Kate had worked in a small medical clinic as the head nurse until she retired. She’d lived a mostly quiet life with a lovely group of friends who rotated dinners at one another’s houses every couple of weeks, and evenings and weekends were spent with Willa and her aunt and uncle until they passed when both were well into their eighties. She was by Willa’s side when Selene was born, was a collector of seaside paintings by local artists, helped in her community, and loved to work in her garden, a space filled with flowers in every color.
“She was magnificent,” Selene had said as she sat on the couch in my office that day that seemed so long ago now, but was only the month before. “Happy, peaceful, knowledgeable, funny, and beautiful.”
“She was stunning,” I’d said, smiling as Lizzie looked to me, curious about this woman she’d never heard of.
Kate had passed peacefully in her sleep eight months before Selene showed up on my front porch asking if I’d ever known a woman called Gisela. She’d always been honest with both her daughter and her granddaughter about what had happened in her life, and why she’d made the choices she’d made. But while Willa had worried looking for her father might alter their life in a way that was hurtful, Selene had always been curious about me. And so, eight months after Kate had passed, she’d come looking.
“I knew it was you the moment you came to the door,” Selene had said, reaching for her purse a last time. “She always said this was her most prized possession.”
She’d pulled something out and handed it to me. As my fingertips touched the image, my heart began to race. We’d taken one photo together and I’d given it to her. I hadn’t seen it since the day I left her in England. And now here it was in my hands.
“Some months after the war ended,” Selene said, “a bunch of boxes arrived at the apartment in Manhattan. Through their network, Aunt Victoria and Uncle Frank had been able to salvage some of the Holländer estate. Including a few of the belongings Kate had left behind.”
I’d stared down at the couple in the photo, choking back a sob. It was the day I’d asked her to marry me. I’d borrowed a camera and remembered Kate laughing as I set the stand precariously in the field our tree grew in, watching it fall over twice before I got it to balance and then ran to stand beside her, pulling her close, her hair brushing against my cheek, her body rising and falling against mine.
“Forevermore,” I’d whispered then before the camera flashed.
“Forevermore,” I’d whispered again as I stared down at the photo.
We pulled up to a small two-story house the color of the fading sun, shutters on every window, a small yard filled with ornamental weeping trees and flowering shrubs in front.
“This was Kate’s home,” Selene said. “She was so proud of being able to afford it on her own. Loved puttering around fixing little things, decorating... Maman moved in after she passed as neither of us could imagine letting it go to anyone else. We had too many wonderful memories here.”
She turned off the car and got out, Lizzie and Emma behind her. But I was slower. My heart beating hard in my chest.
I’d never known I had another daughter in the world, and I was afraid. Would she hate me for having another family? Would we like one another? Would she and Lizzie get along? What if this was it? Would we have this one meeting and then never see one another again?
“William?” Selene said.
“Yes?” I wiped my damp palms on my slacks.
She pointed to a little arched gate. “Through there.”
I glanced at Lizzie, then Emma.
“You’ve got this, Old Man,” Emma said, and I grinned, took a breath, and nodded, turning toward the gate. They didn’t follow.
As I pushed through, a little bell rang, announcing my arrival. The garden at the back of the house was somehow lusher than the front with layers upon layers of flowers and shrubs. It reminded me of something out of one of Olivia’s books.
I followed a stone path as it curved gently through the grass toward a patio with a table and chairs and a bright turquoise umbrella, a slender woman with light brown hair kissed by the sun sitting beneath it.
She stood, the skirt of her pale-yellow sundress billowing gently in the breeze, a hesitant smile on her face. My face. My eyes. She was the spitting image of me. There was no doubt this was my child. Mine and Kate’s.
“Willa,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion.
“Bonjour, Papa.”
48
Nice, France
1950
“Ice cream?”Willa asked, staring at her cone, a drip making its way down the back of her pudgy little hand. She was always sticky. Always smiling, her pale blue eyes reminding me of another time, another place, another human I’d loved almost as much.
“Ice cream,” I repeated, nodding at her pronunciation.
She spoke mostly French, something that happened when you lived in France, attended a French school, and had little French playmates. I did too these days, after struggling our first couple of years in the country. I was teaching her other languages too though. The language of my adopted home, and sometimes the words of the country I was born into as well. But not as often.
