The Brontë Plot (10 page)

“He did. He went over with some friends, but I know all the stories and . . .” Lucy stopped and glanced down to her computer, now unsure of all her dad had told her. His stories had glided through the years with the glow of a fairy tale. The hint that they were, in fact, untrue made sense. But the truth hurt. She flexed her fingers across her keyboard then slowly shut the laptop. She waited.

“I'm not stealing your history from you, Lucy. I'm sharing a little of my own . . . As I said, I met Oliver the summer after college. I took a job at a small jewelry store down in the five hundred block here. I wanted something different, exciting, and that's about as adventurous as I got. A few of my more daring friends went to New York, but Daddy wanted me married and on the North Shore. He gave in, a little, but only if I stayed in Chicago. So I got a studio apartment, a few pots and pans, and I was free. Well, the jeweler was—”

“My grandfather?” Lucy interjected.

“No. He was a friend of my father's so it wasn't quite as daring as I'd hoped. I suspect there were daily reports concerning my comings and goings. But one day, yes, your grandfather walked in the door. He was only a few years older than I was and had so much presence. He seemed to know what he was about and he had the most striking green eyes. Your eyes.” She waggled a finger at Lucy. “He sold jewelry to the shops—not jewelry so much as antique watches, lockets, estate pieces. He
specialized in English, but sold a few European pieces as well. Sometimes he'd bring in table pieces like silver snuffboxes and service sets. Beautiful stuff. Mr. Jones started purchasing from him after that visit.”

Lucy felt the blood drain from her face. “We're not . . . We're not related, are we?”

“Not at all. No. Oh . . .” Helen's eyes widened. “We are not related in any way.” She quirked a half-smile. “And as I said, I'm messing up the entire story. This is the first time I've talked about Ollie in over sixty years. It doesn't follow a structure in my head.”

“He sold jewelry to Mr. Jones.”

“Yes, and he was so handsome and had an energy about him, kind of a James Dean meets that young man today, you know the one . . . Oh . . . It doesn't matter. I flirted with him the second he stepped in the store and he was no better. We were inseparable from that day . . . until we weren't. He took me to nightclubs, dancing, on picnics and motorcycle rides. We even stayed on Oak Street Beach one night so we could catch the sunrise, and he had a Ducati 60 . . . I loved that . . .”

Helen's voice drifted off and then returned abruptly. “I digress. Then fall came. I remember that smell in the air. It's an ending smell to me, maybe has been since that night. You see, I wanted to surprise Ollie at his workshop. I hadn't done that before, but I wanted to be a part of his world, his whole world. He worked out of a garage due west of here. Anyway, as I walked in, I heard him negotiating prices with another man and I learned that everything was stolen. Everything he sold was stolen and there was no mistake.”

“Did he know that?”

“He did. That was how he ran things. He bought inventory cheap and without questions, fixed it all up, and sold it to high-end stores all over Chicago. For some things, he could even provide paperwork. Paperwork he'd constructed. And everything worked and was beautifully refurbished. He had the most amazing hands and could fix anything.”

“Where'd he get it all?” Lucy's voice came out tight.

“England, the Continent—after World War II, there was stuff around, unclaimed, lost, stolen. Life was more chaotic over there. Jewelry, books, art, you name it and you could buy it, with little care or concern about the original owners. But as wild as I thought I was, I was still . . . It turned my stomach and we fought. I threatened to tell Mr. Jones. Later I realized I only wanted a reaction from him. I wanted him to choose me.” Helen pressed a hand into her chest. “You see, I had chosen him.”

“What happened?”

“He threw me out.” Helen tapped the watch. “I stole this on my way out the door. I wanted to hurt him and knew it had value. I also thought he'd come after it—and that meant he'd come after me.”

“But he didn't.” Lucy's tone was varnished in relief.

“No, and my father got wind of my goings-on and sent me to graduate school. I took a course in teaching and when I came home for Christmas break, I took the watch to Ollie's workshop. He wasn't there. It wasn't there . . . Perhaps he believed my threat and left Chicago, eventually finding his way to England. I don't know, because I didn't search any farther. I hid the watch and met Charles at a family party that same Christmas. We married six months later.”

