Chapter 18 Clara
CHAPTER 18? CLARA
London, England
Wynnie’s breath returned.
I slumped to the floor. This was the closest call Wynnie’d had since she was six months old and I’d found myself in a car wreck on the way to the ER. By the time the ambulance arrived, they’d needed to use a bag and oxygen. I nearly lost her, and that horror never left me. I often woke from a dream, frantic and sweating, trying to run with her through the hospital doors, but my feet were leaden, and no one could hear me scream.
Wynnie slid off the couch and into my lap, snuggled up next to my chest, breathing in and out, in and out, slowly, surely. “It’s okay, Mama.”
“No, it most assuredly is not. I should have never left without your medicines. I was too eager to get the papers, to find the letter.”
“So was I.”
“Wynnie, you’re eight. You can be eager whenever you please. I should have known better.”
“It’s all right now, Mama. Emjie told me it would be. I wasn’t scared.”
“Well, I was.”
Wynnie snuggled closer. “I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Yes?”
She lifted her soot-stained face, inky black rubbed across her cheeks and now smudged on my sweater. “I was going to tell you when we got here, but then I sort of forgot until right now.”
“What is it?”
“The last night on the ship, I dreamed about Grandma.”
“Oh, you did?” I ran my fingers through her tangled hair, pulling at the strands to separate them. Her face was still cold to the touch and her eyes were dilated so wide that I was sure she saw the world askew.
“She was in a garden.”
Just as she was the night I floated above my own body, the night I nearly lost myself. Had I ever told Wynnie about my dream of Mother when I gave birth to her? Had I ever told anyone, and Wynnie overheard it?
No, I knew I had not.
It made sense that this was how my daughter would see my mother, because the most famous photo of her was in a forest, looking over her shoulder with a smile of satisfaction. In the photo in the woodlands of New Hampshire, right before she met my dad.
“I know you think it’s because of her photo,” Wynnie said as if my thoughts had bubbled up and out of my lips.
I let out a nervous laugh. “Maybe so.”
“But that’s not it. It wasn’t that photo. She was old, and it was a garden.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No. She didn’t see me.”
I hugged Wynnie close and listened to her even breathing, holding her and thinking I should just turn around and go home, get back on that ship right now with our things, Mother’s papers, and our safety. I would call the cruise line in the morning and inquire about an immediate departure.
“Let’s stay in this evening,” I said, “and skip the museum. The air is obviously unhealthy.”
Wynnie stood up now. “Let’s look at the papers?” she asked with a grin.
“First food,” I told her. “I don’t want all those medicines in your empty stomach.” I wanted to move slowly now—my need to rush into things had nearly cost my daughter an attack I couldn’t fix. Slow. Easy now , I told myself.
She sighed in resignation, an audible exhale that was clear of wheeze.
“They’ve been gone for twenty-five years, so another few minutes won’t matter so much,” I told her, and ruffled her hair.
The rental company had left us canned soups, eggs, milk, and a few things in the small yellow refrigerator. We ate a cup of potato soup and snuggled down on the couch. Wynnie turned her upbeat self again, as if the episode had never happened. Her lips and cheeks shone pink, and she was jazzed up, as she often was after the adrenaline flooded her body. She jumped up and paced around the coffee table and then pointed at the satchel.
“Mama, are you going to open it or not?”
“Right now, I am going to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. You know that.” She plopped down next to me. “Now open it. I want to read it, too.”
“Sweetie, I think the air here is bad for you. I think we need to leave London.”
“Go to that place Mr. Finneas told us about? The place with all the lakes and where Grandma’s play is?”
“No. We need to go home.”
Wynnie pushed away from me and slid to the other end of the couch. “Mr. Jameson said it’s going to pass. That the fog rolls in and the fog rolls out.”
“This feels worse than a little fog,” I told her. “I could barely see. It burned your lungs.”
“I know. But next time we’ll bring my medicine. I want to see the museums and Buckingham and inside Westminster, where the queen will get her crown, and you promised we’d climb to the very top of St. Paul’s. Do not make us leave, Mama.” Her voice choked with tears. “There are so many things I want to see, and maybe we can go to Cumbria and see that country house and the play.”
“Not at the expense of your health.”
“My health,” she said. “Always my health. I’m so tired.”
“Lie down, sweetie,” I suggested, squeezing her toes inside her tights.
“No, I am tired of it being the reason we can’t do things.”
“We will do all the things we can. I promise.” I looked to the windows and pointed. “It looks like it is ten at night outside, and it’s only four thirty.”
“It’s kind of pretty in its own way.” She lifted a biscuit from the plate I’d brought out and took a bite. “Now open the bag?”
I retrieved my purse from the entryway where I’d dropped it and reached inside for the letter. Nothing. My heart plummeted. The letter. Mother’s letter. I flipped the purse over and dumped it onto the coffee table. Nothing. I would never know what she wanted to say to me. I felt a sob bloom below my breast.
“It’s not here,” I said.
“What isn’t?”
“The letter.” I imagined it floating down the river, sinking and sinking just as once I’d imagined the pages of her language. “No, please,” I said. “Not again.”
And then I shoved my hand into the side pocket.
There it was. I exhaled and slipped it out.
I then pulled the papers out of the satchel. Wynnie and I both stared at the top, where a sentence was written in Mother’s language. Wynnie set her hand on the pile and then blurted out in a way that meant she’d been holding it tight, “I saw something in Mr. Jameson’s library.”
“What did you see?” I gripped the letter.
“Grandma’s biography. The one Papa hates.” She wiggled her toes and scooted closer. “I saw it on the desk. The Wild and Tragic Life book.”
“It was there?”
“Yes, and I have to tell you something else, Mama.”
“What is that?”
“I’ve read it.”
I leaned closer to her, squinted at her with a lift of my chin. “What? When?”
“I found it in the town library last year, and I read it little by little when you let me stay in the afternoons.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m sorry. I knew you didn’t want me to, but once I saw it, I couldn’t stop. And I’m almost nine years old, Mama. I’m not a baby anymore.” She sat up straighter and exhaled.
“I know you’re not a baby, but I didn’t want you reading some hogwash that some stranger wrote about our family.”
“One part of it made it sound like Papa might have hurt her or made her disappear.”
“That might be why he doesn’t like the book.” I tried to make light, but my laugh was off, nearly a cough. “He had nothing to do with her leaving, honey. She just walked out one night and never returned. When we can’t explain big things about people we don’t know, we make up stories.”
She nodded. “I just wanted to know her. Know about her. She is my grandmother.”
“I know, baby. I want to know about her, too. Let’s read the letter first?” She wiggled closer and nestled under my arm.
My name was written on the front of the envelope in Mother’s slanted handwriting with the long drop of the leg in the letter g. Clara May Harrington.
No married name.
The envelope was sealed shut, which meant that no one, including Charlie, had read it.
I slipped my finger under the lip of the envelope and carefully ripped it open. I pulled out the letter, my heartbeat racing toward its unknown words.