by Robin Wells
“So I wrote Jack that I must stay in France to care for my mother. I loved him, but I didn’t want to ruin his life, so I told him that the best thing would be for us to divorce and for him to go ahead and marry Kat. I told him I had not mailed his letter to her breaking off the romance.
“And then, when the army mistakenly sent a letter from Kat to my address—which was also listed as Jack’s address—well, I wrote her back.”
“She didn’t recognize it wasn’t Jack’s handwriting?”
“I am an expert calligrapher. Part of what I did for the Resistance was forge false identity papers for Jews and travel papers for resistance workers.”
“Stop it, Amélie.” Jack’s face was hard and cold. “Caroline, she’s just trying to put me in a better light.”
“No. I can prove it,” I insisted. “I will show you my calligraphy skills. Jack is trying to protect me, so I won’t be hated in Wedding Tree. But I think it is better for everyone to know that it was my fault and not Jack’s, and that he tried to act honorably.”
“She’s right, Jack,” Caroline said. “If you’re to be trusted as a doctor here, you can’t be seen as someone who would so callously jilt his fiancée. For goodness’ sake, let her talk.”
“I discovered I was pregnant, and then my mother died,” I said. “After that, there was no reason I had to stay in Paris. I still loved Jack, and I wanted my baby to grow up with her father. So Jack and I made up, and I came on a bride boat to America.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Caroline turned to her brother. “But, Jack—why didn’t you mention your marriage in any of your letters to the family?”
I had thought this out ahead of time. “He couldn’t,” I said, “because Kat did not yet know. She needed to be told first.”
“Oh, of course.” Caroline seemed stunned.
“Here is the part of which I’m most ashamed,” I continued. “I only admitted to Jack that I had been writing to Kat, pretending the letters were from him, right before he left for the United States. He was very, very angry.”
Jack glowered at me, unwittingly reinforcing my story.
I hurried on. “I persuaded him that since things had gone on so long, it was better to tell Kat in person rather than to tell her over the phone. He planned to come to Wedding Tree a couple of days before I did—he thought it would be easier if I weren’t yet in the picture—and talk to her father. He was going to try to gently break the news to her while she was surrounded by her family. But when he called her to arrange that, he learned her father had suffered a stroke and your mother has pneumonia, and our baby was sick, too sick for me to manage alone, so . . . here we are, all together.”
“Oh, my! Oh, heavens! Oh, you poor dears! Oh, what a mess!”‘
“We were, each of us, only trying to do what seemed right at the time, but I have put poor Jack in a terrible situation, and I’m afraid he is horribly angry with me.”
I smiled at Jack. His face was, indeed, thunderous.
“I warn you, Caroline—he will say I am lying,” I continued. “He will do anything to try to protect me. He told me he is worried that I will be hated and ostrich-ized.”
Caroline’s husband howled with laughter. “I think you mean ostracized.”
“Yes. He is willing to take the blame fully on his shoulders. He is such a hero that way. But I need for you to spread the word that it was I, not Jack, who kept the secret from Kat for so long.”
“Yes. Yes, of course! I will go talk to Kat.”
The conversation, thankfully, moved on to the topic of Jack and Caroline’s mother as we piled into Bruce’s Ford and arranged our luggage in the trunk. Jack and I climbed into the backseat.
“And how is Dr. Thompson?” Jack asked.
“He’s awakened from his coma, but he’s paralyzed on the left side, and he can barely talk.”
Jack’s face grew somber.
“Kat’s mother is in denial that he was ever unconscious,” Caroline said. “She insists he was only resting.”
A gloom of silence hung in the car. At length I said, “Bruce, I understand you served in the Pacific.”
He nodded. “I left a kidney in Guam.”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” Caroline said.
I had hoped to steer the conversation onto more cheerful topics, so I said, “Jack tells me you are an attorney in Wedding Tree.”
“Yes, that’s right. Mainly wills and probate—not very interesting, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, some of the things people put in their wills are quite interesting,” Caroline said. “And he does a little criminal defense, as well. Bruce, tell them about the boy who tried to drive the bread truck over a car!”
Bruce launched into a comical story. Jack smiled and laughed at the appropriate part, but he did not say a word to me the entire trip.
—
Bruce drove us to his and Caroline’s house—a charming two-story Acadian-style home with three bedrooms and two—two!—full bathrooms upstairs, and a powder room below. I could scarcely imagine the luxury.
I settled into one of the bedrooms with Elise. Bruce drove Caroline and Jack to the hospital to see their mother and Dr. Thompson.
While they were gone, I rummaged through Jack’s bag for an example of his handwriting. I found some notes about a new method for removing a gallbladder.
I tore a page out of a notebook I had brought from France, crumpled it just a bit, then smoothed it and, copying Jack’s handwriting, carefully penned a letter to Kat. I dated it July 9, 1944. I folded and refolded it several times, making it the size to fit into a small envelope.
