London House, page 28
The words drifted away. I had no need to go back there anymore.
Soon settled in the rich leather banquette of a cozy corner table, we ordered. I started with escargot and tried not to laugh as Mat gingerly pulled his first snail past its plug of parsley, butter, and garlic with a tiny fork. One bite and his skepticism vanished. He brightened and dug those buttery dollops out as fast as he could snag them. He commented he couldn’t taste the snail, but loved escargot.
I grinned. “That’s because it’s only a conduit for butter, garlic, and parsley. Three of my favorite foods.”
We then moved on to cassolette de ris d’agneau for Mat and filet de boeuf, sauce Bérnaise, and frites maison for me—basically a country stew and steak and fries. Every bite worked its magic and I soon found we leaned toward each other more, smiled with greater ease, and truly laughed without holding back.
The real surprise came at dessert. Before we even ordered, a chocolate soufflé and the house tiramisu arrived without prompting.
“Your mother ordered these for you and paid the bill, with her compliments.” The host arrived aside our waiter.
Mat raised a brow in an annoying I told you so manner.
Rather than give his smug look any reply, I reached forward and snagged a bite of tiramisu. He countered with a spoon to my soufflé.
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so well.” He finally laughed, swiping my ramekin and scooping out the final bits of chocolate. “I live on a chicken I cook every Monday and a heap of salad fixings. I can stretch the whole thing out a week.”
He surveyed the room, now filled with the harmonious sounds of tinkling glass, china, and soft conversation—like an orchestra playing the first notes of a perfect night. “I couldn’t have imagined something like this.” He looked at me and tilted his head. “But you . . . the London House . . . I didn’t know that about you in college. You must go to places like this all the time.” His gentle lilt lifted his sentence to a question.
My mind shifted back to my Sunday arrival, reading letters with my mom. Something she had quoted . . . “There are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”
Mat’s tentative question was all the encouragement I needed.
“Not really.” I cracked the door open to my childhood a little wider, for him and for me. “When I was young, my brother was a teenager and into every sport imaginable, and he was a good student. Weeknights were spent following his games or his studies. After he left for college, the same fall Amelia died, there weren’t many family dinners. And now, fancy dinners out aren’t my style, nor any of my friends. We’re more of a pub burger than Neptune group.”
The high-end Boston oyster bar somehow reminded me of Le Procope. It wasn’t the decor, other than the almost matching black-and-white tiled floor, but the exquisite attention to detail, bustling vibe, and robust prices. I’d been there once, on a date, a couple years back. Now I longed to return. Mat would enjoy it. It would remind him of tonight . . .
“And Caden?” Mat’s question stopped my musings. “No special dinners here in Paris?”
My heart shifted. Mat was cracking the door open to his heart as well. We were stretching beyond the topic at hand.
I sipped my wine and, this time, I prepared to take him back in time. I shared with him the details of that spring, wandering around museums and eating picnics. I shared with him who Caden was and who I thought I’d been in his company. And as I talked on, I realized my experience was more aligned with my aunt’s than I’d accepted. Just as she had written to her sister, ideas and thoughts shared late at night about life, politics, art—along with good food and wine—had made Paris, and me in it, feel alive. It wasn’t Caden as much as it was that I had stepped outside myself and my narrow perceptions of my world and my place within it. Perhaps the coat hadn’t been borrowed after all.
I felt my face warm. “I’ve been hanging around you too much. I’m beginning to believe how I think changes who I am, and I can hang on to that brighter, even happier woman I found here.”
“You were that woman before Paris.” Mat kept his eyes trained on me. “Maybe you forgot, but I was serious when I said you hadn’t changed . . . You still drive me crazy and you’re still the woman I fell in love with.”
