Later that day, I managed to eat some dry toast and sip some tea. I had no appetite, but I forced it down for the sake of my baby. Then I curled up in a ball and went back to sleep.
When I woke, the loneliness was still there, worse than before, and I wished I could sink back into a sensationless slumber, but it was not to be, for there was a woman at my bedside. She looked to be about sixty and wore an expensive-looking brown tweed suit.
“You’re awake,” she said, sitting forward on the white metal chair and laying a hand on my wrist.
I stared at her for a moment. “Who are you?”
“I’m Lady Grantchester. But call me Catherine.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “You’re Theodore’s mother.”
“Yes.” Lady Grantchester averted her gaze, and her chin trembled. “It’s a terrible thing that happened. I still can’t believe it.” She took a moment to collect herself, then squared her shoulders and forced herself to sit up straighter. She looked at me again with damp, glistening eyes.
“I can’t believe it either,” I replied, cognizant of the fact that Theodore was her youngest son, and she must, like me, be devastated today.
In the very next second, my heart raced under the awareness that I was an imposter in this bed. She thought I was Vivian, her daughter-in-law, which meant I had to think clearly, because I’d made a promise.
“It all happened so fast,” I mumbled, my belly tightening at another memory of the bomb exploding.
Lady Grantchester pointed at my face. “Is that painful?”
I touched my cheek and realized I must be black and blue. “A bit. I don’t even know what it looks like. I haven’t looked in a mirror since . . .”
“It’s fine, dear. There’s just some bruising and a few small lacerations. Nothing that won’t heal in a week or so.”
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the cuts on my face or how I looked. The worst pain was inside my heart every time I remembered this new reality—a world without my twin.
Lady Grantchester wet her lips and cleared her throat. “I regret that we never had the chance to meet before now, but Theodore’s father is a proud and stubborn man. It’s difficult to move him once he sets out on a particular path.”
Not knowing what to say or do, and not wanting to make a mistake and say the wrong thing, I remained silent and merely nodded.
“Obviously you are aware of that,” she continued, gesturing toward me with a hand. “I’m sure that Theodore confided in you about their differences.”
No, he didn’t confide in me. But my sister did. She told me everything.
Lady Grantchester inclined her head. “You’re very quiet. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you must be going through, having lost both your husband and your sister in the same day.”
I nodded again. “I don’t feel quite myself.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.” She fiddled with the brown kid gloves on her lap, then looked at me fiercely. “I would understand if you didn’t wish to see me or speak with me, given the circumstances, but that’s why I’m here—to ask that you allow us the opportunity to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Yes. I saw the house on Craven Street, or what’s left of it, which is basically nothing. And I know you’re expecting a child. If it’s a boy, he’ll be the heir to my husband’s title and all the property that goes with it.”
My mouth went dry. “What about your other son, Henry? Isn’t he the eldest?”
“Yes, but he’s in the Royal Navy now, somewhere in the Atlantic or the North Sea—I have no idea where. I can barely sleep at night, thinking of U-boats and torpedoes.” She looked away again. “I apologize. I’m not myself either. Nevertheless . . . he’s unmarried. If anything happens to him . . . well . . .”
“Your family would lose the title,” I said.
“Yes. Without a male heir, when my husband is gone, it would pass to a distant cousin in Ireland. I don’t know the family at all.”
I laid a hand over my belly and frowned at her. “This is my child, Lady Grantchester. I won’t let you take him away from me, just so that you can keep your title and fortune, especially when you showed no interest in accepting me into your family before this.”
It was surprising how easy it was to speak for Vivian. To be her.
And I wasn’t lying. It was my child. She had no right to him or her.
Lady Grantchester’s cheeks flushed with color, and I saw a look of panic in her eyes. “Please . . . I’m so sorry. This is coming out all wrong. I understand how you must feel.” She swallowed uneasily. “Let me assure you that we have no intention of taking your child away from you. I, for one, have regretted the rift in my family since the beginning. I’d hoped we could put an end to it, and I wanted to meet you. Truly, I did. When Theodore wrote to me and told me that you were expecting a child, I was overjoyed, and I began to pray that it would bring us all back together again. I’m sure you must know that he wanted you to be safe from the bombings, and he asked if we could take you in—along with your sister, of course—and naturally, I said yes. But then he wrote to tell me that you didn’t wish to come. I was disappointed, because I thought Theodore and his father might have been able to reconcile. But then last night, when the bomb fell on your house . . .”
Her voice broke, and she began to weep. It was a terrible sight—the heartbreaking emotional agony of a mother drowning in grief over the loss of her youngest son. I felt it in my core, and I wished there was something I could say or do to help her, but there wasn’t.
Lady Grantchester finally managed to pull herself together. She wiped her eyes with a linen handkerchief that she retrieved from her purse. “I’m very sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying.”
“Neither can I. So there’s no need to apologize. You’ve suffered a terrible loss.”
“We both have.” She tucked the handkerchief away and snapped her handbag shut. “You also lost your father recently, I am told. You have my deepest condolences, Vivian. No one should have to suffer so much loss in such a short time.”
