The Story She Left Behind

Chapter 36 Charlie

CHAPTER 36? CHARLIE

Lake District, England

From the downstairs hallway, Charlie listened to Clara’s warm voice flowing from the kitchen as she chatted on the telephone to her father in South Carolina. The golden glow of the sconces lit the hallway. Once meant for tallow candles, they had been converted to electric thirty years ago. Sometimes he caught a whiff of that old wax, which was still embedded in the stone walls. From where he stood, he saw the corner of the wooden kitchen table and the flicker of a flame under a kettle.

The kitchen was Charlie’s favorite part of the house. Its brick walls and warm stoves, its low-beamed ceiling, along with the aroma of baked bread even when none was in the oven. A kettle was always at the ready.

Listening to Clara, he realized that the desire to protect her was taking hold. This emotion—a fierce impulse to take care of a woman he barely knew—was new to him. She hardly seemed to need protecting—perfectly at home with herself, her daughter, and her art. And yet.

Her voice rose and fell.

“Dad, I am fine; I promise. We won’t be on the departing ship on the tenth. London was locked down with a hideous fog and we made it to the country, thanks to a nice family called the Jamesons. Yes, the man who found Mother’s satchel. He doesn’t know. No, he doesn’t. I’m trying to find out. We had a scare with Wynnie. She’s fine now. I’ve tried to call Nat and haven’t gotten an answer. I love you, Dad. So much. I promise to let you know anything I find out. We’ll be home as soon as I can get a new passport from the embassy. I don’t want to miss the Caldecott ceremony no matter what.”

Then in a quieter voice said, “Dad, can you please tell Nat what has happened? I tried to call his apartment, but he didn’t answer. I will find some way to send a telegram.”

Without hearing her father’s part of the conversation, it was as if Clara were reciting a poem in broken stanzas, lines to a song she hadn’t finished, the puzzle pieces of a relationship between two people who had suffered the loss of the woman they loved.

It was astounding to Charlie that she spoke so lovingly of the mother who had left her. If his mum left him, he assumed his anger would erupt at the very mention of her.

“Eavesdropping, are we?” Clara’s voice, and then she was standing in front of him with a grin on her face.

“Caught,” he said. “But honestly, I was just waiting my turn for the telephone to ring the embassy about your passport.”

“Oh, thank you, Charlie.” She swept her hand into the kitchen. “All clear for you. And I will pay you back for that call. I would have sent a telegram, but Moira said there isn’t a telegraph office in this village. That I’d have to take the ferry across Lake Windermere, and it all seemed quite complicated.”

He laughed. “Not so complicated. The lake is right down the road, and the chain ferry goes back and forth, but it’s quite all right, Clara. You needed to call your dad.”

She moved past him, and he touched the wool throw she wore around her shoulders. She lifted her eyebrows in question.

“It’s the family tartan.”

“I was cold and…”

He kissed her cheek. “It’s lovely on you.”

Then he left her there in the hallway as he wondered why he’d done just what he’d done. It felt right and natural and he had just let the gesture flow out of him.

After he’d called his university pal at the embassy to hurry along Clara’s and Wynnie’s passports, he found Archie in the study, smoking a pipe and reading a financial report.

“Brother!” Archie looked up and grinned. “Tell me all about the beautiful Clara.”

Charlie thumped his brother’s shoulder and sat down. “Archie, I need to ask you something.”

“First, tell me about Clara.”

“As I told you on the phone, Father owned some of their family papers and she came to retrieve them and then got stuck in the fog with an ill child. Wynnie has asthma. Thank you again for bringing us her bags. It means a lot to her.”

“You’re welcome. And Adelaide wanted to get away as it was—the fog trapped us in the house for days. Tell me—what’s your question?”

“It’s the papers. You see, it is a language created by Clara’s mother.”

“Wow.” He raised his eyebrows. “Like Tolkien?”

“Ah, didn’t even think of that, but yes, an entirely new language.” Charlie rubbed his forehead. “Would you have any idea how these papers found their way to Father’s safe and office?”

