The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Davis, Barbara

  He moves to the door as if I haven’t spoken. “This conversation is over. Except to say that if you decide to be troublesome, if you attempt to contact me or my daughter or ever breathe my son’s name to a living soul, I will make it my mission to ruin you. In other words, Miss Roussel, I can help you or hurt you. The choice is yours.”

  I stand there with his ultimatum, studying the man I thought would one day be my father-in-law. How cool he is as he makes his plans to dismiss me, so steely and businesslike. A deal to be brokered. A mess to clean up. Anson once called him formidable, and he was right. His father has thought of everything.

  But Owen is right too. I haven’t many options. None, in fact. I’ll need a place to live, somewhere clean and safe, until I can find work and make my own way. I will accept what he’s offering, because I have no choice. But my baby will not need a family. I will be its family.

  THIRTY

  RORY

  July 12, 1985—Boston

  Soline sat with downcast eyes, clearly shaken by the story she’d spent an hour pouring out. Rory studied her, trying to imagine what it must have been like. A terrifying escape. A heartbreaking telegram. A baby she hadn’t planned on. And a monster who had turned her out to fend for herself. How on earth had she survived it all?

  How might she have fared in similar circumstances?

  The question made her feel vaguely ashamed. She forgot sometimes just how comfortable her life had been. She’d been born with a trust fund and a name guaranteed to open doors and had never known anything close to hardship. In fact, before Hux’s disappearance, her biggest challenge had been navigating her thorny relationship with her mother.

  “You make me ashamed,” she said quietly. “Most people would have given up after the things you went through, but you just kept fighting. And then there’s me, showing up at your door with my bag of takeout, whining about how tough I have it. Why can’t I be strong like you?”

  Soline closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “Being strong for too long makes one brittle, chérie. And brittle things break easily.” She looked away, dabbing at her eyes, then forced a smile. “There, you see? Not so very strong. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet.”

  “I’m sorry to make you remember all that. Are you okay?”

  Soline nodded, but her smile slipped as she pushed to her feet. “I’m fine. Just a little warm. Why don’t we go in? I’ll wash up the dishes, and then we’ll have some dessert. I’ll show you how to make real coffee, with a press. I promise you’ll never go back to your drippy machine.”

  Rory did the dishes while Soline gave a tutorial on the virtues of a french press, declaring it the only civilized way to make coffee. She filled two cups and arranged madeleines on a plate, then carried the tray to the living room.

  They settled on opposite ends of the sofa with their cups. It was a large room but comfortable, furnished with items chosen to please rather than impress. It was Soline to a T. Tasteful but without all the fuss of Camilla’s perfectly styled home. She’d been right about the coffee too. In fact, everything here felt right.

  She reached for a madeleine, nibbling thoughtfully as she watched Soline sip her coffee. She couldn’t explain the connection between them. She only knew that it was real, that fate had somehow seen fit to weave their stories together. But why?

  “Do you ever think about why we became friends?” Rory asked quietly. “The way I found the row house and then the box. It felt sort of . . .” She paused, searching for the right word. “Inevitable, maybe. Do you believe in that kind of thing? That certain things are supposed to happen?”

  Soline was silent a moment, as if weighing the question carefully. “Once, perhaps,” she said at last. “I believed Anson and I were supposed to get married, that he’d come home with my mother’s rosary and I would give him back his shaving kit, and we’d live happily ever after.”

  Rory nodded gloomily, then frowned as she recalled something Soline had said earlier. “Wait. You said Anson’s father took the shaving kit, but I remember seeing it in the box.”

  Soline shrugged. “He gave it back. I don’t know what made him do it or even when he did it. I was gone within the week. The chauffeur drove me to the train station, and a woman named Dorothy Sheridan met me in Providence.”

  “Who was Dorothy Sheridan?”