Reaching under the bed, I found some dust against the baseboard. I had learned as a hotel maid that no matter how good the housecleaning, there is almost always dust on under-bed baseboards. I rubbed a tiny bit onto the edges and folds of the paper, where dirt settles on a document. I handled it a little more to make it look aged and worn, then I tucked it into the bottom of my suitcase.
—
I gave Elise a bath, then foraged in the kitchen. I pulled on a red-checked apron I found hanging in the pantry, then located some leftover chicken in the fridge, as well as a half-opened bottle of wine. I added some potatoes, carrots, celery, and spices, and set it on to simmer.
“Something smells wonderful!” Caroline said when she and Bruce came through the door around six o’clock.
“It is coq au vin.”
“But how did you find anything to cook? There was barely any food in the house!”
“Barely any food?” After what I had gone through in France, I was truly shocked. “You had a feast in your refrigerator!”
“It was just leftovers,” Caroline said.
“Well, it was more than enough for a meal.”
Caroline lifted the lid off the pot and inhaled appreciatively. “You’re a miracle worker! No wonder Jack married you.”
Jack had no idea whether I even knew how to boil water, I reflected. “Where is Jack?”
“He’s gone to see some patients. There’s a flu epidemic, and word spread that Jack has returned.”
I stirred the stew. “How did things go at the hospital?”
Bruce and Caroline looked at each other for a moment. Oh, la; I could read in their expressions that it had been a difficult visit.
“How is your mother?”
“She was very glad to see Jack,” Caroline said. “She’s feeling much better.”
“Better enough to be a pain in the neck,” Bruce grumbled.
“She asked for her makeup and perfume and hair rollers and a lace bed jacket,” Caroline said.
“And her cigarettes,” Bruce added. “She’s on oxygen, and she wanted her cigarettes!”
Jack had not said much about his mother’s personality, aside from telling me she never got over being a debutante. He’d also said that she
’d been widowed by the banker two years ago, and was now in the market for a new husband. “How did she react to the news of Jack’s marriage to me?”
Again, Caroline and Bruce exchanged a glance. My palms grew damp.
“She wasn’t happy,” Caroline admitted. “She and Kat are thick as thieves.”
“She had been looking forward to playing a leading role at a big wedding,” Bruce said dryly.
“She will come around,” Caroline said. “Don’t worry about it. Jack takes everything Mother says with a grain of salt.”
“Should be with a shot of vodka,” Bruce grumbled.
“How about Dr. Thompson?”
Caroline pulled a serving bowl down from the cabinet. Bruce bent to play with Elise, who was on a blanket, banging a wooden spoon.
“It was a difficult visit,” Caroline said. “He is very weak.”
My heart squeezed. “Did Jack tell him about . . . our marriage?”
Caroline nodded, her eyes somber.
“What did Jack say?” I was anxious to hear how he talked about us.
“That he knew he’d broken Kat’s heart, and that he felt horrible. The doctor made some moaning sounds and closed his eyes.”
“What did Jack do?”
Caroline hesitated.
“Tell me,” I urged. “I need to know. Please be very blunt.”
“He cried.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. My hand flew to my chest, where my heart felt like melting wax.
“Jack said that you all will leave Wedding Tree once Mother gets better.”
Jack leave Wedding Tree? All he could talk about in Paris was coming back to his hometown. He’d made Wedding Tree sound like Eden! In fact, he’d talked about the town and the doctor and the practice they would have together far more than he’d talked about his fiancée. I couldn’t imagine him even considering the idea of moving.
“What did Dr. Thompson say?”
“His voice is like a grunt, but he talked very slowly and was quite clear. He said, ‘You can’t leave now. The town needs a doctor.’”
“How did Jack respond?”
“Well, Mrs. Thompson showed up just then. Kat had come home, and of course, she’d told her all about . . . about . . .” Caroline hesitated, obviously searching for a kind way to put it.
“About me.”
She nodded.
“And . . . she was angry?”
“Oh . . . furious! She gave Jack a real tongue-lashing. Used some very un-Christian words and actually threw him out of the room. She was especially angry that he’d led Kat on for months in his letters.”
“Oh, dear!”
Caroline pulled some napkins out of the drawer. “So I hope you don’t mind, but I dropped by Kat’s house on the way home. I thought it might help her to know what you’d told me—that Jack had written to her before the marriage, and that you hadn’t mailed the letter because you thought you might not be able to leave France. I told her that you then received her letters, so you’d forged Jack’s replies, because you didn’t want to ruin Jack’s chances with her when it looked like you couldn’t leave France.”
“And?”
“Well, she was surrounded by her minions.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Kat was Miss Popularity in high school. She still is. She had six friends with her, trying to console her, all outraged at Jack on her behalf. The worst one is Minxy.”
“Minxy?”
“That’s her nickname. Her father gave her a coat with a mink collar when she was in junior high and the name stuck.” Caroline placed the napkins around the kitchen table. “Anyway, I pulled Kat aside and told her what you’d told me. She immediately trotted back to her friends and repeated everything I’d said.”
“Did it help?”
