Property of a Noblewoman (15 page)

“She met the count very quickly after she got to England. I don’t remember, but she might have met him on the trip over. She said he was a kind man, and wonderful to her, but she always missed you and said her life wasn’t complete without you. She was meant to stay in England when she got there, but she went to Italy with him instead. He got her into the country with an Italian passport after he married her in London. I know she tried to get you back at one point, I think you were about seven. She came for two weeks with her husband to see lawyers about taking you to Italy with them. The war was over. She met with your grandparents, and she told me they wouldn’t give you up. I’m not sure what they did to convince her, but she and her husband left without you. I never saw her again after that. Your grandmother was livid and threatened to expose Marguerite, disgrace her, and cause a scandal. I think she and her husband tried to get you back through the courts after that, but it didn’t work, and she eventually gave up. Her parents fought too hard. Your grandmother never had any maternal feelings for you and she left you to me to take care of, but they were trapped in a lie and the story they had made up, that you were their child, and they wouldn’t return you to your rightful mother. They had forced her to let them adopt you. Marguerite never had any other children, she didn’t want any. All she wanted was you, and they kept you from her. It was cruel, but at least she had a kind husband who doted on her and took care of her. She was still young when he died, but she stayed in Italy afterward. She had nothing here. Your grandparents saw to that.” Fiona looked angry as she said it.

“She never wanted to see her parents again, and they didn’t want to see her either. Once she left, the following year they told a story that she had died of influenza in Europe. She was nineteen then, and they put a black wreath on the door. I would have been heartbroken, except she wrote to me. She was very much alive, and she didn’t know what they’d said until I told her. They wanted to be sure she could never come back. I heard your grandmother tell your grandfather they had destroyed all her photographs. It was unnatural. Decent people don’t do things like that. They stole you from her, and buried their own daughter alive in everyone’s minds. I could never think of them as your parents, and they didn’t act like parents to you. They treated you like a stranger someone had left on their doorstep. I always hoped they would tell you one day, about your mother, and what they’d done, but they didn’t. And no one else ever knew, except the doctors at the home in Maine and their lawyers. You had a proper birth certificate that named them as your parents. I saw it once. It was all a lie, and they broke their own daughter’s heart. I was very glad she met the count and he loved her so much, or she would have been alone in the world. She loved you, Valerie, very dearly, and she would never have left you if she had a choice. She’s not still alive, is she?” Fiona wanted to know now, as Valerie shook her head, with tears running down her cheeks. Now she knew for sure.

“She died seven months ago. She’d been back in New York for twenty-two years. I could have met her if I’d known.” It shocked her too to realize that Fiona was only two years older than her mother and was still alive. Her mother hadn’t been as lucky, but had had a hard life, and didn’t have loving children to care for her, like Fiona did.

“I’m sure she would have looked for you if she’d dared.” Valerie couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t. Or maybe it was too painful to explain her return from the dead. “You were a grown woman. She must have thought it was too late.” Valerie would have loved to meet her real mother at any age. And it was shocking now to realize that she’d been right about all of it, that her grandparents masquerading as her parents had hated and resented her, and probably thought of her as a constant reminder of her mother’s shame. And they had kept her mother away from her for an entire lifetime, until her mother’s death, long after their own. The only mother love Valerie had ever known had been from Fiona, until she was ten. And she looked gratefully at her now.

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Valerie said in a hushed tone.

“I always wanted to. I thought you would suspect something or find out in some way. I never expected it to take this long.” It had taken seventy-four years to find out who her mother was, and she suddenly felt like the orphan she had been all her life, but at least she knew now that her mother had loved her. She was shaken too to realize that it was only a strange quirk of fate that had brought Phillip into the appraisal of the abandoned safe deposit box. Otherwise she would never have known. She was grateful for all of it now. “Tommy’s parents were Muriel and Fred Babcock, by the way, if you ever want to look for them. I hear you can find people on the Internet. My son tried to give me a computer but I’m too old to learn. But they’re your family too.” It hadn’t even occurred to Valerie to do that, and she wanted to think about it. She had so much to absorb and try to understand first. She had just gained a mother who loved her, and lost her, all in the same day.

