The Forgotten Room (28 page)

She saw where I indicated and elicited a bored sigh. “Yes, it is. My mother clipped every article about me from my debutante ball through my wedding. I thought it was quite tiresome, but she insisted.” A spark lit her eyes, belying her ennui.

“May I see it?” I asked, already walking toward the bookcase.

“If you must. But do not take too long. I need my rest.”

I looked back and saw Mona rolling her eyes. After placing my cup and saucer on top of the bookcase, I slid the thick volume from its place and brought it back to the bed. Mona cleared the tea set before excusing
herself for a moment. She returned with a kitchen stool that she placed next to Prunella as I settled the scrapbook against the older woman's scrawny knees.

The glowing young woman in the aged photographs was barely recognizable as the same woman in the bed beside me. I calculated that Prunella would be about seventy years old now, but her air of frailty and helplessness added years to her age. I wondered if disappointment and regret could do that to a person, could etch themselves into the curves and planes of a young girl's face, like time's library stamp.

I let her turn the pages with her still elegant hands, listening to her stories of what it was like for her in the latter part of the last century, to imagine Stornaway Hospital as the glittering mansion it had once been, seeing her handsome brothers in their formal wear dancing with beautiful women at the various balls the Pratt family had hosted in their short stay in the mansion on East Sixty-ninth Street. It made me nostalgic for something I had never known but felt a connection to nevertheless.

I was thinking of an excuse to leave when she turned the page to reveal a large article and photographs that filled facing pages. There was an inset photo of the entire Pratt family in formal attire, posing in front of the familiar circular stairs of the mansion. I pointed to the tall and handsome fair-haired young man standing next to a younger Prunella, his smile full of mischief. “Is this Harry?”

She nodded, her finger gently brushing the clipping. “He was so handsome, wasn't he? Gus was handsome, too,” she said, tapping the image of another blond young man, who was still nice to look at yet lacked whatever spark his brother seemed to have. “But Harry . . .” She sighed. “My mother used to say he hung the moon in the sky, and if you'd known him, you might even agree.”

I leaned closer, studying his eyes. I examined the curve of his jaw
and the way his nose was a little too thin and a little too long but which made it all the more arresting in his otherwise perfect features. “He looks . . . familiar,” I said, leaning back to get a better perspective.

“He should,” Prunella said indignantly. “We favored each other.”

I looked at her and nodded. “Of course,” I said, knowing that wasn't it at all.

The larger photo was taken at Prunella's engagement ball. A full orchestra was set up at one end of the ballroom, which was currently being used as examining areas for the patients, with cots running the length of the gilded room. Some of the couples were blurred as they swirled around the floor, smudges of white from ladies' gloves resting on the shoulders of black-frocked gentlemen. I recognized an older version of Prunella, the mother from the smaller photo, holding court near the punch table. I leaned in closely and felt my breath stop.

Standing directly behind Mrs. Pratt was a young woman in a maid's uniform almost identical to the one Mona currently wore. Except this uniform was new and crisp and fit the slender form of the woman who wore it. She had dark hair pinned up beneath a white cap, and her gaze was fixed on the tray of champagne glasses that she gripped with both hands, as if she were unaccustomed to serving.

Despite the pressing heat in the room, I felt a chill dance up my spine and take residence at the nape of my neck. It wasn't that the woman resembled me. It wasn't even that she was a dead ringer for the woman in the miniature portrait that belonged to Cooper and had once been his father's and his father's before him. It was the dark-stoned necklace that hung on the outside of the uniform, the delicate chain tangled in the neck of her dress as if some exertion had coerced it from its hiding place and it had become stuck in the high collar.

It took me a moment to find the words in my dry mouth. “This maid—with the necklace. Do you know who she is?”

Prunella leaned forward and squinted, her eyes then widening in
apparent recognition as her expression changed to a scowl. “Her name was something like Olivia or Olivette or something.” She shook her hand like she was shooing a fly. “Something
common
.”

I forced my voice to remain steady. “And she worked as a maid for your family? At the house on Sixty-ninth Street?”

Her lips formed a single line of disapproval. “She thought she was one of us because her father had been an architect. But blood does tell in the end, doesn't it? My father discovered some horrible things about him and dismissed him, hoping he'd just go away. But the fool killed himself, and his daughter was left to believe that he'd been slighted. The one thing I do know is that she was a thief. She stole that necklace from me. And she disappeared with it before I could get it back.”

“The stone, in the necklace. Was it a ruby?”

She gave a small shrug. “I suppose so. It was dark red and had belonged to my mother, so I assume it was a valuable stone like a ruby.”

I had been about to show her the ruby that was at that moment hanging around my own neck, had even reached toward the top button of my blouse. But I stopped. I replaced my hands in my lap, watching as they trembled. “What sorts of things was her father accused of?”

“Adultery for one. With a client's wife, no less. Both father and daughter deserved what they got.”

I stared at her for a long moment, realizing that she didn't know that Olive was my grandmother or that her own stepson had married the daughter of an apparent thief. A maid.
Was this the reason for my mother's secrets?

I stood, my knees shaking, desperate to leave. “I should go,” I said. “And let you rest. I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”

She looked almost disappointed, as if she didn't get visitors very often, and I felt an unwelcome stab of pity for her.
Disappointment and regrets.
Before I could stop myself, I said, “I'll come back, if you'd like. You can show me the rest of the scrapbook.”

Her face seemed to brighten, transforming it. “That would be . . . appropriate,” she said. “Just please be sure to let us know when you'll be here to ensure it's at a convenient time.”

