Percy wondered now at the flaw in his logic back then. He had acted as if returning the baby to her home would somehow save her from the shadow of a tragic, violent, and traumatic event. He’d expected that she would be found by family and that it would represent a happy end to the story, at least as far as her disappearance was concerned. But his thinking had been simplistic. All events, like all objects, cast a shadow; there was no way to escape it. That was physics. That was life.
At dinner that evening, Percy had observed that Polly was shy. He knew nothing about the rest of her life, but he wondered whether her tendency to blush, the diffident way she had of speaking, the nervous habit of playing with the pendants on her necklace, were consequences of having grown up, even unwittingly, in tragedy’s shadow. What Nora Turner-Bridges had lived through, what she had done, must have left its mark. How, Percy wondered, had it changed her? What sort of mother had she been?
It was Polly’s habit with the necklace that had drawn his attention to the wooden wren. He’d recognized it at once and had instantly been spun back thirty years: the ride from Meadows, the shop in Hahndorf, the last day of his life before it had all fallen apart.
There’d been rain recently in the Hills. It must’ve churned things up. But how remarkable that Polly should have found the wren. Howsly the gods. Percy had looked for the little sculpture many times since his first trip back to the picnic site that Christmas Eve, scouring the land by the edge of the water hole, beneath the willow tree, to no avail. The wren had become a symbol for all that he’d lost, that night and afterward. He’d figured it had vanished irretrievably. It seemed that he’d been wrong in that.
Percy had bought the fairy wren for Isabel as a parting gift. He could still remember the jolt of bittersweet pleasure he’d felt when he saw it, the certainty that she would love it. She adored miniatures; the collection of her mother’s Japanese netsukes was her most prized possession. She had shown it to him once, when he was borrowing books from the library at Halcyon, back in the year before she died, when they were still politely tiptoeing around the attraction that was growing between them.
The love affair itself had been brief. A matter of weeks before they agreed that it had to end. Isabel had been distraught when she showed him the letter, which had been dropped through the mail slot on the door and bore no stamp. Percy had known at once from whom it came. He’d recognized the handwriting, and it had brought into focus the inexplicable bad mood of his second son in recent weeks.
Once Marcus knew, the situation was untenable, and the affair was ended. But love itself is not so easily defused. Incredible to think that if Percy hadn’t run into Mrs. Pigott from the post office while he was riding Blaze on the first morning of 1959, if she hadn’t asked him to do her the favor of delivering a parcel on his way home, everything might have turned out differently.
But Percy had agreed to help, and so it was he who handed the parcel to Isabel that day. “Hello!” he’d heard her call as he guided Blaze up the driveway toward Halcyon. “I’m over here.” She was standing at the top of a ladder, holding a string of bunting, surrounded by foliage. She looked like Titania, Queen of the Fairies. “Is that for me?” she said.
Spellbound, he held the parcel out toward her and gave a nod.
“Do you think you could do me a terrific favor?” she asked with a laugh—that laugh! “I can’t let go of this string—it’s been the devil to get it this far—but I’m dying to open that package. Would you come and hold this for me?”
He did as she asked, climbing up one side of the ladder to take the string from her, their hands brushing as she let go. He watched as she tore away the wrapping to reveal brand-new books, hot off the press:Breakfast at Tiffany’s,Our Man in Havana,The Darling Buds of May.
They got to talking. Reading shapes a person. The landscape of books is more real, in some ways, than the one outside the window. It isn’t experienced at a remove; it is internal, vital. A young boy laid up in bed for a year because his legs refuse to work and a young girl on the other side of the globe, sent to boarding school because her parents had both died, had led completely different lives—and yet, through a mutual love of reading, they had inhabited the same world.
It was a bridge he’d never been able to cross with Meg. It hadn’t mattered before. It didn’t matter now. He and Meg had built a life together, children and a business in common, countless small daily joys and terrors. But meeting Isabel and finding that she, too, knew the places and people of his imagination, was powerful. Intoxicating. To feel known was a revelation. To have to give it up was like being expelled from home.
Isabel had told him, just before he left for Meadows, that she’d decided to go back to England. “What future is there for me here if you’re not part of it?”
They’d been sitting side by side on the stone bench near Mr. Wentworth’s pond. He’d come up on the pretense of a grocery delivery and she’d slipped around the rear of the house to meet him as he made his way back down the driveway. A few final, precious, snatched moments. He’d wanted to be able to offer her more. In another life, with a different set of circumstances and values, he might have been able to do so.
She’d been to see a solicitor, she said, who was arranging passports. They were going to leave in the new year. She hadn’t told her husband. “He would only find a way to stop us. He’s a very determined man.”
She hadn’t told her children, either. “Matilda will be the difficult one, and John. And Evie.” She’d sighed. “None of them will be happy. Except, of course, little Thea. She’s always happy. She’s a delightful little person. She takes after her father.”
Percy’s phone was ringing somewhere nearby, and it took him a moment to find it in his coat pocket. Kurt’s name appeared on the screen. Percy checked the time and saw that it was half past ten. “Hey, mate,” he said when he answered.
“Hey, Dad. Not too late, I hope?”
“Just counting the stars.”
“All still there?”
“So far, so good.”
There was a pause then, and Percy realized that his son had called with no purpose other than to check on him. He’d had more of these telephone calls in recent years. It was as if Kurt and Sally believed that he had lost the ability to take care of himself now that Meg was gone. Next would come a simple, random inquiry. Something like:
“Didn’t leave my hat down there, did I? Black cap with the shop logo on the front?”
“Haven’t seen it, but I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Right-o, thanks.” Another pause, and then, “Nice dinner tonight.”
“Very nice.”
“I think Polly had a good time.”
“She seemed to enjoy herself.”
“Such a strange thing, meeting her there like that.”
