An Echo in Time

Chapter 25 UNRAVELING A MESS

Chapter 25

U NRAVELING A M ESS

On Tuesday, Noah makes breakfast while she takes a shower. Charli uses his razor to shave her legs. Her mind is ablaze with revelations. After thinking that her idea of making right a wrong from 1881 sounds pretty ridiculous, she’s back to the other consideration, that Miles didn’t kill Lillian. Is that the piece that Frances says is missing, the truth that is yet to be unraveled? Could that be the puzzle piece that sets her family free? If so, how in the world could she ever figure out the answer? Though she likes a good mystery, she’s no Miss Marple, especially when it comes to cold cases from the Victorian era. To that end, she’s no Sherlock either.

Her self-doubt sprouts wings, and she can hear her mother laughing at her. Charli, you dumb shit. All you are is a pile of excuses—just like your father. Her mother slapped her face only a couple of times, and she feels one of those strikes now, but it’s the blunt force of her mother’s disappointment that hurts even more.

The razor drops to the shower floor.

Charli presses her eyes closed and turns the water hotter, hoping to burn her mother’s energy out of her. When she pulls her head away, she sucks in a breath that tastes like courage. “Go away.” She touches her cheek and shakes her head with the fight that she knows she has in her. She’s getting somewhere in her journey and can’t let up now.

She puts her focus back on why she is here. As she dries her hair with a hair dryer she found under the sink, her mind goes to the constellation in Costa Rica. She’d like to draw it out, and maybe she will when she gets some more time alone.

At the beginning of the constellation, she’d been tasked with choosing someone who represented herself. She’d picked the woman with the Chinese characters tattooed on her neck—Millie—and it was she who originally faced Herman. Later, Frances had asked Charli to replace Millie/Charli with a representative of who was really standing there: Lillian. Was that the life debt that Frances mentioned? Somehow, Charli had assumed Lillian’s spot in the constellation, facing Herman, ultimately facing the same red lights.

If Herman wasn’t Miles, though, who was he? Who is the murderer? Miles’s father? His pictures don’t evoke feelings of warmth, to say the least. And what or who is the source of his frustration, as represented by the guy wearing the Lionel Messi uniform? Could that be Miles? Did he upset his father so much by falling in love with a woman of a lower class that his father shot Lillian? It’s a stretch, but she can’t deny that she feels a connection to the angry man.

Charli remembers saying that it felt like Letícia was protecting the guy in the Messi uniform. “So Lillian was protecting Miles from his father? Is that it?”

A waft of simmering bacon fills the air, and she’s reminded of how kind Noah is being, how accepting of her. And here she is playing him for a fool. But she has no choice. Her father’s life is more important than her own integrity.

A curious seed planted earlier blossoms in her mind. Flipping open her computer, she searches the British Newspaper Archives and reads an article from the Hampshire Chronicle , dated October 11, 1921.

Arthur Turner, owner of the Smythun Inn & Pub, was shot dead after an attack on Lord Edward Pemberton, who was also shot and is recovering at his home of Elmhurst. It is believed that the attack was Mr. Turner’s effort to avenge the death of his sister, Lillian, who died forty years ago at the hand of Lord Pemberton’s brother, Miles. Mr. Turner leaves behind his wife, Sadie, and son, Joseph ...

Charli finishes the article and lets her mind wander, imagining what it must have been like for Arthur to lose Lillian and then for his wife and son, who were left to run the inn after Arthur’s passing. What a tragedy. Maybe that kind of trauma was powerful enough to set their family constellation out of balance as well.

What’s even worse is that Miles went down in history as the one to blame. If she’s ever going to prove otherwise, she needs to dig deeper. She has to find a way to have a conversation with Helen, but she doesn’t want to force it. And what if Noah’s family doesn’t have the truth? What if she’s been barking up the wrong family tree?

That’s when an idea strikes.

The taxi costs her fifty pounds, but she’s okay with it. What’s on her mind as she travels through the Hampshire countryside is that she’s about to knock on the door of a family she didn’t know she had.

Accepting that Lord Pemberton wasn’t going to write her back, she’d committed to finding the address of the house that had been in the family all this time. She’d read mention of Elmhurst multiple times. Turned out the estate was included in the National Heritage List for England, and she found a brief description. The Pemberton family originally built the house in the year 1630, and it has been in the family ever since. It took Charli only another few clicks to find its location.

