Page 126 of The Treasure House

She took me through to the back room, which was an open-plan extension. It had plate glass windows facing a snowy garden lit by floodlights. Right in the middle of the garden was a little fir tree, decked out in cobwebs of Christmas lights. There was a bookshelf across the entire back wall of the room; it held as many photographs as there were books.

“Let’s get you a cup of something hot,” Marly said. She pushed me down into a buttery leather couch. The copy of Forever Amber I’d found in the house sat on the table like a great fat brick, the postcards and letters wedged between the pages. I’d given it to Jake to pass on to her. I wondered if maybe that was the source of her new warmth to me as I picked up the book. The Paris postcard was poking out, the tip of the Eiffel Tower visible above the pages of the book.

“Where on earth did you find those old things?” she asked me as she made me a cup of hot chocolate. “I haven’t seen them for years.”

I told her. I felt awkward perched on her couch, and the whole evening felt surreal.

Marly snorted. “My daughter told me she couldn’t find those boxes anywhere. I bet she didn’t even look.”

“To be fair, it was hard to look, given the state of the place,” I said weakly.

Marly reached for the book and fished out the postcards and letters. “Did you read them?” she asked me.

I nodded, shamefaced. “Sorry.”

She waved my apology away. “I would have read them too.” Her eyes twinkled. “Do you want to see a picture of him?”

“Who? Freddie?”

“Who else?” She rose and glided over to the bookshelf and fetched a silver framed photograph. “Sylvie always said he looked like Montgomery Clift.” Marly shot me a sly look. “I bet you don’t even know who Montgomery Clift is.”

“He was in From Here to Eternity,” I said, still sounding stuffy from all my crying. The memory of watching the old movie in the cold walk-up apartment while I waited for Tina to come home almost set me off again.

Marly held out the picture frame. He did look like Montgomery Clift. The strong eyebrows, the piercing eyes, the slightly sulky mouth. Freddie de Marche was in a military uniform, looking very serious, but there was a twinkle in his gaze that reminded me of Jake.

Oh. The significance of what I was holding hit me. She wouldn’t have a framed photo of him, unless…

I’ll wait. That had been his last message to her that I’d read.

“Did he wait?” I asked Marly breathlessly.

“Of course he did. Stubborn man.” Marly forced the hot drink on me. “Drink up and I’ll get the albums, to give you some visuals to go with the letters.” She came back with a cloth-covered photo album and flipped it open to the first page. “See the size of me?”

She was young and very pregnant in the photo; she had round cheeks and a cascade of dark hair. She was standing in front of the house on Tinker Street: my house. It looked so different. The yard was mostly lawn at the front, with a couple of sapling lilacs planted just in front of the whitewashed palings of the front porch. Marly had her hands splayed on either side of her huge belly. Standing next to her, his arm around her, beaming from ear to ear, was Freddie de Marche.

“He already had the ring,” Marly told me, looking at the ring on the finger of the girl in the photograph. The same ring was still on her finger, I saw. “The idiot planned to propose to me. Even though he thought I was already engaged.” She shook her head, still clearly pleased, all these years later. “And he didn’t even know I was knocked up!” Marly turned the page and there were the wedding photos, Marly and her belly in a pink dress, with a cap and veil and a little bouquet of daisies and Freddie in his uniform, still beaming from ear to ear.

“How did he take it when he found out you were pregnant?” I asked. I took a sip of the hot chocolate, and the sweetness flooded me. I felt better.

I remembered telling Tim I was pregnant. I’d taken the test in the bathroom at the mall, straight after buying it from the pharmacy. I’d sat in the cubicle, watching the line form and knowing my whole life had changed in an instant. Telling Tim had been terrifying—mostly because I’d had a gut instinct how he’d take it. We’d been sitting on his bed, and he’d unconsciously leaned away from me as I spoke. He said all the right things, because he was always a nice guy, but there was a new haunted look in his eye. And he never quite looked at me the same way again. Although, I don’t suppose I ever looked at him the same way again either.

“Oh, it was exactly as I thought it would be.” Marly rolled her eyes, looking for a moment like Lainey. “We fought. I said I wouldn’t marry him in a million years. He said he’d ask me every day of his life ’til I said yes. I said go ahead. We fought some more. And then, well, you know what it’s like, there’s a moment where it all comes tumbling down around you. And then you stop fighting and start listening. And you say I love you and fall into bed and live happily ever after until the next fight.” There was a wealth of bittersweet love in her voice.

Jake had never talked about Freddie, I realized. His grandfather. And he hadn’t been at the school play. My stomach squeezed with sympathy as I watched Marly turn the page of the photo album. What must it be like to lose the love of your life?

Soon after the wedding photos there were baby photos. A round-cheeked baby girl with bright blue eyes.

“Jake’s mom,” Marly said, her voice fragile with sadness. “Amber.”

“You called her Amber?” That fact filled me with delight. I glanced at the book on the table, and the postcards dotted through it.

Marly gave me a sideways smile. “Nobody thinks I’m a romantic, but I have my moments. I was reading that book the night I met her father.”

As Marly turned the pages of the photo album, I saw Jake’s mom grow up. Playing in the garden at Tinker Street; making sandcastles on the little horseshoe beach with her dad; sitting on the swing on the back porch, surrounded by dolls and teddy bears; laughing at a local carnival, holding a Kewpie doll in one hand and a candy apple in another. All those sun-splashed days by the coast, smiling and dimpled, in the summer house where she was conceived and born and loved.

My house had always been Marly’s place in my head; I’d never really had a clear picture of Jake’s mom as a person, even though I’d been clearing out her junk all these months. And developing feelings for her son. But seeing these photos of her as a kid made her seem real to me for the first time.

I could see why Amber had wanted to live on Tinker Street as her memories melted away. It was somewhere that had cocooned her with love. I felt a stab of pure jealousy as I traced her childhood through the album. I wished I could have grown up in that house too, with all that love.