Chapter Two

Chapter Two

‘It's hard to know where to begin, isn't it?' Catherine said, reading my mind, or at least the look on my face. ‘You must have a lot of questions.'

‘A few.'

The silken wallpaper in the parlour was painted, just like the walls in the foyer, but in here, the artist had chosen a gentle blue over sage green with white clouds overhead and willowy trees surrounding us on all four walls. Their branches were full of songbirds and curled carefully around the arched sash windows at the front of the house. I almost expected to look down and see the forest floor beneath my feet instead of polished floorboards, it was so realistic. Above the ornate marble fireplace at the heart of the room was a huge mirror that threatened me with my own tired and sweaty reflection, and two heavy-looking gold candlesticks sat on either end of the mantle. As someone who grew up playing a lot of board games, they made me uneasy. Miss James in the parlour with the candlestick. I'd never been any good at that game.

‘When they came to tell me what had happened to your father, my heart was torn in two.'

I looked back at Catherine to see a single tear sliding over her high cheekbone. ‘It felt like I would die too. There has never been a pain like it.'

Wedging my hands tightly under my thighs, I tried not to fidget. She looked devastated, truly heartbroken, but if she loved my dad so much, why had he raised me to believe both of his parents were dead?

‘You wouldn't believe the hoops they had me jump through to bring you home,' she went on, wiping the tear away only for another to take its place. ‘The whole system is a disgrace. Forms on top of forms on top of forms, all of them keeping us apart for far too long. I should have been by your side the moment the accident occurred. I should have been there to bury my son.'

‘It's not your fault.'

I thought of all the paperwork I'd seen passed around over the last few weeks, my name, dad's name, doctors, dates, addresses. Who knew death required so much admin? I paused before speaking again, a question she had to know was coming lingering on the tip of my tongue.

‘Catherine,' I began, still not sure which words to reach for. ‘May I ask you something?'

‘Anything,' she replied right away.

I rolled my lips against each other, stalling. It wasn't going to be an easy thing to say and I imagined an even more difficult thing to hear. There was no other way to phrase it but the facts.

‘My dad told me you were dead.' I croaked out the words and she winced as though I had struck her. ‘Why would he do that?'

Before Catherine could reply, Ashley sailed back into the room, carrying an enormous silver tray.

‘OK, who's hungry?' she asked cheerfully, carefully setting it down on a marble coffee table and unloading the contents; plates groaning with cookies, small sandwiches, fresh fruit and a gleaming pitcher of iced tea. When she said tea, I automatically thought she meant hot tea. It was another reminder that I was really in the south.

‘If y'all can manage without me, I'd like to go take a bath,' she said with an exaggerated shiver. ‘Wash all that nasty airplane off me.'

She looked to Catherine, who gave an approving nod, and I could almost see the relief roll off her shoulders. She was more anxious to leave than she wanted us to know. Holding the silver tray against her chest like a shield, Ashley slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.

‘When the weather is hot like this, tea is simply all I can tolerate,' Catherine said as she poured two glasses from the pitcher before pushing a silver sugar bowl towards me. I shook my head and watched on as she dumped several heaped teaspoons into her glass, just the way Dad used to take it. ‘I must confess, I may not know all that much about climate change and such but I do know the summer is creeping in earlier and earlier. Ninety degrees in May? I don't think so.'

‘It sure is hot out there.' I reached for a cookie as my stomach growled menacingly under my shirt. Was she going to answer my question? I didn't know if I had the courage to ask it again. ‘It was raining when we left Wales.'

‘Look at us, talking about the weather like a couple of real Brits,' she clucked happily. ‘Tell me, how did you like living over there?'

Apparently, she was not.

‘It was nice. Quiet. We were kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Dad's friend, Anwen, rented us a cottage on her farm so most of our neighbours were sheep.'

‘So are mine.' Catherine gave me a quick, small smile before taking a thoughtful sip of her tea. ‘I understand you travelled around a lot for your father's research?'

‘We did, around Europe mostly. We lived in New Zealand for a while when I was very young but I don't really remember it all that well.'

I reached for another cookie and my stomach growled happily. They were beyond delicious.

