by Julia Kelly
The Luftwaffe kept them at work until a rosy dawn broke out over the capital just after six thirty. Captain Jones, who had ordered Bombardier Barker off the roof in disgust, had deputized Louise to march the girls back to their billet. In truth, it was more scramble for sanctuary than march. The wind had picked up around three, chilling them all through despite the summer season, and by the time they poured into the canteen Louise was grateful for the mug of tea one of the orderlies shoved into her hand.
“What a night,” Mary said, stretching her neck this way and that.
“Ten hours straight,” said Vera. “And all of that machine-gun fire.”
Charlie glanced around before leaning in. “Did you see Bombardier Barker?”
“What happened to her?” Nigella asked.
“She’s never seen combat,” said Charlie with a shrug. “Cartruse told me he overheard Captain Jones talking to another officer about it. He was worried back in Oswestry.”
“They should promote Louise, at least to lance bombardier,” said Lizzie. “You jumped right in.”
Louise blushed, pleased to hear the compliment. “I just got us back on track. You all know what you’re doing.”
“Bet we showed that Colonel Nealson,” said Charlie, with a grin. “B Section with two direct hits and five planes turned around.”
As they sat drinking their tea and nibbling on biscuits, the adrenaline of the night started to leave them. Louise could see the moment each of them hit a wall of exhaustion.
“Time for bed, I think,” she said as the canteen began to fill up with ATS girls readying themselves for their day’s work.
“I feel like Dracula,” Mary moaned.
“You’ll start looking like him too if you’re not careful,” Lizzie teased.
Louise hung back for a moment, smiling as the girls bickered and made their way out of the canteen. Finally it was only her and Vera.
“You know, Lizzie’s right. You should put in for a promotion as soon as you can,” said her friend.
Louise scoffed. “I’m hardly commanding officer material.”
Vera raised her brows. “They made Barker a bombardier, and look what happened. You need to be able to do more than shout during training exercises. You need steel.”
Louise shook her head. “I’m just a girl from Haybourne.”
“And I’m just a girl who grew up in a military family who knows what that sort of leadership looks like.” Vera yawned. “Come on, let’s get to bed before Charlie starts snoring.”
“I should write to Paul first,” Louise said, hauling herself up from the table.
But by the time she made it to their room, she was half-asleep and fell into bed, promising herself that she’d write him when she woke up.
13
CARA
The coffee in Cara’s mug trembled a little until she clamped her free hand around it and raised it to her lips to ward off the chill that radiated from her parlor windows. That Sunday morning, sleepy Elm Road was quiet except for a runner clad in black tights and a shocking-pink jacket, her thin black braids swinging across her back.
I should start exercising again.
Cara dismissed the thought with a snort. These days she was more likely to collapse into bed with sore muscles from hauling inventory around Jock’s shop than she was to pull out a yoga mat or lace up her running shoes.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the door to Liam’s cottage swing open. It was time. He was driving her to London, back to the storage facility that held all the artifacts of her past life. There would be no more delays. She’d already set too many things in motion.
She took a final sip of coffee before walking back to the kitchen and depositing the mug in the sink to rinse later. Then she gathered up her black leather jacket and slid on a pair of gray canvas flats.
Hitching her purse over her shoulder, she locked the front door and took a breath. Then she mustered the most convincing smile she could and waved to Liam.
“Good morning!” he called, catching sight of her as he rounded the short hedge between their drives. “Still up for our adventure?”
Not quite. On one hand, she was eager to retrieve Gran’s box, desperate as she was for any scrap of information about her family’s past and the secret that hung between them. At the same time, the thought of opening up the locker containing what was left of her parents’ life and her marriage was daunting.
Still, she forced herself to smile. “I’m ready.”
Liam’s brow knit. He already knew her well enough to know that she was lying. “If you don’t want to go—”
“No.” She lifted her chin. “We should. I need to do this, and . . . I’d rather have company.”
“Okay then.”
He sprinted over to his car and opened the passenger door for her. Touched by the gesture, she climbed in and promised herself that everything would be fine.
Everything was not fine.
The closer they got to London, the tighter Cara gripped the side of Liam’s passenger seat. All through the hour-and-a-half drive, she’d fought to keep her nerves from boiling over, but as they drove past the sign for her old neighborhood, her anxiety rose. Now, in front of the building she’d never wanted to visit again, her blood pounded in her ears and her palms were clammy.
Liam pulled into a parking spot in the massive storage building’s parking lot and turned off the ignition. Then he turned to her, his expression one of open kindness. “How are you doing?”
Unclenching her fingers from the seat, she said, “I’ve been putting this day off for too long.”
Liam reached over the center console, hesitating a moment before picking up her hand and giving it a squeeze. “We don’t have to do this. We can find a pub and sit down for a Sunday roast and drive back.”