They wind through country roads over rolling hills. Classical music creeps out of the taxi’s speakers, the cabbie tapping his finger on the wheel to the beat of the timpani. The first flowers of spring bloom purple and yellow. Baby leaves have begun to decorate the trees that collect in clusters in the valleys. Long wooden fences keep sheep and cows from crossing into the road.

Cresting a hill, the cabbie says, “I think that’s her.”

Charli isn’t quite prepared for the grandness of the estate. Tucked at the end of a perfectly straight driveway that cuts through a lawn big enough to land an airplane stands a magnificent country manor that is surely fancy enough for a visit from the royal family. Statues and mature trees line the drive. Several chimneys rise like steeples from the house’s roof. It must take a team to keep the place running.

The idea that she came from such magnificence is inconceivable. All the way from this apparent royalty to the runt of the litter known as Charli Thurman. The degradation of the family tree could not be illustrated any better, and it’s a triple reminder that there will be no babies filling her womb. She can at least spare the world that. Another few generations of procreation and they could devolve to rodents.

At the bottom of the hill, the cabbie turns onto the drive. Straight away stands a large iron gate. E LMHURST is carved into the stone wall that flanks either side. Just below that is an intercom system with what looks like a video camera.

“I guess this is as far as we go,” Charli says. “Give me a little bit. I don’t even know if I can get inside. I wasn’t expecting a gate.”

“Looks like you could walk around it if you like.”

“Probably not the best way to introduce myself to my long-lost family. Let’s try this first.”

He comes to a stop, and Charli climbs out. She peers through the iron gate and imagines her people coming and going over the years, by foot and horse and eventually automobile.

She presses the button with a jittery finger, and it rings with a chirp.

A high-pitched British female voice comes through the tiny speaker. “May I help you?”

“Hi there,” Charli says. “I know this is wild, but I’m looking for the Pembertons. I’m family visiting from the US.”

A crackle. “Family?”

“That’s right.”

A pause. “Do they know you’re coming?”

Charli deduces that she is not talking to a family member. “No, I didn’t have their number.”

There is a pause. “I’ll be right out.”

Charli waits a moment and then sees a hefty woman come out the front door and waddle her way along the driveway. It must take her three or four minutes from the front porch to the gate. She’s dressed in black with a white apron. A mole protrudes from her chin. She’s breathing heavily and does not look happy about the interruption or the long walk she had to make.

She squints, and her face scrunches together. “You said you’re family?”

“My name is Charli, and I’ve been researching my family tree. Lord Pemberton is a cousin of mine.”

The woman sighs, as if she gets genealogy cuckoos every day. “Well, I’m sorry, they’re not here, and they don’t like visitors.”

Charli’s head kicks back. She understands the want for privacy, but there’s no call for the surly attitude. “I just wanted to ... do you know how I could get in touch with them?”

“They’re in London.”

“Oh, his wife and him?”

She replies by giving a skeptical look toward the taxi.

Charli tries to be as kind as possible. “I wrote him with an email I found. This is all so new to me, but I would love to say hello. I have some incredible stories and have just learned how my side crossed the Atlantic to eventually settle in Boston.”

The lady crosses her arms. “I can tell him that you emailed. I’m sure that’s fine. I must get back to—”

Charli puts her hand on one of the iron bars. “Could you share with me his telephone number? The email could have gone to spam.”

“His telephone number?” The woman chuckles, her body jiggling. “I’m not going to give out me boss’s telephone number to some strange American claiming to be kin.”

“Fair enough. Could you let me write out a note and make sure he gets it? I know that’s asking a lot, but I do think he’d find the whole thing interesting. Does he have children? I couldn’t find that information. I could reach out to them.”

“A note is fine.” She doesn’t bother addressing Charli’s last question.

Charli doesn’t have a paper or pen. “I don’t ...” But she doesn’t want to make the woman walk all the way back. Lord knows, she’s not getting through that gate. “Let me ask if the driver has something.”

