“Because you are,” she says simply. She removes her gloves and wraps her bare hands around her cup. “Because a nosy clerk in a post office in Newquay wanted to know if the woman whohad appeared in town so suddenly was who she claimed to be—my daughter.” Tears well in her eyes. “She said you were asking after me. I could scarcely believe it.”
I think back to the telephone conversation with Henry Gould. WhatdidI say?
She grasps my hand beneath the table, tears spilling. “When a mother believes she will never see her child again, and then someone encounters her, says she islookingfor her…”
Had I been looking for her? Looking for myself, perhaps, for understanding. Yet there’s a faint sense of home just sitting here with her, the pressure of her fingertips on mine, her melodic voice in my ears.
Then she pulls back, and my heart braces without being told to do so.
“You left. Often.” That must have been the trouble between us.
Her face crumples. “You’ve misplaced your memories, but that you keep?”
“It made an impression.”
“I used to take you with me. Do you remember that too?”
I trace the handle of my teacup. “Where did we go?”
“Oh, everywhere.” Her eyes are moist, imploring me to remember the times she was agoodmother. “We traveled together for many of my seasons, seeing everything. Meeting people, tasting food, delighting in life. After a time, you didn’t care for it, though.”
“Why not?” But my subconscious answers before she does.
“You weren’t one for change. You wanted to be home. To grow roots.”
That’s what Cecil calls it.Growing roots. Something every child wants—and should have. “But you didn’t.”
“I took you on stage with me at every opportunity. You were a wonder, with that rich voice of yours.”
“They paid you more for two voices. That’s why you took me, isn’t it?” And perhaps why I left. She’d used me.
This pains her. “I love the stage. I longed for the one I loved best to experience it with me. But even more, I wished to give you an endless taste of the world. To show you how vast, how nuanced, is the great wide world outside of Cornwall.”
She’d given meherdreams. That’s one form of love, isn’t it? Giving to the one you love what you believe they want—even if it isn’t. But…there’s an aroma of sacrifice even in that. “So then you left me behind. At Dunn Cottage.”
“But I always returned.”
She did, with a flourish of welcome and music and lovely gifts. This knowledge rolls over me—shedidlove me, in her imperfect way. She loves me still. The angst of it stretches across her face.
“You were my little nightingale,” she says with a smile, wiping moisture from her eyes.
Nightingale. The one who was afraid—I hear the old folk tune on her voice, singing me to sleep. The bird wouldn’t go alone into the valley, into the shadows. It never liked to be alone.
Then why had I cut myself off from her completely? Why did I choose to be home alone?
“Stay with me in Bath. Come attend my performance.”
I open my mouth to refuse, but then I think of Cecil and hear myself say, “Very well.” Because it will take days for the lord chancellor’s order to be entered and recorded.And because it’ll keep me from kidnapping Cecil from Ludgrove School, where he was transferred.
I follow her onto the train to cross town, full to the brim with questions I cannot articulate, answers I don’t even know how to ask for but desperately need.
I’m close. I can see a fuzzy picture.
“Now tell me, my sweet.” She places a gloved hand on my knee as the train moves through the countryside. “Tell me about your wonderful Ansel.”
Oh, how my heart squeezes. Perhaps it shall break.
This is the perfect opportunity to tell her the extent of how my mind has failed me. How AJ has failed me. I should seek her advice and comfort.