  “She ran the Family Aid Society, which is a pretty way of saying a home for unwed mothers. There were eight more like me there. Some were little more than girls, others claimed to be war widows, but we all had one thing in common—we’d gotten caught without a husband and had nowhere to go. I cried the whole first day. I couldn’t believe Owen could hate me that much. But when I opened my box, there was Anson’s shaving kit at the bottom. It’s hard to imagine him feeling remorse, but perhaps he did it for Anson’s sake. It certainly wasn’t for mine.”

  “Did you at least get to say goodbye to Thia?”

  Soline shook her head. “He sent her away the next day.”

  Rory was quiet for a time, trying to imagine the horror of it. Pregnant and grieving alone. “You have to be the bravest woman I know. To live through all of that and keep on going.”

  Soline looked at her hands, alternately clenching and flexing them, something she often did when she appeared lost in thought. “I kept going because there was no alternative.”

  “I know, but giving up a baby . . .”

  “I didn’t give her up,” Soline said, looking away. “She died.”

  Rory went still, absorbing the words like a blow to the solar plexus. “I’m so sorry. I just assumed . . . What happened?”

  “One morning I got out of bed, and there was a rush of water. I knew that happened, but it was too soon. I told them they had to stop it, that she wasn’t supposed to come for another month, but they said she was coming anyway and I needed to pray. They brought me to a small room with no windows and a narrow bed with leather straps. There was a tiny crib, too, a hospital bed for babies. Then they gave me something—a needle in my arm and a mask over my face. I don’t remember much after that.”

  Rory’s eyes widened. “They put you under to have the baby?”

  “It’s how it was done in those days. Twilight sleep, they called it. So you wouldn’t remember after. When I woke up, I felt as if I’d been beaten. There were bruises on my ankles and wrists from the straps. But I didn’t care. I begged to hold her, to feed her, but they said it was too soon. She wasn’t strong enough to nurse. I must have fallen asleep. I was so tired. When I woke up, the little crib was gone, and I began to holler. Someone finally came, one of the matrons, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye. I knew then what was coming, but hearing her say the words nearly broke me in two. Too small to survive. Lungs not developed. Gone to be with the angels.”

  Rory closed her eyes, unable to find adequate words of comfort. Language for that kind of anguish simply didn’t exist. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated feebly.

  “I knew it would be a girl. I had already named her—Assia. It means ‘one who brings comfort.’” She paused, struggling to swallow. “I heard her cry,” she whispered. “When she was born, I heard her. I wish sometimes that I hadn’t. If she’d been stillborn, lifeless from the moment she left my body, it might have been easier. But knowing she lived for even a few hours without her mère, that she died never knowing my touch, still breaks my heart. I asked to see her, to hold her, but they had already taken her away.”

  “Taken her where?” Rory asked, horrified.

  “They called the coroner’s office to come for her. It’s the law, so they can verify cause of death for the certificate. They said because I was indigent, Assia would be buried in the county cemetery. There would be no service, no marker. I begged them to stop it, to give me time to find the money to bury her properly. I would have called Anson’s father and begged, but they wouldn’t let me use the phone. Three days later, they told me it was done.”

  Rory swallowed a throatful of tears. “Did they at least tell you where,
so you could visit her grave?”

  “No,” she murmured. “But maybe that’s a blessing. I know it sounds strange, but seeing her grave would have made her death too real.”

  “But it was real.”

  “Yes, it was. But when you love someone—truly love them—you’re connected in a way that can never be severed. Even when they’re taken from you, years later, you still feel them, like an echo calling back to you. And a part of you is just a little bit glad for those moments, even when they nearly double you up.”

  An echo calling back to you.

  The thought washed over Rory like a cold breeze. Was that how it would be with Hux? No goodbye, no answers, just nebulous memories?

  “I imagine that I see her sometimes,” Soline said in a faraway voice. “Like I used to with Anson. I’ll see a little face in the crowd and my heart goes still for the tiniest instant. She has eyes like her father’s and a grin like her aunt Thia. But then she turns her head and the face is all wrong, and I remember that Assia is gone.”

