have five thousand years earlier. A water buffalo standing in the grasses stared idly as they passed.
Two months after reconnecting with Henry, Charlotte was now based in Egypt full-time. Mr. Lavigne, loath to lose her, had offered Charlotte the position of curatorial consultant to the Met, acting as a liaison between the Met and the Egyptian Museum. When she wasn’t in Cairo, she headed to the Valley of the Kings to assist with the newly formed Theban Mapping Project, led by an esteemed archaeologist who had begun surveying the historical sites on Luxor’s West Bank. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s missing folder on Hathorkare had been recovered intact in Mona’s apartment, which meant that, in her spare time, she was writing her article on the reclamation of the female pharaoh, to be published in the fall, as well as cowriting an article with Omar regarding the discovery and identification of Hathorkare’s mummy. The work Charlotte was doing was more fulfilling than she could have imagined, although she’d been pleased to hear that the King Tut exhibit at the Met had broken all previous records, the ticket line stretching twenty-three blocks down Fifth Avenue.
Annie had traveled to Egypt from Vienna, where she’d been conducting research with Diana Vreeland for the next Costume Institute exhibition. Charlotte was pleased at Annie’s excitement over her work with Mrs. Vreeland; the girl was flourishing. Henry had flown to Luxor from his gallery in Geneva, landing that very morning.
Charlotte had found it in her heart to forgive Henry. After all, they most certainly would have found each other if it weren’t for her parents’ meddling, and now they both could move forward with their lives with clarity. The ship sinking hadn’t been his fault, even if he was the reason they had climbed aboard in the first place.
Meanwhile, Mona and her husband were in jail in New York, awaiting trial, denied bail due to the fact that they were considered a flight risk. Ma’at had been effectively dismantled, its leadership locked away thanks to the address on the letter Annie had stolen from Leon. Heba had been released, although her store had been seized by the Egyptian government.
An old woman emerged from the fishing hut and invited them to sit at a table and chairs under a torn red canopy. In broken English, she spoke of a night many years ago during a frightening storm, when a steamer and a felucca had collided in the middle of the river, the captains blinded by the pouring rain. Her son had gone out in a boat to help with the rescue and plucked a baby girl from the water just after the man holding her was swallowed up by the river. Her son had brought the baby home, and her son’s wife, who had recently given birth to a stillborn child, insisted they keep the girl for a few days. He had agreed, eager to comfort his distraught wife, to ease her pain. A few days turned into months, and then years.
As she spoke, a woman in her forties appeared on the footpath and joined them.
“Fatima, there you are,” said the older woman.
“I’m so sorry, I got held up at work.” She stood near her grandmother, one hand on the woman’s shoulder. They both wore headscarves, and the younger of the two stood with a straight back, as if she were bracing herself for a blow.
Charlotte remained seated, unsure of what to do next, what to say, even though the electricity between them was palpable. It took all her strength not to run to the woman and pull her close. Not yet. She didn’t want to spook her. Charlotte scrutinized her face, just as she had Mona’s a couple of months earlier. The woman had Charlotte’s small ears, thank goodness, and Henry’s nose, and Charlotte recognized her mother’s high cheekbones. She was taller than Charlotte—about Annie’s height—with narrow shoulders. Her eyes were a golden brown. She was beautiful.
It was Layla.
Fatima, the clerk from the Winter Palace Hotel, was Layla.
That day, on the rooftop of the Met, when Annie had figured out the puzzle to Mona’s vague declarations, Charlotte’s first impulse had been to head to the airport and take the next flight to Egypt. But Henry had advised taking a more measured approach, instead sending a letter to Fatima, care of the Winter Palace Hotel, which would allow her time to process what they were asserting.
They’d received a reply a month later—it felt like centuries to Charlotte, who luckily had been kept busy with the relocation from New York to Cairo. The letter had been sent to Henry in Geneva, as he had a fixed address, and he’d called Charlotte immediately with the news: Fatima wanted to meet them in Luxor.
And now here they were. “I hope our letter wasn’t too overwhelming,” said Charlotte.
“No.” Fatima looked back and forth between Charlotte and Henry. “I knew who you were. Even before you found me.”
Charlotte had imagined all kinds of reactions that Fatima could have had upon receiving their letter: disbelief, anger, resentment at having her world turned upside down. The last thing Charlotte expected to hear was that she already knew.
“I’m sorry,” sputtered Henry. “What? When did you find out?”
“When I was a teenager, I needed a birth certificate for something, and when my parents couldn’t provide one, they eventually admitted that I was a foundling. They mentioned something about a shipwreck and how I was miraculously rescued, and so I went to the library and scoured old newspapers, found articles written about the collision. Your photos and names were included—as victims of the sinking—along with the name of a baby girl, the only infant on board, Layla Smith. I knew that had to be me. The article said you’d come to Luxor to work for the Metropolitan Museum.”
“Did you tell your parents what you discovered?” asked Henry.
She shook her head. “It would’ve hurt them.”
“They passed away last year,” said the grandmother. “Within a month of each other.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Charlotte.
Fatima’s chin quivered. “They were good parents, raised me well. They insisted I learn English, and because of that, I got a job at the hotel, starting as a maid and working my way up to the position of desk clerk. I was pleased to land a position at the hotel popular with the foreign archaeologists because I liked the idea that maybe my birth parents once walked down the same halls.”
Her grandmother nodded from her chair. “She is a good girl, she takes care of me. I told her to marry, but she said she wanted to stay here with me. A good girl,” she repeated.