“Well, I think it took the edge off their anger at Jack. But several were skeptical. Minxy didn’t think anyone could forge handwriting convincingly enough.”
“I’ll show you. Get a piece of paper and write something, and I will write in your handwriting.”
She grabbed an envelope and pen from the counter and wrote her name and address.
I took the envelope, studied it for a moment, then carefully wrote her name and address beneath it, matching her handwriting nearly exactly.
Caroline picked it up. “This is amazing! If I hadn’t seen you write it, I would think I wrote this myself!”
I lifted my shoulders. “It’s a skill that came in handy during the war. And here is Jack’s handwriting.” Jack’s script was fresh enough in my mind that I didn’t need an example in front of me. I wrote Jack’s letters, I scrawled.
“That’s incredible!” Caroline picked up the envelope. “Can I take this to Kat and show her?”
“Of course. And I have something else she should have.” I straightened and rubbed my hands on the apron. “I have the letter that Jack wrote to her—the one I did not mail.”
Her eyes rounded. “You brought it with you?”
“Yes. It is in my suitcase. It was never mine to keep, and now, of course, I know I should have mailed it. Would you take it to her?”
“Oh, of course! Oh, that will be so helpful!” Caroline clapped her hands together. “I’ll take it to her right after dinner—along with this example of how well you can imitate handwriting.”
65
KAT
2016
My fingers grip the arms of Amélie’s chair so tightly it is a wonder my fingernails don’t cut the fabric. She forged the letter from Jack? And she’d done it after arriving in Wedding Tree? She is more duplicitous and conniving than I had even imagined! “I can’t believe you just lied and lied, then forged a letter!”
She lifts her shoulders in that graceful French way of hers, an expression that seemed to say So what? or No big deal. “I wanted to help preserve Jack’s reputation as much as I could. I thought the note would be a convincing touch.”
Oh, it had been. It had been convincing, indeed! At the time, it had certainly convinced me.
Caroline had brought it to me the evening Jack returned to Wedding Tree, as Mother and I were cleaning up from a dinner we’d barely touched.
“Amélie and I talked at great length tonight,” Caroline had said. “She showed me how she can replicate handwriting—it’s truly amazing! She could write exactly like me.”
“Well, isn’t that a worthwhile talent,” I’d sniffed. “Almost as wonderful as pickpocketing.”
“She knows calligraphy. It’s no wonder she could write letters that you believed came from Jack.” Caroline had reached in her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “She gave me the letter that Jack wrote you a year and a half ago—the one she didn’t mail. She said you should have it.”
I’d snatched it out of her hand, and run into the living room. I’d sunk onto the chair by the window, unfolded it, and read it like a starved wolf devouring a squirrel.
Over the next weeks and months, I reread it so often I committed it to memory:
Dear Kat,
It breaks my heart to write this, but I must tell you that our engagement is off. I will put this in very straightforward terms: I am about to marry a Frenchwoman.
I know this must be a shock. It is shocking to me, as well. I find it hard to explain and I am sure you will find it hard to understand, but life is very different here, and I am very different. I go to another evacuation hospital closer to the front in two days’ time; a similar hospital was just bombed, and I fear I will not make it home in one piece. Everything here is urgent and intense and uncertain. The uncertainty demands rapid action. Amélie and I fell into a madness of love and will marry at one o’clock today.
I regret making promises to you that I can’t keep, but it would be unfair to you for me to even try.
I want you to be free to fi
nd a new love of your own. From this vintage point, our plans for the future seem like a childish fairy tale we told ourselves. Life must be seized as it happens.
I know that such a beautiful woman as you will be quickly snapped. I envy the man that you someday will marry, and I will always cherish your memory.
Love always, Jack
Right now, I am so angry at Amélie that I want to slap her. I hold my right hand with my left one to stop myself, because I know my impulse control is no longer very good.
That letter has been a huge consolation to me over the years, and now she is taking that away from me.
When I first read it all those years ago, I thought it was an admission that Jack had fallen into some kind of madness and acted rashly. I figured that he’d probably been seduced, had carnal relations and fallen under a spell of lust. I wondered if he had been drunk or somehow drugged or even shell-shocked. I wondered if he’d had a terrible fear of being wounded and wanted to spare me from caring for him as a cripple.
I drew special comfort from the fact he said I was beautiful and that he would envy the man I eventually married. That meant he wasn’t over me, didn’t it? That he’d never be over me. And the sign-off, Love always—a man wouldn’t write that to someone he wouldn’t always long for. That helped me make it through the hard days ahead of me.
And now . . . Amélie is snatching that sole consolation away from me by telling me Jack never wrote such things, that she wrote them herself after arriving in Wedding Tree.
But, then . . . of course. It should have become obvious to me when she told me they hadn’t even met until shortly before Jack’s return to the States. All the implications of that one fact, all the ways it changes what I know—or thought I knew—of the past, has not soaked in yet.
And oh, there are so many implications! My brain is not as agile as it once was—or perhaps it is just overwhelmed by receiving so much information so fast.