Kay’s Story, 1934

by Adele Whitby

  “You know it’s been decades since I wore the Katherine necklace, and it hasn’t lost a bit of its sparkle,” she declared. “It suits you well, Kay. How glad I am to see you wearing it.”

  “So you’ve had a nice time in the city?” Mom asked. “I was worried that it would be too much work for you—”

  “Too much work? For us?” Aunt Katie asked, sounding surprised.

  “Nonsense!” Great-Aunt Kathy said with a laugh. “We’ve had a grand time of it—oh, there were so many glorious memories made in these rooms over the years! Katie and I could’ve succumbed to the doldrums, I suppose, as we sorted through everything—oh, this is the doorway where John hung the mistletoe; oh, this is the piano where Eleanor played “Auld Lang Syne” every New Year’s—but really, I must say that it’s been a gift to be here one last time before the sale.”

  “I think we both agree that we’d rather say good-bye to it all now than to have never had it in the first place,” added Aunt Katie. “And we’ll always have those lovely memories. No one can take those from us.”

  My fingers pressed the Katherine necklace against my chest. I was painfully aware that I might have to say good-bye to it soon—perhaps tomorrow, even. But Aunt Katie was right. No one could take away my memory of wearing it, and that was a gift I never thought I’d have.

  “What time is your dinner?” Great-Aunt Kathy asked suddenly.

  “Half-past five,” Mom replied.

  Great-Aunt Kathy glanced at her timepiece. “You’ve just enough time to bathe and dress, I’d say,” she remarked. “Especially with just one lady’s maid to attend you all.”

  “I do hope your meeting is a success,” Aunt Katie said . . . but there was sadness in her eyes that told me she was prepared for the worst.

  “Keep your chin up,” Great-Aunt Kathy advised us. “No matter how it turns out, we’ll all have cake together on the balcony afterward, and stay up as late as we please. There’s always something to look forward to.”

  A few hours later, Betsy, Aunt Beth, Mom, and I stood outside the entrance to the Waldorf Astoria, a grand hotel not far from the Vandermeer brownstone. Buoyed by Aunt Katie and Great-Aunt Kathy, I’d felt like I could do anything. But now, the thought of meeting the collector behind POB Enterprises and explaining the truth about the books filled me with anxiety. I wanted to keep it all—the debt repayment, the shares of Vandermeer Steel, and the sense of security that had lightened our hearts.

  And especially the Katherine necklace.

  How much did Great-Great-Grandmother Katherine lose? I asked myself. What did she leave behind forever? And all to follow her heart.

  Somewhere, buried under all the things that were so easy to want, the truth shone brighter than a beacon. We’d have those things—the money, the stocks, the security, even the Katherine necklace—fair and square, or we wouldn’t have them at all. And so it was with my head held high that I walked into the Waldorf Astoria.

  “Good evening,” Mom said to the maître d’. “Vandermeer, party of five.”

  “Yes, madam,” he said. “Your dinner companion has already arrived. I took the liberty of showing him to your table.”

  “Wonderful,” Mom said with a charming smile. I walked behind her as the maître d’ led us to our table, wishing that I could be half as collected as she was. Then Betsy fell into step beside me and linked her pinky finger with mine, and I felt better right away.

  “Your table, madams,” the maître d’ announced.

  The gentleman at the table rose and turned around to face us.

  I recognized him right away—and, strangely enough, so did everyone else. My mouth dropped open in amazement. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to meet him—let alone have dinner with him at the Waldorf Astoria!

  “It’s—it’s—it’s Paul O. Brady!” I exclaimed.

  “Paddy!” cried Mom, beaming.

  “Patrick O’Brien?” gasped Beth and Aunt Betsy.

  Paul O. Brady, the famous movie director, smiled at us—the same dazzling smile that I’d seen in every copy of Hollywood Hello. “What a pleasure to see you all,” he said—as though he knew who we were!

  To my surprise, Mom walked right up to him and took his hands. “Paddy, how long has it been?” she asked warmly. “Fifteen years?”

  “A little more than that, Mrs. Wilson,” he replied.

  “Please, call me Kate,” Mom told him.

