Why didn’t Neville tell me I had grandparents?
Granny said she had to do the same thing as me: not ponder too hard things she could only guess about. She told me my grandfather and Neville didn’t see eye to eye on anything. Gramps wanted Neville to go to Oxford and get a proper education, settle down, and have a respectable career. Neville didn’t want any of that. He wanted to be in theater. So maybe he didn’t tell them he had a daughter because he knew he hadn’t become a father in the proper way, and he figured that would matter to Gramps.
I think Neville might have also wanted to keep me from his parents because he was afraid if I was around them, I would grow to belikethem—unimpressed with who he was. I didn’t come to this conclusion until I was much older. Because even though Granny told me not to ponder it, I did.
I pondered a lot of things.
You’re probably wondering how I came to be with Granny.
First, you need to know that Neville was in a horrific car accident in Dublin. That’s where he was, Emmy. Not India. He was living with a woman who owned a little theater. He was starting to direct plays and skits, and he was out one night after a performance that he had starred in and directed. He’d had too much to drink and he crashed the car he was driving into another car. The crash didn’t kill him, but he was so badly hurt and he barely had any money for the hospital. No surprise there, right? The woman he was living with was afraid he would die if he didn’t get the medical care he needed, so she looked up his parents and rang them. Gramps and Granny came out to see if they could transfer him to a hospital in Oxford. But his injuries were too severe. Right before he died, Neville told his parents about me. Told them where I lived and what Mum’s name was. Granny said it was as if he knew he was dying and he wanted to give them something precious and beautiful in place of all the heartache.
And that’s just what he did,Granny said.
She told me all of this before I was talking again, probably sometime in the second year we were in Connecticut. I remember I had already had my eighth birthday. I still didn’t know about Mum. And I didn’t know where you were. I’ve never known where you were.
It hurt to hear Neville had died long before, and worse still to be told a few weeks later that Mum was also dead, and had been dead for months and months. Both times I felt myself folding in like I was spinning a cocoon.
Granny knew what happened to Mum because Gramps discovered it and told her. Granny never really had Mum’s permission to take me to America, but it wasn’t like she could wait around to get it with the Germans bombing London every five minutes and Mum nowhere in sight. But I guess Gramps hadbeen insisting all along that theyhadto find out where Mum had disappeared to. Gramps didn’t feel right about Granny whisking me off without Mum’s permission, even though I was now far from the war. Granny finally gave in and told him to see what he could find, though I know now that she was terribly afraid Mum was in turn looking for me and would want me back. Gramps hired someone to look for Mum and that person found out Mum had died in the bombings. Her name was on a list.
When Granny finally told me Mum was in heaven, I said three words. The first in who knows how long.
What about Emmy?
And Granny said,Who is Emmy?
My sister,I said.
A sister? Was she Neville’s daughter, too?Granny asked, and she looked like she was about to have a heart attack thinking Neville had two little girls in London and she had rescued only one of them.
I shook my head.
From another daddy?Granny asked.
And I nodded.
I don’t know where she is,Granny said.But I can try to find her. Would you like me to?
I was done with words for another few years. I just nodded my head.
But Granny never did find you. Sometimes I wonder how hard she looked. And I know it wasn’t easy during the war to find out where someone was.
And then sometimes I wonder if she did find out and she just couldn’t tell me.
Even now, when I could ask her, should ask her, I can’t.
I have done my own searching. I’ve looked in every telephone directory I can find for an Emmeline Downtree. In my braver moments I’ve checked cemeteries and fatality reportsfrom the war. I’ve even checked every bridal magazine, every design house, every wedding dress shop in London, and it’s because I can’t find you in that little universe that I fear you must be dead.
If I could have one wish, it would be that I hadn’t switched out the brides box with my fairy tale book that night we left Aunt Charlotte’s.
I would, Emmy. Even if it meant it was the only wish I could have.
I’ve looked for your brides everywhere. Every time I see a woman in a wedding dress, I look to see if she is wearing one of your gowns.
But how could she?
You don’t have any of your designs.
I took them from you.