Charli runs to the cab and gets a piece of scrap paper and a pen. On the hood of the car she writes a quick note, saying that she’s family with an interesting story to tell that may explain what happened to Miles Pemberton. When she returns, she says, “Thank you for doing this.” She hands the note through the iron gate. If only Charli could describe through the gate how high the stakes are in her mission to liberate the truth.

Since it can’t hurt to ask, she says, “Is there any way you could share their address in London? I’m going back there in a few days and could find them.”

“I’d say this is enough,” the woman says, waving the paper in the air.

Charli’s not surprised. “Yeah, yes, of course. Thank you for passing it along. I promise I’m not looking for anything other than putting some puzzle pieces together.” In hopes of sounding more real, she adds, “I’m almost thirty now, and family has started to mean more to me.”

She shoves the paper into the pocket of her apron. “I’ll make sure he gets it.”

Charli keeps a smile on until the lady turns away. She might not be Miss Marple, but she can lie like her.

On Wednesday morning, Charli sneaks in a question to Noah about where his family is buried. She’s sly about it, telling him that she wants to be cremated and eventually eases the conversation into his family. He doesn’t seem to give it a second thought as he replies, “There’s a whole swath of us buried over at the Brighton Cemetery. I’ve got a spot waiting for me.”

Once he goes to work, she tracks it down. A light rain falls, and Charli holds an umbrella over her head. It’s a modest cemetery flanked by a movie theater and a Verizon.

Ten minutes later, she finds it. The gravestone reads: L ILLIAN J ANE T URNER , TAKEN FROM THIS LIFE ENTIRELY TOO EARLY . M AY SHE REST IN PEACE . F EbrUARY 27, 1864–JULY 2, 1881. A fresh wound arises as Charli considers how much pain Miles must have felt losing her—at losing anyone who means a lot to you. She tries not to think about her father, but his body stretched out on the floor flashes before her.

Then there’s Noah. She can’t quite figure out his part in all this. Why did he happen to be behind the bar the day they met? Why did she choose that pub anyway?

Next to Lillian lies her brother. The stone reads: A RTHUR HENSLEY T URNER , LOVING FATHER , HUSBAND , AND SON . R EST IN PEACE . J ANUARY 7, 1860–O CTOBER 10, 1921. Charli imagines how absolutely devastated he must have been to lose her. So much so that forty years later he was still holding on to it so tightly that he decided to avenge his sister by going after Miles’s brother.

She sits facing Lillian’s gravestone and says a few words, forcing herself to take the action seriously and not get caught up in the doubt. After all, she’s about to talk to a dead person.

“I don’t believe that Miles killed you,” she says to Lillian. “I don’t know that I can prove it, but ... Frances says I owe a life debt to you, that I wouldn’t be alive had you lived. Please know that I’m trying to get to the bottom of things, but don’t hold your breath.”

She snickers. “Well, I guess you can’t do that anyway, being dead and all. But let me tell you that I’m not the best person to owe you a life debt. If I were you, I might have gone after someone with a better track record for getting things done.”

Charli laughs at herself but doesn’t want to leave it like that. If there’s any substance to what she’s doing, she can’t make a joke out of it.

“Sorry, I have a bad habit of doing that. It’s serious, though. I feel like I’m a phone call away from finding out my father killed himself. And my mom is no better.” The reality of what she’s saying tugs her down. “I’m not sure I’m much better. But I want to be. I want to wake up and be excited about the day. I want to stop hearing my mother’s voice. I want to have some level of confidence. Would it be so bad if I liked myself?”

Her eyes water, and for some reason she keeps talking, telling Lillian about her life, everything from her childhood to the Bookstore That Never Was.

“If all this family constellation stuff is true, then maybe a lot of this is guilt. My bet is that it’s Miles’s dad who killed you. I wish you could give me a little help here. Whether it was Miles or him, they’re my relatives, and I guess I do feel the guilt of what they did. Maybe that’s ultimately what’s been drowning my whole family. I’m here trying to figure out how to make it right, Lillian. I don’t know where to go from here.”

She shrugs. What else can she say? “For the record, we have suffered. I mean, generations of pain, possibly all tied back to the moment you were killed. Isn’t that enough? Why can’t it stop with me?”