‘My son, the historian,' she said proudly. ‘I should have guessed he'd end up in academia. Paul was always asking questions, always ready to learn. What about you, Emily, are you smart like your daddy? Do you do well in school?'

‘Because we travelled so much, I mostly did homeschool but I already took my exams and passed them all,' I replied, an unexpected but vehement need to impress her appearing out of nowhere. ‘I took them early.'

‘But of course you did!' She pressed her hands to her heart and gasped. ‘My granddaughter, as smart as she is beautiful.'

I froze, no idea how to respond. No one had ever called me beautiful before.

Catherine reached across the space between us to hold my warm, clammy hand in her cool dry one.

‘Emily,' she said. ‘I want the two of us to start off on the right foot, no secrets.'

‘No secrets,' I repeated, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘I'd like that.'

‘Let's start with what you already know.' She clutched my hand in hers and moved closer to me. ‘What did your daddy tell you about your family?'

I looked down and touched the toes of my shoes together as I realized this wasn't going to be simple for either of us. Who would feel good about your son pretending you were dead? Sometimes, when I asked about our family, he would ruffle my hair and say I was all the family he needed. More often than not, he avoided the subject altogether. If I pushed too hard, his eyes would glaze over and he'd tell me it was too painful to talk about. Eventually, I stopped asking, resigned to the fact I would never have grandparents or aunts, uncles and cousins like all my friends. It would always be just the two of us.

Until it was just me.

‘He said we didn't have any living relatives,' I said, unable to look her in the eye. ‘He said he grew up here in Savannah, met my mom in college then moved to New Zealand after she died.' I hesitated and cleared my throat. ‘He told me all my grandparents passed away before I was born.'

‘All except one,' Catherine said softly. ‘He never mentioned Ashley?'

I shook my head. ‘I didn't know he'd ever had a sister until yesterday.'

The loving expression on her face faltered and the edges of her smile flickered into something so sad. My dad never lied. He was honest to the point of bluntness, never once lying about what had happened to my missing goldfish and always kindly correcting me when I was wrong. How could he have lied about something so huge for so long? And more to the point, the question I'd been asking myself ever since Ashley showed up on my doorstep – why would he lie in the first place?

Catherine let go of my hand and began twisting a large aquamarine ring around and around on the third finger of her left hand, neatly groomed eyebrows creasing together as she processed the information.

‘I cannot begin to imagine how you must be feeling right now,' she said, her forefinger still resting on the ring. ‘But please don't be mad at your daddy. Everything that happened was my fault. He may have lied to you but he believed he had good reason and back then, once Paul's mind was made up, there was no changing it.'

I tucked my hair behind my ears, a puff of agreement escaping my lips. ‘He could be pretty stubborn.'

‘Stubborn and impulsive, and that's a difficult mix. I should know, he got it from me,' she replied with a knowing smile. ‘The short version of the story is, we had an argument over our differing beliefs, neither of us were prepared to compromise at the time and so he left. I believed he would return home but I was wrong and I have never, ever forgiven myself for losing him over something so foolish. Now he's truly gone forever.'

A sob caught in her throat and before I knew it, I was sitting beside her on the sofa, holding her hand and consoling her as though I'd known her all my life.

‘Families fall apart over the most stupid of things,' she said, her voice trembling and fierce at the same time. ‘Maybe I can't make things right with your daddy but I can damn well take care of his little girl. I won't make the same mistakes twice, Emily. If you'll let me try, I would like to be a true grandmother to you. We could be a real family.'

A real family. The one thing I'd never had. The one thing I'd always wanted. I gazed into Catherine's eyes and saw all the things I'd dreamt of gazing back. Whatever happened between her and my dad happened a long time ago and it seemed to me that she'd suffered enough. She deserved a second chance. We both did.

‘I'd like that,' I told her, falling into another warm hug as exhaustion hit me like a tidal wave.

‘Look at me, talking your ear off when you should be resting.' Catherine brushed my hair away from my face, her eyes full of love. ‘Emily James, you look worn slap out. We need to get you upstairs to bed.'

‘Really, I'm fine,' I protested but when she stood, I struggled to do the same. Five minutes ago, I was so full of energy, I could barely sit still but suddenly, my legs were useless lumps of lead.