She looked down at their joined hands, shocked at how comfortable it felt sitting here with Liam. They’d only known each other for a few weeks, but he’d already shown he could offer comfort and understanding without treating her as though she might break.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “This is the closest Gran has ever come to talking about the war. If I go back empty-handed, it’ll only give her a reason to shut down again.”
His thumb stroked the top of her hand once, sending her heart fluttering before he pulled away to unbuckle his seat belt. “Okay then. Let’s find your locker.”
The attendant at the front desk directed them to the right elevator bank. As they rode up to the tenth floor, Cara took the two padlock keys, one stainless steel and one brass, out of her pocket.
The doors slid open and they took a left down a hallway. Everything was quiet, save for the sound of their footsteps and the buzz of the fluorescent lights droning above them.
“Do you remember what you stored?” Liam asked.
“Too many things.” All of my things. “I went from a five-bedroom house with a drawing room, sitting room, and dining room to a two-bedroom cottage with a parlor and eat-in kitchen, so there’s a lot of furniture. And there’s also my parents’ things.”
She knew she was talking too much, but the words kept spilling from her. “I took the things with me I knew I wanted. I was supposed to have time to sort through the rest of it, but the house sold faster than anyone expected. I had the movers bring everything here.”
As they approached locker 2027, her hands started to shake.
She fumbled a little, sending Granddad’s dog tags jingling on the key ring as she stuck the brass key in the bottom padlock. It unlocked with a gentle click. The stainless steel one gave just as easily.
Unthreading the locks from their hooks, she reached down and gave the heavy metal gate a tug upward. It moved about four inches, but then stuck.
“Here, let me,” Liam said, bending down to grip the handle on the opposite bottom corner. Together they pulled, and the rolling gate revealed a lifetime of memories.
Cara flicked the light on in the wide locker, and the overhead fluorescent bulbs flas
hed once and then filled the space with harsh light. The movers had left sheets covering most of the larger pieces, which now rose up like ghosts. Plastic bins packed with dishes, utensils, and bric-a-brac lined one wall, while rolled-up rugs wrapped in sheet plastic leaned opposite them.
“Where do we start?” asked Liam, shoving a hand through his hair as he tried to take in the huge task of finding one safe in the mess of another family’s possessions.
“My parents’ things are all in the back. We might have to move items around a bit to get to them.”
“How big is the safe?” he asked. She held up a hand to her waist. “You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “Dad’s great-uncle was a banker, and the safe came down through the family to him. No one wanted to inherit it because it meant having to move it. It became a sort of family joke. Dad made a snug on the ground floor of our house his study because he didn’t want to make the movers bring the safe upstairs.”
“All right then,” said Liam. “Shall we?”
She pulled the first sheet off and winced.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She pointed to the quilted headboard she’d picked out with Simon. “My old bed. I have no idea why I still have it.” Neither of them had wanted to keep it after the divorce. It was too painful a reminder of what their lives had once been, but still, she’d wound up with it.
The next sheet revealed a pair of bookcases; the third, a pair of round side tables that had once flanked the drawing room sofa Gran had given her for her twenty-eighth birthday.
“Can you help me shift these a little?” she asked, resting a hand on one of the twin tables.
“I can do one better,” said Liam. “I can stack them.”
It took them a half hour of lifting, moving, stacking, nudging, and occasionally cursing as they made a pathway to the back of the storage unit. Midway through, she shrugged off her puffy vest and Liam pulled his fleece quarter zip over his head. The sweat on the back of her neck was a good sign. The physicality of today kept her mind occupied, didn’t give her time to think.
“This is good,” said Liam, sitting down in one of the straight-backed chairs that had made up her parents’ dining room set.
Regency chestnut dining chairs, set of eight. Paired with chestnut table with two leaves and brass fixtures. British. 1821.
“We’re to the back. Now we just have to decide whether to go right or left,” he said, casting a weary gaze around.
“Regretting this?” she asked, more to distract herself than anything else. Her thoughts had begun to creep in the moment they’d stopped, and she felt her past pressing down on her.
He shook his head. “Not even a bit. How else would I have learned you used to pretend the dining table was a cave when your parents had dinner parties?”
She smiled weakly. “You could be doing other things with your Sunday.”
He shrugged. “So could you. And remember, I promised Iris I would come with you. I have a feeling it would be best not to cross your gran.”
“You’re probably right,” she said.
“Sit down and have a rest,” he said, moving one of the dining chairs.
But she couldn’t stop. Instead, she tugged on a sheet next to her. It slid to the floor and revealed her great-great-uncle’s heavy black iron safe.
“Is that it?” Liam asked.
She laid a hand on the cool metal, her memory flashing to all the times she’d seen it behind her father’s desk when she’d brought him a cup of tea or nagged him for permission to visit a friend Mum didn’t quite approve of. “This is it.”
“Do you have the combination?” he asked, eyeing the pair of tumblers and the large steel handle on the door.