We sat in grim silence for a moment. Then a new patient was brought into the ward on a stretcher. He groaned as the orderlies lifted him onto a bed.
Lady Grantchester waited for them to leave. Then she resumed our conversation. “The doctor told me that you would be discharged later today. Do you have anywhere to go?”
My brain scrambled to think of how Vivian would answer that question. “I have some friends,” I explained. “Girls I used to work with at the ministry. We shared a flat before Theodore and I were married.”
But I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to contact them. I’d never even met them. For all I knew, they could have been bombed out of their flat as well.
Lady Grantchester leaned forward and clasped my hand tightly in both of hers. “Please, Vivian. I will be the first to admit that George and I behaved appallingly when Theodore told us about your engagement, and I’m not proud of what happened. If it makes any difference to you at all, I never shared my husband’s opinions. Certainly, I wanted Theodore to marry a different girl—a young woman who was a friend of the family, and I supported that match, but I never wanted George to legally disown Theodore. That circumstance has caused me nothing but grief. All I’ve wanted for the past year was for George to patch things up. I swear to you, if that bomb hadn’t taken Theodore’s life, I would have eventually succeeded in convincing George to swallow his pride and let us be a family again. Especially with a grandchild on the way.”
“Eventually?” I said. “So, he hasn’t swallowed it yet? Does he even know you’re here?”
Lady Grantchester spoke indomitably. “Yes, he knows. The loss of Theodore was a great shock to him. I believe George always expected Theodore to come crawling home one day, begging forgiveness. And George would have forgiven him too. But you know as well as I do that Theodore can be just as hardheaded as his father. He was always a stickler about r
ules. With Theodore, things were always written in stone.”
Yes indeed, I was aware of that, because my highly principled brother-in-law had wanted me to surrender myself to the authorities. As the bomb was falling, he and Vivian had argued about it.
It haunted me now—how they spent their final moments. It felt like a hammer coming down on my heart, crushing it with yet another form of guilt that would probably never leave me.
“But you mustn’t let that scare you away from us,” Lady Grantchester continued. “George is devastated. He’s consumed by regret over the fact that he never resolved things with Theodore. Now it will never happen. He won’t have that chance.” Her body shuddered, and tears welled in her eyes. “Mark my words, Vivian, he will dote on your child—and you—every day for the rest of his life. You’re all we have left of our son, perhaps the only grandchild we’ll ever know.”
I couldn’t speak. The thought of lying to this woman, her family, and the rest of the world about my child’s parentage made me want to curl up into a ball and dissolve into mist . . . to float away and escape this war . . . to be with my sister again, wherever she was.
“Will you come home with me?” Lady Grantchester pressed, her eyes alight with hope. “Please, Vivian. This city isn’t safe for you. Bombs are still dropping every night, but I have a car waiting outside. By nightfall we can be in the country, where it’s peaceful and quiet and you can see the stars. We have a room already prepared for you. And you will, of course, have access to our family’s most excellent physician, who will take wonderful care of you when your time comes.”
I felt a little sick to my stomach and took a few deep, steadying breaths.
“I give you my word,” Lady Grantchester said. “Your child will grow up with every advantage and opportunity. A proper education, the very best schools, and a large inheritance. But most importantly, you will have a home. A place where you’ll be safe from the war.”
Her final words were what moved me.
Or broke me.
Safe from the war.
I couldn’t go back to the house where I’d been living for the past month with Vivian—my sister, who knew all my secrets. She was gone now, and the house was nothing but a pile of bricks. I didn’t even have a ration card to buy food. It would need to be replaced. And the rest centers for all the bombed-out families were already overrun.
I couldn’t tell anyone who I really was—the lover of a high-ranking German Nazi—or I’d be arrested on the spot and shipped off to an internment camp. Heaven only knew what might happen to me there. What Lady Grantchester offered was a lifeline, a safe haven where I could carry out the term of my pregnancy and give birth to my child.
Perhaps the war would be over by then.
On the other hand, the Germans might invade Britain. Everything was so uncertain. Everything except the child growing in my womb—a child I loved more than life itself and would protect at all costs. He was all I had now.
Sitting forward, I reached for Lady Grantchester’s hand and told myself that she was my mother-in-law. She would be my family. And I would be Vivian.
“If you really want me, I’ll go with you.”
Her eyes grew wet with tears, and she smiled as she raised my hand to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, Vivian, you’ve made me so happy. I promise we’ll take good care of you, and we’ll make up for the mistakes we made. If Theodore is watching over us now, which I’m sure he is, I believe he would be very pleased that you said yes.”
I embraced her with open arms, but I wasn’t so sure that Theodore would be pleased. In fact, I was quite certain that he would roll over in his grave, just as soon as he got there.
Later that afternoon, outside the hospital, a shiny black Bentley was waiting at the curb. A uniformed driver opened the car door for us and gave me a friendly, caring look. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Gibbons. Although I wish it were under better circumstances.”
Realizing that Vivian must have met this man before, I said simply, “Thank you” and kept my gaze lowered as I climbed into the back seat.