“Of course, gídda,” said Fatima. “It’s true. I never married or had children. I preferred to work, to support myself and my grandmother instead of relying on someone else.” She glanced up shyly at Henry. “A few years ago, a man rushed up to the check-in desk at the hotel and asked if Henry Smith was available, but then quickly shook his head and said, ‘No, sorry, Darius Farid is his name.’ The guest was out, but when he arrived to collect his messages, I recognized him from the newspaper photo I carried with me. Your faces and names had been etched in my brain ever since I first saw them, and I knew he was the same man. I knew you were the same man.”
“I remember that day,” said Henry.
“I couldn’t believe you were alive, after all this time. But you were distracted, and there was a woman with you, she called you Father. I watched as you argued in the lobby. I could tell there was something terribly wrong.”
“That was Mona, my other daughter. Your half sister.”
“I didn’t think it was right for me to approach at that time. When your daughter came to the desk to check out a couple of hours later, I pulled her aside and said that I believed I was also the daughter of her father. I tried to explain about the shipwreck, but I was flustered and it must have sounded crazy. She laughed at me, said if I didn’t leave her alone she’d complain to the manager that I was harassing her and her family. I probably went about it all wrong, I see that now.” Fatima’s forehead wrinkled at the recollection. “She stormed off.”
“Sounds like Mona,” said Henry, a pained look on his face.
“My parents were still alive then, and I decided to forget about it, so as not to cause them any hurt or get myself into trouble.” She glanced over at Charlotte. “And then, a few years later, you showed up.”
“Did you recognize me as well?” asked Charlotte.
“Yes. Right away. After the shipwreck, the newspapers identified you as Charlotte Smith née Cross. After you told me your name and that you worked at the Met Museum, I knew it was you.”
“That’s why you asked us so many questions when we first arrived,” said Charlotte. “I remember thinking it was like going through customs all over again. Why didn’t you say something, if not that day, then before we left?”
“She tried to,” answered Annie. She turned to Fatima. “You took me outside to show me the way to the camera store and seemed eager to talk. I remember you mistook me for Charlotte’s daughter.”
“I thought you were her daughter, or granddaughter, perhaps.”
“I didn’t correct you because I rather liked the idea. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, or somehow discouraged you.”
“It wasn’t just that. Miss Cross seemed very preoccupied, very upset, and after seeing how the other daughter reacted, I decided it was better not to be rejected again. I’d rather not know the truth.”
This was all so formal, so stilted. Charlotte wanted to scream, to jump up and yell to the hills that she’d found her baby girl. They’d lived very different lives yet were connected at the most primal level.
“That’s how I knew who you were, but how did you find me?” Fatima asked.
“Annie here figured it out,” said Henry.
Annie shrugged. “Mona said that you had been ‘right under our nose,’ and that it would be a ‘very, very cold day in hell’ when she told us where you were. She knew we’d been in Luxor and that you worked at the Winter Palace Hotel, where archaeologists were known to stay. It was a play on the hotel’s name. Mona guessed correctly that we had probably crossed paths.”
“But how did you know it was me and not some other employee?”
“Your hair.”
Fatima touched her headscarf, confused.
“When we were on the steps of the hotel that day, your headscarf came loose in the wind and I noticed the gray,” said Annie. “But it wasn’t until later, when Henry mentioned that Charlotte’s silver streak was hereditary—her mother had one as well—that I put two and two together.”
Slowly, Fatima unwrapped her headscarf and pulled it off. The gesture was childlike, trusting. Her hair was thick and shiny, falling halfway down her back in a rich brown hue, the same color as Charlotte’s.
And, just like Charlotte, a streak of gray ran from her right temple, like a silver waterfall.
Charlotte rose and crossed the space between them, softly touching Fatima’s hair. “I’m sorry we lost you for so long. I’ve missed you terribly.”
Fatima’s eyes filled with tears. Charlotte enveloped her daughter in a hug as they wept into each other’s shoulders, Fatima catching her breath only to cry some more. They cried for all the years Charlotte was unable to soothe Fatima when she was hurt, or share in her triumphs. For all the birthdays spent wondering about the missing, and the choices they’d made to avoid further pain.
Lost year after lost year.
Henry stood and joined them, placing his arms around them both.
For most of her life, Charlotte had prevented others from getting close in order to avoid another loss. Only recently had she come to understand that doing so actually increased the anguish, and that interacting with others, letting her real self be known, served as a gentle buffer to what had come before, stopping the pain from becoming overwhelming. It was the only way to repair the agony of the past without obliterating it.
But the dark clouds of her past had lifted. Her daughter was alive. Although nothing could make up for the decades lost, there would be many years ahead for them to get to know and understand each other.
Annie walked over, holding two sprigs of jasmine, and offered one to Charlotte and the other to Fatima. “I’m glad you found each other.”
Charlotte placed her sprig behind Annie’s ear. “I’m glad I found you as well.”
For so long, Charlotte had felt incomplete and unknowable, misunderstood and damaged, much like the Cerulean Queen and Hathorkare. Many questions had gone unanswered. Now Hathorkare was about to take her rightful place in history as a strong, admired woman of power, and the rediscovered Cerulean Queen was attracting hordes to the Egyptian Museum, not to mention substantially increasing the museum’s coffers.
And Charlotte was finally whole. She knew the truth, and silently vowed to honor the memory of Hathorkare, to celebrate the rediscovery of her daughter, and to spend the rest of her days in Egypt among the whispers of ancient pharaohs and the joyful laughter of those she loved.