Fiona was tired after the long story she’d told Valerie, which had taken two hours with all the details.

“I’m ready for a nap,” she said as she closed her eyes, and Valerie leaned over and gently kissed her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled.

“Thank you, Fionie. I love you,” she said, just as she had as a child.

“I love you too,” Fiona said, patting her hand again. “Just know that she loved you, and she’s an angel watching over you now.” It was a sweet thought, and Valerie tiptoed out of the room as Fiona fell asleep. It had been the most emotional day of Valerie’s life.

Valerie got back in her car then, and thinking of everything Fiona had said, she drove back to New York. She stopped for coffee once at a truck stop on the way, and sat staring into space, thinking of her mother and everything that had happened to her, and the terrible parents she’d had. They had done all they could to ruin their eldest child’s life, as punishment for a youthful mistake and an illegitimate child. It made Valerie furious thinking of it, and as the anger subsided, she was overwhelmingly sad, and filled with compassion for the mother she had never known, who had wanted to come back to her and never did.

She got back to New York at midnight, and lay awake for most of the night. She had a lot to think about. She had no idea what to do now. She wasn’t ready to tell Phillip yet, although she planned to, but first she had to make peace with it herself, with all its implications and ramifications. She wasn’t who she thought she’d been all her life. The only one she wanted to tell was Winnie, to vindicate herself. She wasn’t crazy after all. And she had never felt saner or clearer in her life. She propped a photograph of Marguerite on her night table as she got into bed. She had finally found the mother she’d never had.

“Goodnight, Mama,” Valerie said softly, and drifted off into a deep sleep.

ALL VALERIE KNEW
when she woke up the next morning was that she had to take what had happened one step at a time. A bomb had hit her life the day before, and she wanted to control the damage as much as possible. She was planning to move slowly, and think it all out carefully before she did. The one thing she knew was that Fiona had given her an incredible gift: the truth about herself. It explained so much, why she had always felt like a stranger in their midst. And she had been her parents’ grandchild, not their child. It made a big difference to her now. And the only person she wanted to tell at this early stage was her sister Winnie. Everything and everyone else could wait, even her son. She didn’t want to share the story with him yet. She needed to try to understand it first.

She called Winnie again that morning, and told her she was going to drop by shortly. She didn’t ask her this time, and she didn’t care if it was convenient or not. What she wanted to say had waited seventy-four years, and she didn’t want to wait any longer.

Winnie was fully dressed in a navy blue Chanel suit when Valerie arrived, and she’d had her hair done the day before. She looked like the wealthy, aristocratic Park Avenue matron she was. Valerie was wearing jeans, a sweater, and ballet flats, and her snow-white hair in a braid down her back. Her eyes were bright, and she looked rested. She felt better than she had in years, and suddenly free of the burdens and disappointments of the past.

“I won’t take long,” Valerie said calmly as she sat down, and Winnie looked instantly worried. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like whatever it was that Valerie was going to say. She was much too calm, and she was almost euphoric.

“Did something happen?”

“Yes,” Valerie answered, “I visited Fiona yesterday, our old nanny.”

“She’s still alive?” Winnie looked surprised. She had never corresponded with her or stayed in touch. Only Valerie had, and Fiona with her Christmas cards to her every year.

“She is.”

“She must be a hundred years old,” Winnie said, dismissing her.

“Ninety-four, and clear as a bell. I drove to New Hampshire to see her. I figured she might have the answers that you and I don’t. We were too young when Marguerite left. And I was right. I didn’t get the answers I expected. I showed her a photograph, and I thought she was going to tell me that Marguerite Pearson di San Pignelli was our sister. I was dead certain of it, but I was wrong.” Winnie ruffled up her feathers and looked self-satisfied and triumphant as Valerie admitted her mistake.

