The Things We Cherished (24 page)

And that meant continuing to work with Jack, she thought, as his face appeared in her mind. She was seized by a sudden image of last night, Jack moving above her. What had happened? The whole thing was so surreal, it was as if it had been a dream. But an unmistakable heat rose within her, confirming that the encounter had indeed occurred, leaving her to wonder what it all meant. It’s the stress, she decided. Two lonely people, working long hours together, caught up in the moment.

Still, she could not shake her sense of unease. It wasn’t like her; she could have stopped him or said no. There had been others, of course, in the years between Brian and now, casual encounters that after a few dates had left her feeling more empty than anything else. But this had been different. It was as if a tiny crack, a fissure in the protective armor she had spent years putting up around herself, had been opened, leaving her feeling naked and exposed.

Irrelevant, she concluded finally, finishing her coffee. It had happened and it was over and now, with Brian here, it would not be an issue again. She stood, throwing her cup in the trash and refolding her newspaper before starting back toward the compartment.

Just then her BlackBerry vibrated against her side, signaling a message. She looked down, surprised. Contact with the outside world seemed so foreign now. She pulled out the device, clicked over to the Internet function, and logged into her Gmail account.
The Web page loaded slowly, hampered, she was sure, by the lack of a strong signal in the mountainous terrain.

A new message, from Alicja Recka. Charlotte’s heart seemed to skip a beat as she clicked on the e-mail and scrolled down. She had not expected to receive a response so quickly.
Lovely to hear from you
, it read.
I checked our records and regret to say it appears that Magda Dykmans died in the gas chamber at Belzec in 1943. Best, Alicja
.

Charlotte’s stomach dropped. Suddenly it was as if she had known Magda, and the loss was hers as well as Roger’s. Well, what had she expected, a happy ending after all these years?

Reluctantly, she headed back to the compartment to tell Jack and Brian the news. As she neared the door, she stopped, hearing voices. The brothers were actually talking to each other, which was a pleasant surprise. Perhaps they had managed to break the ice after all. She waited, not wanting to interrupt the possible reconciliation. But the volume of their conversation was rising now. She leaned in, listening more closely. Though she couldn’t make out what they were saying, it was clear from their heated tones that it was not an amicable conversation.

I should walk away, she thought. Whatever is going on between them is none of my business. But her curiosity grew: What was it that was still such a bone of contention between them? Unable to resist, she leaned in closer.

“Leave her alone, Brian,” she heard Jack warn in a terse voice.

They’re talking about me, Charlotte realized. She slipped back farther behind the doorframe.

“Why do you care, anyway?” Brian demanded. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“Not at all,” Jack replied quickly, as though the question was a ridiculous one. Charlotte stifled a gasp, stung by his dismissive
tone. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be toying with her like this. Dragging her into the case and then—”

Brian’s voice rose in protest. “I’m not—”

Charlotte stepped back, her eyes burning. It was more than just Jack’s denial of what had taken place between them that hurt; she thought that they had become equals these past few days, that they worked well together. But to hear him now, he thought her unworthy of his brother’s time—or his own.

Jack spoke again, “And now, with Danielle pregnant …”

A rock slammed into Charlotte’s chest. Though she’d known about Brian and Danielle’s marriage for nearly a decade, the idea of a child legitimizing it all was more than she could bear. She spun and sped back down the corridor of the train, banging her elbow against a half-open compartment door but scarcely feeling the throb. She ran as fast as she could, dodging passengers and suitcases, as though she were outdoors back home and burning off some steam after a particularly grueling day in court by running the eight-mile loop on Kelly Drive.

A minute later Charlotte reached the café at the end of the moving train once more. She slowed, walking to the cracked window at the back of the car, watching the hills retreat. She stood motionless for several minutes, still breathing hard. What am I doing here, she wondered? Suddenly the full magnitude of it all slammed down upon her. Europe, Brian, these were feelings she had tucked away nearly a decade ago, and the pain, while still there, had at least scarred over, muted by time. How could she have been so foolish as to let them in again?

