“She ran away from the war,” Candice breathed.
“Was she Jewish?” Henry asked.
There was no mention of her religion on the passport.
“Maybe she pretended to be something else,” Lindsey suggested, although it was impossible to know.
They were stumped again. At this point, the librarian had taken an interest in their story, and although her shift had already ended, she remained in the basement, searching through files. Candice checked her phone to see that they’d been down here for more than three hours. Already, Sarah had written that she, Peter, and Nathan had returned to the city. Candice wrote back that she loved them. “Glad you’re safe.”
Suddenly, the librarian snapped her fingers. “Over the years, when prominent people from the Vineyard died, diaries and journals and old letters were donated to the library for us to go through. It was up to us to put together a history of the Vineyard, you know? Not everything was important, not to the island. But we kept just about everything. An intern a few years ago categorized everything, saying who the letters were to and who they were from. Maybe, if your Greta Vanberg wrote any letters to anyone on the Vineyard, you can get a better feel for who she was.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. It was also their last hope.
The librarian led them to a computer to show them the system the intern had put together. An easy search led them to more than forty letters written to and from Greta Vanberg. Most of the letters were correspondence between Greta and a womannamed Rita Taylor. From a cursory glance, it seemed to Candice that Rita and Greta had been the best of friends.
“I can email these letters to you,” the librarian suggested. “You can peruse them at your leisure.”
“And outside of this basement,” Henry said.
“We need to get out of here,” the librarian agreed. “We're going to get swallowed up by the past.” She let out a cackle, then typed out Candice’s email and sent Greta’s correspondence.
Candice, Lindsey, and Henry walked wordlessly out of the library and wound their way through downtown. Nobody knew what to do with themselves. But it was a gorgeous evening, with the sunset casting its orange light across the beautiful Victorian homes and along the cobblestoned streets. Eventually, Henry steered them onto a beautiful veranda, where the three of them ordered a glass of wine. Henry let out an ominous sigh. “World War II,” he said finally.
“It’s heavy,” Lindsey agreed.
“Let’s get into it,” Henry said.
Candice burned with excitement and fear about what they were set to encounter. Her questions were numerous. Who was Greta Vanberg? And if Greta wasn’t their grandmother, why had Greta come into Stella’s life? Why did Stella have her last name?
And who were the McGees?
“All right,” Candice said, opening the file filled with old letters on her phone. “Who wants to read the first one?”
18
Volunteering for the first reading, Lindsey took Candice’s phone, cleared her throat, and said, “This first one is from the late forties. 1948, to be precise.”
“That would have been two years after Greta bought the Harbor House,” Henry said, fidgeting with his glass of wine.
“Good memory,” Candice said, smiling at her little brother. She’d never imagined that Lindsey and Henry would help her out with this so much, nor that they would get so invested.
Lindsey began to read. “My darling Rita, I want to thank you again for the invitation to the Fourth of July party. After two years on Martha’s Vineyard, I have so few friends that I’ve begun to wonder if I’m too strange to build a life for myself. I apologize if that’s too forward. Being from Germany, we were taught always to tell the truth, no matter what. You asked me at the party what my husband might have thought of Martha’s Vineyard if he were still alive, and I’ve thought about that a great deal. I really loved that question. Asking it brought Hans back alive again, if only for a little while. To answer you, I’d like to say that Hans would have loved Martha’s Vineyard. He would have loved sailing and hiking. He would have loved the food and thewhite beaches. He would have thought the house was far too big. Although he came from money, he was never keen on having too much space. He said that having space meant you simply accumulated more things. Probably, he was right.
“When I first came to the United States, I thought Hans would join me shortly afterward. But he was forced to fight in the war, as you know. That wretched war, which he didn’t even believe in. He didn’t survive the year. That was 1942, six years ago! I can’t believe I’ve been a widow for so long. I apologize for the rambling. I speak to people so little. I suppose I feel like I need to remember I exist, somehow. In any case, I would love to have you over for dinner soon. One thing my mother instilled in me is a love of cooking. Sincerely, Greta Vanberg.”
Lindsey’s eyes widened. She set the phone down and shivered. “I feel like I just walked through the past,” she said.
“Is this too invasive?” Henry asked.
Lindsey and Candice considered this quietly.
“If it leads us to Stella, I don’t care,” Candice said finally.
“And isn’t it better to know about Greta?” Lindsey asked. “Isn’t it better to know that she existed, that she loved and lost her husband Hans, that she came to this island and felt very lonely before she met Rita? Isn’t it better to keep the past alive, like Greta said?”
Henry nodded and folded his hands. “Keep going.”
They did. Candice read the next letter, which showed that Greta and Rita were becoming fast friends. In many of the letters after that, Greta wrote about how desperately she wanted to get married again, if only so she could have a child. She desperately wanted a family and wanted to know what it was like to raise a baby. But all of her dating efforts were fruitless. “I don’t know how to please these American men,” Greta wrote in the early fifties. “I don’t know what to talk about or what to look like. Ifeel my looks fading, anyway. Maybe I need to make peace with being alone.” Rita urged her to keep trying, but it was hopeless.
