The Brontë Plot (34 page)

She laid down her pen and reread the letter.

Dear Dad,

I'm so glad I found you. Twenty years is a long time to wait, a long time to wonder. There is so much of myself I see in you and I don't know that I'll ever look in the mirror again and not remember your right eyebrow, matching my own, your green eyes, or the way both our left eyes crinkle
shut when we smile. I've noticed that about myself in pictures and now I know I've inherited the “disappearing eye” from you.

There are other things, perhaps, I get from you too: an insatiable love for story and history and an ability to become so absorbed that I miss appointments, schedules, and sometimes, reality. Those last issues may be mine alone, but your Birthday Books certainly fostered such distraction with so many wonderfully rich tales. Thank you for that connection and for encouraging a love for reading and learning. I hope, after this letter, you will not stop sending me a book each year.

I need to go now. And while perhaps I should give you the respect of speaking to you directly, I also feel I need to protect myself and you from hasty words or judgments. I heard you last night and understand your path and plans. And I thank you for your clarity in answering my question. I will be forever grateful for that moment, perhaps our only moment, of pure honesty. I agree, home must always be protected. Unlike you, I have found my home. But contrary to your advice, I've made mistakes. Everything has not been on the “up-and-up.”

Now I must return and make things right, protect the people I love, and redeem my mistakes. I want to be more than I am right now. In my imagination, I linked our stories, our lives, and our salvation. If you were thriving and doing well, then so could I. But my journey is my own and I'm responsible for the consequences. I can't use you as a scapegoat or a savior.

I may not search for you again, Dad. In many ways, I feel I caused you more concern than joy. Be safe and be well. And if ever you don't feel that the stories truly speak to your soul and provide the “transcendent” experience you crave—or if you get to the place where you don't need them “to pay”—come find me. I'm beginning to suspect true wholeness lies somewhere else entirely.

All my love,
Lucy

Lucy reached for the envelope the hotel's receptionist had given her. She folded the letter into thirds, slid it inside the envelope, and licked the seal. She carefully wrote “Anthony Montrose” on the outside and slid it into the outside pocket of her handbag. She grabbed her suitcase, gave the room a last good-bye, and pulled the door shut behind her.

Upon reaching the cramped alcove, which served as the inn's lobby, she handed the letter to a man pushing a vacuum. “An Anthony Montrose is planning to meet me here for breakfast. He's about fifty with short black hair, graying on the sides, about my height, and he's got green eyes. He may be here already, waiting in your pub.” She gestured across the room. “Could you find him and give him this? Or give it to him when he arrives?”

He widened his eyes as she handed the letter to him, but made no comment. Instead he headed to the pub's door. Lucy reached out. “No. Wait. Please give me ten minutes before you look.”

“All right.” He said the words smoothly and evenly, as if such requests were made every day.

Lucy stepped out the front door. She took a deep breath, capturing the crisp morning, the soft breeze, and the hint of sun. Raindrops from the night before had left everything shiny and new as if fireflies made of light, air, and hope danced off leaves, car windshields, signs, and store windows. She felt her face crack in bright and genuine delight as she turned right and loped down the hill toward the bus stop.

Lucy hopped on the bus and replayed the last few days.
Was it that long?
She raised her hand and counted it off in hours.
Only forty
. She rested her head against the window's cool glass as the scenery flashed by—gates, moss-covered walls, shops, and cars, whizzing by so closely that she felt as if she could reach out and touch each.

It's not genetic. Crazy, but not genetic.
She stopped her line of thought. Her father wasn't crazy; he simply played by his own rules. Bette might call it Moral Relativism. Lucy's mom would call it “Me. Me. Me,” as she had chimed all through Lucy's childhood when she felt her daughter had done something selfish, wrong, or unkind.

Lucy reached into her bag and pulled out her copy of
Jane Eyre
, the one her dad had sent for her thirteenth birthday. That had been his gift to her. The stories. If she could carry anything away from these forty hours and call it her own, it could be that. Nothing more, but nothing less either. She rolled the small paperback in her hands, feeling its material weight—paper, ink, and a worn and torn slick cover.

As the bus pulled onto the highway and accelerated along the straight, smooth road, Lucy let herself trail through her favorite scenes. Jane Eyre running into the passage, into the garden, calling,
Where are you?
knowing Rochester was out there and needed her. Then sitting with Rochester and asking,
Have you a pocket comb about you, sir?
She loved that line—true love defined by a pocket comb.

It really was that simple, that tangible, and found in day-to-day acts. Her mind drifted to
Wives and Daughters
and the moment when Roger realizes he loves true-and-loyal Molly. It took him time, he made mistakes, but he found his way. And in
Wuthering Heights
when Nelly declares,
I believe the dead are at peace . . . At peace.

She envisioned
North and South—
at the end, when John takes Margaret into his arms and pulls her hands from her face. What had she said? About his mother? Oh . . .
That woman.
She was certain Mrs. Thornton would exclaim that disapprovingly upon hearing of their impending marriage
. That woman . . .
The words stuck in Lucy's mind. She played them over and over, knowing they pointed elsewhere, but she couldn't place it.
That woman
. . .

“What a woman!” Lucy barked aloud then ducked down into her seat. That was it. James had said that about Jane Eyre when they first met. He'd admired Jane's courage, her moral fiber, and her strength at the end of the story. She was the conqueror . . . She wrestled loose her happy ending.
What does it take to claim that?