  Rory sat silent for a time, overwhelmed by the totality of Soline’s losses. She denied being brave, but she was wrong. Out of nothing but grief, she had forged a life. A woman, alone in a strange city while a war was raging and there was no real work to speak of, and yet she’d managed to build a lucrative career and, from the look of it, make a good deal of money in the process. What else might she have accomplished had a succession of heartaches not altered the course of her life?

  “How long did you stay . . . after?”

  “Not long. Once the babies were born, they wanted us out. A week later, Dorothy Sheridan came to me and said she’d found me a room and work. I was to pack my belongings and be ready to go the next day. When the work dried up in Providence, I moved to Boston, but when the men started coming back, it was impossible to find anything. I worked at a shoe repair shop for a while in exchange for room and board, and I took in sewing on the side. I had to share my meals with the mice, but I didn’t mind them so much. They were hungry too.”

  “And you never spoke to Anson’s father again?”

  “No. I took him at his word when he said he’d ruin me if I tried to contact him. Besides, I wanted nothing from him. I would have liked to have seen Thia again, though, to explain why I left so abruptly.” She paused, smiling wistfully. “And to tell her I finally got to make dresses with my name in them.”

  “I’m still in awe,” Rory breathed. “To start with nothing and accomplish so much. How did you do it?”

  “Like the heroines in all the best stories, I had a fairy godmother.”

  Rory grinned at her. “How do I find one of those?”

  “You don’t find them, chérie. They simply appear. Often, when you need them the most. And the how is different for everyone. Mine was named Maddy, and he was wonderful.”

  “Your fairy godmother was a man?”

  Soline flashed a grin. “He was.”

  “All right, then, how did he find you?”

  Soline’s smile dimmed. “That is a story for another day, I think.”

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to push.”

  “You didn’t, but I’m tired.”

  Rory looked at her watch, shocked to find it was after seven. She stood, collecting their cups and placing them on the tray. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. I was supposed to be picking out light fixtures. I’ll just help you clean up before I go.”

  Soline picked up the tray before Rory could grab it. “It isn’t much. You go on. I want you to.”

  Rory reluctantly slid her purse onto her shoulder and headed for the foyer. “I really am sorry I made a pest of myself. You should have kicked me out hours ago.”

  “Don’t be silly. What else had I to do?”

  “Still, I promise not to barge in on you again. Thank you for the talk, though. I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about Hux. No one who gets it, I mean.”

  “I meant what I said before, Rory. If you’re having second thoughts, we’ll tear up the lease and forget it. But I think your Hux was right—this dream does have your name all over it.”

  Rory blinked back the sting of tears, struggling against an impulse to pull Soline into a hug. “Thank you for that,” she said instead, grateful as she stepped out onto the stoop, that this lovely and inexplicable woman had come into her life. As she reached the bottom step a thought occurred. She paused, looking back at Soline silhouetted in the doorway. “I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re my fairy godmother.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  SOLINE

  While it is fair to expect compensation for our craft, financial gain must never be considered when weighing whether or not to accept a particular client. Trust La Mère to provide in other ways and remember that our first and last consideration must always be The Work.

  —Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch

  Rory’s words stay with me as I close the door. I fear I’m a poor excuse for a fairy godmother, but hearing her say the words has warmed me in a way I haven’t been warm in a very long time. And yet I find myself strangely melancholy. The house feels empty suddenly, and so do I.

  I go to the kitchen and open a bottle of wine to keep me company, then take the plate of uneaten madeleines to my study. It’s where I spend most of my evenings these days, sitting with my memories and getting tipsy enough to sleep without dreaming.

  The madeleines are flavored with lemon. I pick one up and take a bite, letting it melt on my tongue. Suddenly I’m smiling. The tangy sweetness reminds me of Maddy, which is why I purchase them from time to time. They were his favorites and, in a roundabout way, the reason we became friends.

