The Last Night in London by Karen White (reading list .TXT) 📕

I shouldn’t have been having this conversation with a complete stranger, but I had to know. “You mean he talked about me?”

“Yes. Quite a bit, actually. He talked about how you two didn’t suit, and how you had appalling taste in men and a sense of humor that bordered on childish. I’ll have you know that I had to do a lot of distracting to get him to stop talking about you. It was very frustrating.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, eager now to get her off the phone. “I’ll tell him you called, but send a text just in case. . . .”

“It’s better I don’t communicate with him, or I might start crying again. Could you please just let him know that I still had the key to his house in Cadogan Gardens, so I put it through the post slot in the door?”

“I’ll tell him.”

I was about to end the call when she said, “Has he mentioned me?”

I paused a moment before answering, deciding that the blunt truth was what she needed. “No, Imogen. He hasn’t.”

Her voice with that odd accent seemed resigned. “I suppose I already knew it, deep down. Sometimes we just need to have someone else say an unpleasant truth out loud for us to believe it, don’t we?”

“Probably.”

“Thank you, Madison. Good-bye, then.” She’d ended the call before I’d had the chance to say good-bye.

I stared at the phone in my hand, her words ringing in my ears. Sometimes we just need to have someone else say an unpleasant truth out loud for us to believe it. The words unsettled me, and I found myself staring out the front window for a long time, watching as morning bloomed around the buildings across the road.

Eventually, I fished out my own phone again and called Aunt Cassie. She picked up on the second ring.

“Maddie, sweetie. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah—it’s all good.”

“Can I call you back? I’m about to start a conference call.”

“No need. Just wanted to hear your voice. And to tell you to go ahead and make that appointment with Dr. Grey for the week after the wedding. Yes, it can wait that long—it’s just more tests. Nothing urgent. I’ve got some projects coming up before then, and I don’t want to be distracted.”

“Now, Maddie, are you sure you want to wait . . . ?”

“I’m sure. Just make the appointment, please, and we’ll go from there. No sense borrowing tomorrow’s troubles for today, right?”

I heard the smile in my aunt’s voice. “Your mama used to say that all the time.”

“I know.”

We said our good-byes, and when I looked up, I saw Arabella in the doorway. “Everything all right?”

I nodded, avoiding her eyes. “Everything’s fine.”

She walked into the room, not looking entirely convinced. “I had a bit of time between meetings and I was curious about your two a.m. e-mail. You said you’d found something interesting?”

I stood and led her toward the corner where a stack of hatboxes waited. “These belonged to Sophia. I was hoping that even if we can’t find anything about Eva, there’d be something about Graham, right? Sophia and Graham were siblings, so it makes sense. And if we find one, we should find the other.”

“One could hope.” The clothes racks had spilled over into the dining room, and Arabella stroked the sleeve of a fur coat, its nap flattened by years in storage. “Look at this beauty. Precious has a few pieces of Chanel from after the war. You know I’d love to showcase them in the exhibition, too, but she’s not keen on talking about her time in France.”

“I did ask her why she went. I thought maybe it’d be a gateway to my questions about the Resistance, her experiences modeling in an occupied Paris, and all that.”

“What did she say?”

I considered not answering. When Arabella held her ground and didn’t look away, I said, “According to her, she went for the same reason I left Georgia. To escape her ghosts. She’s wrong about me, of course. I left to pursue my education.”

Arabella dropped the sleeve to face me. “Why do you think she came back after all that time—and to London, not Memphis?”

I shrugged, uncomfortable with my friend’s scrutiny. “Why indeed? Maybe her ghosts found somebody else to haunt.”

“Perhaps. I’m curious what makes a person leave their home for so long, and then what it is that eventually brings them back.”

Eager to change the topic, I grabbed Arabella’s arm. “Come on,” I said, leading her to the hatboxes. “This is what I found.”

I lifted the top box and moved it to a clear spot on the dining table. “I was assuming these all had hats in them, which is why I didn’t go through them right away. But I was very excited to find pictures instead. Early nineteen forties—don’t you think?”

The box was half-filled with black-and-white photographs. I recognized the bright blond hair in the images on the top layer and wondered if Precious knew these existed.

“Wow,” Arabella said, lifting the top photo. It showed Precious walking down an aisle surrounded by chairs filled with well-dressed women and a few men. She wore a long gown in a shiny material. A matching stole was draped around her creamy shoulders, her face soft and open, wearing an easy smile. Of all the expressions I’d seen on Precious so far, I’d yet to see that particular one.

I did a mental calculation and figured she’d have been in her late teens or early twenties. Maybe that was the look most young women wore before time and life etched themselves on their innocent faces.

“I love this one,” Arabella said, reaching in to pull out a photograph of Precious sitting on what appeared to be a park bench. Her hat was in her lap, her head turned toward the right. It looked as if she was laughing with someone just out of the picture frame.

“It’s one of the very few that hasn’t been cut.” I reached inside the box again and retrieved three more photos, each one with a clean