“I guess.”
“Not ‘I guess.’ I mean it. Moping doesn’t make you stupid. You got hurt. You’re allowed to feel feelings.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Ah.” She crunched on her cone. “There you’re out of luck.”
I had my last shift at the Prose Garden the next day. Liz baked me a miniature cake, and Maggie gave me earrings of dangling stacked books. “Come back next summer,” Maggie invited. “We’ll let you choose one of the book-club books.”
I launched myself at her, and after a surprised moment, she hugged me back. “Thank you,” I told her, then hugged Liz, too. “You guys have been amazing.”
I expected that to be the most memorable part of the day, but an hour later, Edward Barbanel showed up in the bookstore’s doorway, dressed in jeans, a sweater, and a windbreaker, as though it wasn’t eighty degrees outside. Seeing him outside his home jarred me; he looked much frailer than when seated behind his massive desk or at the head of the table, surrounded by the home and family he’d built over decades.
Great.What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly be rude to a ninety-year-old man when I wasn’t fueled by rage. “Hello, Mr. Barbanel.”
“Abigail.” He smiled at me, the expression unexpected on his weathered face. “Do you have a moment to talk?”
Did I have a moment to talk with my ex-boyfriend’s grandfather who’d stolen my grandmother’s necklace? “I’m working right now...”
“It’ll only take a minute. Where can we sit?”
Oy.“In the armchairs. Let me tell my boss I’m taking a break.” I hesitated, hostess instincts kicking in. “Would you like anything from the café?”
“An Earl Grey would be perfect, my dear.”
Blargh, old men calling memy dear. I gave him a pained smile.
When I returned, I placed his tea on the table beside him and settled into the opposing armchair, a green juice in hand.
He opened his eyes. “I wanted to tell you about the necklace.”
Did he, now. After avoiding the topic for months. I sipped my juice. “Okay.”
It took him a moment to start. “The necklace was Ruth’s, it’s true.”
I did not sayNo shit, Sherlock,for which I should have been commended.
“It was one of the few things she arrived with—the clothes on her back, a small case, and the necklace. She hid the necklace itself in the hem of her dress before she came to New York. She planned to sell it after the war, to bring her parents to America.”
I swallowed over a sudden lump.
His eyes were kind. “Yes. After the news, she wore it everywhere. She bought her whole wardrobe to set off the necklace—she only dressed in reds and blacks for a year.” He paused. “We decided to get married.”
My eyes widened. I wanted, instinctively, for Noah to be here—Noah, who I was so mad at. Yet he’d been part of uncovering this story from the beginning. “What happened?”
“My mother.” He sighed. “And before her, the collapse of the family fortune. Ruth knew, of course. She said we should sell the necklace and use the money to help the company survive. To help us survive. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something.”
He drew something from his pocket and passed it over to me. “Then she sent me this.”
I am going to try to explain,the letter started, and for the first time, I read one of O’ma’s letters, as she tried to set Edward Barbanel up for disagreement. She loved him, she said. She loved him, but romantic love was only one kind of love, and she prized other types equally as high.
Yesterday, your mother showed up at my apartment. I haven’t seen her in ages, and I threw myself into her arms right away and started crying. And she hugged me back, and Ned, it was—I don’t even know how to explain it. I feel stupid, since she’s your mother,and obviously you’ve always had her. But I barely see her now that I’ve moved, and I’ve missed her, and here she was.
We went inside and I wanted to die from embarrassment because the room I rent from Mrs. Schwartz was so cramped and small and messy, and I’d left clothes everywhere and didn’t even have tea to offer her.
But it didn’t matter and we talked for hours, and I felt like a sunflower reaching toward her, soaking in her rays. And then she said, “You know you can’t marry Edward.”
And I said we were in love.
