Falling For Henry (5 page)

A frost this early in October, she thought, surprised, touching the wrinkled petals.
A killing frost
, Gran would say. Gran was one of the reasons her father had let Willow come to London in the first place—because she could spend weekends with Gran in Brighton and have the influence of family, as Dad put it. Dad had been pretty protective. And then when he'd died, Gran had thought it best that Kate come to live in London, as well, and Willow had agreed. “Sisters need each other,” Gran had said. “But you must stay with me in Brighton on weekends when you can.”

Gran had selected the private Camden school—promised Kate that it would give her the education she required to go on in whatever field she wanted. It was expensive. Kate had seen the financial statements on Willow's desk. But that didn't make her grateful. She just didn't care about school. And as for future plans—it was hard enough taking life day by day without trying to think about the years to come. Since the car accident that killed her father, she'd felt like a piece of cotton fluff, whirled this way and that in the wind until eventually … eventually she, too, would vanish. Just as the people she loved had vanished—first her mother and then her father.

She pushed open the heavy door to the building and stepped inside and, for the third time that day, thought about disappearing and what a relief that would be. It wasn't fair that her dad had died, and it was more than unfair to find herself stuck with life in this stupid place, going to that stupid school. And now, she had an evening ahead with this totally cute guy, and she was sure to blow it. Whatever had attracted him was sure to evaporate once he spent any time with her.

She plodded up the worn marble stairs, deciding that the exercise couldn't hurt. Her thoughts returned to the cost of the school. A check arrived from Gran every few weeks that would certainly be helping fund her education. Kate had seen Willow open the envelopes, purse her lips, and tuck the slips of paper into her wallet. Sometimes when the bank statements arrived, Kate could tell her sister was worried. But Willow was twenty-three, old enough to take care of things.

Did Fenwick actually get paid more for working there because it was a private school? Kate bit her lip in disgust, stopping for a moment on the landing to catch her breath. That greyhound of a woman had senses unknown to humankind, and wherever her salary went, it wasn't going toward personal hygiene. Fenwick often smelled of B.O. and everyone knew the teacher passed gas in class.

As she navigated the last flight, Kate wondered whether she'd be as slim as Willow if she always took the stairs. It was more than exercise that did it for Willow, she guessed. Stress used up a lot of calories, and Willow fretted about a lot of things. At first, Kate thought it was going to be easy living with Willow. But Willow quickly proved to be more protective even than Dad. You had to tell her where you were going. You had to tell her when you'd be back. And you had to get all your homework done, every detail, well ahead of deadlines. For a while, Willow had tried to make Kate run, as she had in New York. Training had been part of her lifestyle then but, with her short legs, Kate knew she'd never be a track star. Why bother?

As Kate opened the doorway to the second floor, she pulled off the navy jacket, damp from the rain, and wondered what Willow would say about her date with Hal. With some misgivings, she realized she didn't even know Hal's last name. But Willow would be at the theater. If Kate was back home early enough, the date would be her secret. Nobody would have to know—not Willow, not Gran, not anyone.

5
The memories

Kate pushed the large gold key into the lock but it stuck, as usual, when she tried to turn it. She grabbed the door handle and rattled it as hard as she could. Stupid door—why was it always such a pain? In New York, her dad could have fixed this easily, but here, you had to apply for a repairman from Reception and then wait about fifteen years.

“Here, let me help with that.” Kate jerked around. It was their tall, angular neighbor, Martin Brown. He'd come so quietly down the hallway that Kate hadn't heard him approach. “It's simpler if you turn the key instead of the door.” Martin Brown smiled. Then they both laughed when, with a flick of his wrist, he turned the key and opened the door as easily as if it had been unlocked to start with.

“Well,” he said, stepping back toward his own flat. “Be seeing you.”

“Yeah,” said Kate, looking at his jet black hair with admiration. It was sleek and shiny, like a raven's wing. Then she suddenly remembered his line of work. “You study history, right?” she asked.

