17. Jessica
August, Present Day
Maple Ridge
“This is my English grandmother, Hazel.”From the wicker chair next to mine on the patio, Anne points at one of the pretty women in the black-and-white photo she’s holding. The woman’s in her late twenties with wavy shoulder-length blond hair. She’s smiling at the camera, the curve of her lips carefree and wide.
“And this is my grandfather, Charles.” Anne’s finger slides to the man between the two women. He appears to be the same age as Hazel. His dark hair is short and slicked back. He’s good-looking. I’ll give him that even if he did cheat on Iris, his fiancée.
Anne points to the other woman in the photo. “And this is Auntie Iris.”
She resembles a slightly younger version of her sister. Same wavy bond hair. Same eyes. Same dimple. Same smile—except Iris has a more impish look to her expression.
I stare at the woman whom I’ve never met but admire so much. I guess in a way I have met her—within the pages of her journals. She appears as strong and beautiful as I’ve imagined her to be.
I want to reach out and touch her image as if she’s the real flesh-and-blood woman standing before me, to say thank you for giving me the strength and idea to help Violet hide from her husband. I rein in the urge, eager to learn more about Iris. The Iris Anne knew and loved.
I’d be surprised if Anne didn’t somehow feel the excitement humming through me at getting to talk to her about her great-aunt. “When was the photo taken?”
A butterfly flutters over to the nearby flowerbed. Bailey scrambles to her feet, the butterfly snaring her attention.
“Lie down, Bailey,” I instruct her. She follows my command, and I reward her with a treat.
Anne flips the photo over. “August, 1939.” Just prior to the start of World War II.
“Were Iris and Charles engaged then?” I ask and cringe at my mistake. As far as Anne knows, I shouldn’t know that.
“You mean Hazel and Charles. No, from what Auntie Iris told me, they got engaged during the war and married a few months later. But the three of them had been friends for five or six years before that. It wasn’t love at first sight. My grandparents’ love for each other grew over time.”
I wince on the inside at the version of the truth Anne had been told. She never knew about the heartache her great-aunt had suffered through after discovering her fiancé and sister in bed together.
Would Iris want the truth to come out now? She’d had decades to tell Lizzie and Anne about what happened, but she chose to keep it a secret.
No, that’s not true.She wrote it in the journals. Had Iris planned to give her niece the journals, only for her niece to die in the car accident before that could happen?
I pick up my glass of strawberry lemonade from the table. “What else did your great-aunt tell you about your grandparents?”
“They loved each other very much. And they fell in love with my mother the moment they saw her. They thought she was the best thing to happen during the war. The only good thing to happen.”
“What else?”
“Other than that, Auntie Iris didn’t talk much about my grandfather, other than saying he was a good man. I don’t think she really got over losing him as a friend. She talked more about my grandmother. She would tell me all kinds of stories about when they were kids. My grandmother loved folklore and was positive fairies and other mythological creatures existed.”
That fits with what I read in Angelique’s journals. Johann’s sister had believed in them too at one point.
“You mentioned Iris was fluent in French and German, and your great-grandfather had been an English diplomat in both Paris and Vienna. Did Iris ever visit France and Austria during the war or afterward?”
“Not that I know of. Definitely not during the war. I doubt she could have entered either country since she was a British citizen at the time. The Nazis would never have allowed it. She would’ve been killed. And after the war?” Anne shakes her head, her gaze directed skyward.
Not much longer before I’m finished transcribing the journals. Not much longer before I can share the truth about her great-aunt with her.
I know Anne will be even more proud of her great-aunt, at what Iris accomplished during the war, than Anne already is about the woman she did know. God, I can’t wait for her to find out the truth.
“I don’t think she ever mentioned going back to France or Austria,” Anne ventures. “She might have and didn’t think to tell me. And I didn’t think to ask. She and my mother moved to the U.S. in 1949 or 1950.”
Anne picks up a framed photo from the table and passes it to me as the gate to her backyard clicks open. The three women in the colored photo are all smiling. I recognize Anne. She looks to be in her early twenties. The older woman was in her seventies, and the woman in the middle could be in her forties. It’s obvious the women were related.
“This is my mother.” Anne points to the woman in the middle. She’s blond like Anne, Iris, and Hazel.
“Hi, Catherine,” Anne calls out cheerily, shifting my attention from the photo in my hand.
A tall blond woman Anne’s age walks up the wooden porch steps. She has on yoga pants and a tank top that’s snug on her curvy frame. “Hi, Anne.” The pitch of her voice is high and has the singsong quality of a chickadee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you have a guest.” She smiles, flashing her bleached-white teeth at us.
Anne rests her hand on my forearm. “Yes, this is Jessica.” She turns to me. “Catherine is my neighbor.”
