Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1925

D isappointment hung heavy on Lauren's shoulders. After spending all day searching her aunt's home with Elsa, they still hadn't found the box of letters written between her parents.

Elsa's limp was more pronounced than usual as she made her way to the couch and collapsed onto it. "When my parents return from their trip, I'll ask my mother. She may know where it is."

"All right." Lauren scratched Cleo under the chin. The fact that the cat wasn't standing at her food bowl told her that Ivy must have already fed her before going out tonight. "Or do they employ any servants who would have been working seventeen years ago?" Most of the staff who hadn't traveled with Aunt Beryl and Uncle Julian had been given time off for the holiday and weren't around today. "Maybe one of them knows something."

"I'll look into it." Elsa snagged the latest issue of Bird-Lore magazine from the coffee table and opened to where she'd left off before.

After trading her shoes for slippers, Lauren settled in at the desk in one corner of the room and fed a clean sheet of paper into the typewriter. She hadn't found the letters she'd been looking for, but she could write one of her own.

Dr. James Breasted had been one of her professors at the University of Chicago, and they regularly corresponded. She asked him for help with tricky translations from time to time, and she was more than happy to proof articles he wrote for scholarly journals. Today's message, however, would be different.

Lauren tapped out the usual greeting and pleasantries, asked after his wife, updated him on her work, and inquired after his own. Aside from teaching, he organized a group of artists, draftsmen, and archaeologists for an epigraphic survey. Together, they made high-quality copies of hieroglyphs they found in tombs and temples in Egypt and brought them back for reproduction in textbooks and journals.

Now for the reason for the letter.

Have you heard of the Napoleon Society? If so, what are your observations so far? My father's on the board, but please don't let that keep you from sharing your honest opinion. The society is organizing an expedition to Egypt, and there may be a chance for me to join it. My boss at the Met has made it clear they'll not be sending me. If you know of other opportunities for me to use my skills in Egypt, I'd be most grateful if

A knock on the door sounded urgent.

"Are you expecting someone?" Lauren asked Elsa.

"No."

"Lauren." The voice was her father's. "Lauren, there was a fire."

She rushed to the door and opened it.

"Dad!" she gasped at the sight of him. She pulled him inside and vaguely heard Elsa say she would go for some ice.

"It looks worse than it feels, really." He touched a fingertip to the swelling on one side of his face.

"Your hands are all scraped up, too. What on earth happened? You said there was a fire?"

"There was, but I can't blame this on that. I'm not as spry as I used to be." He grabbed the back of a ladderback chair for support.

Noting his unsteadiness, Lauren sat at the table so he would do the same. "Where else are you hurt?"

"My knees are a bit banged up. The left shin. But it's nothing that time and rest won't heal."

"Are you going to tell me what happened?"

"Grand Central during the Thanksgiving travel rush happened. I lost my balance getting off the train, and then the press of the crowd was too much for me to fight."

Lauren's hand flew to her mouth. "Tell me you didn't fall to the tracks."

"That gap between the platform and the train is a perfect fit for me." He coughed into his handkerchief. "I was never in any danger, since the train had stopped. One of the Red Caps had a dickens of a time helping me back up again. But that's not what kept me away from you on Thanksgiving."

Lauren's heart thudded violently against her ribs. She could picture one of the uniformed men who normally carried hatboxes and luggage pulling up her father instead. She blinked back the heat in her eyes. "It could have been different," she whispered. It could have been so much worse.

"Now, now," he said. "This is the least of my concerns. I came straight here from the terminal. I need to explain why I wasn't here yesterday."

Elsa returned with a rubber bag filled with ice and slid the first aid kit onto the table. While Lawrence held the bag to the fast-growing knot on his temple, Lauren dipped cotton swabs into a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and dabbed the scrapes on his free hand.

He'd done the same for her once. She had been seven years old, and Nancy had told her again to be quiet, so she'd run outside to climb the giant maple, wishing she were a bird. Even more, she wished her father would come home, or at least that her mother would follow her to the tree like she had before getting sick. "Fly away, little birdie," Mother would say, "but let me be your nest when you land." And Mother would stay there, watching and waiting until Lauren was ready to climb down.

But on that particular day, Lauren hadn't even made it past the second branch before falling. If Mother hadn't been sick, she would have been there to catch her. Something fierce had risen up in Lauren that she didn't recognize, an anger so strong it shook her. A few tears squeezed free, but she bottled the rest, afraid of the fury inside.

And then, almost as if she'd conjured him, her father appeared after being gone half a year. He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her damp cheeks. The pain that made her cry had nothing to do with her fall, but she wouldn't tell him that. She wouldn't tell anyone that. In the house, Nancy had rushed forward, but her father had insisted on tending her scrapes himself, and Lauren's anger began to cool.

"Next," Lauren said now, and he switched the ice bag to his right hand so she could disinfect the left. She felt a twinge over the pale brown spots on his skin, the soft wrinkles that bunched over large knuckles. So many years had passed since she'd held the hands that once held hers.

"I would have been here if I could have," he said. "But there was a fire at the house."

"Where?" She finished wrapping his hand with gauze and tied the ends.

"The Napoleon House. The museum for the Napoleon Society, in Newport, Rhode Island. Remember?"

While Elsa put away the first aid kit, Lauren struggled to make sense of what her father was saying. "Go on," she urged. "Tell me everything."

He leaned into the ice bag and winced. "I got a telegram Wednesday that there was an emergency at the house we've been renovating into our museum. I had to go, Lauren. We'd started storing some artifacts there already, and I had to see if there was anything I could do to salvage them."

"What was the damage?" she dared to ask.

"The firefighters stopped the blaze before it reached the artifacts, thank God. It started in the attic, a problem with the electrical wiring. There was a spark inside the walls, and it spread. Much of the roof is gone, the attic open to the elements. Repairs will set us back quite a lot, but at least we didn't lose more than we did." The quaver in his voice clashed with the optimistic platitude.

"Tell me you have property insurance, at least?"

"We do." He placed the rubber bag on the table. While Elsa disposed of the ice, he folded his bandaged hands. "But there is a huge deductible we must meet before the insurance company will help, and we need to pay for the work to get done immediately, and then it's anyone's guess as to how long the insurance company will take to reimburse whatever amount they approve."

Lawrence groaned and leaned back in his chair. "I wanted to do this right, Lauren. I'm trying to build something that will last. Something that you can finally be proud of, since I know I haven't given you reason to feel anything toward me but resentment."

But resentment had made a poor companion. Far poorer, she decided, than the man before her, humbled and admitting to his mistakes.

It wasn't satisfying at all to see him hurting, no matter how he'd hurt her in the past. "This isn't your fault," she assured him. "You've had a setback, but you'll soon get your feet under you again." The idea that he valued her esteem came as a startling surprise, since she'd always craved his approval, if she could not have his love.

For the first time in years, she wondered if she might finally achieve both.