Thirty-Six
While we’d been inside Le Procope, Paris had transformed once more. This time from pale pinks in blue-graying skies with white stone and yellow streetlamps, to colorful restaurants, wine bars, and neon store signs brightening the black backdrop like pinpoints. Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Place du Carrousel were all lit and the Eiffel Tower shot resplendent with gold on the hour. Without talking about it, we found ourselves meandering back toward the Seine, making a broad loop, before turning toward the apartment. Cars, zipping through the streets, added a sense of modernity to the night that disappeared completely across the quiet bridges. There they slowed and the streetlamps’ golden glows invited us to stroll again and take in the moment. It was the evening’s perfect denouement.
As we crossed back over the river, I reached for Mat’s hand again, sliding mine down his wrist until our fingers interwove once more. “Mat?”
“Yes?” He stepped closer to me.
I stopped and, before I lost my nerve, I kissed him. I didn’t ask. I didn’t explain. I simply lifted up on my toes and captured his lips with my own. In the first second, I sensed his hesitation and feared I’d misjudged. I lowered myself down, my mind racing through how to explain, retrench, and recover. But as our lips parted, he stepped forward, gathered me in his arms, and drew me up closer.
“You’re not getting away that quickly,” he whispered against my lips.
Instead of replying, I looped my arms around his neck and deepened the kiss. Margaret had said it felt like tiny bubbles. She’d been right. A bubbly sensation had danced through my head and heart for days. Now the champagne had been opened and a fizzy sensation rose from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, unlike anything I’d experienced. While I’d had a series of casual boyfriends over the years, there had only been two men I deeply cared for. First Mat, then Caden. And no two men could have been more different. There had been an intensity about my relationship with Caden. It felt fraught, and only in this moment did I understand I had mistaken an edgy anxiety for passion. Mat, on the other hand, had always felt like a delicious promise forever out of reach. Except he wasn’t.
After a moment more, Mat pulled back. His eyes held such warmth I felt saddened by the time lost and the distance I’d put between us. But, I reminded myself as I sank back to earth, I wasn’t the same woman back then, despite what he claimed, and that kiss wouldn’t have been, couldn’t have been, so glorious years earlier.
Without words, he tucked me close and we walked on toward Boulevard Saint-Germain. As we rounded the abbey, Mat stopped so abruptly I stumbled in surprise.
“Caroline?” I tracked his line of sight. “Isn’t that your dad?”
It was, dressed in dark pants and a sports coat, standing outside the apartment building. He was pacing small circles on the sidewalk.
“Dad?” I dropped Mat’s hand in my rush forward. “What are you doing here?”
Without answering, my dad pulled me into his arms and engulfed me into what might have been my first hug from him in over a decade. I discovered my forehead fit perfectly in that soft spot right beneath his clavicle.
I breathed him in. Lime shaving soap. Acqua di Parma. And his favorite cinnamon mints.
He stepped back, still holding my shoulders. “I came to see you . . . Can we talk?”
“Of course,” I replied as I felt Mat step behind me. Flustered, I turned between them. “Mat Hammond, you remember my father, Jack Payne. Dad, this is Mat. You met him, but—”
Dad cut across me with both words and a handshake. “I owe you an apology, Matthew.”
“Just Mat, sir.” Mat paused mid-handshake as if trying to rewind correcting my dad. “I mean—”
“Just Mat?” Dad teased with a side peek my direction. He and Mom chided us as children when we didn’t introduce ourselves by our full names.
“Moraitis,” Mat replied. “Moraitis Papadakis Hammond. Greek mother. English father.” Mat waved his hands, clearly undone. “My brothers got Luke and Peter, and I got Moraitis, my grandfather’s name. ‘Mat’ was my idea.” Mat looked between us, eyes wide. “Sorry. That was more than you needed to know. More than anyone needed to know.”
“Not at all, Mat.” Dad laughed.
Dad teased? Dad laughed? My focus swung back to him.
“I spoke with your mom. She said this apartment has three bedrooms. Do you mind if I stay with you?”
“Not at all.”
“Please do.”
Mat and I raced over each other in nervous agreement. If Dad caught the currents, he didn’t comment. He turned away and led us through the building’s front door.