“That's my field, yes,” he said. “Although I'm not exactly an expert on general knowledge, you know, just things specific to my subject area …”

“I'm … I'm interested in wolves,” she blurted. “Like, why everyone says there aren't any in England.”

“Wolves,” said Martin Brown slowly. He gave her a quizzical glance. “The English people exterminated the wolves a very long time ago, likely before the 1500s. Why do you ask?”

Kate could feel herself flushing. “I'm … uh … writing something for our school newspaper. I'm supposed to find out some interesting facts.”

Martin Brown turned his own key in its lock and stood for a moment, muttering to himself. Kate noticed how his sleeves were too long, his wrinkled coat hanging on him like ruffled feathers. “Wolves … an interesting subject …”

“Well …” said Kate, when it didn't seem as if he was going to offer any new information, “I'll be seeing you.” She looked at his door to see if the other name was still on it, and it was. Martin and Ellen Brown. Too bad, she thought. Martin Brown was just the right height for Willow. And his bright black hair would be such an interesting contrast to Willow's blondness.

“One can't be a hundred percent certain …” Martin Brown said, surprisingly. “Not a hundred percent certain. About anything, really. I have an interesting book on the Renaissance if you ever—”

“I … um … I have to go in, now, because I probably have to do the dishes,” Kate interrupted. The last thing she wanted to do was read any history books. She stepped inside and quickly shut the door behind her, leaving Martin Brown in the hallway. She wondered if she'd been too abrupt, but it was a little late now to worry about it.

Once inside, Kate hung up her wet jacket. Out of habit, she sniffed the air in the flat, although, as usual, there were no comforting smells of cooking to welcome her. Willow, of course, had already gone to the theater. Back home in New York in the other life she'd had, their father liked to make rich pasta suppers that included lots of herbs and mushrooms, savory sauces that scented the whole house with mouthwatering goodness. Although it was billed as a bed and breakfast, there were meals offered almost any time of day. Now Kate wandered into their tiny, airless kitchen and looked around. Her father would have hated it here. For one thing, when he cooked, he used a lot of shelf space. In contrast, she and Willow barely had room to set down their cereal bowls, and then there was no space to sit and eat, just room to stand at the counter. There was a little table in the living room but they hardly ever used it.

It was her father's deluxe fare that won over even the most reluctant of paying guests: afternoon snacks composed of hot scones, cream, and raspberry jam, cold chocolate coffee of his own invention, and preserved oranges. Their house, close to Broadway and all the shows, had been ideal for sight-seers. And her father had been the perfect tour guide, always willing to give advice, with stories to tell about various local haunts. Less than four months ago, she had been in that life, unaware of how lucky she was. And unaware, too, of how quickly things could change. She thought with a sudden flood of emotion of the rough feel of her father's cheek when she bent down to hug him after a hard day. He always smelled of aftershave, a clean, tangy odor that made her think of Christmas because of the evergreen scent. And he always had time for her.

They'd been on the expressway, driving home from the dental surgeon's where she'd had a wisdom tooth removed. Her father had fiddled with the radio and then suddenly given a strange kind of moan and veered out into the other lane. With practiced ease, Kate skipped thinking about the rest, fastening on the bit she let herself explore. A heart attack, the doctor had said. Surprising in a man so young. Possibly he could have been saved if he had been wearing his seat belt. Possibly not.

Why hadn't he been wearing his seat belt? She couldn't remember him ever not wearing it, but then she hadn't really checked. She'd been wearing hers. The perfect safety commercial, father and daughter heading home, but only the daughter makes it. The grim reality of black and white, a necessity for the image at the end of the commercial, thought Kate, torturing herself. A bride, walking alone down the aisle. Tears sprung to her eyes as she pictured herself in such a scene.

How old was he? Kate stood alone in the dark little kitchen, trying to remember. I don't even know what year he was born, she thought. I don't know anything about him at all. He had curly hair. Hazel eyes. An aquiline nose. These separate features disconnected and, for a moment, Kate couldn't even recall his face. He was my dad, the parent who raised me, and I know as little about him as I do about Isobel, she thought, desperately. She reached for a bag of cookies that was in the cupboard and opened them, chewing absently as she walked out of the kitchen.
Biscuits
, she thought, superimposing the English term on top of the American word. Funny how something could simultaneously be two different things, depending on where it was.

