“Would you have come if you’d known?”
“I have no other place to go! Don’t you understand that yet? I know you don’t want us here, but where else can we go? Tell me, please!”
Eve stood. “I’d better make a path so the doctor can get through the door.” Audrey watched as she hauled the trunks and suitcases from the tiny entryway into the bedrooms. She knew Eve well enough to know that she was doing it to defuse her anger. And to avoid answering her question. “Robbie and I had breakfast out at the farm,” she said when she finished, “but I’ll fix you something if you tell me what you’d like.”
“Why did you change his name to Robbie? You named him Harry, after your father. I remember that very clearly.” Eve simply stared at her as if the answer were obvious. She supposed it was. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand how you could do this, Eve. Or why you did it. From anyone’s point of view, your deception is monstrous. Don’t you feel at all guilty for lying to Robert’s parents, deceiving them into thinking Harry is their grandson? Taking their money, this house?”
“I never intended to stay! My plan was to use the tickets you threw away to come to America. Harry and I would have a new start. I was going to leave town once I found a job and figured out how to make it on our own. But coming here was like stepping into a snare. I was trapped. The Barretts were devastated by Robert’s death, as you can well imagine. They made me feel like I was doing a wonderful thing by staying here and giving them a family again. You have no idea how happy they were to welcome Harry and me into their lives. How fully they embraced us. You were far away and out of touch and, I assumed, getting on with your life. I knew how much you loved Wellingford Hall. I never imagined you would change your mind and decide to take back what you so callously threw away.”
“I was unable to make any rational decisions when I threw those papers away.”
“If anyone has done something monstrous, it’s you—refusing to even visit the Barretts or let their grandson be part of their life.”
“I was certain they blamed me for Robert’s death. I didn’t want to upset their lives.”
“You’re upsetting their lives all over again by showing up now!”
“That’s unfair, Eve. I had no idea you were here, impersonating me. I didn’t come here to hurt you or them. Can’t we find a solution to this mess?”
Eve huffed again. “I’m going to make tea. Do you want some?”
“No thank you. I think I’ll put Bobby to bed.”
Audrey sat on the edge of the bed, rocking him in her lap until the doctor came an hour later. His diagnosis was roseola. “The rash usually lasts three to five days,” the doctor said. “He should feel normal in about a week.” Eve had been standing in the doorway, but Audrey saw her turn and walk away at his words. They would be trapped here together for a week. “Keep him quiet and in bed,” the doctor continued. “He should rest and avoid activity. Have him drink plenty of fluids. Give him half of an aspirin tablet for his fever.”
Audrey sat by Bobby’s bedside after the doctor left, waiting until he fell asleep. She was returning to the kitchen for the promised cup of tea when she overheard Eve’s son say, “Can we go swim in Nana’s pool now? I’m hot!”
“Not today. We have company.”
“Well, when are they going away?”
“I don’t know . . . The little boy is sick and has to stay in bed.”
“That makes me mad!” The back door slammed. When Audrey ventured into the kitchen, Eve was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She looked up.
“You have to understand, Audrey, that when I was Harry’s age, I had all of this.” She gestured to the kitchen, the back garden. “Not the Barretts’ wealth, certainly, but a cozy home and a mum and granny who loved me. I lived in a village where everyone looked out for each other, and I was free to play and explore . . . and to just be a child! I wanted those things for my son. Does that make me a monster?”
“I never had any of this,” Audrey said. “Only the wealth. That’s why I couldn’t imagine this life when the Barretts offered it to me. Especially without Robert. I can barely imagine living here now, but I have no other choice. What I wanted for my son was the life that Alfie and I had at Wellingford Hall. But the war we fought to preserve that life ended up destroying it.” She sat down at the table across from Eve. “And it also made us sisters, Eve. Remember?”
“Yes. . . . Maybe I could tell everyone you’re my sister,” she said with a weak smile.
“And keep living a lie?”
“I don’t know what else to do! It’s like there’s a huge mountain in my path and I don’t know how to climb over it or go around it. I’m thirty-one years old and I’ve already climbed so many mountains that I don’t have the will or the strength to try.”
“You were the one who always kept me climbing, Eve. Even when I wanted to quit.”
“Well, maybe I’m tired of being the strong one.”
“Remember how hard that year was after our mothers died?” Audrey asked. “If anyone had asked us what we hoped for once the war ended, we wouldn’t have known what to say.”
“I couldn’t imagine that it would ever end,” Eve said, running her fingers through her sandy hair. “One by one we watched our dreams being destroyed along with our country. There was no chance to ask ourselves who we were or what we wanted in life. We lived day to day, driving ambulances, picking up broken people, taking them to hospital down pitch-dark roads. Sometimes I lost hope that my life would ever be different.”
“I know. The years when most girls plan and dream of the future were stolen from us. All we knew was to get through each day, doing without all the things that gave us our identity and helped us know we were women.”
Eve gave a mirthless laugh. “Remember that shapeless ATS uniform? Those ridiculous undergarments? We looked like old crones.”
“We had no idea what life would be like when the war ended—when we either won or, God forbid, were forced to surrender. So why dream? Why plan?”
“And then the Americans came,” Eve said with a little smile. “Pearl Harbor was bombed just like England had been. Finally the Americans entered the war. There was a ray of hope at last. I remember feeling glad that the Japanese attacked them—and then hating myself for thinking it.”
“I remember thinking that it truly was a worldwide war now. I pictured that little globe Alfie and I had in our schoolroom and it chilled me to know that nearly every place on the planet felt the war’s effects. It was overwhelming! Like something from the last pages of the Bible.”
“And then the invasion came, remember? Not the Nazi one we’d long dreaded, but the American invasion. All those fresh-faced GIs. Nearly two million of them!”
“One of them was Robert,” Audrey murmured.
“Yes, and one was Louis. They made us remember who we were. They made us feel like women again.”
Audrey could only nod. Not only had Robert made her feel like a woman, but like the woman God created her to be. Where had that woman gone?