Chapter 34. Lenore
Lenore
The train lurches away from the platform, gaining momentum until Burlington is a blur of redbrick and gnarled trees. “The last letter that Abigail wrote to James was—”
It took some gentle persuading, but Thomas eventually agreed to let us borrow the letters long enough to make copies.
After all, they’re part of my own family history as much as the Bradfords’.
Paper coffee cups from the onboard café act as paperweights for the scanned pages on the foldout trays attached to the seats in front of us.
I type the date from the letter into a spreadsheet open on my laptop, which is tucked onto my lap in the cramped space.
The goal is to compile as much information as possible before presenting the paintings to an appraiser in the city.
The paintings in question are padded with blankets and stowed on the luggage rack overhead.
“So, her family forces her to break off the engagement to James Bradford in March, which means his portrait must have been painted some time before that,” I review aloud.
As formal as the final letter from Abigail to James was, the heartbreak between the lines was palpable.
As a noncommissioned officer, James didn’t have the means to secure her hand in marriage—not in the eyes of her father, at any rate.
Abigail had no choice but to turn him down in favor of a more advantageous match.
Still, she had kept the portrait she painted of the handsome corporal. It had remained in the family for all these centuries, a testament to a love that never had a chance to be.
Cal nods, shuffling through papers. “That sounds right.”
I double-click to open an attachment in an email from Bill Billings at the town municipal office. It’s a scanned marriage license from 1778, between Abigail Mary Dutton and Alpheus Sullivan French.
When I first received the email yesterday, I gasped.
Not at the confirmation that Abigail was my ancestor, but at her husband’s name.
I’d seen that name before, on the oldest headstone in our family cemetery: ALPHEUS SULLIVAN FRENCH perhaps it’s better left alone.
Footsteps drift through the open window at my back. “Lenore?”
A wave of relief rushes over me at the distraction. I push the fluttering curtain aside and duck my head to peer into the darkened apartment. “Out here.”
Within seconds, Callan is contorting his long limbs to squeeze through the window onto the fire escape.
We’re both in our pajamas, but it’s not like anyone is going to notice us perched up here in the dark.
He wedges in beside me on the narrow step.
“Hey,” he says, his voice like gravel. “Couldn’t sleep? ”
“I almost forgot how bright it is here at night.”
“The lights woke you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what woke me.”
Perhaps it was some bone-deep sense of not belonging, like a nonnative plant cultivated in some soupy greenhouse—alive, but never quite what it could’ve been. I’ve outgrown the city, my roots burrowing hungrily for richer soil. I had to come back to be certain.
I’m changed in a hundred different ways from the girl who moved here, and maybe that change doesn’t have to be for the worse or the better.
Maybe it just is. We’re all a series of tomorrows, a thousand possibilities stretched out before us.
Nothing says we have to stay the same from one day to the next.
I scrub a chill from my bare arms. Cal shifts in the cramped space so that he can pull me in close to warm me. He nods at the journal, resting on my lap. “Planning to do some reading?”
I run my hand over the well-worn leather cover.
Maybe there’s never going to be a right moment.
There will always be another question, something else you remember that you forgot to ask.
Maybe part of grief is coming to terms with all the pieces of a person that we’ll never get the chance to know, all the little intangible things they couldn’t leave behind.
“I think so,” I say.
His eyes fall to the journal. “I can leave, if you’d rather do this alone.”
“No,” I say. “I think it would be good to have some company.”
So, huddled close on a fire escape overlooking a city that no longer feels like home, I turn the page to an entry from seven years ago.
Friday, September 13
This morning brought with it a bit of bad news.
I’ve suspected that something was wrong for a while now. So many lapses in memory, forgetting appointments and locking myself out of the house—I’ve brushed those incidents aside, tried to attribute them to the usual failings that come with age, your mind not quite as sharp as it once was.
Until last week. I got in the station wagon and drove to the train station in Burlington, where I waited for hours. Sometime after dark, the security officer came and knocked on my window, asked who I was waiting for. And I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember what I was doing there at all.
My doctors have stuck me in different machines and run all sorts of tests.
It’s Alzheimer’s, they suspect. I’m told that it can’t be definitively diagnosed while I’m still living, as that would require an autopsy of the brain.
A grim thought. For now, it’s manageable, but there’s no knowing for certain how fast it might progress.
Which leaves me to reflect on all the things that still need doing, and the things that are already done.
I’ll need to ensure that the financial burden of my care does not fall on my grandchildren’s shoulders.
This disease might take my life, but I can’t bear the thought of it indirectly taking theirs.
I find comfort in knowing that I’ve helped raise two exemplary people—if I can even take credit for that.
Damien, who’s always been fiercely loyal to his family.
Lenore, whose artist’s eyes can turn the most mundane moment into something magical.
Even as my memory goes, I know there are two humans in the world who love me and this home I was able to give them.
I trust that they’ll know how to carry on that legacy after I’m gone.
I close the journal, releasing a foggy breath on the night air.
Gran had her memories plucked away, one by one, until almost all the things that made her her were gone.
Until the words pouring out of her mouth after my brother’s wedding were unrecognizable.
Yet there are so many happy memories that I’m lucky enough to have, to hold on to—including memories of her own, tucked into the pages of the journal.
My grandmother once said that love was in all the things we hold on to. In grief, those mementos become painful reminders of the people we’ve lost. But love is a living, breathing thing. It thrives in the sun, banishing shadows to the far corners, clearing away cobwebs.
It’s in the gold wristwatch that I wear every day.
In the pages of her crumpled paperback bodice rippers, which I’ve taken to reading while curled in bed every night like she used to, our own private book club.
It’s the clouded emerald ring in the velvet ring box, clunky and several sizes too small.
Gran never had it resized, but I like to think that love is meant to grow and change along with us, so maybe one day soon, I’ll take it to a jeweler.
The cold weather has made my nose runny, and I sniffle. Cal angles his head to watch me drowsily. His hair is flattened on one side where it was pressed against the pillow.
“Hey,” he says gently, and brushes my hair back from my face. His palm is rough and warm against my cheek. “Is everything all right?”
I rest my head on his shoulder, my hair catching on the scruff of his beard. Beyond the neighboring rooftops, skyscrapers twinkle in the Financial District, a strange substitute for stars.
“Not yet,” I say at last, “but I think maybe it’s going to be, eventually.”