I would never know the answers Hilda might have given to my questions.
Why did you steal my girl? Why did you keep her for five years? Why? Why? Why? What misery drove you to take what you had no right to take?
Seconds stretched in the silence. John D’Orfini broke through it. “The child’s name is Vinni. Lavinia Stewart,” he said. “This is her mother, Madeline Stewart.”
Meta wept as she reached for my hand across the navy chintz. I let her touch me, although I refused to clasp my fingers around hers. She looked away for a moment but then continued in a softer voice.
“Yes, yes. Hilda told me all this. Vinni is Sophie’s real name. I know now, but I never knew before . . . before Hilda died. . . . All this time Soph . . . So sorry . . .”
“Vinni has been separated from her mother for five years,” John D’Orfini said.
“Where is Vinni’s school? I’ll go and get her. We don’t need to stay and talk if she’s not here,” I said.
“No. No. You mustn’t frighten her. Sophie—I mean, Vinni— will be home soon. Please stay. I must tell you what Hilda wanted you to know. She died ashamed that she hurt you. She knew she did wrong. Not at first, but at the end. She was going in and out of consciousness. She wanted me to tell you. Yes? You want to know?”
John D’Orfini nodded and sat back in his chair. “We want to know,” he said.
Meta stared at her hands in the lap of her skirt. She rubbed her fingers against each other, massaging them as she sighed deeply.
“She told me her name was Ada and that she was the guardian of her cousin’s child, Sophie. For the first year they were here, Sophie was very quiet.”
“Go on,” I said, in a voice I could barely hear.
“They just showed up at your door one day?” John D’Orfini asked.
“Armen and I rent out the cottage. Everyone knows this. It had been empty for close to a year. I never asked how Ada found us.”
“Is Hilda the owner of all this?” John D’Orfini hurled it as a question, but I wondered if he already had the answer.
Meta nodded and continued. “I will tell you what Ada told me before she slipped into the coma. She knew she was dying. Sophie—eh, Vinni—knew as well.”
She looked away as if she couldn’t bear to say more.
“Go on,” I said. Vinni was in school in the village, ten minutes away. Armen had left to pick her up. He would stop by for her after dropping off bags of soybeans on the way.
“Ada—”
“Her name is Hilda,” I interrupted.
“Ya. Hilda told me how Vinni had been asleep when they carried her to the plane. They flew from Canada to Germany. Hilda wanted to bring Vinni home.”
“Why did she want my child?” I asked. I had to know the answer. As much as I wanted to see Vinni walk through the door, I needed to know why she had been kidnapped.
“Hilda’s only child died at the age of eight, when she was thrown from a horse. Hilda watched her child die instantly. Her name was Kaethe. I knew the man who owned all this had had a granddaughter who died. We never met him. Armen and I were hired through his lawyers. But this was many years ago.”
“So Hilda inherited everything.” John D’Orfini said. He surprised me with his interruptions. Affirming what he knew or what he suspected.
Meta nodded. “Ya . . . more sadness. Hilda told me she had caused her sister, Hannah, much pain.”
I inhaled sharply.
Sisters?
The pain of a promise. That was how George phrased it when he asked me to stay away from Hannah.
“Hilda loved her sister. They had been separated for years. She confessed.”
“Confessed?” I inched forward in my seat. My mind reeled. My shoulders tensed.
Meta looked down. “Not to what you are thinking—to something a long time ago. Hilda was a child of fourteen when she discovered Hannah and a boy named George together in the barn. Hilda was the horse lover. Hannah less so. She begged Hilda not to tell their father.”
“Tell him what?” John D’Orfini asked.
“That they were planning to run away together that night. George’s cousin was waiting for them at the end of the path in the woods at the edge of the Haydn farm. He drove them on to Heidelberg. Hilda told me she had to promise. Her father, she said, ‘knew sternness like the skin on his thumb.’ Hilda never forgot her sister’s words.