“And her dear, dear friend.” Catherine laughs, the girlish sound matching her chickadee voice. She gives me a once-over, and her gaze lands on my face. Her eyes widen a minuscule amount.
She quickly recovers her composure before Anne can catch her reaction and takes a seat next to her. “What are y’all talking about?”
“My great-aunt Iris,” Anne says, apparently at ease with her friend joining our conversation. “Jess bought her house a few months ago.”
“So, you’re the one.” Catherine’s tone switches from friendly to something a little chillier, but maybe I’m just imagining that. Her eyes seem to be locked on the scar by my mouth. I squirm on the seat as if I’m sitting under a microscope, waiting for her to dissect my past. The wicker creaks under me, loud enough to give away my discomfort at her scrutiny.
Anne looks fondly at the framed photo in my hand. “Iris was smart. Clever. Generous. Brave. And she was very much hands-on. She loved to do things herself, even when her right hand caused her trouble at times. Even more so when it became arthritic.”
“Her hand?” Oh no. The hand Christian hit with the paperweight? I take a sip of the lemonade, growing more and more curious about the woman she remembers—and more and more disquieted by her neighbor.
“It was caught in some machinery during the war, and her hand was badly injured.”
Machinery? More like the result of an English traitor who sold what little there was of his soul to the devil. Christian’s greed and ambition cost a lot of people their lives. And it sounds as though he might have caused Iris to have only limited use of her hand.
The next hour is spent with Anne telling me all kinds of stories about her great-aunt. The great-aunt she knew growing up. Not the one who lived in occupied France for part of the war, and who helped to bring down the Germans and liberate the country.
The person Anne knew is obviously the same one who lives in the pages of the journals. Iris’s spirit and courageous and caring soul never changed, even after everything she had survived through during the war.
I don’t look at Catherine at all while Anne talks, and Catherine fortunately doesn’t interrupt her. I’m vaguely aware of her pouring herself a glass of strawberry lemonade at one point, but other than that, I pretend she isn’t sitting on the porch with us.
I get lost in Anne’s fascinating stories about a woman I feel like I’ve gotten to know almost better than I know Anne. “And she never married here in the States or had any children?”
“No,” Anne says, and my heart breaks for Iris. “She didn’t have time to date when they first moved to the States, and after the loss of her sister, Hazel, my mother became the most important person in Auntie Iris’s life. She didn’t want to risk falling for a man who couldn’t love her niece the way she did. I think as courageous as Auntie Iris was, she was afraid of loving someone who wasn’t Lizzie—other than me later on. She had lost her sister and brother-in-law. I think she was afraid to risk her heart to anyone else and have it crushed when she lost them too.”
That I can relate to only too well. Iris had been pregnant when the Gestapo captured her. The conditions of the war would have been enough for anyone to lose their baby. She was in love with her unborn child. Had that loss scarred her in the way losing Amelia has made me scared of giving my heart to yet another person?
My heart aches for Iris, and if she were alive, I would hug her. Hug her and thank her for all the sacrifices she made, especially during the war. I can only begin to imagine how much it changed her…like my past has changed me.
Anne’s phone rings on the coffee table. She checks the screen and stands. “Sorry, I have to get this.” She answers the phone and walks into the house—leaving me with Catherine.
“So, Jessica…” Catherine draws out both words. They roll unpleasantly from her tongue. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she bit into an underripe lemon doused with paint thinner. “My husband is a retired cop.” She glances briefly toward Anne’s house.
I nod, having no idea what she expects by way of an answer. Congratulations? Good for you? I’m sorry?
“He’s a good man. Hard working. Put his life on the line so many times to protect our community from scumbags.” Her eyebrow rises on the last word.
She knows. She knows who I am…or was.
I have no idea where she’s going with this. Okay, I do know. She’s clearly on the Savannah-Townsend-killed-her-husband side of the fence, but I don’t get what point she’s trying to make.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but nothing comes out. Mostly because I know it won’t make a difference. It won’t change her mind.
“We used to have a little boy,” she goes on, her voice turning into cracked ice. “He was the sweetest thing. But then one day a stray bullet struck him down. He died in my arms.”I almost stop breathing at the last part. If there’s one thing I can relate to, it’s losing a child.
Not once does her voice soften while she’s telling me that. If anything, it grows harder. Colder.
I close my eyes for a beat, searching for my own voice, her pain a screwdriver turning in my chest. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She releases a noise that’s somewhere between a snort and a huff. “I’m sure you are. Your type generally is, aren’t they?”
“My type?” The words barely make it past my suddenly parched mouth.
“My son died when an ex-convict decided money was more important than my son’s life.” She stands abruptly. “Does Anne know who you are, Savannah?”