The tears flowed now in a way they hadn’t for years, maybe not ever, even when Winnie died and she stood at the edge of the desolate cemetery, realizing for the first time how alone in the world
she really was. Then she had gone into a functioning mode: there was the house to sell, a job to be secured. Afterward, when things had settled down and there might have been time to mourn, she had simply not chosen to reopen that door and let the feelings in. They were irrelevant, like a textbook for a course she had taken and would never use again. But now the grief burst forth and she wept openly, not caring who heard, her sobs echoing around the empty café car.

What was it about the Warringtons anyway? The fabric of her life was rich, filled with people and places and experiences. Yet she had let Brian—and now Jack—get under her skin, affect her in ways that no one else quite had.

“Hey.” Charlotte spun around. Brian stood behind her, juggling two cups of coffee. She stared at him, as if she had forgotten for a moment that he was here or had not expected him to find her on the train. He held one out to her wordlessly and she took it, sinking to the seat at one of the tables he indicated. He had not, she realized gratefully, asked if she was all right. Had he seen her outside the compartment when she fled?

“I’m sorry,” she said, fumbling with a sudden need to explain. “It’s just that—”

“Being here, after so many years,” he finished for her. “It brings back a lot of memories, doesn’t it?”

She hesitated, caught off guard by his seeming comprehension. This was the man she had forgotten about, stripped of all his bravado, empathetic and real. This was Brian at his most dangerous. “I overheard you and Jack talking,” she confessed. She studied his expression, but if he was angry he gave no indication. “Congratulations, about the baby and all.”

His face brightened. “Thanks so much. I’m thrilled.”

She noticed he did not say
we
. “Danielle must be excited, too.”

A flicker of something passed over his face. “She is, I think. It’s just the timing.”

Charlotte nodded, understanding. Danielle, already an income partner, would be up for the more senior equity partnership at her firm about now and maternity leave, time away from client development and billable hours, would surely hurt her chances. “I’m not sure she’s ready,” Brian added, “to put someone else first.”

From anyone else, Charlotte reflected, the confession about his wife’s lack of maternal instinct, made to an ex-girlfriend, might have sounded disloyal. But Brian’s tone was nonjudgmental, matter of fact. He was not conveying regret, or suggesting that he would have preferred Charlotte in his wife’s place, but rather reporting on the status quo as it now existed. “It’s a lifestyle change for sure,” she agreed. “Do you know what you’re having?”

“Not yet, and I’m not sure we’re finding out. Danielle wants to know so we can decorate the nursery. But I think it’s one of life’s true mysteries. I wouldn’t mind a daughter, though.”

Charlotte looked at him, surprised. She would have thought for sure that Brian wanted a son, for the football games and such. Suddenly she was aware of the strangeness of the conversation, not just the fact that she was sitting here with her ex-boyfriend, discussing his child with the woman he left her for—but the fact that it didn’t seem to bother her that much at all. Her mind reeled back to the earlier exchange she’d heard between the two brothers. It wasn’t the idea of Danielle and Brian having a child together that had upset her so much as the fact that Jack seemed to regard her as irrelevant.

The sky had grown dark; thick clouds clustered around the mountaintops. “Did you want to go back?” she asked. “I mean, it was good of you to come after me, but I’m sure you have work to do.”

“Nah,” he said, smiling. “Jack’s probably sleeping by now. There’s no way to work through that kind of snoring anyway.”

She faltered, unsure how to react to the comment, which was amusing and true, but at the same time a bit too intimate for comfort. You actually snore far worse than he does, she wanted to tell Brian. Jack’s was more of a gentle whistling, the wind through a narrow passageway, not the freight train his brother seemed to channel.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said abruptly. Something hard slammed into her stomach. It was the first time she heard Brian apologize for anything. Maybe if he had said as much a decade ago, things would have been easier to take.

“For what?” she asked, wondering if she shouldn’t ask, if her assumptions about his apology were better than anything he might actually have to say.