‘Don’t tell Papa. Ever. I will send letters to you through George’s cousin, but you can never tell Papa where I am. Promise me, baby sister.’ Then she hugged Hilda tight. Hilda watched her run into the woods, holding George’s hand.’”
Meta continued with her hands folded. Her head lowered.
“After Hannah ran off, Hilda’s father turned bitter. He wanted her to marry a German. He suspected the Hungarian boy had taken away his oldest daughter, but Hilda kept the secret so Hannah could have the life she wanted—a life with George.”
John D’Orfini took my hand.
“And Hannah kept Hilda’s secret so she could have the life she wanted . . . with Vinni,” said my detective.
I looked at him. How much had he known and not told me? To spare me or to help me forgive?
Meta continued. “Hannah sent word to her sister through George’s cousin that she and George had left for America. They settled in Brooklyn, New York.”
I closed my eyes.
John D’Orfini reached for my hand and said, “There’s something I must show you.”
I waited.
He took out the picture of little Kaethe Haydn and laid it in front of me on the coffee table.
I put my hand over my mouth to suffocate my cries. The same chin, the eyes, the hair, the smile, stared back at me.
Meta nodded and touched the picture.
“Ah . . . poor Kaethe! So young!”
John D’Orfini placed his hand over mine. I slipped it away and reached for my purse. I knew where to find what I was looking for. I never left the house without it. I placed the picture of a smiling Vinni, slapped upon me in the limo, alongside Kaethe’s picture.
“Where did you get this?” John D’Orfini asked, lurching forward in his seat.
I shook my head. It was too late to worry about that.
The three of us stared at the resemblance in silence. The slight dip in the chin, an almost perfect circle for the shape of the face, and the full lips, so unusual for a child—they were all there, looking up at us from the table.
Tears slipped down my cheeks. What had Hilda thought when she had looked at my girl on the beach and seen her own? How distraught had she been to take what was mine?
Meta continued.
“Hilda came to me six weeks before she died. She was dying of ovarian cancer after fighting it for twelve years. She had been in remission for five years, but then it returned with a vengeance. ‘I am Hilda Haydn,’ she said, and then, of course, I knew why she had come. I recognized the last name. She had come home.”
“You haven’t told me why Hilda wanted Vinni,” I said. But I knew.
“Ya. Ya. It was only to be for a year, and then she would give the child back. She wanted to be a mother for a time, but then she grew to love the child and one year grew to two and then three and four . . .”
Meta lowered her head. “Hilda went crazy with grief over Kaethe’s death. She told me how it drove her mad. When she knew she was dying, it became clear what she had done. Before, all she could see was how her grief had grown over the years until she could no longer bear it.”
I wondered if Rudy had taken Hilda’s conscience with him when he died. Left on her own, had Hilda forgotten or simply abandoned the plan to return Vinni after a year?
Hilda wanted to be a mother, but between us there was only one child.
“The night when Vinni and I went to Hilda and Rudy’s house for dinner, she said something about how my work kept me from Vinni. I’ve often thought about why she would bring that up. Why she said that.”
Meta lowered her ga
ze. “I know nothing. I know only what Hilda told me . . . before the end. Ada—I mean Hilda—said I must call you. She made us promise. What to do? So much pain. Armen and I didn’t know what to do. So we call you as Hilda said we must.”
As Meta talked, I felt a strange kinship.
Dare I say it?
Hilda. How she must have suffered.
Insanity from grief had replaced reason. Without reason, the good in Hilda and Rudy hid but never fully disappeared.
“Vinni has a beautiful voice. She loves to sing. She loves the color blue, and she loves her blue garden. Hilda sang to her in German, and one day, after five months, I see them outside together and Hilda is helping the child plant a garden, but I see Hilda is tired, and so Armen and I, we offered to help.”
“She always talked about having a blue garden,” I said.
“Only blue,” Meta said. “The garden brought her back to life. She started to speak to Armen and me. She told us . . .” Meta looked away and lifted her clenched fist to her mouth to stifle her tears.