I slowly nod. God, please tell me my being here won’t end up hurting Anne.
The door to the house opens, and Anne steps out. “Sorry about that.”
The coldness on Catherine’s face washes away, and she smiles at Anne as if she and I didn’t just have that conversation. “I need to get back home. It was nice meeting you, Jess.” Catherine’s voice is, once more, that of a perky chickadee.
I nod again, the movement robotic this time. “You too.” I stretch a smile on my face, which I hope doesn’t look anywhere near as awkward as it feels.
Anne seems to buy it. She says goodbye to her friend and resumes telling me all kinds of stories about Iris.
I shove my hands under my thighs so she doesn’t see they’re shaking. It takes me a few minutes, but I eventually push my conversation with Catherine aside and focus on what Anne says, laughing along with her. I decide not to tell her about Catherine. It’s best not to make a big deal out of it—but I won’t visit Anne again here and risk making things difficult for her.
It’s getting dark by the time I drive home, my thoughts full from everything Anne told me. I focus on that and only that. There’s so much Anne doesn’t know yet about her great-aunt. So many things involving Iris the world has no idea about.
Things the world should know.
There are books published about some of the more well-known female SOE and OSS agents: Virginia Hall, Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom, Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, Yvonne Rudellat, and so many others. But so far, I haven’t seen Iris’s contribution to the war mentioned.
The journalist in me—the one responsible for the World War II research I’ve done to date—wonders if I could write a nonfiction book about Angelique’s time in France. But that would require me traveling to London and France and possibly even Austria and Germany to locate as much documentation as possible. Some of it might even need to be translated to English. I can’t rely on only the journals to write Iris’s story.
It would require me leaving my safe haven of Maple Ridge. I’m not ready for that yet. Maybe I won’t ever be.
And the idea of writing a nonfiction book sounds daunting, especially if it’s based on history.
But maybe I don’t have to write a nonfiction book to acknowledge the sacrifices Iris made for her country and king. When I first moved to Maple Ridge, I told Delores I was writing a thriller. The next thing I knew, the lie took root, and several people now think I’m actually writing one—including Simone, Zara, and Emily.
I told them the thriller was on pause while I did the renovations. The excuse was so I didn’t have to write said thriller.
But why not write a novel? A historical novel based on what’s in the journals? Some of the World War II historical novels I’ve read were based on real-life people.
For the first time in months, an idea I’ve had makes sense. I could really see this for me—I can feel it. The fulfillment I’d gain from writing the story.
Is this the purpose I’ve been seeking?
My blood thrums with the same excitement as earlier. Excitement that I now have a new purpose—which hopefully will get me further than wedding photography. Excitement and a need to do this. A need to show the world just how amazing Iris Bromfield was. To give her the recognition she so rightly deserved.
And then I can give Anne not only the journals and their transcriptions—I can give her the novel manuscript. She would have final say if I could query the book to agents…assuming it was worthy of that. It’s one thing to write an article about PTSD and the impact it has on the individual and their family; it’s another to write a novel.
I don’t even know where to start.
But I know someone who does. Garrett.
I can’t tell him what I’m writing though. I can’t tell Troy or anyone else either. The subject of my novel will need to remain a secret until after I’ve shown it to Anne—and that’s only if she lets me show it to anyone else.
I’m going to do this. I’m really going to do it.
You can’t write a novel. You can’t do anything right.
The words slithering through my thoughts are in my dead husband’s voice.
You’re not smart enough to write a novel. It takes a skill you don’t have.
“You’re wrong,” I tell myself. Or him. “I can do this. It won’t be easy, but I am a good writer. I have awards stating as much.”
I push the self-doubt aside. The desire to write the story tingles on my tongue, pulsates through my veins. I’m smart. I can learn to write a novel. With the right guidance and resources, I know I can do this. It won’t be easy, but I can’t improve if I don’t at least try.
I check the time on the truck dashboard. Troy and his brothers won’t be home yet from their training. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to Garrett.
My phone rings. I accept the call.
“Hey, how’re things going?” Troy’s voice comes through the truck’s speaker. A car drives past me, heading toward Ash Falls.
“Good. I’m almost in Maple Ridge.”
“Any trouble?” Worry colors his voice, noticeable even over the phone. Unlike the day of the accident, the road to Ash Falls isn’t empty of traffic. Nor is there a steep slope on either side of it. If a deer does dart onto the road, the outcome won’t be like last time. I won’t be stranded overnight in a storm.
“No. Things are good.”
“Okay. I’ll see you soon.” The worry in his voice diminishes to a fine wisp but doesn’t entirely go away.
My mouth widens into a smile. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“In your sexy purple bra and panties?”
I choke out a chuckle. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”