  I turned to Mom. “You know him?” I exclaimed. “You know Paul O. Brady?”

  “Excuse me.” Aunt Beth spoke up. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but what exactly is going on? Betsy and I know this man to be Patrick O’Brien. We met him in London last month at the botched sale of the Katherine necklace.”

  The smile on Mom’s face began to fade, replaced by a look of confusion.

  Mr. Brady—or whoever he was—held up his hands. “I can see I’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he began.

  “I should say so,” Aunt Beth said. She was perfectly polite, yet there was an icy edge to her voice that gave me chills. “I would be grateful to hear more about your obvious interest in the Vandermeer family, as well as learn why you have so many different identities.”

  “That’s fair,” Mr. Brady said pleasantly. He pulled out a chair beside him. “Lady Beth, would you care to have a seat?”

  Aunt Beth hesitated for a moment before she sat. The rest of us followed.

  “Lady Beth is correct—my real name is Patrick O’Brien,” Mr. Brady—I mean Mr. O’Brien—began. “Kate here knows me as Paddy, because that was my nickname when we met many years ago, right after I emigrated from Ireland in 1916.”

  “Yes, it was 1916,” Mom suddenly remembered. “I was holding all those Red Cross meetings at the house, rolling bandages for the war effort. I’d see you coming and going from the East Wing when you visited Essie.”

  “Essie Bridges was my great-aunt,” Mr. O’Brien said in a quiet voice.

  One look at the faces around the table showed me that everyone else was as surprised as I was.

  “You see, my great-grandfather was a man named Sean O’Brien,” Mr. O’Brien continued. “Shortly after he married, he went to India for work, and his bride, Maggie, took a position as a housemaid at Chatswood Manor until he could return. Sadly, Maggie died giving birth to their daughter, Essie, and the midwife didn’t know how to contact my great-grandfather. As a girl, Essie knew nothing about her parentage. When she was old enough, she, too, sought employment at Chatswood Manor—where she was hired as a ladies’ maid to Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katherine.

  “But my great-grandfather never stopped looking for his wife,” Mr. O’Brien said after a pause. “Eventually, his search led him to Chatswood Manor. Maggie’s fate would’ve remained a mystery if not for the efforts of two young girls who were determined to discover the truth. Thanks to Lady Katherine and Lady Elizabeth, my great-grandfather was not only able to find out what had happened to his dear wife, but to meet Essie, the daughter he didn’t know he had.”

  “No one ever told me that part of the story,” Mom said softly, and Aunt Beth nodded in agreement.

  “To finally know what had happened to his wife, to find out that he had a daughter—it meant everything to my great-grandfather,” Mr. Brady said. “After he moved back to Ireland, he eventually married again and had more children—but he never lost contact with his first child, Essie. Not even when she moved all the way to America with Lady Katherine. The bond they shared filled a hole in each of them. And all thanks to the Chatswood twins.”

  “What a touching story,” Mom said.

  “I’m still a bit confused,” Aunt Beth said, though her voice was warmer now.

  “Bear with me. I know it’s complicated,” Mr. O’Brien said apologetically. “After Great-Grandfather Sean died, all of us kids in Ireland stayed in touch with our far-off aunt Essie. My sisters married, one by one, and then there was me—the baby of the family—with very few prospects. There was war on the Continent and rebellion in
Ireland. In early 1916, Aunt Essie wrote to me. ‘Come to America,’ her letter said. ‘Come without delay. This great country can become your home, as it did mine.’ And in the envelope was enough money to pay for passage across the Atlantic Ocean. It was an opportunity I’d never dreamed I would have. How could I pass it up?”

  Mr. O’Brien swallowed hard before he spoke again. “Of course, I knew full well where the money came from. It came from the same woman who let me stay in the East Wing of Vandermeer Manor with my aunt until I could find lodging of my own. The same woman who noticed my threadbare clothes and gave me a fine suit that had belonged to her late husband. The same woman who made one phone call and had me hired at Vandermeer Steel. The very same woman who’d helped Aunt Essie find her father all those years ago.”

  “Great-Great-Grandmother Katherine,” I whispered.