“I told you she wasn’t. You were just trying to make trouble for Mother and Dad.”

“All I wanted was the truth,” Valerie said quietly, “no matter what it was. And that’s what I got. The woman who left the safe deposit box full of jewels, and was married to the Italian count, was in fact your sister, but not mine. She was my mother,” Valerie said softly, with tears in her eyes. “She got pregnant at seventeen, by a boy she was in love with. They wanted to get married and their parents wouldn’t let them. They separated them immediately, and your parents, my grandparents, sent Marguerite to a home for wayward girls in Maine, and told her she had to give up the baby for adoption. They gave her no other choice, since it was considered scandalous to have a child out of wedlock at the time.” Winnie’s eyes had opened wide, and she looked shocked by what Valerie was saying, but she said not a word, which made Valerie wonder if she had suspected it, but there was no way she could have known.

“That was November 1941. And two weeks later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the boy who was my father was drafted or enlisted in the army and went to boot camp. He was sent to California for further training. And he was killed in a matter of weeks in a training accident. And apparently my mother refused to give the baby up after that. So your mother and father, not mine,” Valerie said pointedly again, “moved to Maine, pretending that your mother was pregnant. They returned to New York in September, claiming me as their own child. They forced Marguerite to let them adopt me. And days later, they put Marguerite on a ship to Europe, with a war on, banished from their home, and risked her life, on a ship to Lisbon, and from there she went to England. Essentially they forced her to give me up to them, even though they didn’t like me or want me or approve of me. And a year after she left, they told everyone that Marguerite was dead, depriving me of my mother, and her of her child. They kept me as their own child to avoid any scandal and broke her heart, and then pretended to all of us she was dead. Apparently, she married very shortly after she got to London, to a man who loved her dearly, thank God. Fiona says she tried to get me back, but they fought her tooth and nail, and threatened her with scandal and she eventually gave up. She never had other children, and I never had a mother who loved me, thanks to them. You may think they were good people, but I don’t. They perpetuated a terrible lie for most of my life. And all evidence points to the fact that my mother, your older sister, led a lonely life once she was widowed at forty-one, and for the next fifty years I could have known her and loved her if I’d known she was alive. Your parents, my grandparents, robbed you of a sister, me of a mother, and her of her only child.

“I haven’t digested it yet, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. There’s nothing I can do. No one can undo what’s been done, and what they did. But I wanted you to know before anyone else. I’m not crazy or senile or delusional, as you suggested. I was right, more so than I ever knew. I thought Marguerite di San Pignelli was our sister. I never suspected for an instant that she was my mother. And whatever happens, I thought you should know. I can’t imagine ever forgiving them for what they did. We were both innocent victims, you and I, we were lied to all our lives.” Valerie fell silent and looked at Winnie, who must have believed her. No sound came out of her mouth, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks. It still didn’t seem possible to her, but everything Valerie said was so clear and so cohesive that however much Winnie hated it, it had the ring of truth. And as she listened, all her illusions about their family were shattered. Just as Valerie had said. Winnie was shocked, and she felt her safe, orderly little world crumbling around her. It was hard to imagine how Valerie felt, having never met the mother she had lost.

“I think they did love you, though,” Winnie insisted in a hoarse, shaking voice, as Valerie looked at her, stone-faced. “They probably thought they were doing it for the best.” She was always loyal to them, even now.

“They ruined my mother’s life, your sister. And made my childhood a living hell. Fiona was the only loving adult in my life, and God knows how my mother must have felt, being robbed of her only child. It doesn’t bear thinking. And she died alone, while you and I went on with our lives.” It was a horrifying thought, and Winnie continued to cry silent tears as the two women faced each other, and Valerie stood up. “I’m sorry I sound so harsh about it. I just wanted you to know.” Winnie nodded but made no move toward her. She wasn’t sure if Valerie was angry at her by association or not, and she looked afraid.