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Her face lit up. “How wonderful, Henry. That’s such lovely news.”
“So I guess suddenly it feels important to know more about my history.”
His aunt nodded. Even with tiny lines, and a softness around the jaw she was still a pretty woman with shining, smiley eyes and creamy skin, delicate features, well-kept. There was the shade of Alice around the brow, something in her smile. She had none of Alice’s darkness, her edge.
“Of course it does. Of course.”
She patted the stack of albums, notebooks, and files. “I am a bit of an armchair genealogist,” she said. “As for the past, it’s all here—or a lot of it anyway. And with all the new technology, finding answers about you will be easier than ever before. If you want me to, I can help you. I can help you understand who you are. Maybe we can even find your father. Is that what you want, Henry?”
He was surprised by the rush of emotion, feelings he hadn’t let himself have, a stunning desperation to belong somewhere,tosomeone.
“Yes,” he managed, his voice cracking slightly. “I want that very much.”
After lunch, he followed his Aunt Gemma up the staircase to the second floor.
“Step into my office, said the spider to the fly,” she said with a chuckle as she swung open the double doors to a room filled with bookshelves, a big desk with two computer screens, a cozy couch facing a coffee table stacked with photo albums, notebooks, files.
She urged him to take a seat and he did, nearly sinking into the soft floral cushions.
“Our father started this project before Maggie and I were born. He could trace his heritage back to British landowners, though by the time his parents came to America they were tradespeople. His father was a tailor; his mother was a governess until they married.
“Our mother was descended from Russian Jews,” she said. “It’s a funny thing that the people who are privileged by history are also the beneficiaries of better record keeping. It took me years, two trips out to Utah where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the largest collection of records in the world, hours and hours online, to find the name of the town where I think my maternal grandmother was born. We had a trip planned to Russia, but then my husband passed.”
“I’m sorry.”
She paused a moment. “Thank you. He was a wonderful man and we had thirty good years together. I try to be in gratitude for that, not grief.”
“Children?”
A flush came up on her cheeks, her eyes filling. She shook her head, seeming not to trust her voice.
His hand found hers again and she looked at him gratefully.
“That’s my life’s biggest sadness,” she said. “We tried and tried. But...”
They sat a moment until she was ready to go on. And then she did. They sat talking, the sky going dim outside as she shared her research—telling him stories about distant relatives on both sides, things she’d gleaned from old letters, and news stories, birth and death certificates. She shared grainy photographs, and wrinkled copies of wedding announcements, handwritten ledgers from churches she and her husband had visited in the UK.
It was a journey into the distant past, brought alive by his aunt’s meticulous research. And something in Henry settled, something that had been an endless restless question was answered. He did have a history, a family. He wasn’t just floating in time, disconnected, a stranger even to himself. Maybe.
“I still have so many questions,” said Henry.
“Yes.”
“I mean, Miss Gail worked hard to get me my own social security number. But we never were able to track down my actual birth certificate. What if I’m not even Alice’s child? What if she abducted me or something?”
It was just one of a myriad possibilities he’d turned over in his mind. Had she stolen him? Is that why they were always on the run? Those foggy memories he had, were those from his real family?
His aunt shook her head. “No,” she said. “I see her in you, the shape of your eyes. You even have the chin cleft everyone on our father’s side has. I feel it, Henry. I do.”
He put his hand next to her arm. His skin was so much darker than hers. He gave her a meaningful look.
“That meansnothing. We have to find your father to get the other pieces of your puzzle. And that’s all it is. DNA. It’s just one big puzzle, and we’re each just tiny little pieces that all fit together somehow, somewhere.”
He found himself smiling, which he didn’t do often. Piper was always on him.Lighten up, loser.His wife was the one person who could always get him to crack a grin, until he met his aunt. He liked her energy, warm, practical, loving. She was right; he felt it, too, their deep connection.
“But how do we find that piece?”
She got up and went to her desk. When she came back, she held a glossy brochure. She handed it to him.