  “That’s right,” Mr. O’Brien said, nodding. “Even back then, I knew that I’d be forever grateful for everything that Mrs. Vandermeer had done for me—from the new suit to the new job to the new life. And most of all, for the chance to get to know my aunt before she died. I visited with Aunt Essie whenever I wasn’t working. We’d talk for hours about work and the weather, about our faraway family, about my wildest dreams and her sweetest memories. Sometimes I’d go see a picture show and tell her all about it afterward, and one evening I confided in her my biggest secret: that I wanted to direct a movie myself one day. And do you know what she did?”

  We all waited, breathless, for the answer.

  “She pulled out this old wooden box and opened it with a Celtic-knot key—I just knew it was something she’d kept from the old country—and she handed me a stack of money. ‘You go to Hollywood, Paddy,’ Aunt Essie said. ‘You go tomorrow and you make your motion pictures. You’ve got great stories in you, my boy, and if you don’t tell them, who will?’ ”

  Then Mr. O’Brien looked right at me. “So you see, Miss Kay, that you’re right as well. I did indeed become a movie director. There was quite a bit of bad feeling toward the Irish back then, so I decided to use Paul O. Brady as my professional name.”

  “Across the Way is my favorite movie!” I exclaimed. “You’re the best director who ever lived!”

  “That’s high praise, Miss Kay, but any success I’ve had came from what your family did for me,” he replied earnestly. “Everything I am—everything I’ve become—is a direct result of the kindness and generosity of the Chatswoods and the Vandermeers.”

  “Mr. O’Brien, this is an amazing story,” Aunt Beth said. She nearly sputtered with disbelief. It was all so much to take in. “But how does it relate to the Katherine necklace and the Dickens books?”

  “Aunt Essie died, and shortly thereafter, Mrs. Vandermeer,” Mr. O’Brien said. “I hardly knew Kate, so my ties with the Vandermeers were severed. But not a day passed that I didn’t remember how much I owed them, my very life included—for how would Sean O’Brien have been able to marry again and start a new family if Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katherine hadn’t helped him uncover the truth about his first wife? I’ve followed your doings over the years; I’m sure you know that you’re a regular feature in the society pages, here and abroad. When I read about your troubles in the papers, Kate, it gnawed at me. I wanted to help you more than anything—really, it was the least I could do. But I knew you’d balk at accepting anything from me, a veritable stranger.”

  “You’re quite right there,” Aunt Beth said wryly, making us all laugh. “Heaven knows, I’ve tried.”

  Mr. O’Brien leaned forward. “Then I had this idea, you see,” he continued. “I remembered all the priceless antiques in Vandermeer Manor, and I thought, if their need should grow so great that they start selling their belongings, I’ll be there to buy them.”

  “POB Enterprises!” I exclaimed suddenly, putting it all together.

  “Smart girl,” Mr. O’Brien said approvingly. “I sent notices to all the antique dealers on the Eastern Seaboard to let them know that whatever the Vandermeer family might sell, I wanted to buy. Of course, I don’t consider myself the owner of any of it. More like the . . . caretaker. I’ve been keeping it safe for you.”

  I reached up to touch the Katherine necklace. Keeping it safe, I thought, as a wave of gratitude washed over me.

  Mr. O’Brien must’ve noticed, because a smile crossed his face. “I recognized the Katherine necklace as soon as I heard about it,” he said. “You’ll have to tell me how it made it home again, because I was heartsick when I accidentally sold it to the wrong person. Especially knowing that it was the last possession Elizabeth kept when she became Katherine.”

  A ripple of shock passed around the table. He knows! I thought. Mr. O’Brien knows the secret!

  “I’m so sorry—is that still a secret?” he asked in alarm. “Essie told me—I thought surely you knew—”

  “Oh, we did,” Aunt Beth assured him quickly. “I think we’re all just a bit surprised that you knew!”

  “Paddy—Patrick—I don’t know where to begin,” Mom said. “You’ve been like a guardian angel to us. How on earth will we ever be able to thank you?”

  “Thank me?” he asked in surprise. “Kate, you’ve got it all wrong. I owe everything to your family. I’ll never be able to thank you.”

  “There is something I have to tell you, though,” Mom said.

  I knew exactly what she was going to say. Here it comes, I thought. The moment of truth.