“What did the child tell you?” John D’Orfini said.
Meta looked up at me. “Hilda told her you had died. It was later that she made a story to tell the child. She was afraid Sophie would hate her if she told her the truth.”
John D’Orfini interrupted Meta. He took my hand and looked into my eyes.
“Vinni had no way of knowing anything other than what Hilda told her, but Hilda had to know that it was a matter of time before Vinni would start asking questions,” he said.
I looked hard at John D’Orfini and walked over to the open window. A warm breeze rustled the clean curtains.
Will I risk my child’s happiness if I take her back to New York, away from the beauty and the life she now knows?
“Do you want to see the garden?” Meta asked.
I nodded. I followed Meta down a long hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door. We walked on the grass in silence. The mountains watched as we made our way toward the blue grown from the ground.
FORTY-ONE
I LOOKED BEHIND META TO JOHN D’ORFINI. HIS FACE had relaxed since we had entered the house. Armen had handed him a tray of glasses filled with iced tea and left the garden to return to the house for biscuits.
“We’ll sit in the shade by the arbor, Miss . . . uh . . . Miss Stewart,” Meta said.
“I thought Armen left for Vinni’s school,” I said.
How I hated being called miss. It reminded me of Mr. Kosinski.
“He brings us biscuits first, and then he goes.”
What was I doing sitting in Vinni’s garden without Vinni?
John D’Orfini was unusually quiet.
Meta’s sun-spotted skin hung loose around her chin and neck. Armen brought us the biscuits. He tapped Meta on her hand and kissed her forehead before he left. To me, he said, “I bring the child to you. You must take her home.”
Home.
When Armen said the word, my heart squeaked open like the sound of a rusty hinge swinging a porch door. I felt the heat on the top of my head weighing me down as my foot’s ache spiraled all the way up my leg.
Home.
Meta spoke into the silence of the blue garden.
“The child sings like an angel. She is the star in the pageant.”
“What is the pageant?” I asked.
“It is a tradition every year at Christmas. The child began to sing two years ago, after she had been . . .” Meta stared down at the brown spots on her hands. “Quiet.”
“Did she ever speak of me?” I asked.
Meta smiled. “She told us how you sang together.” But then Meta’s expression turned inward. “You must be careful with the child. I see it in her eyes—the quiet so close again.”
Hilda had replaced me. The idea of mothering a child like her lost Kaethe attached itself like a sore. When she saw Vinni on the beach, possibilities emerged and grew sweet.
“What do you mean by quiet?” I said.
“It is only a few days since she lost Hilda.”
“She lost me five years ago.”
Meta inhaled deeply.
The wind outside changed. It was as if it blew open my body and shifted my organs until nothing felt right. Meta suggested we go inside to wait. I hadn’t seen the rest of the house. Vinni’s bedroom. I needed to smell it.
“I’d like to see Vinni’s room,” I said.
“Ya. Ya.”
We all stood as the cool wind appeared to die down. I knew I would return to the garden, but when I did, I wanted my child’s hand in mine.
I let Meta take my hand, and together we walked up to the house in silence. When we reached the back door, the phone was ringing and Meta hurried inside to pick it up. I decided to walk through the house on my own. As I turned down a hallway, I stopped short.
Two of my paintings hung on the wall.
I stepped back and stared and then walked through a narrow hallway into a formal dining room. There were the other three pieces purchased by Donald Howard for his secret client. Hilda Haydn.
When Meta hung up, she looked for me and found me staring at the paintings. She spoke in a soft voice. “You are a talent, miss,” she said. Five beats. Six beats. Silence passed between us.
“Armen will bring Sophie—Vinni—home later than expected. She is rehearsing for the school choir.
“Take me to her now,” I said. “No more waiting. She must find out I’m alive.” I felt large and rough as I stood in front of my paintings next to Meta.
“Vinni believes you are dead. Why shock her when she has already suffered so much loss? Please. Stay here. Wait.”
