She’d never known her grandmother, who seemed to be the linchpin of both her work life and her family. The one woman who had all the answers had died during World War II, killed during the German Blitz on London. It was too late.
Or was it?
She turned to Lonnie. “Maybe you’re right, about taking a break. Maybe I should go to London.”
England. The home of Virginia Woolf. Of Charlotte Brontë. Of so many of the Berg’s authors. Including Laura Lyons.
“You mean where the bridge is?” Valentina launched into an off-key version of the children’s song.
“Yes.”
Lonnie studied her. “Why London?”
“Well, there’s nothing going on here for me, for the time being. And I’ve never been before. On top of that, it was part of our mother’s life, even if she didn’t talk about it much. Now that I’ve been outed as Laura Lyons’s granddaughter at work, why not go there and see what I can discover?” She didn’t say out loud the thought that maybe she could take advantage of the connection and secure something for the Evergreen exhibit. Get back into Dr. Hooper’s good graces. It was a long shot, to be sure.
“I figure, why not?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
London, 1993
Why anyone traveled more than two time zones away was beyond Sadie’s comprehension. She’d woken up drooling and groggy as the flight attendants passed around breakfast trays with a deafening clatter. The slow trudge off the plane was followed by a long wait in line at customs.
The travel agent had found her a cheap fare that departed three days after she’d first brought up the idea with Lonnie, along with a reasonable rate at a bed-and-breakfast. Once there, she lay down for what was meant to be a twenty-minute nap and woke up six hours later, starving and confused. A restless night in her room attempting to sleep followed, before the lady who owned the B&B knocked on her door the next morning carrying a tea tray, chatting away in a singsong voice about rising and shining, when all Sadie wanted to do was go back to bed.
She’d wasted most of her first day asleep, and there were only four left, so Sadie pulled herself out of bed and took a long bath, washing her hair using the unwieldy spray nozzle and trying not to wet the lime-green floral wallpaper as she did so. Not an easy task.
The tube wasn’t at all like the subway in New York, where tokens were swallowed up by the turnstiles and off you went. Here, you had to prove you hadn’t traveled any farther than the zone you’d paid for, or so explained the irritable tube agent as Sadie bumbled her way through the turnstile, having misplaced her ticket. It was embarrassing, getting so much wrong, when she usually prided herself on getting things right.
She tried her best, eating sandwiches consisting of only a bit of cheese and a drippy tomato, drinking tea, figuring out which coins to leave for a tip. If she were with Nick, they might have had a good laugh at the myriad of differences between the two cultures. She missed him. She missed the library, the smell of old books, and her squeaky desk chair. The days when everything was in order, and she knew what to expect.
She was discombobulated—what a perfectly onomatopoeic word to describe her current state, all jumpy, confused, and tired. The city of London was discombobulated as well, the IRA having blown up a bomb-filled truck in the city’s financial district two weeks ago, killing one and injuring more than forty. It hadn’t deterred Sadie from coming, though, just as the bombing in the parking garage of the World Trade Center hadn’t changed the way she went about her day in New York. Although she had to admit she quickened her step as she passed by trucks—they were called lorries here—idling by the side of the road.
But Sadie’s shoulders began to drop and her mood lifted as she followed the map along the hilly streets of Highgate to the address that was on all of the correspondence from Laura Lyons’s estate. The air felt lighter here than the air in New York City, softer. She ended up in front of a redbrick town house with a manic rose garden out front, a crazy riot of white blossoms and thorny vines that looked vaguely sinister, like flowery barbed wire. She realized with a start that it was the exact location where Laura Lyons was standing in the photograph in Lonnie’s dining room.
Sadie knocked on the door. After a short wait, an older woman with high cheekbones and huge blue eyes opened the door.
“Hello, I’m looking for Miss Hilary Quinn,” said Sadie.
The woman didn’t answer right away, just stared. “That’s me. Who are you?” She spoke with a throaty croak.
“I’m Sadie Donovan. Laura Lyons’s granddaughter. I’ve been calling, trying to reach you, from New York. I thought I’d stop by during my trip abroad and introduce myself.”
Miss Quinn squinted at her suspiciously; then her eyes softened. “You look so much like her. Forgive me, I’ve been a little under the weather, and seeing you is something of a shock. Come in.”
The apartment took up the first two floors of the building, the lower one opening up to a large kitchen with a long wooden table in the center and a living room behind it that looked out onto another jungle-like garden. This was where Laura Lyons had written her essays. This was where she’d come up with her radical ideas and put them into words that had inspired generations.
And this was where Sadie’s mom, Pearl, had spent several years before returning to New York for college. Once again, Sadie felt a pang of guilt for not asking more questions. Then again, what child cares about their parent’s life before they were born? It’s not until it’s too late that the resonance of the earlier times, and how they echo through the next generation, are deemed valuable.
“Would you like some tea?” Miss Quinn moved stiffly toward the stove.
“Can I help? Please don’t if it’s a bother.”
“No bother at all.”
Sadie settled into one of the wooden chairs at the table. “When did you first come to work for my grandmother?”
“Back in 1935. Eons ago.”
“Did you know my mother, Pearl?” Even as she asked, she realized the math didn’t add up for their paths to cross.
“No. Laura sometimes talked about her daughter in the States but never went to see her, and the girl never came here.”
“Did she ever say why? Was there a falling-out?”
Miss Quinn shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Sadie waited, but the woman didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. Maybe Sadie was being too direct, too American. She tried a softer approach. “It’s been wonderful, the way Laura Lyons is finally being appreciated for her work.”
“These days, I get legions of Lyons fans wanting to know more about her, about her life,” sniffed Miss Quinn. “Knocking on my door first thing in the morning, asking for a tour.” That explained her reticence.