In the following silence, a slight breeze stirs, giving Charli the chills. As impossible as it seems, the movement feels like a response to her plea. Once again, Charli finds it hard to doubt the unseeable magic in her mission. Lillian is there with her, urging her along.

Charli stands and whispers, “Thank you, Lillian.”

Back at Noah’s place, while Noah’s still at work, Charli sends Marvin another email assuring him she’ll be back Monday. Then she updates Viv and Aunt Kay. Despite feeling like the answers are not coming as easily, she does taste this sweet flavor of possibility, and that’s what she tells them on the phone, that this trip has been good for her, one way or another. Last, she calls her father.

“Daddy.”

“Everything okay?”

“I don’t even know where to begin.” She shares some details. “More importantly, how are you?”

“Charli . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stop with all this worrying about me?”

“Will you stop with giving me reason to?”

“Hey, I’m fighting like you are. That’s about all I can say.”

Nothing is changing. And why would it anyway? Because she stood over the grave of a dead woman?

“I want to say ... that I love you.” With that she cracks, breaking into a million pieces, and she pulls the phone away so that he won’t hear her.

She hears his reply. “I love you back. And I should be asking if you’re okay.”

Her phone back to her ear, she puts some pep on her voice and says, “Yeah, Dad. I’m really good. Hoping that I’m getting closer.”

“I’m sure you are. Hey, Charli.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

She ends the call before he knows that she’s crying ... and then she lets it all out there, sitting on Noah’s couch. She folds into herself and becomes consumed by the dark void that’s swallowing them all.

When the tears have dried up, she makes herself a sandwich and tries to figure out what’s next. She needs to get a moment alone with Helen, who seems to be her last hope, but it’s not easy. She can’t outright call or track her down at home. The stealth of this operation still seems paramount, as they surely won’t tell her a thing once they know who she is.

That night, while she and Noah are watching TV, she casually asks Noah if his grandmother is still involved in the family business.

“No, not really. The buck stops with my father, though even he’s not involved that much anymore.”

Charli tries to find an angle. “But she still eats for free, right? I mean, does she still have ownership?”

“Oh, yeah, she still has her part of it, though she’s given half to my father. He’ll get the rest when she passes, and then on to us.”

Charli is prying but dares ask one more push. “I haven’t seen her in a while. She’s doing okay?”

“Oh, yeah. She’ll be in tomorrow. She still has a desk.”

Having to return to London in three days to fly out Sunday morning, she hopes that she can finally make some headway.

Charli goes into the pub for lunch on Thursday. She takes her laptop and stays for a while. Helen is in and out, and when Charli gets the chance, she suggests they have tea. Helen looks slightly surprised by the invitation but politely agrees.

They share a pot of black tea, and Helen raves about tea with immense passion. Her age doesn’t seem to be a burden at all. She explains that they’re drinking a first flush Darjeeling from West Bengal, India. Charli is so wired after a cup that she’s asking all sorts of questions about Helen’s life. The woman is incredibly interesting and wise and passionate.

“You are an inspiration,” Charli says about fifteen minutes after Helen sits. “What’s the secret to aging so well?”

“Oh, you folks will all live to one hundred. What with all the technological advances. Can you believe electricity was only becoming a thing when I was a little girl? We didn’t have it at the pub until 1936. And now we’re talking to each other on screens. By the time you’re my age, can you imagine?” She lets out an infectious laugh. “You’ll be half robots.”

Charli sees a way into the conversation she wants to have. “I think I would have preferred to be born when you were. The Roaring Twenties.”

“Oh, I don’t know how much they roared here in Winchester. It was a nice time to grow up, I suppose, but ...” Her voice and words trail off.

Charli seizes the moment. “Noah told me about what happened to your ... was it ... great-great-aunt? I bet even your generation was affected by such a thing.”

She takes a moment to wade through the years. “Well, yes, of course. I suppose it had been fifty years by the time I was old enough to hear about it, but the sadness of it lingered in the pub like a ghost.”

“I can imagine.”

She seemed to be engaged in the memory now. “My grandfather was born the same year of the murder, so he was always connected to it, talking about it, throwing out his theories. His father had told him that his aunt Lillian used to talk to him while he was still in the womb.”