“What if you’re lying to me?”
“My God, no! You must believe that your child is coming home to you.” Meta’s face contorted into a wrinkled rush of sympathy, for me for having lost Vinni, but I wondered if it was also for herself and for fear that she might lose her place on the land after all these years.
“Hilda loved the girl. She was good to her.”
“Hilda was insane. She had no right to take what wasn’t hers,” I said.
“Hilda left all of this,” Meta said. She opened her arms wide. “All this property and much more is yours and the child’s and, yes, Hilda’s sister’s as well.
“Mr. Haydn invested wisely. Armen and I hope to stay on as tenant farmers. We want nothing more than to help you. We did not know the truth. You must believe this. We knew nothing.”
“All I want is my daughter.”
“Ya. Ya. When we cannot undo the past, we make it right today. It will be right again. If you wait a little more. Let Armen bring Vinni home, so she does not get frightened. You cannot go there now. No!”
Meta’s face turned red. Then white. She looked away from me.
“Once, Soph . . . Vinni did not come home directly from school. Hilda was frantic. This is a small village. Everyone takes care of the other. The child was in no danger, but Hilda paced up and down the front room until she walked in at dinnertime, explaining that she had stopped along the way to collect stones. Only then—only then—did I think something was not right. But what could we do? We have spent a simple life on this land. We own nothing. We worried we could lose everything if we asked questions.”
I closed my eyes. Everything ran through my mind at once. Rudy’s body on the beach, Evelyn’s tea table, Mother’s black Cadillac in the garage, Kay unwrapping my foot, the wailing babies in Number Eleven, and John D’Orfini standing in the hotel room in Füssen, telling me he loved me.
I needed to make the right choice.
I needed to be the mother my own couldn’t be.
Go or stay.
My own mother had chosen to leave. Or perhaps her mind had twisted into too many voices, making it impossible to hear through the noise.
“Please take me to her room,” I said. “I’ll wait there.” I was sure this was what I should do.
Stay and wait.
“Gut. Ya,” Meta said, as she reverted to the com
fort of her native German. Meta walked ahead, and I followed her.
I stepped over to the bed and pulled down the white quilt— an embroidered medallion of pinks and greens perfectly positioned in the center. I slipped under the sheets and rested my head on the pillow. Slowly and with care, I breathed in my girl’s leftover breath from where she slept. I laid my cheek against the soft cotton where her cheek had been. I caressed the smooth lining of the quilt’s silk border. I looked up at the painting on the ceiling—a circle of angels with fingertips touching—floated against a background of blue and white clouds. I pulled the sheets more tightly to my neck as I shivered inside the heat of the room.
The midday sun beat against the earth. I left the bed and opened the door to the tiny closet to the right of the window. Two pairs of denim overalls hung in front of an assortment of plaid shirts and jeans. Simple white collared shirts—at least six—cleaned and ironed, lined up one behind the other. Three pairs of leather boots filled the closet floor. I walked over to the dresser and opened the top drawer. I rifled through mismatched socks and a young girl’s first bras. The middle drawer held a small journal with a brown leather cover. I opened it and read, “Happy Birthday, Sophie. Love, Ada.”
How many times can a heart break?
But as I turned the pages, I read the words Dear Mama over and over again and a strange peace overcame me. A peace I had never experienced in the whole of my life. Vinni knew I would always be Mama. As the dates moved forward on the pages and Vinni wrote more deeply, she described what it was like to live on the farm.
Ada and Meta and Armen gave me a special gift today for Christmas. My own horse. I named her Chelsea. Ada worries when I ride, but Armen is teaching me how to be a good horsewoman.
I read page after page, until I heard a door open farther down the hallway. Sets of footsteps climbed closer into the house. A voice! I recognized the sound of Vinni’s voice.
“Ich habe noch nicht in den Garten heute und der Himmel ist eigentlich auf Wolke später am Nachmittag.”
A Matter of Chance Page 28