An hour later and still pondering the question, Lucy found an empty seat on the train to London. In fact, she found a nearly
empty car. Only an old man and a couple of teenagers, making out in the back, shared her company. She dropped into the seat farthest from her companions and tapped her phone.

“Hello,
meu pequenino
, are you on your way home?”

“Maybe.” She skipped over Sid's Portuguese, knowing it would be an endearment because that was Sid. She closed her eyes and recited her new battle cry.
Come further up, come further in
. “Sid? I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“The MacMillan vases and the books.” Lucy laid the whole truth before him, starting with her first book sale, when she found herself telling a story . . . to sell the story. She concluded with the call from MacMillan's assistant, Aidan, and how she'd agreed to pay him a fee, a bribe, to move up the list and procure Sid's three vases immediately rather than wait over another year.

“He asked for money? For him personally?”

“In exchange for ‘a favor' as he called it. He asked for five hundred pounds to guarantee immediate delivery. I paid it and entered it in the books as a purchase for
The Purloined Letter
.”

“That's not remotely funny.” Sid remained silent for a few heartbeats. “What do you expect me to do?”

The question wasn't rhetorical or sarcastic. Lucy could tell that Sid genuinely wanted to know; he was out of his depth. She heard his breath catch over the line.

“I can't process this,” he added.

“I should've waited until I got back. Some things are better in person, but I didn't want to wait and I knew you'd need time.” Lucy willed her heart to calm. “For now, you need to know that I'll make things right. As right as I can in each and every case.”

“The books?”

“All of them. I'll figure it out.”

“The MacMillans? I almost sold one. Me.” He was quiet a moment. “That's my name on the door.”

“I know, Sid, and I'm sorry.” She imagined him standing in the gallery by the George III desk looking out the window, his name painted on the glass in crisp Helvetica font in glossy black. “Could you please set out all three vases? I'll call Jones and Jones to come crate them and ship them back.”

“Yes . . . I need to hang up. This is too much, Lucy.”

“Wait. Please,” she cried out. The teenagers broke apart and searched for the sound. She shifted low in her seat.

“I'm still here.”

“While you're thinking, digesting, cursing me . . . Please know I'll never do anything like this again. Any of it. I won't cross that line. I'll make everything right. I want to stay at your gallery in whatever capacity you'll allow me. You don't owe it to me, I know, but I'm begging for a second chance.”

“Why should I give you one?”

“No reason at all.”

“And that's supposed to sway me?” His voice arched high as if
he
was now begging.

“You asked why you should give me one; that's the answer. If you asked why I want a second chance, that's something else entirely.”

“Then answer that question.”

“Because I need a mentor. All my life I have been seeking ways to define myself and I've been following all the wrong cues. I understand that each and every decision is my own
and that I'm accountable, but I also need a guide, Sid. I'm not guaranteed a happy ending just because I make it to the last page—every choice along the way matters and they have real consequences. I want to learn from you. There is no one I admire or respect more.”

She'd launched it in one breath. She took another and pressed on. “You seek to truly understand your clients, to bless them, not so they can bless you, but because you want to bring them joy. You
get
the proper place of things in a life and you treat what you do with a light and respectful heart, knowing that deeper truths exist and more important aspects of life hold greater value. I spent a lot of time hauling down curtains and moving furniture with Bette in Haworth and I never felt so alive. I was helping her, Sid, and it was creative and colorful, and I felt creative and colorful and I think Bette's still on cloud nine. I'm rambling . . . But will you think on all of that, please?”

“Yes,” he whispered. She heard a soft clicking sound and knew he was tapping his toe against the floor. “I hear you. Now I need to go.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes. “Thank you, Sid.”

Lucy clicked off her phone and tilted her head to the window.
Comefurtherup, comefurtherin.
She felt if she kept repeating it, she could stay closer to the truth and have the courage to endure it. She tried to smile but couldn't. She only managed a tiny wavery thing she caught in the window's reflection. “What have you done?” she whispered to it.

Lucy closed her eyes and let the cadence of the train provide a tempo for her thoughts. She thought about her apartment with
its few furnishings and knew she'd do it differently if she could. The space would be filled with “gems” like Sid often found during his travels and at garage sales. She, too, could restore them by hand and make them unique by adding color or a stain or simply scrubbing them with steel wool to change their texture.

She would cover the walls. Load them with pictures of her friends, moments of laughter and love. She could enlarge that beautiful black-and-white photo of her mom and her at the beach when she was sixteen and hang it in her living room as the centerpiece. Her dad would be there too. She'd find a good picture, hang it, and let him be himself. No better, no worse. The smiling face of a man she did believe, in his own way, loved her.

The drapery panels. She'd finally hang them too. There were no patches left to fill. Waiting was arrogant and cowardly at the same time. It said she couldn't be satisfied, was always holding out, and was never content. Also cowardly because she was leaving an escape open, never letting anything tie her too closely to a home. And the result? Beauty wasted and lying on a cold wood floor and books with no shelves of her own to hold them.

Lucy tapped her phone again.

Her mother answered with a soft “Did you find him?”

“I did and he's everything, I suspect, you thought he'd be—living with a woman about my age who thinks he's forty, asking me to lie so she wouldn't do the math, working a touring scam and running away with the deposits, using all the stories I believed were sacred and defined him, me, and our relationship—It was eye-opening.”