Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1925

H appy birthday, Mother." Lauren laid a bouquet of gold chrysanthemums on her mother's marble headstone. The petals rippled in a breeze that skimmed her cheeks. Goldie Westlake would have been sixty years old today.

"My father should be here," she added.

Elsa shifted beside her, balling her cold hands into fists and pressing them beneath her folded arms. "Maybe he came earlier?"

"If he did, he didn't bring flowers." Lauren nodded toward the lonely blooms she'd brought, a splash of sunshine on an otherwise washed-out day. "I suppose I could have mentioned the date when I saw him last night, but I was thinking about forgeries and the Napoleon Society and Joe, who feels like the friend I remember and a man of unplumbed depths all at once."

"So you said last night. I'll bet he made a much better dance partner than King Tut's mummy." Elsa grinned.

"Anyone would be a better dance partner than King Tut's mummy."

"Touché."

Lauren sent her a small smile. "Anyway, I don't know why I thought my dad would remember Mother's birthday now when he rarely did when she was alive. It's probably better that I don't see him until I get over what he did last night anyway."

When Lawrence had passed her off to Mr. Sanderson, it triggered the emotional memory of his abandonment all over again. She thought her father had wanted to spend time with her, and then he gave her up and walked away to do something else.

It had been such a small act, and yet it brought to the surface feelings of rejection long buried.

"The last thing I want to do is argue in front of my mother's grave."

Elsa tucked her scarf beneath her chin. "You know, I've never actually seen you argue with anyone."

"Maybe I do my arguing on the inside." A rueful smile bent Lauren's lips.

"Well, if we ever do choose sides, sign me up for yours." Her cousin nudged her with an elbow.

Lauren chuckled. But there shouldn't be sides. If she had any interest in whatever remnant of relationship she had with Lawrence, she needed to forgive him, as often as she needed to, or succumb to a lifetime of embitterment.

That wasn't what she wanted. That wasn't what Mother had wanted for her, either.

"Both of our mothers certainly set an example for resentment against my father," Lauren murmured, and Elsa agreed. "But eventually, mine confessed the need to forgive him, and that she should have done it long ago, for her own sake as much as for his."

Before she died, she had told Lauren, "How I wish you knew your father ." Then she'd closed her eyes and whispered, " Redeem this." She never opened her eyes again.

But one person could only do so much.

Footsteps crunched on the brittle grass, then stopped short. "Lauren?"

"Mrs. Foster." Something disagreeable threaded through Lauren at the sight of the hawk-nosed nursemaid who had tended Mother since before Lauren was born. Most memories that included Mrs. Foster were unpleasant ones.

Elsa greeted her, too, reintroducing herself. "You came to my house on Fifth Avenue many times. Good to see you again, Mrs. Foster."

"Call me Nancy." She was older than Lawrence by a few years and looked every inch her age. Stooping with rounded shoulders, she lay orange asters alongside the chrysanthemums.

"Thank you for coming," Lauren tried, as if this were a meeting she had called for, which it was not.

"I have never missed her birthday, not since I was hired to look after her when she was but a wee thing."

It was a wonder they hadn't seen each other here before. Lauren supposed her luck had to run out sometime.

She sealed her lips to trap the thought on the tip of her tongue. That she was jealous of the time this woman had had with her mother. Jealous that she'd known her so well before Mother ever grew ill, and that Nancy was usually the only one allowed to be with her after that.

"You knew her longer and better than I ever did." The words slipped out before Lauren could strip the facts of feeling. "I wish I'd understood her better. I don't think she understood me, either."

Nancy hobbled closer. The once-formidable woman now looked up at her and Elsa. "She understood more than you give her credit for." Her gaze narrowed. "You never read the letters."

Lauren glanced at Elsa, who only shook her head, the questions in her eyes reflecting her own.

The aged nursemaid sighed. "Maybe grief made you forget. After your mother passed into glory, Mr. and Mrs. Reisner let me stay on in the house until your father came back and settled affairs. When he did—months after the funeral—I found a small wooden chest in his fireplace when I went to light the bedroom fires. It appeared he intended for it to be burned. I wasn't about to destroy it without knowing what it held, so I looked. It was full of your mother's letters to him over the years. He was going to burn them. Like he had no use for her memory, just like he had no use for her in life, God rest her." Nancy's voice shook, the soft skin beneath her jaw trembling. "I wouldn't have any part in that. Instead, I added the letters your mother had kept from him, and I left the box for you. You didn't read them, did you?"

"Did you?" Lauren snapped. She hadn't meant to, but her nerves were strung tight at the thought of her father wanting to destroy those letters.

Nancy pushed her hat back on her brow. Wrinkles bracketed her pursed mouth. "I was the one who read them to her when she hadn't the strength to read herself. I was the one who wrote her final message to him near the end. I don't mean to scold, but she'd have wanted you to know her better instead of chasing after a man who won't even visit his wife's grave on her birthday."

A white cloud puffed from Elsa's nose. "Pardon me for saying so, but Lauren would have known her mother better if she'd been allowed to be around her more often."

It was exactly what Lauren had been thinking, but she hadn't come here to spar with Nancy.

Turning from the woman's disapproval, Lauren knelt before the tombstone. She tugged at a weed caught in the unyielding earth, and Elsa followed suit.

"I snuck into Mother's room at night sometimes," she murmured to her cousin, willing Nancy to pay her respects and leave.

"To sleep in the bed with her?"

"On the rug on the floor beside it." Only once did Lauren crawl into the cold space her father left empty. She didn't know she'd kicked in her sleep until Mother's soft groan awoke Nancy and got Lauren sent back to her own room. "I wanted to be with her, even if it meant sleeping on the floor. But I found myself back in my own bed before morning every time. I don't remember walking back to my room, though. I told myself a fairy spirited me away."

A grunt sounded from behind. "I've been called worse."

Elsa sat back on her heels and twisted around.

Lauren stood, bracing herself for another tirade.

"What was I to do when I came in to check on her and found her, sick as she was, curled on the floor beside you?" Nancy began. "She would drag a blanket down to cover you both, but that was no bed for a woman in her state. She'd never get well on the floor with the cold seeping into her bones. Oh no, not on my watch."

Lauren's breath caught on the new information. She would give anything— anything —to remember the feel of her mother's arms around her.

"Your mother would only go back to her bed once you were safe and warm in yours. I'd have locked you out at night if she'd let me, but she forbade it. When I did separate you, it was for her good. Her life was my life's work."

The air in Lauren's lungs grew thick. Mother had wanted to be near her. Lauren should have tried again. Tried harder.

Elsa stood silently beside her, having risen at some point during Nancy's speech.

The lapels of Nancy's overcoat flapped in the wind, and curls of grey hair twirled beneath her hat. "Find those letters. You owe it to her to hear her side of the story." She kissed her wrinkled fingertips, touched the tombstone, and walked away.

Magenta and tangerine streaked the sky that would soon deepen to purple, then black. A chill prickled Lauren's neck. The temperature was dropping along with the sun. "Do you have any idea where a box like that could be if I left it in your house?"

Elsa bit her lip. "Sorry, I was eight years old when Aunt Goldie died. Attention to detail was not my strong suit. But it is now. If it's in the house, I'll find it."