Yes, but what about your hurt, Julia?she said.This thing you did hurt you, too. You believe you are undeserving of happiness because you robbed Emmy of hers.
What I am supposed to do if I find it?I asked.I can’t give the brides box back to Emmy.
She answered with this:What would you like to do with it?
This is what is keeping me up tonight, Emmy.
What would I do with your sketches if I could have them again?
Simon told me at dinner tonight that he will help me if I decide to go looking for Aunt Charlotte’s house. He has a car. We can use our Saturdays to drive out to Gloucestershire and poke about, which is surely the least effective way to look for it. But the evacuation records from my school were all lost to a demonic V-1. Simon said if I want to do this, we could get a map of Gloucestershire from work and circle all the smaller cities that have train stations. We could check with the local officials of those towns to see if anyone knows of two sisters named Charlotte and Rose who took in evacuees from London at the start of the war.
Simon asked me if I would know the house if I saw it.
I told him I wasn’t sure.
Then he asked me if I truly wanted to try to find it.Because you don’t have to do this, you know,he said.
I could not answer him.
And now as I sit here trying hard not to count raindrops on the window, I am not sure if I want to try.
I think I’m sure that I want to find the brides box.
I’m just not sure that I want to try.
It’s the trying that scares me. I’m afraid this quest will be like the search to find the flat and the bridal shop.
And you.
I failed in all of those.
But this I do know, Emmy. If I could find the brides box, I would do for you what you wanted all along.
If I can find your sketches, I will make the dream you had come true.
Julia
July 2, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I have decided to look for Aunt Charlotte’s house. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe it might actually be possible to find, so I can’t imagine not trying. I asked Dr. Diamant what was the worst thing that could happen to me if I try to find the house and can’t.
She returned the question to me. What did I think the worst thing would be?
I guess I would be no better or worse than I am now.
She said if that was an accurate gauge of how I’d feel, she thought I should give it a go.
So Simon and I got a map of Gloucestershire and spread it out on the lunch table at work. I remember that when you and I got off the train the day we left London, we walked outside and I saw that we weren’t in a major city. It was more like a country town. The streets were not full of taxis and buses or tall buildings. I remember there being mums on the sidewalks with prams and a dead bird that you poked with your toe so that we could walk past it. Simon crossed off the larger cities like Gloucester, Cirencester, Cheltenham, and Swindon. We drew circles around all the towns that would have had a train station in 1940. So many of the railway stations have closed since the war; dozens in Gloucestershire alone, Emmy. People drive their own cars now.
Anyway, as we were studying the map, I saw the word “Cotswolds” written in block letters, which is the name of one of Gloucestershire’s districts, and I had another prickling feeling. I pulled the map closer to me and whispered that word out loud. The second I did, I saw us back in Aunt Charlotte’s car when she told us the golden-colored stone we were seeing everywhere was Cotswold stone.
The Cotswolds, Emmy. I am right, aren’t I?
I turned to Simon and told him you and I were somewhere in the Cotswolds.
Simon started naming towns. Adelstrop, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Camden, Moreton-in-Marsh, Stow-on-the-Wold. Fairford. Blockley. Naunton. The Slaughters. Oddington. Tewkesbury.