Six floors up, the elevator opened into a stunning apartment. The living room, with broad windows, black leather furniture, and massive modern art, boasted a view across the building tops and distance to the Eiffel Tower. To the left, I caught a glimpse of books in a small library. Mat gravitated that direction. To the right, I found the edge of an oven range through an open doorway. Dad headed there and soon returned with a bottle of wine in hand.
“Would either of you like a glass?”
Mat spoke first. “Not for me, sir, if you don’t mind. I’ll leave you two to talk.” He looked toward me with an encouraging smile.
I nodded to Dad, unsure what to say. While he returned to the kitchen, I dropped onto one of the living room couches and tucked my feet under me. I recognized the gesture, tucking tight into a safe ball, but I couldn’t force myself to unwind. Soon he joined me, carrying two glasses of red wine and sporting a tense expression. I tucked tighter.
“Thank you.” I reached for the glass. It was an amazingly big, dark, earthy red, most likely a Bordeaux blend, and chewy enough to count as a meal. Although I wasn’t hungry, it was exactly what I needed, rich and grounding. I shifted my attention from the wine to the window and straight upon the top of the illuminated Eiffel Tower. The whole effect—the day, the wine, the company, and the view—was surreal.
Dad still had not spoken.
I turned back to him. “What are you doing here, Dad?”
We both heard my tone. It lay between us sad, defeated, and worn on so many levels. I also had failed to banish a note of wariness. All those feelings of light and hope I tried to envision as my own in the preceding hours vanished when faced with the reality of my dad.
“You’re exhausted,” he replied.
I nodded. I was exhausted. I also felt young, hurt, and very small. In the instant he hugged me, I had realized how much I missed and still needed my dad. Breathing him in had felt like coming home. I wasn’t sure I could withstand another lecture or another walking away. I scrubbed my hand across my eyes. “It’s been an unbelievable week, but you were right, the price has been high. I fly home first thing Friday to get to work.”
“I’m glad you won’t lose your job.”
“Yes, well . . . I’ve been thinking about that.”
His lips parted. It was clear he wasn’t sure what to do with that comment, but I wasn’t ready to deal with it myself so I pressed on. “Why are you here?”
“I drove to Derbyshire.”
It was not the answer I expected.
He continued, “I was headed to the airport Monday, but—I can’t tell you why—I ended up getting a rental and heading to Crich. I think I needed to say goodbye.”
He glanced at me. Speechless, I could only stare. Jason and I had endured a year of Dad “saying goodbye,” so this detour didn’t surprise me as much as it seemed to have surprised him.
“We didn’t stay for my mother’s burial, so you didn’t go, but all the Waite side of my family are buried in Crich. Generations of them. Grandparents, great-grandparents, great-greats. There is so much history there I’ve never felt a part of or appreciated before.” He paused. “She wasn’t there.”
“Grandmother?” I sat straight.
“My aunt. No one had ever put up a gravestone for Caroline Waite. Not a fake one with her death marked at age seven, nor another as if she died when that letter was delivered in 1941. She simply wasn’t there. It was like she never existed.”
Dad leaned forward, elbows resting on knees. He set his wineglass on the table in front of him and steepled his fingers together. I could see the tips of his nails whiten with the pressure.
“I have never been so angry in my life, Caroline, and I’ve carried a lot of anger through the years. Her life mattered. I don’t care what she did. She lived. She was my aunt, my mother’s twin sister, and she had parents who loved her, and they . . . they erased her. They erased her life like it never happened. And . . . I . . . I can’t abide that. There isn’t a minute of Amelia’s life I would want to miss. I could never—never—” He stuttered to a stop and swallowed. “I could never do that . . . I wouldn’t have missed a minute of Amelia’s life.”
Dad drew in a shuddering breath and blew it out through circled lips. It wavered between us and his eyes glistened. It was the closest I’d ever seen my dad to tears. His Adam’s apple rose and sank, catching with the strain, as he thought what to say next.
“I was so angry standing there. I was furious with all of them. Then this wave of red anger like nothing I’ve ever felt turned back on me . . . It’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? Right now. I’m erasing a life.”
