Page 83 of The Last Night in London
“I suppose I should ask you the same thing.” She reminded me so much of my aunt Lucinda that I smiled.
“I wanted to see if you needed anything. It’s three thirty in the morning.”
“Is it?” I heard the weariness in her voice. Not exhaustion or tiredness, but something bone-deep, something that had festered for years. “Time isn’t the same to me now. I know it’s there, waiting. It’s like watching a stopped clock, but I can still hear it tick.” She tilted her face, flooding it with soft light, erasing the faint lines around her mouth and eyes. “Like you do, Maddie. But I’m old, so I’m allowed.”
Her words stung. “What do you mean?”
I heard the sound of rustling cotton more than I saw the small shrug of her shoulders. “You’re too young to think you know how your story ends. You haven’t yet figured out that life holds more than one story. Each with a separate ending. The end of one doesn’t mean you’re done.”
I forced a lightness I didn’t feel. “And it takes ninety-nine years to figure that out?”
“It took me seventy, but I suppose I can be a slow learner. Imagine all those who never figure it out at all. Of all the tragedies in the world, I think that’s the worst.”
I swallowed my unformed response. It was too late at night to be arguing about the meaning of life. Mostly because I had a terrible suspicion that she might be right. “It really is late. You should be getting some sleep.”
As if I hadn’t said anything, she asked, “Have you ever been in love?”
“No,” I said quickly, ignoring the flash of Colin’s face in the back of my mind, his beautiful eyes and the way his smile always started like an accident. Maybe it was because of the darkness, or because my confessor was nearly one hundred years old and had probably heard worse, but I added, “My grandmother and mother died young, and I’m probably going to die young, too. It wouldn’t be fair to have a relationship just to share my misfortune with someone else.”
The room was silent except for the soft ticking of a clock somewhere nearby. I felt her watching me, considering. “My sweet Maddie. Life is aboutreinvention.” She emphasized the word, as if I might misunderstand or confuse her meaning. “If you don’t like what life’s dished out for you, turn on the oven and start baking something new.”
I surprised myself by smiling. “Did your mama tell you that?”
Her gaze shifted away from me. “Yes. And she was absolutely right.” Slowly, she picked up a dark shape from her lap. “If you’d be so kind as to put this on my dresser, I should probably lie down and get some beauty sleep. Careful—it’s full of memories.”
I took it from her, recognizing the boxy contours of the old embroidered silk purse. Something moved inside as I settled it on thedresser.The cigarette case,I thought,with the Latin words and the bee on the front. The case that once belonged to the elusive Eva.
As I helped her into bed and tucked her under the sheets, she said, “You need to find Eva, Maddie. She’s the only person who can help you.”
“Help me?” I wasn’t sure if she was confused and babbling, if she even knew what she was saying. Either way, I was afraid to hear her answer.
“Eva was a formidable woman. She always knew who she was. And she understood that reinventing herself was always better than giving up.”
I kept my voice gentle. “You know, Precious, it’s possible that Eva isn’t alive. I’d be happy to record her stories, too, while I’m here. Beyond the modeling and the fashions. I want to hear about two women coming of age in a time of crisis. That would be a great way to preserve your memories for future generations.”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “Hogwash. What’s the point in reinvention if a person can’t leave their past in the past? I never intended to parade mine around like a new outfit.”
I studied her, saw the unyielding jut of her chin, and found myself wondering what parts of her past she was hiding. In my experience, it was the darkest ones that were buried the deepest. “Is that why you don’t talk about your work with the Resistance? Sophia believed you to be a hero, but nobody knows the story. Surely that’s worth sharing.”
Her silence stretched, the space punctuated by the ticking clock. When she spoke, I had to lean forward to hear.
“‘His little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love.’”
I frowned, knowing I’d heard those words before.
“Wordsworth,” she said. “They’re lines from a poem. Eva used to recite it over and over to practice her accent and pronunciation.”
“I don’t understand....”
“Unremembered acts of kindness and love. You see, Maddie, some grand gestures and heroic moments never make it into the history books. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”
“But don’t you want the people who love you to know?”
“No. Because then they’d ask why.” She looked at my chest, where my heart necklace hung. “You kept your family together after your mother died. Was it because of guilt? Because of something you did or didn’t do while your mother was alive? Did you think you could have changed the outcome?”
My chest burned with smoldering memories of the last months of my mother’s life, and all of the truths Precious had just voiced. “Why are you saying that?”
“Because no heroic deed is done for the simple act of heroism. There’s always some payment due, some penance owed. Some wrong to right.”
