The Story She Left Behind

Chapter 5 Clara

CHAPTER 5? CLARA

Bluffton, South Carolina

Wynnie ran into the kitchen, bringing with her the aroma of garden soil and briny air, something elemental. She bolted into my arms, and I hugged her close. “Tell me a story from your day while I make us dinner.”

“I have a good one,” Wynnie said.

“Well, do tell.”

“Sammy Fletcher called me four eyes , and guess what I said this time? Just guess.”

“Tell me, darling,” I said, and tried to hide the hurt. Wynnie could read my expressions as surely as she could read a book. Kids teased her about how small she was or how she couldn’t run with them because of her asthma, and then made fun of her glasses, always teasing about the glasses.

Wynnie had all these things, funny eyes and weak lungs, because she arrived in the world too early. The whole point wasn’t that she came early, but that she came at all; her life was miracle enough for me. I told her this all the time—she was my miraculum.

She climbed up the step stool I kept next to the counter, so she could be face-to-face with me. “I told Sammy I have better sight than he does, even if my eyes don’t work. I see things he can’t see, and I’d rather be me.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Who taught you to say that?”

“Emjie.”

Emjie, the main character from my mother’s novel. Emjie, the character who made Mother famous. Emjie, my daughter’s imaginary friend.

“Oh?” I said, and thought of how she’d described Emjie. I tried to imagine Emjie here, with her long dark hair in a crown of braids, with her dainty nose and her eyes that Wynnie described as being as green as the emerald in her crayon box. Sometimes Emjie wore a dress made of ferns, and other times one made of kelp and oyster shells. But Wynnie had moved on.

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

“What is Howdy Doody ?”

“A television show, sweetie.”

“The kids are talking about it. Will we get a TV?”

I wanted to reply yes, but the cost was a waste. We had the radio, records, and endless outdoor activities. We had art and each other and a little boat that ferried us into the bay. We had friends and Dad. “Probably not any time soon. Trust me, you aren’t really missing anything.” I thought about many ways we weren’t the same as the other families. It wasn’t just the TV. It was the way I didn’t doll up for car drop-off, the way I was left out of the Tupperware parties, the bridge club, and the twittering gossip at the playground. I wanted to fit in—who didn’t? I gave up after I left Nat, the invisible brand of D on my forehead.

Wynnie was quiet for a moment and then said, “I’m probably not missing anything. What’s for dinner?”

“Macaroni and cheese with ham,” I told her. “And broccoli. You must eat all of it, not just the macaroni, or I won’t make it anymore.” I kissed her cheek and lightly tugged her braid.

She jumped down, all energy and joy, and sat at the kitchen table, on which her sailboat puzzle spilled out in a disorganized jumble. She separated the edge pieces into a little pile while I stirred the pot on the stove and asked her, “Is Emjie eating with us tonight?”

She didn’t look up but instead sorted the puzzle pieces, focusing with intent, and that was when the phone rang.

The radio hummed a staticky version of “Tell Me Why,” and I picked up the wall phone receiver.

“Hello?”

“May I speak with Clara Harrington?” asked a man with a British accent.

“Speaking,” I said, stirring absently, thinking of the man who had called me about the award and how this was the second man to call in a week’s time, when a man hadn’t called me in years.

“I need to talk to you about some papers belonging to someone named Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham,” he said.

The wooden spoon fell from my hand to the hardwood floor, flecking the stove with yellow dots. I turned down the radio and walked to the other side of the kitchen, as far as the coiled cord would allow, to move away from Wynnie.

“Okay, Mr.—”

“Oh, how rude of me. I’m sorry. I’m nervous, and I’ve lost my manners. Charles Jameson. Charlie,” he said. “I’m calling from London. The papers I found,” he continued, “appear to be some kind of dictionary of words, but words I’ve never seen.”

I laughed. The key to Mother’s lost words? A prank, a ploy to get me to talk and give away what I knew about her sequel. I’d been here before. I exhaled in relief. This was most assuredly a man who wanted information I didn’t have. Dad and I often received letters and calls, though not as many lately. Most were journalists who thought they might have a new angle to the mystery; others were students writing papers about my mother or crime writers seeking inside information we didn’t have. I can’t tell you what I don’t know , Dad told them again and again.

He continued. “It’s all in an old leather satchel. I’m calling to tell you about it, to try and describe what is here.”

“Mr. Jameson, that’s impossible.”

“No, long-distance phone calls are quite possible.” He laughed.

“No, I meant—”

“I know. A poor joke, should have kept it to myself. But it’s not impossible. I’m looking at everything right now.” I felt Wynnie’s eyes light on me, and I turned away as he said, “Let me describe what’s here. Dark brown leather bag. Very scratched. A brass latch shaped like an eagle. Green silk lining. A pile of handwritten papers with words of a language I don’t know.”

“You have my mother’s language?”

“Oh, Bronwyn Fordham is your mother?” His voice lifted in surprise.

“Yes. Was my mother.”

“Grandma?” Wynnie piped up from the table.

I put my finger to my lips to shush Wynnie.

In the background was the rise and fall of music, something baroque and haunting. “I know this sounds barmy, but hear me out. I don’t want anything from you, but it appears that Bronwyn… your mother had some requests.”

Bird wings slammed inside my chest. Had. Past tense. Dizzy, I leaned against the counter. “What do you mean?”

“Along with all these papers, there’s also a letter addressed to you.”

“If you’re after the sequel, I promise you we don’t have it here,” I said. I wasn’t lying. It was hidden in a lockbox across the Savannah River.

“The sequel?” he asked.

“Her book. We don’t have it.”

“I don’t know anything about a book.” His statement felt honest.

Wynnie followed me around the room, right on my heels. Stop , I mouthed to her.

“What is he saying?” Wynnie asked in a loud whisper. “I want to hear.”