Lady Grantchester removed her gloves. “I won’t bother with introductions since you’ve already met Jackson.”
I nodded, relieved to learn the man’s name.
He got into the driver’s seat and watched us in the rearview mirror as he started the engine. “Straight home, my lady?”
“Yes, Jackson.”
I sat forward slightly. “Actually, would it be possible to go to Craven Street first? I’d like to see it one last time. Or what’s left of it. My things are there. Perhaps I can salvage something.”
Lady Grantchester squeezed my hand. “I understand. I went there myself before I came to see you. Jackson, take us to Craven Street, please.”
“Certainly.” He shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb.
As we drove through the ravaged city streets, my stomach roiled with dread at the mere thought of returning to the place where my sister had died the night before and the horror of the devastated town house that had collapsed on top of us. I shut my eyes and forced myself not to recall the noise of the explosion and the pain as I regained consciousness and found Vivian, buried alive beneath me.
When Jackson turned onto the street, it was unrecognizable. Sloping piles of bricks and debris covered the sidewalks. There were barricades blocking traffic.
“This is as far as I can go,” he said.
“It’s fine,” I replied. “I can walk from here. I see our local ARP warden just over there. He knows me.”
Jackson shut off the engine. I opened the car door without waiting for him to come around, but he was there in an instant to offer a hand, which I accepted gratefully because my cracked ribs made it difficult to climb out of the vehicle.
While Lady Grantchester waited in the back seat, Jackson walked with me toward the cordoned-off area.
“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “Mr. Gibbons was a good man. The very best. We’re all in a state of shock.”
“It doesn’t seem real to me,” I replied, looking down at the cobblestones. “I keep hoping I’ll wake up and discover it was all a bad dream.”
“I wish that were so.”
We arrived at my former address and looked up at the skeletal structure that was once a charming Georgian town house with flower boxes at the windows. It was not only our home that had taken the hit but the one next to it as well. Possibly three houses in a row. It was difficult to be sure.
A woman pushing a pram walked by. The shrill sound of her baby crying, along with the scrape of shovels across the sidewalk and brooms sweeping up broken glass, made everything feel tragic and bleak.
“Is that you, Mrs. Gibbons?” the ARP warden asked, slowly approaching.
“Yes.” I let go of Jackson’s arm.
“I’m pleased to see that you’re all right. I’m very sorry about your husband.”
“Thank you.”
Everyone was so sorry about Theodore, but what about Vivian? No one seemed to care, but that’s because they thought she was still alive, standing before them in the flesh. No one cared about April, the sister no one ever knew much about.
“If only we’d had time to reach the shelter,” I said, fixating on the mistakes we’d made, because regret was a constant in me now. I suspected it would become a permanent fixture in my life.
“No, ma’am. You’re wrong about that. It’s a good thing you didn’t go to the shelter, because that’s where the bomb dropped—right in your back garden. The Anderson shelter took a direct hit, and there’s nothing left of it. So, if you’d gone out there, you wouldn’t be here talking to me right now.”
I felt tired all of a sudden while I struggled to make sense of why I had been spared but Theodore and Vivian had not.
Why did things happen the way they did? Was there a reason? If there was, would I ever know it or make peace with it? My whole existence felt like a strange, heady hallucination as I stepped unsteadily over a pile of bricks into
the wreckage of the town house, grimacing at the pain in my rib cage. I was searching for the spot where I’d found Vivian, barely alive. But nothing looked familiar. They had dug her body out the day before, and it was all just rubble now.
Then I spotted the sofa from the front parlor, flattened beneath a fallen timber. I pressed my elbow against my ribs, fighting to withstand the throbbing pain as I picked up bricks and tossed them aside.
“Are you looking for something?” Jackson asked, following me like a shadow and sounding concerned for my welfare.
“I’m not sure.” I stumbled over the shifting debris and scraped my bare knee as I moved farther into the ruins.
My eyes settled on the corner of my brass bed frame. It was poking out from under a pile of bricks. I awkwardly crawled toward it, still hugging my arm to my ribs. Jackson was beside me the entire time. Without a word, he worked fast to help me uncover the mangled bed frame, one brick at a time.
At last I could see beneath it. “There. I need that.”
Jackson bent to peer under.
“My sea chest,” I explained. “It was a gift. There’s jewelry inside it.”
I lost my balance and fell onto my backside while he rescued the one possession I had left in the world. My sister was gone, my father and my brother-in-law, and everything else I owned. Even my identity was lost. But I still had Ludwig, somewhere in Europe, and I knew that he loved me. I couldn’t leave those pictures behind.
“Here you go, Mrs. Gibbons,” Jackson said, pulling the chest out from under the bed frame and mattress. “Look at that. Good as new.” He held it out to me, and I tried to take it, but I had only one good arm. The other was sore from my dislocated shoulder, and I needed to protect my ribs.
“I’ll carry it,” he said as he tucked it under his arm.
Soon, we were walking back to the Bentley, but someone called out to us. “Excuse me!”
I turned to see a young boy jogging toward us. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder.
“Did you live in that house?” he asked.
“Yes.”
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