Emmy went back into the yellow room and swept and dusted.
The room was clean now, and ready for its newoccupants. There was only one thing left to do. She propped the broom up against the wall and then moved the little table away from the wall, revealing the crawl space door. Emmy knelt before it and saw that it was slightly ajar, further proof that Julia had shoved the box inside in a desperate hurry. Emmy pulled the door open and its hinges squeaked a faint protest. She leaned forward on her knees and stuck her head inside, expecting to see the box lying there at an angle after being hastily shoved in.
It wasn’t there.
She dropped to her elbows and crawled halfway inside, letting her eyes adjust to the shadowed light as she felt around. She touched dust-covered piles of books, the frayed top of an embroidered step stool, a hobbyhorse, old shoes, and their button hook.
But no box.
No box.
Emmy withdrew from the darkness and sat back on her bent knees, unable to fathom where else Julia could have hidden it.
A queer ache pulsed inside her at the cruelty of not being able to find the box, but the ache was quickly and surprisingly replaced with relief. She would not have to be the one to destroy the sketches after all. They were gone and it did not matter how. Somehow, the brides had been taken as atonement for her offenses.
She only had to offer the rest of what Emmy had once been.
Emmy had been given what every penitent thief wants more than anything: a merciful way to compensate for what she stole.
She turned her hands over in her lap, empty.
And outside, a light snow began to fall.
Twenty-eight
HUGHand Philip Goodsell, brothers ages six and eight, arrived on December 6. Emmy had not asked Charlotte to bring home boys, but as soon as she came into the house with them, Emmy was overwhelmed with gratitude that Charlotte had not brought home two sisters.
They were shy at first, having suffered a distressing period of homelessness after their flat near Horse Guards was bombed. Their parents had managed to find a place to live near Edgeware with a distant relative, but there wasn’t room for the boys, nor, after so close a call, was their father willing to give in any longer to their mother’s pleas that they stay together.
The boys took to Emmy like glue once she told them she had also lost her home in the bombings. After they managed to extract from Emmy that she had lost her mother as well, they took it upon themselves to findways to cheer her. They made pictures for her to hang on her wall, and fought over who got to play cards with her and who got to hang the washing with her. Charlotte told Emmy this was evidence of how much they missed their own mother.
The boys’ devotion at first surprised Emmy, but it soon became a soothing balm. She felt scraped and raw after her cleansing experience in the yellow room, as though she were knit together solely of the pink, fragile skin that was revealed when a sunburn sloughed off. Hugh’s and Philip’s affections lessened the sting of that newness.
Rose was jealous of the boys’ attentions toward Emmy; another reason for her to scowl incessantly at Emmy. Rose knew enough to understand that Emmy was somehow an extension of the girl who had been at Thistle House before, and occasionally she would ask Emmy, “Where’s the other one?” meaning Julia.
On several occasions Rose flat-out said to Emmy, as if it had suddenly dawned on her, that Emmy’s name wasn’t Isabel.
Once when she did this—in front of the boys, no less—Emmy leaned in toward Rose and told her she had a secret. Emmy had discovered that Rose loved secrets. She loved the word “secrets.” Emmy told her she wanted to be called Isabel because it was her favorite name. And that she would call Rose by her favorite name if she would tell Emmy what it was. Rose’s eyes glittered with the heady notion of being called by a name she loved far more than her own.
She leaned toward Emmy in return. “Ophelia,” she murmured.
Emmy told her that was a beautiful name and that she would call her that.
Rose’s reticence toward Emmy began to wane afterthat. This was a good thing because since Emmy never wanted to go to the village, Charlotte went—most often with the boys in tow—and that meant Emmy stayed at Thistle House with Rose. Rose slowly began to prefer Emmy’s company to Charlotte’s, an oddity that Charlotte seemed to wish to find endearing and not a bit hurtful. She had cared for Rose for two decades, yet here was Emmy stealing away Rose’s affections after only a few weeks. When Emmy caught Charlotte looking injured at Rose’s continued deference to Emmy, she apologized for it, and Charlotte just said, “Don’t mind me.”
Rose seemed to think she and Emmy had a treasure trove of secrets between them now, when in reality they had just the one. And even that wasn’t a secret, since everyone heard Emmy call her Ophelia. But that one secret seemed like a thousand to Rose. And it made her happy.
Between caring for Rose when Charlotte was away from the house, minding the boys, and getting the house ready for the holidays, Emmy’s life seemed full of purpose. They prepared for Christmas—the five of them—by agreeing that they would only give one another presents they had made themselves. Emmy had long since put away the pieces of Charlotte’s wedding dress and had no desire to trifle with her bargain with God by sewing anything for anyone, so she used the money that Mac had given her and bought watercolor paints and canvases at an art store in Moreton. Emmy had never painted before, but she had found creative release and joy in sketching, so wouldn’t it stand to reason that she could find the same in painting?
At night, after the boys were in bed, Emmy would set up a makeshift easel in the laundry room by the privy, the only place where she had any privacy, and experiment with brushes, shades, and strokes. She paintedwhat she saw in the laundry room, which, that first night, was Charlotte’s umbrella, the very same one Julia had dreamed of owning one day. Over the course of the next few nights, a second painting took shape: a flaxen-haired nymph of a girl holding a red-and-white polka-dot umbrella with a curly licorice black handle, and walking in the rain down a flower-flecked path. It would be the first of many Umbrella Girls, though Emmy did not paint another for six years. That first one Emmy gave to Charlotte for their Christmas together at Thistle House. For Rose, she painted a trellis of roses, and for the boys, a horse for Hugh, and a sailboat for Philip.
She also helped the boys make gifts for their parents, and for Charlotte and Rose. They made calendars constructed from old greeting cards that the woman across the lane—the only one of the neighbors who didn’t crinkle an eyebrow when she called Emmy “Isabel”—was going to throw out and instead gave to Emmy for the boys.
During these weeks, Mac rang up from London several times, to say hello and give Emmy an update on his continued search for Julia. Emmy knew he would be spending Christmas in the hotel, so with Charlotte’s permission, Emmy invited him for supper. He rode the train with Hugh and Philip’s parents, who had also been invited.
As they all sat around the dining table Christmas Day with one of Charlotte’s fatter and recently retired laying hens serving as their Christmas goose, Emmy was astonished at how normal and wonderful the scene was. Even Philip and Hugh bickering over a chicken leg seemed perfectly sublime.
After dinner and before their train ride back to London, Mac asked to take a walk with Emmy. They bundled up against the chill and headed outside.
