Property of a Noblewoman (14 page)

“No, we don’t,” Valerie agreed with her, “but I looked just like this child.” Valerie was dogged about it.

“So you should get the money and jewels because you think you look like this child? She probably wasn’t even related to Marguerite, the one who owned the jewels, not our sister.”

“So why did she keep photographs of her in her safe deposit box and hang on to them for more than seventy years?”

“Why are you driving yourself crazy? This has been settled. It’s all about the money for you, isn’t it? You’re possessed,” Winnie said, distressed again. Valerie was disturbing her peace of mind. Winnie liked an orderly life with all the loose ends tied up, and they always had been. And now Valerie was trying to make a mess of everyone’s life, past and present.

“It has nothing to do with the money,” Valerie insisted, took a breath, and tried to explain. “Winnie, all my life I felt like an outcast in my own family, a stranger among all of you. You and Mother looked alike and got along. Father protected both of you. I was the ugly duckling, the strange one, the one who was always different, who never looked or thought like any of you. I never, ever fit in, and they hated me for it. All I want now is to find out who I am, who I was, and why I didn’t fit. I think the answer is here, somewhere in these photographs, and I don’t know why, but I think this woman knew. Maybe she wasn’t our older sister, or maybe she was. Maybe she was an outcast too. They wiped our Marguerite off the slate of our lives, as though she didn’t exist. She disappeared out of our family history, and they would have done the same to me if they could. And now I want to know why. If she was our sister, what did she do? What happened to her? And was I too much like her? Was it acceptable in our family only to be carbon copies of them? Was it a crime to be different? Punishable by death or banishment? They didn’t mourn her, they erased her completely.
Why?
”

“They didn’t kill our sister,” Winnie said with a furious look. “Or banish her. She
died.
And they never did anything to you.”

“Except hate me, and ignore me, and treat me like I didn’t belong to them, and should never have happened. Did they do that to her too?”

“Let her rest in peace,” Winnie said desperately. She didn’t know the answers either, but she didn’t want to. Valerie did. She was starving for answers she had waited all her life to hear, and refused to be silenced again.

“I can’t let her go,” Valerie said miserably. “And I don’t know why, but the child has the answers. I know she does. I can feel it in my bones. And I want to know those answers now too, about why they never loved me and I never fit in. Look how different we are. We’re sisters, and we’re night and day. If the woman in the photographs was our sister, maybe she and I were more alike.”

“You’re trying to exhume an ally,” Winnie said angrily, “who’s been dead for seventy-three years. You have to make your own peace with who you are, and why you never fit.”

“I can’t. I don’t know why, but I just can’t,” Valerie said as tears slid down her face. For years, as an adult, Valerie had accepted the fact that her parents didn’t love her, and had a good life anyway. She’d had a great marriage, and loved her husband and son, but now something jarring had happened, and she needed to know what it was. It had brought back all the unhappy memories of her childhood, and her parents’ constant rejection of her and either inability or refusal to love her. And she had to know why and if the answers were somehow linked to the photographs she believed were of her as a child. She felt she had a right to know.

“You won’t find the answers here,” Winnie said coldly, “or by maligning our parents, or by turning our sister into someone she never was. The woman who married the Italian count was no relation to us, no matter how badly you want her money. Valerie, this is all about greed. And that child in the photographs looks like any other child at the time, not just you.”

“No!” Valerie said, her eyes blazing. “She’s me! I know it, no matter how you want to deny it. Winnie, that child is me, and I want to know why.”

“A dead woman won’t tell you, no matter how rich she was. If any of what you say is true, and I don’t believe it, she took her secret to the grave. And she wasn’t our sister,” Winnie said in a tone of fury. “Our sister died seventy-three years ago,” she repeated. “Let her be!” Winnie said and stood up, glaring at her sister. “I have better things to do than listen to this insanity. I think you’re losing your mind. I would worry about that if I were you.” What she said was like a slap across Valerie’s face, and she left a few minutes after a terse good-bye between the two sisters. Winnie’s hands were shaking when she got dressed to go out for her bridge game.