Helen pressed her hand over her mouth then lowered it. “I loved my husband very much, Lucy, but fear the rest of my family might doubt that if they knew.”

“That's silly. You were married, what, almost sixty years? How could they?”

“I was in love with another for a very long time. And yet, in the end, our marriage was good.” Helen straightened. “But it's a horrid revelation, Lucy, to know you've withheld love—something so elemental, so vital, from someone. I did to Charles what Ollie did to me. He kept enough back to walk away, and for years I approached my marriage the same way. When I saw you, everything turned full circle. That's when I dug out the watch, hired an investigator, and found the Parrish family. Now I need to go back, all the way back, to go forward. I need that now . . .” Helen's voice drifted away.

Lucy swiped at her long bangs. She kept her eyes trained on her lap.

After a long moment she looked up at Helen. “You're sure it was my grandfather?”

“Your last name. And with your eyes, my dear, there's no question.”

Lucy conceded the point with a wry smile. “Okay, but . . .” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I don't even know what to ask.”

“I'm not going anywhere. Well, to London, and you're going with me. There will be time and I'll answer all your questions.” Helen stood and pulled her shoulders back, stretching. “Why don't we take a break? Memories can be exhausting.”

Lucy only nodded.

“Would you like to see the rest of the apartment? I also made
sandwiches.” Without waiting, Helen stood and crossed through the hallway. She pushed a swinging door into a small kitchen with a porcelain farmer's sink, white marble counters, and a countertop eating area. “I eat here mostly, watching
Jeopardy
. Sid updated it; I think he knew I needed a smaller space for meals.”

“I sit at my counter watching
Jeopardy
too,” Lucy replied, not pleased with the likeness.

Helen proceeded down another short hallway, featuring black-and-white landscape photographs, to her bedroom.

Lucy stopped in the doorway. “This is Sid.”

“You know his work well.” Helen walked deeper into the room. “It's the textures I love and it's not a silly room. Right after Charles died, I needed something new, different, and Sid understood that. But if he'd gone too far . . . Well, I think it would have felt like I was kicking Charles out. These purples and greens, they're different from what we enjoyed together, but not too much so.”

Lucy ran her fingers over the velvet-relief fabric on the armchair. Tufts of velvet set in a mesh that blended rough with smooth. “He's used six different fabrics in here, but you don't notice how many unless you count. They're seamless.”

“There's another room you must see.”

When they entered the next room, light danced across a bedroom with walls covered in pale pink silk, shot through with threads of gold and white. Twin beds with high headboards of the same fabric, with pale-gold trim scalloped along the wooden edge, stood side by side. Deep yellows covered small chairs, moss green and gold covered a tiny bench, and on the far wall hung a delicate but large antique curio cabinet filled with at least a hundred small figurines.

“Hey—Beatrix Potter,” Lucy whispered, striding across the room.

“Those figurines were mine as a girl. My granddaughters loved them as children and I can't seem to part with them. Do you know the stories?”

“My father used to read them to me. I think he understood these animals more than people. That's Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny with the bag over his head . . . and there's Jemima Puddle Duck and Squirrel Nutkin. Oh . . . Miss Tiggy-Winkle. She was my favorite.” Lucy spun around. “Bowness-on-Windermere.”

“What?”

“Bowness-on-Windermere!” Lucy shouted the name. She checked herself and continued more calmly. “I looked it up a few weeks ago, for something else, but it has a Beatrix Potter museum. It's in the Lake District, due west of Yorkshire, so we'll be almost there. I wondered . . .” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “This is a sign.”

She addressed Helen again. “You said you wanted to go back to go forward. These are from your childhood . . . Would you like to visit there? Add it to our trip after Haworth? We could steal a day from London and one from Haworth and have two up there without feeling rushed. It's not only Beatrix Potter—it's Wordsworth and Austen and . . . What?”