I couldn’t reply. Nothing had prepared me for this.
Dad nodded as if I’d asked him to go on, as if we’d had a conversation and sat in agreement. “You had the courage to ask questions and to try to understand. You came to me and I was no better than all of them. I denied her to Mat, then to you. I wanted to erase her like they did, because that’s how I was raised. Without realizing it, I toed the party line.”
He smiled, tiny and flat. “Have you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde?”
I nodded and felt the clenching in my chest ease. This was the dad I knew. I still couldn’t speak, but felt a yielding in my eyes and posture. He saw it, or at least sensed it, for he blinked in acknowledgment.
“My family was like that. We looked so perfect. All hiding a secret no one could bear, corroding us from the inside . . . until you tried to understand. Your motives were good. You were trying to protect me. But what did I do? I turned on you. I . . . I haven’t been a very good father, Caroline. In that instant on Monday, as I realized I wouldn’t miss a minute of Amelia’s life, I recognized I’ve missed a lot of yours, and I’m throwing my own away.”
He paused again.
“That sounds like a powerful visit.” It was not the most sensitive thing to say or even what I wanted to say, but it was the only thing that occurred to me.
Dad chuckled. It cracked through the tension surrounding us. “Not one I want to go through again. I once read a biography of Saint John of the Cross. I gather he went through a forty-five-year ‘dark night of the soul.’ One afternoon was enough for me.”
He reached for his glass, drank deeply, then returned his attention to me. “I’m no better than my own grandfather, I guess. Caro wrote he could only see one of them. After Amelia’s death, I could only see her, the one I’d lost. That’s how I’ve measured most things in life, by what I’ve lost. Amelia felt like one thing too many and I decided no more—look at the loss that has led to.”
“You’ve read the letters?”
“I went to see you this morning, to apologize, and to say a lot of this. Your mom said I had just missed you again. I didn’t expect her to, but she invited me in and walked me through a selection of the letters and diary entries you’d found. She even invited me back to read them all.” He smiled at something warm and private. “She also fed me a marvelous lunch . . . When did your mom learn to cook?”
I felt my first genuine smile since hugging my dad break free, thinking of Mat and his Alice Waters comment. “I think she went through your ‘dark night of the soul’ a few years ago and came out a chef.”
Dad stilled, pondering this statement, but didn’t ask anything further. Instead, he looped his hand in a small circle as if resetting our conversation back to the letters. “I never knew my mother had scarlet fever. I never knew what she was like as a kid. I only knew her after years of loss. She also had one too many, I expect.” He nodded to me. “Your mom said you remind her of a young Margaret, and maybe an older Caro. You would have done what she did.”
Dad smiled with affection—and my breath caught in my throat.
“Run off with a Nazi?” I prompted, half joking, half testing. I wasn’t sure how much he’d read, how much he believed, and where we had landed on the lie his family carried for years.
“Pursued a good cause with courage,” he countered.
I felt myself nodding. Not in agreement, but in silent recognition that we’d gotten somewhere new. I bit the corner of my lip to keep myself from getting teary. When that didn’t do the trick, I widened my eyes to dry away the pricking sting. I was someplace I never thought I’d be and someplace I never wanted to leave—with my dad.
Reality overshadowed the warm glow within a few heartbeats.
“It’s over.” I shrugged. “We found what happened to Paul Arnim, the Gruppenführer mentioned in the note. He was shot by a fellow Nazi officer on October 17, 1941. But we didn’t find Rose—that was Caro’s alias. There was nothing about her at all, even though she was in Paris that night for an SOE operation. Did Mom tell you about that?”
“She did . . . So she really was a spy?”
“A British one, yes. Perhaps one of the very first. Mat and I believe she orchestrated the note to her family because she wanted the SOE clear of any backlash for letting her work with them.”
I leaned forward. “You see, those were early days and losing someone like Lord Eriska’s daughter could have ended the whole thing. So rather than put anyone at risk, we think she scripted that note. And whatever happened to her, she also scripted that, as well as she could.”