With a protective arm around my shoulders, she led me out the parlour and up the grand curving staircase, each step like climbing a mountain. When we finally reached the summit, she turned the brass knob on a white-painted door and bustled me through it.

‘Right now, you're going to rest,' she ordered. ‘And first thing tomorrow, you are going to tell me everything there is to know about you.'

‘That won't take long.' I chased my words with a loud yawn. ‘We can probably cover it over a cup of tea.'

‘I don't believe that for one second. You look like a girl with a thousand stories to tell and I can't wait to listen to each and every one of them.'

Everything Catherine said sounded like singing. Each word held hands with the last as it slipped out in her sweet, soft southern drawl. I could have listened to her talk forever.

‘This will be your room,' she said with tenderness. ‘I hope you like it.'

My tired eyes popped open as I took in my new surroundings. The cottage in Wales might have been small and dark but it was still an improvement on most of the university housing we'd lived in over the years. This was something else entirely. There was a four-poster bed in the middle of the room, smothered in blankets and quilts that were surely too heavy for the balmy summer evening, and piled high with so many pillows, I wasn't sure how I was supposed to fit in the bed alongside them. The floorboards were covered in antique rugs and across from where I stood was a real, actual, working fireplace, and the best part of all, four towering bookcases, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Every shelf was crammed so full with books you couldn't have slid as much as a single piece of paper between them. I scanned the spines, all of them broken and well-loved, and felt the happiness on my face melt away.

‘This was my dad's room,' I said, and Catherine nodded. Dad always had a book within arm's reach and never left home without at least two, one for fun and one for work. It was a habit I was happy to have inherited.

‘After they were married, your parents took the larger suite upstairs but this is where your daddy grew up. My boy just loved to sit in the window seat and read, gazing out onto the square and dreaming his big dreams. Always had his nose in a book.' She trailed one finger down the broken spines of a bunch of paperbacks, stopping on a beat-up copy of a Stephen King classic before recovering herself. ‘There's a new mattress, of course, and all the pillows and linens are new, but everything else is an antique. Some of these pieces have been in our family for more than two hundred years.'

‘It's incredible.' I imagined all of the people who might have sat at the desk beside the window, composing their thoughts before me. All of my ancestors.

‘Emily?'

‘Yes?' I turned back to look at my grandmother as she pulled out the Stephen King book and held it to her chest. There was a look on her face I couldn't quite read, somewhere between happy, sad and afraid, or maybe all three at once.

‘Was Paul happy?' she asked, her expression settling on something like hope.

‘I think so,' I replied honestly. ‘He laughed a lot and he loved his work. The last few months, he was kind of quiet but that's how he got when he was working on a new project, super focused, you know? The only time he seemed sad was when he talked about my mom.'

Catherine slipped the book back in with the others, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply before she reset herself with a short, sharp clap that made me jump.

‘Even in this beastly weather, a cup of hot tea always helps me to relax before bed,' she said brightly, her mood completely changed. ‘Let me go boil up some water while you settle in.'

‘That sounds nice, thank you.' I offered her a grateful smile as I spotted my pyjamas folded neatly on the bed. Someone had already opened and emptied my suitcase. Only the backpack was untouched, still zipped up and bulging with all my essential items, tucked away down the side of the desk.

‘I'll be right back,' she promised as she retreated towards the hallway. ‘Holler if you need me.'

My dad used to say the exact same thing.

The door closed behind her and I ran my hand along the silky blue walls, tracing out one of the dozens of hand-painted birds as I drifted across the room, ending up at the window seat. I climbed up and leaned in, my face so close to the glass, I could see the evidence of my every exhalation in front of me. It was almost a relief to know I was still breathing. None of this felt real.

On the other side of the glass was my very own wrought-iron balcony and I wondered if it was safe to stand on. It looked sturdy enough but I wouldn't be taking any chances tonight. Instead, I raised the sash window and poked my head out to breathe in the steamy Savannah evening. Bell House sat on the edge of a square, a little green park, packed with trees and people, a beautiful fountain at its heart. There was bird song and laughter on the air and the happy noises smoothed the edges of my sharper thoughts. Sliding my fingers inside the collar of my T-shirt, I felt for my most precious possession. My mother's gold locket. I never took it off. Wherever I went, the locket came with me, the one remaining constant in my life. I closed my hand around the cool metal, shut my eyes and took what I hoped would be a steadying breath. It didn't help. I still felt like I was living in a fantasy.