A chill travels down Charli’s neck. She swallows and says, “That’s so much of why I admire your family. You’ve been through a lot but somehow manage to be the happiest family I’ve ever met.”

Helen smiles. “Yes, the recipe seems to be lots of family time, even if we don’t always see eye to eye.”

“That would be a recipe for disaster in my family. I don’t know if Noah told you, but I’m a big mystery buff and so interested in what happened to your aunt. Do you mind talking about it? I’m curious.”

Helen pours the last of the tea. “I don’t know that it’s a mystery. She was murdered, and they caught the man.”

“But they don’t know where he ended up? Noah said he was declared dead. They didn’t find a body, did they?”

Helen stares into her cup, as if the Darjeeling has all the answers. “My grandfather claimed that they’d declared him dead so that his brother could step into line to inherit his position in Parliament. What was his name? Edward, I think. No one truly knows what happened to Miles Pemberton.”

“It’s the makings of a documentary.”

“I suppose it is.” Helen sits back. “It would certainly be nice to know that poetic justice eventually found him, wherever he ran. You know, his family was and still is, to a degree, rather powerful. It was said that Miles’s father turned him in.”

“What kind of father would turn in their own son?”

Her bony shoulders incline. “Who knows? But I will say that my grandfather once mentioned that he thought it might be Miles’s grandmother who helped him escape. I don’t quite remember why he said that.”

“What a story.” Charli wishes she could go into the details of the constellation, but she worries she’ll be chased right out of Winchester. Not feeling like she’s getting any closer to proving Miles’s innocence, she does her best to draw out more information. She tries her other angle.

“How do you think Lillian’s murder affected the family? The reason I ask is that I read a book, can’t remember the name, and it was talking about how trauma can be passed through the generations.”

Helen tilts her head, and her pupils dilate.

Charli waits for a response while the flames of guilt burn at her insides. The irony of lying to get to the truth is not lost on her, but she douses the flames.

Helen lifts her hands from her lap and smooths them together, as if it helps her journey back into time. “I could see some truth to the idea. According to my grandfather, Lillian’s brother, Arthur, nearly ran the pub into the ground. He was devastated after losing his sister and never quite recovered. After he was killed, my grandfather, Joseph, took over and saved it. He was not without his hard times, though. He and his wife lost three children as babies before finally having my father, John. Then John hanged himself when I was a little girl.”

“Oh God,” Charli says, at once knowing that Noah’s family has indeed struggled too. “I’m sorry. This isn’t my business.”

Helen nods. “You asked. And now I’m afraid I must excuse myself. My cat will turn naughty if I don’t check on him.”

“Sure, yes, of course. Please let me pay for the tea.”

Helen waves a finger. “It’s my pleasure. Would you care to walk me home?”

“Yes, I’d like that.” Charli admires this woman so much and wishes she had someone like her as a mentor, to show her how it’s possible to find so much light in the darkness.

They stroll a few blocks at Helen’s easy pace, and she points out places that have meant something to her over the years. When they arrive at her house halfway down a skinny street, she says, “This is me.”

Charli looks at the brick row house with white shutters. The chafed door is so old it looks like driftwood. A tarnished plaque indicates the address: #7. A strand of ivy that has climbed up to the second window is coming to life.

“You grew up here?”

“At one time, it was me, my parents, and my grandparents all under this roof. Before that, it was Arthur’s place.”

“Right, Lillian’s brother.”

Charli can almost see Lillian coming through the door to visit her brother. Pieces lock into place, but she’s still so far from the truth.

She turns to Helen as she approaches her door. “Thank you for today. I enjoyed it.”

Helen presses her key into the lock of number 7 but turns back. Her eyes shrink. “From where does all this curiosity stem? If I were to guess, you have more than a passing interest in my family.”

Charli looks away but fights hard to twist back to Helen. “I ...” She doesn’t want to lie.

Helen waits patiently for a reply.

“I’m trying to make sense of my own life, and it seems like I’ve come across your family for a reason. Once I know for sure, I’ll tell you. Can we leave it at that?”

Helen’s forehead crinkles. She searches Charli’s eyes. Then lets her off the hook. “You do right by my grandson, you understand?”

Charli breathes for the first time in thirty seconds. Guilt pours over her like a waterfall as she barely lets out, “I’m trying.”