She walked into the living room, slinging her coat around the back of a chair. Dad followed. He’d hang her coat up later. “You’re still up.”
“How was the meeting?”
“Eh, fine. What are you up to?” She dropped down on the couch beside me. Dad kissed the top of my head and left for the kitchen to make tea.
“I think I figured it out.” I handed her the letters. “They’re signed ‘Edward,’ and mention a place called Golden Doors, which is the name of a house in Nantucket. The house’s current owner isalsonamed Edward, and he would have been twenty-two years old in 1952. O’ma would have been eighteen. She could have spent a summer on Nantucket with him.”
“OnNantucket?” Mom flipped through the letters. “She never mentioned visiting Nantucket.”
I gave her an arch look. “Shouldn’t you have known about someone who writes ‘my darling Ruth’?”
She nudged me with her shoulder. “As though daughters ever ask about their mothers’ personal lives.”
“Rude. I know about your high school boyfriend and the guy you traveled around Ecuador with after college.” I pointed at a company’s website open on my laptop. “I was thinking I’d email and see if I could get in touch with him.”
She peered at the screen. “They’re connected to Barbanel?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“It’s one of the big accounting firms.”
“Yes, the internet told me as much. But what exactly do accounting firmsdo?”
She laughed. “They do financial consulting, audits, taxes.”
“So they’re notconnectedto Barbanel, they founded it. It’s their company. The Edward I was talking about is Edward Barbanel.”
Mom’s brows shot up. “Really. Well. Explains the house on Nantucket.”
“Do you think it’s okay if I try to get in touch with him?”
She hesitated. “What for?”
“What do you mean what for? He knew O’ma when she was young. He could know all sorts of things. He could know about her family.”
“Abby... O’ma was so young when she left Germany. She barely knew anything about her family. Why would anyone else?”
“Because they were in love! And maybe she talked about them when she was younger. Maybe she wrote about her family or her hometown in a letter she sent him.”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up about discovering any family history.”
“Okay, fine. But even if I don’t learn anything—don’t you think it’s weird she went to Nantucket and never mentioned it? It’s weird she was in love with some fancy rich dude and we’ve never heard about it. And why would some rich guy steal a necklace?”
I knew the general progression of my grandmother’s life: She’d left Germany at four years old, traveling first to Paris, then to the States via a steamship. A Jewish family in Upstate New York took her in until she turned eighteen, at which point she moved to the city. She married my grandfather, another German Jew, moved back upstate, raised three children, and retired to West Palm Beach. Was widowed.Got dementia. Moved to a nursing home. Stopped recognizing her family. Died.
The only time I’d seen Mom cry was when we got the phone call about O’ma.
“What does it matter?” Mom said. “If she’d wanted us to know about this man or Nantucket, she would have told us.”
“Bull. You’re just mad shedidn’ttell you, so you’re pretending you don’t care.”
Mom looked startled, then pressed a kiss on my temple. “Thank you for your diagnosis, Dr. Schoenberg.”
“I’m right, you know. So you don’t mind if I try to talk to him?”
“Go for it.”
Over the next few days, I dived deep into Edward Barbanel’s life. He’d grown Barbanel from a successful local accounting firm, already one hundred years old in the 1950s, to a massive multinational organization, though still privately owned. According to a wedding announcement in theNew York Times,Edward had married the same year he’d sent his last letters to O’ma, writingDon’t do anything stupid. I love you.On his eightieth birthday, he handed the running of the company over to his son.
