How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (30 page)

W
ho should plunk down next to me on the Icelandair flight back to America but George Cranston, the same man who'd been seated next to me on my trip out there. I suppose I should have been surprised at the strange coincidence, that he should have been with me the first time and was now here with me again so many months later, but as Edgar had pointed out, so many strange things happened in the world, so many strange things had happened in my world—what was one more?

“How did it work out for you?” George asked without greeting, his words sounding somewhat surly.

“Excuse me?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“That book you were going to write,” he said. “How did it work out?”

I thought about how I'd burned the manuscript in the embassy fireplace.

“I changed my mind,” I said finally. “It wasn't the story I wanted to write after all.”

“Ha!” he crowed triumphantly. “See? You should have written mine.”

I felt a wave of the now-familiar nausea, but I welcomed it: it was a harbinger of something hopefully good to come.

“It's okay,” I said, patting my still reasonably flat stomach, “I think I'll have a new story soon.”

 

In my bewilderment over Edgar's revelations, I had decided to do the only thing I could do: I returned to New York, back to the place where, even if they preferred not to take me in, they just had to.

Only this time, I wasn't going back to Aunt Bea. Of course I'd visit her, visit my cousins over the upcoming holidays, if they'd have me, but it was time I got a place of my own. It was time I discovered who I was in this world without the props of other people.

I hadn't been willing to accept much from Edgar when I'd finally left his house, just the money he owed me and one other thing: it would have been hard to land in the city and find a place to live by nightfall, so I allowed Edgar to use his connections to make sure there would be a place for me. If I didn't like it, I could always move once I got my bearings and had time to properly look.

I'd remained in Iceland just long enough to see that Annette had received the shocking news and taken it well. A part of me had been concerned it would be too much for her—her father wasn't really her father, her mother lived in another country, she herself was a princess—but I hadn't factored in the adaptability and resilience of small children. Besides, what little girl doesn't want to be a princess? Annette was thrilled at the notion, particularly after Edgar promised he'd visit her and visit her often, to make sure she was doing all right. Of course I knew her future wasn't going to be all tiaras and parties—still tea parties for now—but at least as a princess she would no longer have to worry about math.

It would have been harder for me, saying goodbye to her, if I hadn't seen for myself how happy she was now. I suspected that all those years of viewing family photos that had no record before she was two may have planted the seed of suspicion in her mind, that there was another story out there. Whatever the case, she'd always been a girl badly in need of a mother and now she was going to get one.

“I will miss you, Miss Charlotte,” she said tearfully.

“Same here, Your Majesty,” I said, curtsying for her benefit and hoping I'd got the form of address right; no point in me messing her up with misinformation before she'd even started her new life. “But I'll visit one day, if you'll invite me.”

And, somehow, I really did know I would see her again.

On the other hand, it was harder saying goodbye to Lars Aquavit and Mrs. Fairly, to Gina and Britta, than I would have imagined.

I didn't know when I'd see any of them again or even if.

Gina and Britta said they might come see me in New York sometime, but I expressed my doubts.

“Of course we will come!” said Britta.

“Perhaps in summer,” added Gina, “so we can avoid the unbearable heat here.”

Unbear…?

Whatever. I could explain the difference between an Icelandic summer and a Manhattan summer to them at a later date.

Mrs. Fairly and Lars Aquavit were remaining in Iceland for the time being. Well, of course Lars was—he lived there. But they were both remaining at the embassy because Edgar himself would be remaining until he'd finished his service there.

“I'm still a good ambassador, right?” he'd said ruefully. “I mean, it's not like I have to do much here.”

That was true enough.

But he'd also wanted a commitment from me regarding the future and this I wouldn't make. I was too angry with him for all the deceptions.

“But I had to protect Annette!” he objected.

“But you let me fall in love with you!” I objected. “And you knew you were married!”

“But I couldn't tell you that!” he objected. “Annette wasn't supposed to know the truth! No one was supposed to know!”

“But you could have trusted
me!
” I objected. “If you loved me so much, you should have trusted
me!
”

We were both full of buts, full of objections, full of exclamation points. I didn't care if some of mine were unreasonable, given the facts. I'd been hurt, hurt too often and too deeply, and if holding on to my outrage protected me from further hurt, so be it.

“What will it take, Charlotte?” he'd asked, resigned. “What will it take to win you back?”