When I opened my eyes again, he was the first thing I saw.

Right on the edge of the square, leaning against the trunk of a very tall tree, I saw a boy, hands deep in his pockets, a complicated frown on his face. His hair was wavy like mine but shorter and wilder, a deep dark ash, while his skin was tanned, golden sunshine to my spilt milk. My unruly, jetlagged mind began to wander, imagining what colour his eyes might be, how soft was his skin, how firm were his lips. Then I saw it. Without warning, the room whooshed away from me, as though I'd been yanked backwards, and everything went black. I reached out for something to hold onto as the real world was replaced by a flash of his lips on mine, my hands in his hair, my back against the oak tree and our bodies pressed so close together I could feel the warmth of his skin burning through his clothes. It was quick; just half a heartbeat passed before my eyes snapped open and I was back in my room, but the vision felt so real I had to reach for the window frame to steady myself. Just the thought of touching this stranger was enough to set sparks dancing up and down my skin. Still bracing myself, I swallowed hard and glanced back down into the square. His eyes looked directly into mine, the corners of his mouth lifted into a crooked smile that filled his handsome face and my entire body went up in flames. I pulled away from the window, embarrassed, as though he had somehow seen the same thing I had.

‘What was that?' I asked myself, pushing away the image of the two of us entwined underneath the oak tree. In sixteen years and eleven months, I had kissed exactly one person, my friend Gianni, and since he immediately burst into tears and ran away right after it happened, I wasn't sure it counted. All my romantic experience came from my Kindle which meant that, theoretically, I would absolutely know what to do if I ever met a hot orc but had no idea what to do with an actual, real-life human boy. Tensing every muscle in my body, I held my breath and turned back to the window.

He was gone.

While waiting for my heart to skitter into its usual rhythm, I turned back to the vast room, studying every inch, from the shiny floorboards to the decorative patterns that ran around the edge of the ceiling. Everything about the room was extravagant; opulent fabrics, exquisite furniture, it positively reeked of money, and my dad, who never had much of anything, had walked away from it all.

Dragging my backpack over to the bed, I heaved us both onto the mattress and walked my fingertips up the embroidered bedspread, spiralling patterns picked out in gold thread: more leaves, more vines. When I lay down, the bed rose up to hold me, wrapping me in a comforting, secure softness. Bliss. Even the most sensitive princess in the world would have struggled to feel a brick under this mattress, let alone a pea. Sitting up, I opened my backpack and took out the silver photo frame inside, unfolding the three connected apertures and placing it carefully on my bedside table. One side of the frame held a photo of my mom, tall and blonde and beautiful, with an open, laughing smile and enormous blue eyes. On the other side of the frame, I saw my dad, her opposite, dark hair, dark eyes, playful smirk. All our other pictures and mementos were lost years ago in one of our moves, making this all the more important. I used to stare at it for hours, wishing I had blonde hair like hers, wondering where my green eyes came from. Now I knew.

In the centre frame was a close-up picture of the two of them wearing matching black and gold sweaters, standing in front of a tree. My dad's arms were wrapped tightly around my mom and both of them were grinning like they'd solved world peace, won the lottery and scored face-value Taylor Swift tickets all on the same day. Had he come back to this room after that photo was taken? He must have.

Even before the accident that made me an orphan, I'd always felt like an outsider. Life with my dad was exciting and I had loved it, travelling, experiencing different cultures, meeting different people, but there was a downside to living a life so unmoored. I was the perennial new kid, always awkward, never quite fitting in. I had a dozen friends in a dozen countries but no one who really knew me. And no matter how wonderful a parent my dad might have been, it wasn't the same as having a real family. After he died, it was even more apparent. Not quite seventeen and all alone, no one I belonged to and nowhere to go.

I shuffled my backpack under the bed and rolled over on my side to stare at the photos of my parents. Maybe things would be different now. If Catherine meant what she said, I might have a home instead of a bed and a backpack. We could help each other heal, we could be a family.

I might finally have found a place where I belonged.