Helen raised her hands. “You're sweet, but I don't think I need to go back that far.” She flipped off the light and stepped into the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “London will do for me, and then let's add that little romp in Haworth. I have a feeling I'll need to get back after that. There will be much to do here.”

Chapter 10

S
id called once that afternoon to check in, but didn't relent. Instead he listed several more books for Lucy to take home and cited numerous websites for her to peruse. “You can't go to London unprepared. Get cracking,
mio piccolo viaggiatore
.”

“I can't even guess that one,” she replied through clenched teeth.

“My little traveler.”

Still grumbling over the Italian, Lucy unlocked the door to her apartment and shouldered her way in, balancing Sid's books on English antiques and silver, her satchel, and yet another remnant bag. She pulled off her boots, curled her toes against the cold wood floor, and opened her computer to fill the apartment with an appropriate rich and mournful melody.

“Of course you're dead.” She yanked wilted flowers from a tomato sauce jar and shoved them in the trash. She then walked to the window and sank in front of her remnants bin, glancing at the leather armchair. “What do I do with you?” she whispered. She reached into the bin—so many gorgeous
fabrics: Fortuny silks with reds, blues, and golds, embroidered and rich in texture; velvets that crushed under her fingers; chintzes with bright English flowers and that almost waxy finish that made them look alive; toiles with pastoral scenes that evoked the serenity of picnics in France, perhaps à la
Scarlet Pimpernel
; and plaids, stripes, polka dots, and countless other basics that added variety and provided the backdrops for so many of Sid's spectacular creations. None of them quite right, not yet.

She searched for a gold and yellow Scalamandre that she'd saved and put it beside a new emerald silk-wool blend peeking from inside the bag.
Perfect.
Side by side they reminded her of the MacMillan vase, sitting atop the George III chest.
Hope.
She added the pair to her second drapery panel.

Her phone rang.

“You're going on a trip with Grams?”

No hello?
“James?”

“You have to ask?”

Lucy pushed the fabrics away. “No. I mean yes; I guess I am.”

“How? How is that possible?”

“I don't know. She called Sid and no one is giving me a choice.” Lucy thought of Helen's story, her grandfather . . . “What did she tell you?”

“That this trip is important to her, that I'm not to cause problems, and that I'm not to question you.” He rattled off his list.

Lucy smiled. “So you're calling me, why?”

“Lucy.”

There it was again. One word, one name, filled with a world of emotions. This time she read pain, reluctance, annoyance, and disillusionment—a full paint deck of sad colors. Lucy released a slow, measured breath. “She obviously knows we broke up, that this is beyond awkward, and still she insists I join her. Sid's on board and . . . What do you want me to do?”

“Refuse to go.”

Lucy leaned back against the wall and studied her apartment. The light over the mantel pointed right at her new bookshelves, James's bookshelves. Other than that, it was dark. It was an empty, dark apartment, and somehow it now struck her as piteous.

Her eyes trailed the shelves, catching on book titles:
Jane Eyre
,
Bleak House
,
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
,
Moll Flanders
,
Frog and Toad
. . . What had Helen said?
I need to go back, all the way back, to go forward.
And what had Sid said? Lucy reached for the moment, in the gallery, when she'd pleaded for him to make the call and he had refused.
It's the next step.

She turned back to the books
. . . Swallows and Amazons . . .
Beatrix Potter . . . She inhaled deep and pursed her lips to release it slow, like an athlete preparing for a race.
Bowness-on-Windermere
. She could do it too . . .
Go back to go forward.

“Lucy?”

“I won't refuse, James. She hired me and it's my job.”

“This isn't what's best for her, Lucy. She's sick. She has cancer.”

Lucy felt her voice come out calm. “I'm sorry. I know that and I know you're worried about her. You all are. But I also know this, James—with or without me, she's going to London.”

“And Haworth?”

“She wants a visit to the countryside like many trips she took with your grandfather.”

“She mentioned that you suggested the Lake District.”