Chapter 19
Leif
When Noelle laughs, it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
So is she, sprawled out in front of the crackling fire on the sleeping bags and air mattress set-up we’ve made.
While Noelle talks about being in Girl Guides, and how she unsuccessfully lobbied for a badge in drama, I lie next to her, wondering how I ever got to be so lucky.
Forget space. Forget anything but this woman. She’s the only thing I want for Christmas. For my whole life.
“What?” Noelle asks.
I’ve been staring.
I love you.
But the last thing I want to do is scare her off.
I know she said it too, but I still feel like this is tenuous.
Like I might spook her by saying all the things I want to say now that we’re not in the throes of it.
So I lie back next to her, slip my arm gently under her neck and pull her against me, my heart pounding like I said it.
Knowing I probably will if we stay quiet for too long.
“Leif?” Noelle asks after a moment.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your Christmas wish?”
I peer down at her face, which is tipped up to mine. “I think I already got it.”
She laughs, splaying her hand on my bare stomach, brushing her fingers against the trail of hair I’ve got there. “No, really. If you could have anything in the world—that’s not this—what would it be? Seeing as you already fulfilled your childhood dream.”
I consider that, looking at the snow swirling outside in the dark, listening to the snap and pop of the fire. “I guess I’d wish for a life where a couple of people might care about the thoughts and ideas I have about the universe.” I stroke her hair. “I always dreamed about writing a book.”
“I read about a hundred books about the moon when you were gone,” she says. “But you’re not talking about a novel are you?”
“No. I don’t think I’d be any good at that.” I consider my thoughts. “I want to write about how we’re not alone. How there’s so much out there that can help people down here. And if someone could pay me while I do that I guess that would be ideal.”
“The university will pay you,” she says softly.
“They’d expect more academic work from me than I want to give them, I think.”
“Surely they’d let you write what you want to?”
“I don’t honestly know. The more I think about the professorship job, the more constrained I feel. The more I feel like I should just get a job at a community college to pay the bills and do what I want on the side.”
Noelle stops moving against me.
“I don’t want much, Noelle. I want a home. A family. Someone to grow old with.”
“That’s a good dream,” she whispers.
I lean over her, cradling her head in my hands. “I want you, Noelle.”
“You can’t give up everything to live here.”
“Why not?”
She presses her lips together. “I don’t ever want to be the reason you give up something bigger.”
“Noelle, you’re my biggest dr—”
Noelle presses a finger to my lips before I can say it. “We have some time, don’t we? You’re in town until when?”
I grasp her hand and kiss her knuckles. “I have a flight back the day after Christmas.” I open my mouth again to say I can change it; I’m going to change it. I’ll cancel it and never look back.
But she presses her finger against my lips again. “So we have…”—she looks up as if adding it up—“two weeks?”
“Twelve days,” I say under her finger.
“The twelve days of Christmas,” she says with the most spectacular smile I’ve ever seen. “Let’s just enjoy these days together and we can decide then what to do, okay?”
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Fine. But just think about everything, okay? Really think about if you’d be happy here. Take me out of the equation.”
Impossible. But I relent. This is for her, not for me. “Okay,” I say. “Fine. But I’m not going to let you out of my sight.”
She smiles. Then she gasps, as if remembering something. She jumps up and runs fully naked, toward her clothes.
My confused body makes my stomach drop, while my dick swells at the sight of her. “Noelle, you okay?”
“If you don’t want to let me out of your sight, you’ll have to join me downstairs.”
I rise up on my elbows, watching as she shakes out her dress and holds it up over her head to put it on. “You’re a goddess, you know that?” She’s something the universe drew with its own hand.
But as she covers up her gorgeous body I come back to my senses. “Wait, why are you going downstairs?”
“I want to look at that room with the photos.”
Five minutes later, half-dressed with open sleeping bags wrapped around our shoulders for warmth, we’re back downstairs in the room with the picture frames and costumes.
Noelle heads straight for the framed photos, crouching down and flicking through them like she knows what she’s looking for. I’m confused, but trust she’s going to explain what she’s doing at some point.
She lets out an adorable little squeak partway through.
“How did I not know you sneezed like that?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
She’s right. There’s a whole lifetime to learn.
“What are you looking for?”
“Everything about two specific women.”