If I hadn't been still reeling from what I'd just learned, I might have laughed. “Of course. Thank you again,” I said, then said good-bye to Prunella and her maid.

I nearly stumbled in my haste to get through the outer door, then paused on the outside steps as I sucked in lungfuls of fresh clean air that didn't taste like bitter regret.

I sat at the desk in Dr. Greeley's office behind a pile of paperwork, happy for the distraction. He'd seemed surprised when I'd volunteered to tackle the ever-growing pile, but I knew he'd never guess the reason why I chose to hide in a place in which Cooper Ravenel would never think to look.

I'd been avoiding him since the night we'd spent together. Seeing him walking with Caroline was too painful and would have completely dissipated the fantasy cloud I'd created where it was just Cooper and me, and no war, or fiancées, or futures that didn't involve the other. I found myself dreading his release almost as much as I anticipated it, eager to put the pain behind me. I'd have to take the advice I always gave to my patients, to look forward to each day that took you beyond the pain, that healing would eventually come. I only wished the healing wouldn't hurt so much.

There was a brief knock on the door and Nurse Hathaway stepped inside, closing it softly behind her. “I'm sorry to bother you, Doctor. But I have something for you and I didn't think you'd want anybody else to see.”

I sat back in my chair and watched as she placed a small stack of
papers on the desk in front of me. “What . . . ?” I stopped, confused for a moment. They were sketches of a woman with dark hair and a heart-shaped face, nude except for the familiar necklace she wore around her neck. I recognized the fireplace in the attic room, and the mullioned windows, and for a moment I thought it was me. Or, I realized for the first time, my mother. Our coloring had been different, but she'd had the same widow's peak, the same shape of the face. As had her mother.

“Captain Ravenel asked me to give them to you. He said he found them in the drawer of the Chinese cabinet in the attic. He wanted you to know that he'd opened the locked drawer, and that he didn't want these to end up in the wrong hands.”

Her face remained expressionless, but I thought I saw something in her eyes. “She looks like you,” she said.

I felt myself coloring. “Yes. She does. But it's not.” I couldn't meet her eyes. It wasn't me in the sketch, but it could have been.

“I know,” Nurse Hathaway said. “The artist signed and dated it at the bottom—H. Pratt, 1892.”

She must have said something, but I wasn't listening. I was too mesmerized by the single signature, the bold
H
and
P
of the artist on the bottom corner of sketches of a woman who looked like my grandmother, wearing the necklace that had been stolen from Prunella Pratt.

As if she hadn't said anything, I said, “Have you shown these to anybody else?”

“No, Doctor. Of course not. I understand it's a private matter and none of my concern.”

I flipped through the sketches, each one more detailed than the last, as if Harry Pratt had spent a lot of time studying his subject. Olive. My grandmother. I sat back in my chair again, regarding the young woman in front of me. “Why are you always so kind to me, Nurse Hathaway? You must know that I'm not a favorite among the nurses or doctors.”

She grinned broadly. “Because I want to be you. You're a fine doctor, one of the best I've worked with. You know who you are and what you want, and you never give anybody else permission to treat you like you're less than who you are.”

“Thank you,” I said as I stood and gathered the sketches. I needed to speak with Cooper, to tell him about the necklace, about how my grandmother had been a maid in this building. Perhaps we would be able to figure out how the miniature came to be in his grandfather's possession. I might even tell him that my grandmother was a thief. But I would not allow him to stand too close, and I could not allow myself to want him to.

I smiled at the nurse. “It's good to hear, even when I'm not so sure if I've made the right choices.”

She opened the door. “Well, that's the thing about choices, isn't it? There are always more to make. I've never seen a street where you couldn't cross to the other side.”

She smiled again, then headed out into the corridor, her feet tapping briskly against the marble. I'd made it out the door and was shutting it behind me when Dr. Greeley and Cooper emerged from another office down the hall. It was too late to return to the office or run down the stairs. Instead, I held the sketches behind my back and stood where I was while I waited for them to approach, much as I imagined a small woodland animal waited in the middle of a road, staring at oncoming headlights.

I stared at the small cleft in Cooper's chin, unable to meet his, eyes. “Good afternoon, Captain. I hope you're well.”

“Very,” he said. “Thanks to you.”

I felt myself coloring and my gaze jerked up to meet his, and I immediately regretted it. Everything I was feeling—the euphoria, the loss, the regret—was mirrored in his eyes.

Dr. Greeley sounded almost gleeful. “The captain is doing so well that I've just completed his final exam and am pronouncing him fit enough for discharge.”

Cooper cleared his throat. “Caroline and I are taking a train to Charleston tomorrow afternoon.”

I almost said that it was too soon, that I needed to talk to him about the sketches, and the photo in Prunella's scrapbook, and how I'd suddenly realized why I thought Harry Pratt looked so familiar. But I couldn't, of course. It was too late. I needed to go, needed to get away as quickly as I could before I shattered into so many pieces that I could never put myself together again.

“That's wonderful news,” I said to the cleft in his chin, still unable to meet his eyes.
The color of winter grass.
I remembered thinking that the first time I'd seen him, and how now it seemed that I had seen them before, had always known him.

“Good-bye, then,” I said, spinning on my heel and racing toward the steps before I made a fool of myself. I headed outside onto the pavement and into the hot sunshine, wanting to feel anything except the sharp sting of regret that filled the cavity in my chest where my heart had once been.