“About the way things ended between us back then.” No, he wasn’t sorry for what he had done, or for hurting her so. It was the messiness he regretted, the inconvenience of leaving behind a situation he couldn’t feel good about. “That we couldn’t have been like you and Jack are now,” he added.

Charlotte’s heart seemed to stop. Did Brian know what had transpired between her and his brother? Had Jack said something to him? “Friends, I mean,” he added.

She exhaled silently, relieved. Brian was envious that his brother had gotten close to Charlotte in a way that he could not, but he didn’t suspect more. Not that it mattered anyway. It was clear from the comments she had overheard that Jack did not regard her as significant.

We couldn’t have stayed friends, she thought, because we never really were in the first place. “Friends,” she said finally. “I don’t know if Jack would agree.”

“My brother’s a hard guy to get to know,” Brian observed. “He’s just so melancholy.”

Charlotte was surprised by the remark. Years earlier, she might have agreed. But now she saw Jack as something else, not sad, but pensive and deep where Brian was not. The comment about his brother seemed unfair, and she wanted to remind him of the admonition they’d received in law school—personal attacks on your opponent undermine your credibility with the court.

They stared out the window, neither speaking, as the snowcapped peaks of the Obersalzberg unfolded before them in the mist and raindrops began to fall. “Do you remember the Jefferson at night?” Brian asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

Charlotte nodded, the memory instantly coming into focus. It was a trip they had taken to Washington in late winter, an attempt on his part to take her mind off her dying mother, back when he still cared, before things went bad. Late at night after the Georgetown bars they’d caroused had closed, he roused her from half sleep, coaxing her from their hotel room. “Where are we going?” she asked as he led her through the frigid night air, around Washington Harbor and the Kennedy Center toward the Mall, their breath rising in puffs above them. The streets were eerily silent and she worried that perhaps it was not safe to be out walking. They climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, staring up in awed silence. Then they’d pressed on. She had no idea how much time had passed, and if the long walk seemed tiring she never noticed as they strolled along the reflecting pool to the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin, which seemed illuminated under the pale gray night sky.

The memory, one she had not allowed herself for years, was as vivid as though it had just happened. But why was he bringing it up now?

“That’s what it reminds me of here,” he said. She opened her mouth to tell him that the bustling Washington metropolis, even at night, was the furthest thing from this alpine haven. Then she decided against it. Brian was, in his own clumsy way, trying to connect the two moments of solitude and retreat. And this was, she realized, the closest they might ever come to friendship. She wasn’t going to ruin it by correcting him.

“It’s hard, isn’t it, to imagine the war here,” she offered instead. The snow-capped mountains looked tranquil, as though undisturbed for a thousand years. It was almost impossible to picture the tanks and other machinery of war that had rolled through here, causing such unbearable suffering just sixty-odd years ago.

Jack appeared in the door of the café car then. “We’re almost there,” he announced abruptly. Charlotte peered out the window, unable to discern any signs of civilization among the unbroken hills. But it was less than a few hundred kilometers between the two cities and he spoke with the confidence of a man who had traveled this route many times. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a church steeple came into view, nestled between two of the peaks, and then the mountains broke to reveal a sea of spires and red rooftops below.

Charlotte turned away. She could still feel the puffy redness around her eyes, giving away the fact that she had been crying. Jack did not seem to notice, but looked from the window to his watch, then back again with impatience. As she remembered his tone when he disavowed to Brian that there was anything between them, her anger grew. The man she had glimpsed last night at the hotel, gentle and open, was nowhere to be found. Had it been an act or had something changed afterward?

A few minutes later when the train had screeched to a halt, they stepped off onto the platform and made their way to the front of
the station. The e-mail from Alicja, she remembered suddenly. She felt as though she should have said something earlier, but it had not felt right to tell Brian without Jack. “Um, wait a second,” she said. They turned and looked at her expectantly. “I have some news. After Roger told us about Magda, I did some checking with one of my contacts from years ago when I was researching in Poland.” She glanced up at Jack’s face to see if he was angry that she’d done this without telling him. But his expression remained impassive. “I just received an e-mail: it turns out that Magda died in the camps in 1943.”