“What women?”
Noelle hands a framed article to me, then another.
She doesn’t answer until she finds a third frame. “These ones.”
Apparently satisfied, she leans the frames up against the boxes, then sits down in front of them, crossing her legs like a little kid and patting the floor next to her for me.
I join her. There are three framed articles. The first has a photo of two women arm in arm, in 1940s garb. I read the headline out loud. “First Official Meeting of the Quince Valley Women’s League.”
She points to the next one. It looks like the same two women standing next to an old-fashioned looking ambulance car, on a bombed out street. “Women Join the War Effort.”
The last one I don’t read out loud. Tragedy Strikes the Women’s League.
I look at Noelle in confusion.
“See that one?” She points to the first photo. The women smile for the camera, their heads tilted toward one another like they’re good friends. “The one on the left is my great great grandmother.”
“What?” I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
“My mom’s great grandma. Everyone called her ‘Grandma Betty.’ She lived to be 101 years old—died when my mom was around twenty.”
I glance from the photo to Noelle. There’s a slight resemblance, I realize. In the cheekbones, and the tilt of her smile.
“Mom remembers Grandma Betty fondly. She says she used to tell her stories about her time in the war. She was an ambulance driver in London during the air raids.”
Noelle reads the first paragraph in the article out loud:
Best friends Betty Brown and Carolyn Adams form the Quince Valley Women’s League with an aim to join the men in the war effort.
“This picture was taken right here. See the window?” She points to the window behind the women—only a sliver of it is visible, but it’s clear it’s the same unique round window on the wall in front of us.
“Wow,” I say.
“I know.” She keeps reading the article, about how the two friends raised money to fund their trip to London.
The second article, which I read, is the story of how they succeeded in becoming ambulance drivers during the air raids in London.
My eyes catch though, on a quote from Noelle’s grandmother’s friend.
“‘I always felt a kinship with Europe, since I was born in Switzerland. I never knew my parents. But I couldn’t stay home when I knew there was a way to help. I’m just lucky my dearest girlfriend felt the same.’”
Noelle’s eyes go wide. “Oh my God.”
I move aside so she can look at the article too.
“Switzerland—Leif! My dad told me he thought Carolyn might be connected to Eleanor Cleary, but I wrote it off as a coincidence, especially when I found out a lot of orphans had been brought over here after the First World War, when Eleanor had her baby. But I didn’t know Carolyn was born in Switzerland. ”
My heart skips. Could this be Eleanor Cleary’s daughter? The girl who Aunt Nora was convinced lived here in Quince Valley?
“The timing’s right,” Noelle says, growing even more excited. “She was born at the right time, her name starts with a C, and your Aunt Nora always talked about how James’s diaries mentioned a girl called ‘C’”.
I don’t want to get her hopes up. But that’s a lot of coincidences. I run my hand through my hair. “I guess it’s not outside the realm of possibility. We could ask Nora to do some digging?”
Noelle makes a little squealing noise. But when we look to the third article, her smile drops.
I read the first paragraph. “Except Carolyn died in 1943,”
Noelle scans the article, her shoulders dropping. “She was caught by a bomb while trying to move stranded civilians to the bomb shelters,”
Despite the still very likely possibility that Carolyn is just Carolyn, I can’t help the sinking feeling in my chest. “If it’s her, it’s the end of the line.”
It feels anticlimactic.
“I don’t know why I feel so sad,” Noelle says, setting the frame down after a moment. “You’re right, it’s probably not her.”
But neither of us can tear our eyes away from the frames. Could Carolyn be Eleanor’s baby?
“How did you know these would be here?” I ask, as much to distract her as for my own curiosity.
She points to the first article. “I have this photo. Or not exactly this photo, but one from the first series. Mom gave it to me when I was in New York. The same window is in the background—when I saw it I knew it was familiar. I just had no idea it would be so close.” Noelle swallows, touching the glass over her grandmother’s cheek.
“Mom said Grandma Betty did some acting. Maybe it was here. Maybe she wore some of these costumes.”
I slide over so we’re leaning against the wall, and pull Noelle up tight next to me.
“You know, growing up in a small town like Quince Valley, I know it’s not unusual for there to be coincidences like this—finding a photo of your grandmother in some random old building. But it’s still pretty special.”