I shook my head at her.

“You found this in your father’s library. Who is your father?” I held my hand against my chest as if I could slow my heart from racing to his answer.

“Callum Jameson. He passed away three weeks ago. I’m just doing what the note requested, so now you can decide what to do.” His voice went a little cold.

“Mr. Jameson, I am so sorry you lost your father. So very sorry, but if you have what you think or say you have, can you please send it to me?”

“If this belongs to your mother, I know this must come as a shock, but for now, there are things you probably should know.”

“And what would those be?”

“The note states that you are to be given these papers in person. They are not to be sent by post or transit.”

“Please tell me exactly what the note says?” I didn’t want to flirt with the desperate hopes that flickered around me, but I was begging for information.

Mr. Jameson read aloud in his charming accent: “?‘The contents of this satchel are to be given only to Clara Harrington of Bluffton, South Carolina. She must retrieve these papers in person. They must never be mailed. The sealed letter inside is to be read only by her. Le draíocht.’?”

“Draíocht?”

“Ah yes, it’s Gaelic. It means charming—roughly translates as a spell for enchantment.”

“Well now,” I said, “that would be something my mother would write.”

“I won’t get in the way of any enchantment or curse.” He attempted a laugh and then cleared his throat. “There is another note at the bottom that states: ‘Please tell Clara that I’ve saved this language for her, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham.’?”

For me.

My body tingled; electricity raced through my veins. Something for me from my mother. “Is she alive?” I asked in an exhale.

“I’m sorry; I have no idea, really. This is just as confusing for me.”

“Mama!” Wynnie was pulling at my sleeve. “What. Is. He. Saying?”

I covered the mouthpiece. “He’s just a man looking for information about Grandma.”

“I hear you,” he said with laughter.

“I’m… confused.” I pressed my fingers against my forehead.

“I am as well.”

“It’s all too extraordinary,” I said. “You should know that this satchel and those papers have been assumed to be in the deepest part of the sea by now, along with her. I need a moment to think about this. May I call you back?”

He gave me his phone number, and I wrote it down. My voice sounded young and vulnerable when I said, “Please keep everything safe. Please.”

“I will, yes.”

“Thank you so very much.” I placed the phone in its cradle and sank to the stool.

“Mama?”

I looked at Wynnie. “It can’t be true.”

“What can’t be true?” My dad’s voice filled the room as he walked through the back door from the garage. His wrinkled suit and iodine-stained lab coat hung loose on his thin frame, and he carried the haggard look of a day that hadn’t gone well. He walked straight to the bar between the kitchen and the den and poured himself a bourbon in a cut-glass tumbler.

Wynnie and I watched silently as he downed it, then turned to us both. “What can’t be true?” He repeated his question softly.

Wynnie ran to his side and looked up at him, adoringly as always. “Some man just called Mama and said he found”—Wynnie drew out the tension and grinned at her papa—“the lost words you and Mama talk about, the ones Grandma took with her.”

Dad set down his glass and smiled sadly. “Again. Someone else? What’s their story this time?”

“A man from London called. His name is Charles Jameson, and he says he found her papers in his father’s library,” I said.

Dad froze a moment as if he’d seen something dangerous over my shoulder, but then his smile reappeared. “Sure. Did he also find a unicorn and elf?”

Wynnie laughed and ran back to the kitchen table and her puzzle. The fun was over for her.

I lowered my voice and stepped closer to him, resting my hand on his arm. “Dad, he said there was a sealed letter for me.”

“You aren’t falling for it, are you, ladybug?”

My dear dad, a surgeon, was a kind soul who never remarried after his wife disappeared. When Nat and I divorced, when I discovered our bank account was depleted and we had lost the house, I moved back to our family home. Nat’s family in Georgia refused to help, and four years later I still hadn’t found a new place to live for many reasons, but mostly because I loved Dad, and I loved Wynnie growing up around her papa on the edge of the tidal bay.

The loss of the money, including the royalties from Mother’s famous novel that Dad gave me, wasn’t just awful for our marriage, but also the loss of a grand dream. I wanted, desired, and needed to use that royalty money for good and not material gain, to open a school of art for young children with wild imaginations, where I would teach them that it was okay to be different.

Nat robbed me, literally, of that dream.

I told Dad, “No. I’m not falling for it.”

“Good girl.” I watched his face. Some days when he returned from the hospital, he looked many years older. Today was one of those days. His blue eyes, so like mine that people commented when they met us— same shape, same color; you’re the spitting image —were rheumy and lid-draped with fatigue.

“You all right, Dad?”

“I lost one today, ladybug. A ten-year-old boy to a car accident. These are the tough days when I doubt my decision to become a doctor. I’m going to leave you and Wynnie to your dinner. I ate at the hospital, and now I’m going to bed early.” He poured another inch of bourbon, took his glass, and walked away, and then stopped, turned to look at me. “I’m not happy you went through that god-awful divorce. I know it was tough as hell. But it means so much to me that you’re here. You and Wynnie—my girls. Even though there is enough paint and paper to hold an art festival in here.”

I laughed. “Living with me is a mess, isn’t it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I love you, Dad.”

“You too, always.”

How we came to Bluffton was because my father met and fell in love with Mother in Boston. At the time he was in medical school at Harvard, while she worked for the Boston Herald. After they married in 1917, he brought his bride home. In Boston, Bronwyn’s fame followed her like fog. He wanted to have a simpler life and a family with the woman he loved, not the famously enigmatic author who was forever being scrutinized.

But no one wanted to hear that story.

Her writing earned her phenomenal success and accolades. But her disappearance instantly transformed her into a mystery, an enigma, a literary cold case to be solved. Hers was the legend of the lost, mad artist.

But the world didn’t know everything.

No one did.