  “It’s about the Dickens volumes,” Mom continued. “Some new information has come to light proving that they weren’t initialed by Dickens after all. I’m afraid you’ve grossly overpaid for them. I am, of course, more than willing to refund your money, but it will take a day or two to—”

  Mr. O’Brien laughed suddenly, catching us all off guard. “Dickens? You think I cared about Dickens’s initials?” he asked in a kind way. “Gracious, no. I wanted those books so badly because I used to read them to Aunt Essie. Those hours we spent sitting side by side, the smile of happiness on her face as I read . . . A Christmas Carol was her favorite. . . . Overpaid? On the contrary. Those books are precious to me, at any price.”

  It took me a moment to understand exactly what Mr. O’Brien meant. When it dawned on me, it felt like the clouds had parted, letting in the most glorious sunlight. He doesn’t want the money back! I thought joyfully. We won’t have to sell the Katherine necklace!

  Mom was so overcome with emotion that she had trouble speaking. When at last she found her words, they were simple . . . and enough. “Thank you,” she said, again and again. “Thank you.”

  “Now, listen, there was another reason why I accepted your invitation to meet today,” Mr. O’Brien said. “I have a proposition to make.”

  I sat a little straighter in my chair. There was something about the intensity in his face that made me believe the next few moments could change everything.

  “The history of the Chatswoods and the Vandermeers is a story for the ages,” Mr. O’Brien declared. “Secrets . . . mysteries . . . drama . . . intrigue . . . and most of all, love. It’s got all the ingredients of a runaway hit. Now, if you’d consider selling the rights to your story to POB Enterprises, I know that we could surely make a fantastic movie. And a lot of money, too.”

  “Sell the rights?” Mom asked.

  “To our family history?” Aunt Beth added. They stared at each other across the table, a long look that was impossible to read.

  “You don’t have to answer right away,” Mr. O’Brien said quickly. “We’re prepared to be extremely generous with the terms. You’ll have full approval over the script, which I’ll write myself. And, of course, I’d want to shoot on location, at Vandermeer Manor and Chatswood Manor. If I may, I’m confident that you’d make enough from this picture to buy back control of your company . . . and then some. So take some time; think it over—”

  “Yes,” Mom and Aunt Beth interrupted him, speaking at the same time.

  “Yes?” he repeated in surprise. “You’ll do
it?”

  “Yes!” Mom said as happy tears filled her eyes. “It sounds like a phenomenal opportunity. We’d be fools to pass it up!”

  “And the time for secrets has passed,” added Aunt Beth. She placed her hand lightly on Mr. O’Brien’s arm. “I think that Great-Grandmother Elizabeth and Great-Aunt Katherine would be so pleased to hear how they influenced your remarkable life, Mr. O’Brien. To honor them in a movie is a tribute they never could’ve imagined. Thank you.”

  “You must come to Vandermeer Manor at your earliest convenience,” Mom said to Mr. O’Brien. “We have so many materials you can use in your research.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” he said . . . but he was still looking at Aunt Beth.

  The waiter appeared then to bring us our menus, but I didn’t think I could eat a single bite. There was so much to do. . . . Call Dad with the good news . . . tell Aunt Katie and Great-Aunt Kathy that we wouldn’t have to sell the town house after all . . . and, most of all, let Clara know that she could turn down the job in Boston. After all, Vandermeer Steel would be back in my family’s control soon, and I already knew that we would need talented mathematicians in the accounting office.

  I leaned toward my cousin. “Betsy, can you imagine it?” I whispered. “Our family story brought to life on the silver screen! We’ll be famous! Who do you think will play us?”

  “Paulette Lyons?” she said, giggling. “Annabelle Edwards?”

  “And did you hear what else he said?” I continued. “He wants to shoot on location at our homes!”

  “You must visit when he films at Chatswood Manor!” Betsy exclaimed.

  Suddenly, I remembered what Great-Aunt Kathy had said that afternoon: There’s always something to look forward to.

  From Betsy’s and my twelfth birthday ball . . .

  To visiting, at last, Chatswood Manor—the place where it all began . . .

  To a movie about our families . . .

  The future had never looked brighter!