“No, you don’t understand. It isn’t my bag. There was one left under a bench earlier this morning. Over there.” She pointed. “I’m trying to find out where it went. Brown, with writing on the side.”
The porter looked perplexed. “But if it isn’t your bag, why are you looking for it?”
Good question, Grace thought. She considered saying something about the photographs, but decided against it. “I’m trying to find its owner,” she said finally.
“I can’t help you without a ticket. You might want to ask at the lost and found,” he replied.
The lost and found was on the lower level of the station in a quiet, musty corner that seemed worlds away from the bustle above. An older man with white sideburns wearing a brimmed visor and a vest sat behind the counter, reading a newspaper. “I’m looking for a suitcase, brown with chalk writing on it.”
The clerk shifted the unlit cigar he was chewing to the corner of his mouth. “When did you lose it?”
“Today,” she said, feeling that it was in some sense true.
The man disappeared into a back room and she heard him rummaging through bins. Then he reemerged and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Are you certain?” She peered over his shoulder, craning her neck and trying to see the stacks of bags and other lost belongings on the other side of the wall.
“Yup.” He pulled a ledger from beneath the counter and opened it. “Everything that gets turned in is logged here. No suitcases in the past day.”
Then why, she wondered, had he bothered checking in the back? “Is it unusual for a person to lose something as big as a suitcase?”
“You’d be surprised the things people leave behind,” he replied. “Bags, boxes. A couple of bikes. Even dogs.”
“And it all comes here?”
“All except the dogs. Those go to the city pound. You can leave your name and information. If someone turns in your bag, we’ll contact you,” he added.
“Grace Flemming,” she said, using her maiden name as a reflex. She stopped, suddenly ashamed. Was she erasing Tom already, as if their marriage had never happened at all?
Hurriedly, she scribbled down the address of the boardinghouse in the ledger where the clerk indicated. Then she stepped away from the counter and started up the steps. When she reached the main level, she crossed the concourse to the bench and stopped, staring at the spot underneath where the suitcase had been. Perhaps the owner had come back for it after all. Guilt washed over her as she imagined a woman opening the bag and finding the photographs gone.
Grace stood, holding the orphaned photos uncertainly. She could turn them in to the lost and found on their own. They weren’t her problem, really. Then she would be done with the whole matter. But they remained weighty in her hand. She was responsible for separating the photos from the suitcase. The owner was probably wondering where her pictures had gone. Perhaps she was even distraught over losing them. No, Grace had taken the photos and it was her responsibility to return them.
But how? The suitcase had disappeared and Grace had no idea as to the owner or who might have claimed it. Or almost no idea, she corrected, remembering the single name that had been chalked on the bag: Trigg. She recalled, too, that there was a watermark on the photos. She opened the envelope furtively, as though someone might be watching. The watermark was there: O’Neill’s, London. The suitcase was from England, or at least the photos were. Perhaps she should take them to the British consulate.
But the clock in the middle of the station showed half past five and the throng of rush hour commuters was beginning to thin. The consulate would be closed now. Grace was suddenly weary. She wanted to go home to her room at the boardinghouse—which she hadn’t seen in nearly two days—and soak in a hot bath and forget all of this.
Grace’s stomach rumbled. She started out of the station toward the coffee shop across the street. Ruth’s, it was called, though the th of the lighted sign above the door had burned out. No fancy steakhouse dinner tonight. Really she needed to stop eating out altogether, get some groceries to make simple meals in the rooming house kitchen and save a bit of money. Frugality was not something she’d grown up with, but a skill that she had honed these past months living in the city and stretching what little she had left.
She took a seat at the nearly empty counter. “A grilled cheese sandwich and a Pepsi, please,” she said to the yellow-haired waitress after counting the change in her purse mentally and deciding that she had enough.
As the waitress pulled her drink from the soda fountain, Grace’s eyes traveled to the television above the counter. An image of Grand Central flashed across the screen. They were talking about the woman who had been hit by a car and killed in front of the station that morning.
“Turn it up,” she said suddenly, forgetting in her urgency to be polite.
The newscaster continued, “The accident took place at 9:10 a.m...” That was just a few minutes before she walked by.
Then a woman’s image flashed across the screen, dark hair drawn back, face somber. “The victim,” said the newscaster, “has been identified as British citizen Eleanor Trigg.”
Remembering the name that had been chalked on the suitcase, Grace froze. The woman whose photographs Grace had taken was the very one who had been killed in the accident.
Chapter Nine
Marie
England, 1944
Marie sat in her room in the barracks at Tangmere Airfield, trying not to sweat through the wool of her travel suit because she would surely be wearing it for days. As she waited, alone, she rechecked her papers: identification and ration cards, travel and work permits. Each was false—and each had to be perfect.
It was not the first time Marie had prepared to go. Three nights earlier, as she waited, she had watched the fog roll in, low and menacing. She knew there would be no flying that night. Still she’d gone through the motions, picking up her bag and walking dutifully outside to the car. She had made it to the side of the plane before the mission was called off.
Now Marie waited in her room once more, hoping that the rain she felt coming in the night air was not enough to stop the flight. It was nearly a month since that day at Arisaig House when Eleanor had given her the option of giving up and going home. Often she wondered if she had made the right choice. Each night before she went to bed, she told herself she might ask the next day if the offer to leave still stood. But there was something about the crispness of those mornings in the Scottish Highlands, the mist rising above the hills as the girls marched stiff-backed around the loch, that had gotten into her soul. This was where she was meant to be, and there was no turning away.
It was more than just the beauty of the Scottish countryside, which she would inevitably leave behind, that held her. And it wasn’t just about the money anymore either. After Josie had deployed, something within Marie had changed. She became engrossed in the training. She strained to learn her radio codes quicker and faster. “You might have to transmit from inside a toilet so quickly no one suspects anything more than a trip to the loo,” the instructor had once explained. She’d completed a three-day mission outside without food, forced to trap or scavenge from the brush whatever she needed to eat. She could feel the other girls watching and following her lead. It was as if she had risen up to take Josie’s place. She became so focused on her role and succeeding at the job that she forgot to be afraid.