Chapter 16
Sixteen
Sebastian settles next to me, placing a cup of peppermint tea in my hands—the heat soothing. I sip gratefully, my throat raw from talking for hours.
“You’ve got to be tired,” he says, glancing at his watch. “It’s half past one in the morning. We can always stop if you want.”
“I am exhausted, but I’ve tried to bury all these memories for so long that now it’s—it’s like they’re all sprouting up at once, waiting for their turn to be shared. I’m willing to keep going if you are.”
“Are they all bad, like your last time seeing René?”
I shake my head. “There’s plenty of bad. It still hurts sometimes. Feels almost as fresh as it did then.”
“I imagine it’s like ripping off a million and one Band-Aids.”
I laugh despite my melancholy. “But other parts, they don’t hurt at all. And then there are the good things I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I could have done this without you.”
I take another sip, grateful for this rare moment. However alone I was the night I left René, I’m not alone now.
“One last time: Do you want to stop?”
“Why stop? The story will be over soon enough.” My guilt twinges. And so will everything else . . . Death will be angry at me for breaking his rules . . . and for showing my whole self to someone again.
He sweeps a springy curl from my forehead and stares into my eyes. “The things you’ve seen are remarkable. I still can’t believe it. The rational part of my brain wants to reject it, but another part of me, the details you know . . . only someone who’s lived it could know so much.”
“I’ve seen more than I should.” I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Where did you go after Paris?”
I sit up, and my mind toggles through that decade, the memories coming in flashes.
“I wandered for a while, first to Africa, Freetown in Sierra Leone, working in orphanages and hospitals with the Krio people, then to Algeria as the personal secretary of a merchant family, and afterward, I found my way to what is now known as Turkey as a correspondent for a British newspaper.”
I lean over to pluck a silky red shawl from the trunk—a dupatta, luxuriously embroidered in gold with birds, leaves, and flowers.
Another gift, from another love.
It’s lain here, heavy with meaning, only a memento, for decades. Even though these memories cut me to the bone, the pain rising raw and fresh, a bit of joy peeks through too, as I remember the day I received it.
Sebastian adjusts his glasses. “I think I already know the answer to this question, but . . . Why didn’t you return to America?”
“Newspapers reported on the plight of us. It was terrifying, what befell Black communities at the time. I sent money, but I couldn’t send myself.
I simply wasn’t ready. The ghosts still felt too real.
” I say these things, and my heart twists with a familiar guilt.
Could I have done more here at home? Should I have returned and tried to help?
But I know the truth. My heart was shattered. If I’d tried at that point to wrestle with the past, I wouldn’t have survived.
“I wanted to find a place where I could lose myself in nothing but words, so in time, I found my way to London at the turn of the century, years before the First World War began.”