CHAPTER 49 

March 1960

It was two a.m. Under the flickering yellow lamppost gaslights, Peggy and Wren walked back to the hotel from Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the West End. Fog had rolled in from the river while they’d been listening to live music, drinking gin fizzes, and dancing so close to each other that they moved as one. There’d been a five-piece band. Black men glistening with sweat as they blew into their saxophones, a platinum-haired woman singing with her mouth so close to the microphone that Peggy couldn’t stop staring at her. Songs of longing and desire, songs of loss and of love. Peggy had been consumed with all of it, with Wren’s touch, with how very much of the world she’d missed in the little yellow house on the spit of sand.

Loving Wren had been a low hum at the center of her being since they were children. He’d represented adventure and goodness and yet for all of their days next door to each other, no matter the attention he’d given to her, love between them had never seemed possible. But here they were in London, body to body. Even if he left tomorrow, even if his touch was as temporary as a wild sunset, she had this moment.

And all because of a story.

Before they’d left Mother at the hotel, crying into her tea about how she hadn’t meant to do anything wrong, about how she hadn’t meant to steal a story, about how everything she’d ever done in her life had been for her only child, her daughter, a message had come from the front desk for Peggy.

We found her. Because you carried on our story, we found my sister. Thank you. Love, Hazel. Hazel had left a phone number for her flat in Bloomsbury, an area of London that Peggy had studied in school. She’d learned about the Bloomsbury group and they had all sounded so romantic and artsy and frankly sexy. Now this was where the woman who started Whisperwood lived. How apt it all was. But then again, Peggy was prone to making everything a bit fantastical.

Now nearing The Savoy, Peggy asked him, “How do you think they found Flora? Where was she all this time?”

“I hope they tell us, but I bet it had something to do with that journalist they were going to see.”

“Well, that was mighty fast.” Peggy thought about it for a minute. “Do you think the journalist was her sister?”

Wren shrugged. “I doubt it.”

Peggy thought about what everyone might have done after they’d scattered from the Embankment Gardens that morning. At first, after she and Wren had left Mother in midafternoon, they’d wandered the streets: shopping without buying anything, sitting in a coffee shop sipping dark espresso so bitter that Peggy thought she’d never want another kind, and then to a beauty salon where Peggy had shown a slick-haired male hairdresser a photo of Jackie Kennedy from a magazine and said, “Cut my hair like that.”

Mother would hate it and Peggy cared nothing for this fact, and it thrilled her that she could tolerate Mother’s disappointment. What a new and wondrous way to be in the world! Turns out her dark wavy hair was perfect for the bob. A pearl barrette held back the left side. It made Peggy feel free, lighter, and a bit more brave. Which made little sense since it was just hair.

Peggy and Wren approached the doors of The Savoy and Peggy removed her hat, her new bob brushing against the upturned collar of the sky blue coat Wren had bought her the morning before they’d gone to the British Library. They walked through the turning door, warm air a blast on their faces. The gin fizzes she’d consumed in the jazz club made Peggy’s head light and giddy.

In the lobby, a woman sat on a chair, her white gloved hands folded in her lap. It was Mother, sitting exactly where they’d left her almost eleven hours ago, wearing the same dress, her black coat over her legs. She stared at Wren and Peggy and tears fell.

Peggy walked to her mother. “Mother, are you all right? What are you doing?”

“I thought you were dead,” Mother said without moving an inch, only her quivering face showing life.

“Why in the world would you think that?”

“The world is a dangerous place, Peggy.”

Peggy held out her hand and her mother took it, standing stiffly. “Mother, it’s also a wondrous place.”

“I haven’t seen that in a long, long time.”

“Maybe,” Peggy said. “Maybe, because you haven’t been looking.”

Mother slowly removed her white gloves and reached out to touch the edges of Peggy’s hair. “You cut off your hair,” she said.

“I did.”

“It’s absolutely lovely,” Mother said.

The unexpected comment was a grace Peggy had wanted for so long—approval for what Peggy wanted instead of what Mother wanted.

Mother cried in earnest now, covering her face with her hands. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Not one bit. All I’ve ever done is for you.”

“Mother, maybe it’s time to do something for you.”

Mother looked to Wren. “I’ve been terrible to you.”

Wren nodded and reached for Peggy’s hand. “I love her, ma’am.”

“I know you do.”

“Mother.” Peggy glanced about the lobby, empty but for one night concierge in a tall black hat, discreetly turning away from their conversation. “Have you been here, sitting right here, since this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought if I just waited, if I didn’t move an inch, you’d be okay. It’s silly, I know. But here you are.”

“Mother, I’m staying here, of course I’m here.”

“Can I stay with you tonight?” Mother paused, fussing with the buttons on her cardigan. “Then I promise to go home.”

The heat of a blush filled Peggy’s cheeks, and she told the truth. “I don’t have my own room. I’m sharing with Wren.” She guarded her heart for the battle, a battle that didn’t come.

“Okay, I will get my own room.” Mother took a few tentative steps to the front desk and then stopped. “Will you ever forgive me?”

“I already did,” Peggy said. “And guess what?”

Mother gripped the edges of her black purse dangling from her elbow, her back straight as the queen in the portrait behind them. “What?”

“They found Flora.”

“Oh! Was she alive?”

“Very, but that’s all I know. I can’t wait to find out more. But I’ve been thinking about this all day and, Mother?”

“Yes?”

“No matter what you meant to do when you kept the origins of this story a secret, what you did do was keep it alive so that it could find its way to Hazel. You kept alive a story and a lost sister was found.”

Mother almost laughed and then shook her head with something near delight. “So, I’m not all bad.”

“No one is,” Peggy said.

Mother took three long strides back toward Peggy and threw her arms around her, held her tight. “I love you, darling girl. I love you.”

Peggy felt her mother’s body tremble and she let go and looked into her brown eyes, at her mascara-stained tear tracks on her cheeks. “I love you, too.”