The flat was eerily quiet. Kate wandered through the rooms, noticing the newspapers and rubbish strewn about. What did it matter how messy their place was? What did anything matter? She went back into the kitchen. There was a pot of soup on the stove and a note taped to the cupboard that said:
eat it or else
. Nice little domestic welcome, thought Kate. Willow's notes were as loud and demanding as if she were there in person, bellowing.

Kate sniffed at the soup and made a face. Split pea and potato, her least favorite of all. With something like chicken noodle, the ingredients were predictable and familiar. But what exactly was a split pea? Did they grow like that or did people go around factory kitchens mashing them to bits? She ate another cookie and pondered the experience of peas.

Willow had been on a soup kick for at least three weeks and kept announcing that it was the cheapest and healthiest way to get their quota of vitamins. Kate shuddered. I'd rather eat cockroaches than this slop, she thought. She'd always been suspicious of things that had vegetables in perfect tiny squares. A potato was never meant to be a regular hexahedron, she thought, drawing on geometry class. Or, in other words, a Platonic solid. She wandered into the living room, where the question mark she'd drawn on the sooty wall was still visible. Then she went into the bathroom to wash up and saw a dozen or so thin dark shapes darting for cover behind pictures and down drains. Something—their toenails, perhaps—made a hissing sound.

At least the London roaches were tidy creatures and she saw them only in the bathroom, unlike the huge cockroaches they had back in New York around the kitchen drains. Those must have evolved to survive our winters, Kate thought with a wry smile, tying her hair back with an elastic band. Her father had called them kittens so he and Kate could talk without alerting paying visitors to the pests.

“One of the kittens was under the kitchen sink this morning,” he'd say, warm eyes laughing, or he'd wave a hand that had just been running through his tousled curls: “Katie, my darling, you won't believe how that naughty kitten got into the guest bathroom!” Kate would stealthily wait until the guests had gone out for the day, and then she'd set the roach trap. They'd worked as a team, she and her dad, and she ached in his absence. In this new life, it seemed as if everything she did was solitary. And all her memories, even the good ones, had been invaded by a kind of secret sadness that filled the cracks and crannies of her storied past with blue. How temporary things were! And then the worst thought of all, the one that had been hammering at her for what seemed like years, settled against her chest, beating its heavy wings. What good was living at all if, in the end, death swept everything away?

She thought of her mother and the old bitterness surfaced. At least her father had a reason for not being with her. But her mother … the way Isobel had disappeared, with such finality, was unforgivable. The old thoughts—that maybe she, Kate, had made her mother want to leave them—made her swallow hard. The idea always managed to embed a lingering ache in her throat, as if she'd swallowed something hard—a pebble, or a penny. How bad had she been when she was five? Other than breaking the juice pitcher, she couldn't remember. And her fear of small spaces—was it caused by her mother?

Turning on the water, she stared at her hands, carefully turning over the left one to display the scar.
K for Kate.
“K for Kate,” she repeated to herself, finally breaking the hold of the dismal thoughts. She washed her face, the cloth coming away with gray streaks from the London smog.

She went into her room and changed out of her school uniform, and then wandered back into the kitchen where she shoved the soup pot into the fridge and then deliberated. A big jar of lemon spread looked tempting, and Kate had often seen Willow smearing some on toast, but she passed it by. Lemon had a peculiar effect on her, bringing on the same panic as small spaces. She ate another cookie. The box of sweets above the stove tempted her; with sudden resolve, she rejected them. If she kept on gaining weight, she'd need all new clothes, and who was going to pay for that? Instead, she chose another container of stupid yogurt and, standing at the counter, ate it with a plastic spoon. Then she sat in the living room, staring furiously at the question mark she'd etched on the wall. What had happened in the tunnel? It had been some kind of amazing journey, and her mind felt bruised with possibilities. If only she had a simple equation that would explain everything.