“Did you call his curator?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call the auction houses?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can’t help you, Brother. I wish I could.” He grinned and tossed one leg over the other and leaned forward. “And I have a feeling you’d like to discover how you are connected to this woman and child.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He laughed. “Indeed, I would. They are both so charming and you light up around them.”

“Light up?”

“Indeed,” he said. “Very different than when you were around Chelsea.”

“Well, I sure hope so. I just want to help them figure this out. Help them get home.”

Archie smiled that damn knowing brotherly smile that told Charlie Archie didn’t believe him. Then he looked back at his newspaper with the headline London Fog Tie-Up Lasts for 3 Days — Robberies Break Out.

“I need to be back in London.” Archie spoke from behind the newspaper and then looked over it with a smile. “Adelaide has some luncheon she’s giving for a friend getting married. I’d love to stay here with all of you and solve this mystery, but you’ll just have to keep me updated.”

“Thanks for bringing the luggage. Can you imagine being stranded in another country with nothing but one change of clothes?”

Archie laughed. “Brother, I believe you are smitten with this lady.”

“Smitten?” Charlie stood with a laugh. “What are you, an old biddy at a tea party?”

“Enchanted, enamored, swept off your feet.” Archie set down the paper and stood with a broad smile, clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Either way, be careful.”

“She’s something special, I will say.”

“Or taken a fancy to.”

Charlie shook his head and walked out of the room, enjoying the joviality of his brother’s love and teasing, but lacking any answers.

He found Moira in the drawing room, cleaning a game of marbles while classical music played from the turntable in the corner, filling the space with orchestral tones.

Wynnie stood at the window with her nose pressed to the panes. Her breath met the cold glass and escaped in small wisps. Ice blooms lined the view’s edges, and the snow continued to fall lazily, glittery. Wynnie saw him in a reflection and spoke without turning.

“The whole world changes when it snows,” she said. “Even the shadows are different.”

He came to her side.

“You notice quite a lot, don’t you?” he asked.

“I do.” She turned to him.

“Tell me about Emjie.” Charlie had heard her speak of her invisible friend a few times now and had noticed how Clara didn’t correct her, acting as if Emjie were always with them.

When he was a child, he’d fought the dragons and demons of an imaginary world with his brother. They’d made swords of fallen branches and shields of bark, and yet Charlie had known they were fighting something imaginary. He’d known that he wasn’t truly a knight, and his brother wasn’t a king, and still they’d played as if they were. This child believed her friend to be as real as he was, standing next to her.

“Emjie is my best friend.” Wynnie now turned to him. “Except for my mama, who is really my best friend. But Emjie is the only one who will go on all my adventures. Mama can only go on some of them. And she tells me things that other people don’t know. Not even Mama. And she takes me places.”

“Like where?”

“Here.”

He laughed.

“I’ve been here before.” Wynnie placed her hand against the glass. “Right here.”

“They call that déjà vu,” he said.

Charlie felt Moira behind him, moving about the room. The music ended and the room turned quiet, with the scratch-scritch-scratch of the needle at the end of the record.

“What?” Wynnie asked.

“It’s a French word that means ‘already seen,’ but it means a feeling that you’ve been somewhere or done something that you’re doing right now.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not just a feeling.”

“Where is Emjie now?”

Wynnie looked to her left. “I think she’s playing in the snow. She loves it here very much.”

“What does she look like, this friend of yours?”

“She’s beautiful. She has long black curls that are never messy like mine. She has eyes so green you can nearly see through them to the world where she came from. Her nose is a tiny button and her ears are like little seashells.”

“And her voice?”

“You know when you sang for us in London?”

“Yes.”

“Her voice sounds like that, but like a girl. She’s always singing a magical song.”

“I don’t sing magical songs. I just sing songs.”

She shook her head vigorously, her glasses going crooked. She straightened them. “Oh no, that’s not true. Emjie said your songs are bringing Grandma back to us.”

He shivered. “Oh, Wynnie.”

“You don’t believe me.” She smiled. “But you don’t have to believe me for it to be true.”

She withdrew her hand from the windowpane, but the foggy imprint of a little hand remained.