And when Valerie got back to her apartment, she sat down and cried, and then stared at the photographs of the little girl again. But however adamantly Winnie was denying it, Valerie knew she was right, that it was her. And then she remembered something she had gotten the year before, and had almost forgotten since. She went looking for it in some of her files, and couldn’t find it. She tore a whole file cabinet apart where she kept correspondence, and it wasn’t there. She knew she had kept it, out of sentiment, but had no idea where she’d put it. Obviously in some unusual place. It was a Christmas card from their old nanny, who had come to work for the Pearsons when Winnie was two, two years before Valerie was born, and had stayed until Valerie was ten, a span of twelve years. Fiona had been a young Irish girl of eighteen when she came to work for them, which made her ninety-four now. She had married and moved to New Hampshire, where she was in a nursing home, but her mind was still clear. Her handwriting on the Christmas card was shaky, but she was still lucid despite her age. Valerie hadn’t visited her in nearly twenty years, since Phillip was fifteen, although they stayed in touch and Valerie wrote to her. She had loved her passionately and been devastated when she left, and Fiona sent her Christmas cards every year. Valerie just hoped she hadn’t died since the previous Christmas, but she thought her children would have let her know. It was two in the morning when Valerie found the card, along with some others she had saved and put in her desk drawer. It was the last place she had looked. She had kept the envelope too, with the address of the nursing home. She was in southern New Hampshire, where she had lived for more than sixty years. It was a six-hour drive from New York.

Valerie lay awake in her bed all night after she found the card, and she called the nursing home at eight in the morning. They told her that Fiona McCarthy was very much alive and doing well. They said she was bedridden now from her arthritis, but she was clear as a bell, “and still feisty,” the nurse who answered said laughing. “She keeps us on our toes.”

An hour later Valerie was at the garage where she kept the car she owned but seldom used. She liked to have it if she ever needed it, and talked about selling it occasionally. She was on the road by nine-fifteen, and crossed through Connecticut and Massachusetts and into New Hampshire. There was still snow on the ground, although it was March, but there was very little, and there was no sign of spring yet.

It was almost three o’clock when she reached the tiny town that had been Fiona’s home for so many years. And the nursing home looked warm and inviting. It was white and freshly painted with a picket fence around it, a front garden, and rocking chairs on the porch the residents used in warm weather, but it was still too cold at this time of year.

Valerie walked up the front steps with trepidation, wondering if Fiona would remember her, or even recognize her, and what would she say about the photographs? Valerie was an old woman now and looked very different than Fiona’s memories of her even after twenty years.

She spoke to a nurse’s aide at the front desk, who smiled and asked her to sign in, which she did. She said that Fiona had just woken up from a nap and it was a good time to visit. She said her children had been there that morning, and she was alone and would enjoy the visit. Valerie thanked her and walked to the room. She peeked in and saw a wizened old woman with a face full of wrinkles tucked into the bed, with a bright handmade quilt on it. Her hair was wispy and white, but her eyes were the same. They were a brilliant blue that burned right through Valerie as the old woman looked at her. She smiled as Valerie stood in the doorway.

“Are you going to stand there like a statue forever, or come in?” she said, grinning. She knew instantly who Valerie was.

“Hello, Fiona. I don’t know if you know who I am.” She started to explain, and Fiona laughed.

“And why wouldn’t I? You haven’t changed, except for the blond hair going white. How’s your boy?” She remembered Phillip – her mind really was clear. Phillip had loved her when they met, and she had told him tales of his mother that made him laugh and brought tears of memory to Valerie’s eyes.

“All grown up,” Valerie answered. “He’s a good man.”

“He was a fine boy when I met him.” She pointed to a chair, and Valerie sat down, wondering where to start, after all this time, but Fiona did it for her.

“You took a long time getting here. I’ve been waiting for so many years,” she said cryptically. “I thought maybe after your last visit, you’d come back with some questions, but you didn’t. Why now?” She looked interested in what Valerie had to say, and she was wide awake and alert.

“Some strange things have happened. None of it may mean anything, but it’s been driving me crazy. Some photographs have turned up, in an unclaimed estate my son has been working on. And there’s a coincidence of name. The woman who left the estate had the maiden name of Pearson. And the same first name as my sister, the one who died, Marguerite. We’re probably not related, but there are some photographs of a child . . .” Her voice drifted off as Fiona watched her intently. “Winnie says I’m insane, and maybe I am, but I thought you would know.” Valerie delved into her handbag then, and brought out the photographs of Marguerite, before she showed her the ones of the little girl with no name. “I’ve come up with some very odd theories in the past few days. Maybe there’s no connection with this woman, but there are no pictures of my sister. My mother destroyed them all. Winnie and I don’t know what she looked like.” She handed the photographs to Fiona, who examined them through her bifocals one by one, and nodded, as Valerie held her breath. Her whole body was trembling, as though something terrible was about to happen. Or maybe something very good that would set her on a path to freedom, from a family that had never understood nor wanted her. All her life she had felt obligated to them, and had been respectful, while they had reciprocated none of it.