She opened the notes app on her phone and scrolled until she found the combination she’d stored there on her father’s instructions years ago. It took her two tries—the top tumbler was stiff—and when she went to open the safe, the handle hardly budged. She pushed down hard, but all the metal did was bite into her skin.
“Would you mind?” she asked, gesturing to the handle.
As Liam’s arm brushed hers, she shivered and then hugged her waist as she watched him struggle to open the safe. It was a strangely old-fashioned thing, asking a man to use his brute strength to help her open something. She’d been on her own for so long—longer than she’d been divorced, really, if she thought of how little she and Simon had seen each other in the last year of their marriage. She didn’t mind being her own savior from time to time if it meant independence, but she found that she also didn’t mind accepting Liam’s help.
He grunted and threw his body weight onto the handle. There was a click, and he shuffled to the side between a bookcase and a tower of cardboard boxes.
“Would you like to do the honors?” he asked.
When she eased the door open, it all came back to her at once. The horrible journey home from Cumbria, furious with Simon for so many reasons and devastated knowing that she would never see her parents again. It had been a blessing, really, when they’d arrived home and Simon had packed himself off to the guest room. They’d never slept together again.
“It’s okay,” Liam said softly. “I’m right here.”
She looked up and found Liam kneeling in front of her, his hands clasping hers. “It’s just a safe.”
“But it was your dad’s.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “It was where Dad kept sensitive files on cases and where they kept my mother’s jewelry. I had to go into it after their deaths, and it felt so wrong.”
“You did what they would’ve wanted you to do. The wills were important.”
She drew in a shaky breath and nodded.
“And now we have the mystery of Iris’s box to contend with.” He nudged her gently. “You seem to be collecting mysteries, Cara.”
The safe was fuller than she’d remembered. One of her father’s colleagues had cleared out his case files, but plenty had been left behind. There was a small velvet box on the top shelf, and when she opened it, she saw a single lock of her baby hair. A file held birth and marriage certificates and photographs of her parents on their wedding day—Mum in an A-line ivory dress she’d sewn herself because she’d hated ’70s fashion so much and Dad in a plain black suit with lapels that gave away its era. And pressed up against the back of the safe on the second shelf was a scuffed wooden box.
“I think I’ve found it,” she said, but when she went to pull the box free, it dislodged a file and sent papers scattering.
“Damn,” she cursed softly. They both bent to scoop the papers up, but she stopped, lifting a yellowed document up to the light. It was an old medical record with “Iris Warren” typewritten neatly at the top, followed by her address, national insurance number, occupation (“housewife”), blood type (“B”), and allergies (“none”).
“Why would Mum and Dad have Gran’s medical records?” she asked.
“Did Iris have major surgery at some point?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Then maybe they came across the records when they were cleaning out her house.” He held up a piece of paper. “Looks like your mother’s birth certificate.”
“That’s odd.” She reached into the safe, pulled out the file of vital records her father had kept there, and shuffled until she found Mum’s birth certificate. “Why would she have two copies?”
Liam glanced at the paper in her hand. “That explains it. The one you’ve got is the short-form certificate. This one is the long-form with all of the parental information on it. Maybe she was applying for a government document that required the long-form.”
With a frown, she closed the records and slid everything back onto the safe shelf. Then she turned her attention to Gran’s box, which was sitting, temporarily forgotten, on a nightstand they’d uncovered. She ran her fingers over the wooden top. A few scratches marred the finish, but otherwise it was unremarkable—so much so she hardly remembered having seen it when she
was looking for the wills.
“Are you going to open it?” Liam asked.
She stared at the box. “No. Not without her. I don’t want to give her any reason not to tell us everything.”
I don’t want to give her any reason not to explain her reluctance.
“I was dreading coming here, you know. I barely slept last night,” she said.
“And now that you’re here?” he asked.
“Everything is so sad. When Jock first told me I’d be coming with him on site visits, I was excited. I wanted to learn more about the people who owned the things we were selling. I guess I glossed over how emotional it must be for the people who are selling off their loved one’s things.”
She could feel the solidness of him next to her, surveying all of her things with an outsider’s eye.
“Do you know what I see when I look around this storage locker?” he asked.
“What?”
“A woman who’s torn. Part of her wants to believe that these are all just things, but part of her knows they’re much more than that.”
“You think I need to make a decision about what to do,” she said.
“I’m saying it’s complicated, and that’s okay. The answers to these questions aren’t always neat. Now”—he glanced at his watch—“if you want to go see Iris, we can probably make it in time for cocktails.”
Taking up the box, she went to close the safe. She paused, hand on the handle, staring at the records they’d found. On impulse, she grabbed them, stuffing them under her arm, and closed the door. She wasn’t certain why, but she wanted to have them with her.
Cara picked her way out of the storage unit while Liam grabbed the layers they’d shed. He was just about to pull down the door when she stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that it may be time to close this chapter. It’s time to start selling off the things I don’t want.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded, glancing up at him through her lashes. “Would you mind coming back with me one day and sorting through all of this? I could use the help.”