“Give me space and get your divorce,” I'd said. “Then come to me with the papers. If you're lucky, I'll let you court me.”

“
Court
you?”

“Yes,” I said, “dammit, court me.”

“Okay,” he agreed, “if that's what it takes.”

There was one last thing I'd needed to do before leaving Iceland, but I'd put it off until I got to Keflavik Airport, having made Lars Aquavit stop at the drugstore on the way there.

For a while now, I'd been ignoring the nausea. Further, I'd ignored having missed one period and what that might mean, telling myself that it was just another one of those déjà vus all over again that seemed to keep happening to me. Surely it would turn out the same way it had with Buster: a false alarm, no child on the way. I'd put taking the test off until I'd safely left Edgar behind, because on the tiny off-chance that it should prove positive, I just wanted to deal with the news first on my own without it getting clouded by anyone else's feelings. Maybe that was selfish, but I'd been given to servitude for too many years. It was time, if only occasionally, to put myself first.

So, before boarding the plane, I'd gone to the bathroom, hoping my flight didn't leave without me as I peed on the wand, waited the requisite few minutes for the results to come through, feeling unaccountably giddy at the thought that my life was finally about to change.

Of course, I was pregnant.

R
eader, please believe me when I say, I soooo didn't marry him.

What Would Nancy Drew Do?

I know, those words have endlessly haunted this narrative. But they really are, when you think about it, the ultimate light and guide to reason.

So, then, one last time, What Would Nancy Drew Do?

I had learned, by hard lesson, that it would be easier to say what Nancy Drew would not do.

She wouldn't have gotten involved with Buster in the first place.

She wouldn't have tried to write a book, probably because she was too busy solving a new mystery every six days.

She wouldn't have gone to Iceland without researching the place first.

She wouldn't have driven a car when she didn't know how to drive. Well, okay, in an emergency, she would have driven anything.

She wouldn't have been short or dark or Jewish, just because.

But, above all else, she would not, not ever, not even for a second, have gotten involved with Ambassador Edgar Rawlings.

Why not?

Because she would have known, instinctively, that there was something more there than what met the eye, she would have been instinctively suspicious. And, being suspicious, she would not have allowed her heart to become engaged.

And if she did by some insane stretch of the imagination fall in love with a man with a small child, whose absent wife had some kind of air of mystery about her? If she had then learned what I had learned about what was really going on?

She would not compound her previous errors by going on loving a man so obviously wrong for her. She would believe in her own self-worth enough to just walk away.

Even if she believed, with all her heart, that the man in question had really loved her more than he'd ever loved any other woman, still loved her.

She'd still walk away.

I was still walking, too.

But there was a slight hitch here, for I'd come to realize that it didn't really matter a damn what Nancy Drew would or wouldn't do, despite how much she'd taught me—about the importance of making friends; about the importance of searching for the truth, facing things. It mattered what
I
would do.

All along, through the various nanny jobs, through my whole life, really, I'd been searching for an identity. Well, I wasn't going to find it with married ambassadors and I wasn't going to find it by becoming Nancy Drew; being Nancy Drew, unless a person really was Nancy Drew, could get a girl killed. So I'd need to keep searching, I thought, but at least I now knew I was brave…sometimes. It was a start.

And what was growing inside me, the life, was a start, too.

As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I realized it was what I'd wanted all along, a child, so I could really do over the past, loving that child as I hadn't been loved. Previously, I'd settled for other people's children, with the safe buffer of their parents to keep me from loving them too much, hurting too much. But now, at last, I was ready to have my own. It might not be what every woman wanted most, but it was for me. The next child I would raise would be my own, for I could not leave any more behind.

And now for the most important, to me, question of all: What Would Charlotte Bell Do?

She'd wait and she'd go on believing. And one day, when the time was right, she'd risk walking out on that wire again. Because she believed, in spite of Buster, in spite of all the problems with Edgar, she still believed in the ultimate power of love between two human beings. And, just because it had never worked out right before, it didn't mean that it would never happen.

She'd tell Edgar about the baby, because he had a right to know, but she wouldn't let her decisions hinge on his feelings.

One day, one incredibly fine day, true love would happen for Charlotte Bell.

And when that day came, she would be ready for it.

Maybe it would be with Edgar—she kind of thought it would—and maybe it wouldn't. Only time would tell.

But Charlotte Bell still believed.

Against all odds, she still believed.