Fiona finished going through the pictures and looked at her with a solemn expression. “What do you want to know?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Valerie said in barely more than a whisper. “But is that woman my sister Marguerite, who died in Europe at nineteen?” Fiona didn’t hesitate before she answered, and she looked certain.

“No, it isn’t.” Valerie’s heart sank at the words. She had hoped it was. Fiona reached out a gnarled hand then and patted Valerie’s hand with a tender look. “The woman in the photographs is not your sister. She’s your mother,” she said gently. “Marguerite was your mother, child.” Valerie felt like one as she listened in sudden shock. “And she didn’t die in Europe. She got married.”

“When I was born?” Suddenly it was all so confusing, and everything had been a lie, just as she had thought, and Winnie denied. But this was even more complicated than she could have imagined.

“You were born before she left. She was eighteen. I always thought they would tell you one day, but they never did. She was just a girl, and madly in love with a boy called Tommy Babcock, and the worst happened. She got pregnant. They wanted to get married, and her parents wouldn’t let them, and neither would his. The poor things were like Romeo and Juliet. Your mother,” Fiona corrected herself, “her mother said she would never forgive her for the disgrace. A few days later, they shipped her off to a home for wayward girls in Maine. It was right before Thanksgiving in 1941, she was just seventeen, and Tommy was the same age, but turning eighteen. I don’t think anyone knew about what had happened. And in those days pregnancy was such a disgrace. They sent her off very quickly, and told everyone they were sending her to finishing school in Europe for a year, in Switzerland, I think. The war had already started in Europe, but Switzerland was safe. But she wasn’t there. She was in Maine, writing me letters about how miserable she was. Winnie was only four then, and didn’t know what was going on. But she cried when Marguerite left. Marguerite was such a sunny little thing, everyone loved her. The house became a tomb without her. And her mother had murder in her eyes. Her mother was going to put the baby up for adoption. They were forcing her to give it up.

“She had been there about two weeks when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and everyone was in a panic. And the next thing I heard, Tommy had been drafted and was in boot camp in New Jersey. I think he was sent to California right before Christmas. I don’t know if Marguerite ever saw him again, I doubt it, but I don’t know that for sure. Maybe he went to Maine to say good-bye, and if he did, he probably promised he’d be back for her. I think he’d been in California for a month when he was killed in a training accident. Marguerite wrote to me that he was dead at the end of January. Your mother had a strong will and a strong mind, and after he died, I think she told her parents she wouldn’t give up his child. The next thing I knew your mother, or grandmother, told everyone she was expecting, and they were going to the country so she could rest. They rented a house in Bangor, Maine, and I used to visit your mother at the home for girls. The poor thing was heartbroken over Tommy. Your grandparents had agreed not to put the baby up for adoption, and to say it was theirs. You were born in June, a big beautiful baby, and your mother had a hard time of it, she was so young. We spent the summer in Maine, and in September, we went back to New York, your grandparents, as they were rightfully, with ‘their’ new baby. And two weeks after we got back to New York, they sent Marguerite away. And they claimed you as their own. I’ve never seen anyone cry in my life like your mother the night before she sailed for Europe. They booked her passage on a Swedish ship called the
Gripsholm.
It was sailing to Lisbon with other civilians on it, because Portugal wasn’t in the war. And she was planning to go to England after they docked. They sent her to Europe with a war on. The ship could have been torpedoed, and they didn’t care.” Tears ran down Fiona’s cheeks as she told the story. “I went to see her off. They gave her no choice, they wanted her gone. She held you all night, the night before she left, and she swore she’d come back for you one day. And in the morning, she left. I promised to send her pictures of you whenever I could, and I did, for as long as I was there. Your parents never wanted her to come back. She told me they were going to make her stay in Europe, even with the war on.