  It seems like yesterday sometimes, at others, like a lifetime ago. I had only been in Boston a few weeks and was still looking for work. My accent remained very thick, and the dress shops didn’t want a foreigner reminding their patrons of the war. With my money running low, I couldn’t afford to be choosy, and so I began going from shop to shop, offering to do whatever might be needed.

  One day, I walked into a little patisserie named Bisous Sucrés. Finally, I thought, my accent will be an asset. But it was late and I was so tired, and the smells of coffee and chocolate reminded me so much of home that when the woman behind the counter asked what I wanted, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t get a word out.

  She took pity on me, bless her, leading me to the back of the shop, then bringing me a plate of the most beautiful pastries I’d ever seen. I made a terrible pig of myself, though she pretended not to notice, and over several cups of coffee, I told her my story—or at least the parts I cared to share.

  She was ten years my senior, but we had a lot in common. She had come over from Chartres with her parents at the start of World War I and learned her trade from her mother. She’d lost a brother at Normandy and a husband to drowning, and was struggling to raise a daughter on her own. She understood hardship and loss and the need for a woman to be able to make her own way. She couldn’t afford to hire me, but she knew someone who might be looking for a girl who knew how to use a needle, a tailor who had recently lost both his assistants and was in rather a bad way.

  She wrote his name and address on the back of an envelope and told me to go see him in the morning, to mention her name and not take no for an answer. Before I left, she gave me a pastry box tied with twine and told me to bring it with me—to sweeten him up.

  And so, a little after nine the next morning, pastry box in hand, I knocked on the door of a smart brick row house on the corner of Newbury Street with the word MADISON’S stenciled in clean gold letters across the front window.

  4 August 1944—Boston

  He answers after a second knock, a tall man in his fifties, wearing a rumpled robe of charcoal-gray silk and a pair of badly creased trousers. His hair is wavy and toffee-colored, threaded with fine strands of silver, and he wears a thin mustache that I suspect is tinted with brow pencil or wax, because it’s several sha
des darker than his hair.

  “No,” he mumbles at me before I can speak.

  I blink at him, not understanding. “Pardon?”

  “Whatever you’re selling. I don’t want any.”

  “Are you Myles Madison?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  He’s so gruff, so completely dismissive, that I nearly turn and walk away, but I remember my instructions. Don’t take no for an answer. “Claire Bruneau told me to come see you. She said you might need someone to sew for you.”

  He runs a hand through his hair, scowling. “Claire?”

  “From Bisous Sucrés. She told me to bring you these.”

  His eyes are pale gray, heavy lidded with long golden lashes. They light on the box briefly, then shift back to me. “Madeleines?” he inquires warily.

  “I don’t know. She only told me to bring them—to sweeten you up.”

  He grunts but takes the box from my hands and turns away: an invitation to enter, I assume. I take it, finding myself in a dimly lit parlor furnished with deep leather chairs and dark, heavy tables. It feels the way I’ve always imagined a gentlemen’s club would feel. Thick brocade draperies. Brass lamps with dark-green shades. A sumptuous Turkish carpet in shades of claret and sage. Everything burnished and tasteful.

  “What is it you’re after?” he asks in the same gruff tone he used when opening the door. He has untied the twine on the pastry box and is peering inside, treating me as if I’m a distraction.

  “Work,” I reply coolly. “Claire said you just lost both your assistants. My mother owned a salon in Paris until the war. I worked with her there.”

  “This is not a salon, young lady. I do not make dresses.”

  “Does the needle care what it stitches?”

  He jerks his head up, cocking one eye at me. “What is your name?”

  “Soline Roussel,” I say, refusing to flinch under his sharp appraisal. “And you’re Myles Madison, the finest tailor in Boston, or so Claire claims. I’m good, Monsieur Madison, quite capable of whatever task you ask of me—and I badly need the work.”