Catching the Wind

by Melanie Dobson

  Her air bag exploded, flinging her back against the seat.

  Lucas shouted her name, and then she heard someone else. A woman.

  She tried to open her eyes, but they were glued shut. And her toes, they were soaking wet.

  Swim, that’s what she needed to do, out of this murky water. Rush away.

  Lucas said something else, but the last voice she heard wasn’t his. It was Brigitte’s, whispering her name.

  Chapter 52

  London, 1961

  Theater called to Hannah like a mockingbird, mimicking the cry of her heart. She craved an audience enraptured by her talent, and adoration—the theater’s song of promise—lured her into a nest that turned prison cell in her later years.

  It’s impossible to really love someone hidden behind the armor of costumes and makeup and lights, but Hannah didn’t care about love back then. Lily and Bridget had spoiled her with it when she was a child, cushioning her from the pains of hunger, loneliness, and fear. Perhaps they’d spoiled her too much.

  For her eighteenth birthday, Hannah had begged to attend a musical in the West End, and they went together to London to see Brigadoon in Her Majesty’s Theatre. Hannah soaked in the grandeur of velvety reds and brilliant golds, the aroma of expensive perfumes, the buzz of a well-dressed audience waiting eagerly for the curtain to rise. And when it rose, Eliza Cain took the stage.

  Bridget recognized her immediately, though eighteen years had passed, though she wore a powder-blue Celtic dress and a wig with a hundred blonde curls.

  She was magnificent as Fiona. Headstrong and beautiful. Larger than life as she sang about being in love. She captured the hearts of her loyal subjects until she disappeared into the darkness. For a moment even Bridget forgot that Fiona was really Rosalind.

  Tears streamed down Bridget’s face as she thought about Rosalind so long ago, vanishing by the cliffs. But unlike Fiona, Rosalind never returned. Her path took her away from the one person who needed her most.

  When the curtain dropped, Hannah was holding Bridget’s hand, tears smearing her mascara, streaking her flawless cheeks. And Bridget knew right then that she’d never be able to contain her. Hannah was too much like Rosalind. Bold and rash and afraid of nothing, except perhaps being tied down.

  She didn’t love her any less knowing this, but she worried for her.

  And she feared that Hannah, too, would one day walk away.

  CHAPTER 53

  _____

  Listen to the wind, Quenby.

  And so she had. She’d lain down on the lawn by her mother, the sticky grass poking her arms, tickling her ear. And Quenby had listened.

  It’s breathing through the grass, her mother had said. Across the dales.

  There were no dales in their apartment complex, at least none that she’d ever seen, but she’d imagined the dales in Yorkshire, where you could hear the soft wind instead of sirens, feel its coolness instead of the summer heat.

  But then Henry, the bully from the apartment next door, began throwing rocks at them, and it broke the magic.

  Her mother had only been to Yorkshire a few times, to visit her auntie, but she’d told Quenby about a grand house there, the color of buttercream. It was like Wuthering Heights except the stories in that house were only allowed to have happy endings.

  The grass, Quenby remembered, had smelled sweet that morning with her mother, but all she could smell now was disinfectant. Instead of wind, there was a beeping noise that wasn’t close to soft, sheets chafing her skin. Still she wanted to believe that her mother was alive. That there was a place they could find healing.

  When she opened her eyes, a doctor was standing by her bed, asking her questions. Her head, she told the woman, hurt the most.

  “Where’s Lucas?” she asked.

  But the doctor had already stepped away. When she tried to sit up on the pillows, the room whirled.

  “There now,” a nurse said, patting her hand before attaching something to the fluid bag above. “This will help you rest.”

  In minutes, Quenby was gliding across the dales again.

  The next time she woke, soft light filtered through the glass in her hospital room, though she wasn’t sure if the sun was rising or setting.

  Memories flooded back to her—Lucas driving his car, the gray lorry, the river. That terrible sound of metal against metal.

  “Lucas?” she whispered, praying he was okay.

  “I’m right here.” She felt him take her hand.

  His left eye was black, his cheek bruised. “Your eye—”

  “The air bag left its mark.” He kissed her forehead. “And it saved your life.”

  “How long have I been in the hospital?”

  “Two days. You had a concussion, so they did a CT scan in Lewes and ran some other tests, but they concluded that rest is what you need most to recover.”

  “Who was driving the lorry?”

  “I don’t know yet, but the police are trying to find him. He rammed into the back of us after we went off the road.”

  She leaned against the pillows, her head aching. “Your Range Rover?”

  “It’s trashed.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Quenby. It’s my fault for wrangling you into this mess. I’m calling it off.”

  “Calling what off?”

  “Our search.”

  “You can’t cancel it. I have a contract.”

  “You’ll get your money,” he started, an odd coolness in his words.

  “I don’t want the money, Lucas. I want to find Brigitte.”

  He smiled again, pushing her hair away from her forehead. “You’ve searched with your heart, Quenby.”

  “I suppose I have.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be telling any more stories if we continue our search for this one.”

  “Did you get Brigitte’s box?” she asked.

  “I did. Along with your purse.”

  “What if Brigitte’s letter wasn’t actually a good-bye? What if it was a clue?” Her mother’s words came back to her again, how she’d loved to talk about the wind in the grass. “There’s something else, Lucas.”

  She closed her eyes again, trying to remember her dream. It had been based, she thought, on a happy memory with her mother, one that had been stuffed deep. Her head ached, and it wasn’t solely from the accident. There were new pieces to the puzzle, poised to fit together, but she couldn’t even make sense of the frame.

  “In the car . . .” He clung to her hand. “For a moment, I thought I’d lost you. It’s not worth it, Quenby, to find someone who disappeared long ago.”

  He did care for her, as more than just a colleague. Enough to call off the search for Mr. Knight. He couldn’t cancel it, not for her sake, but his kindness eased some of the pain.

  “How’s my patient?” The woman who walked into the room reminded Quenby of a fairy with her snowy hair and elf-like body under her pale-blue shirt. The wrinkles fanning from her eyes flared with her smile.

  “My head aches.”

  “A side effect, I’m afraid, of playing chicken with a lorry.”

  “This is Dr. Eaton,” Lucas said as the woman scanned her chart. Then she took Quenby’s blood pressure and listened to her heartbeat with a stethoscope, asked Quenby to wiggle her fingers and move her feet.

  “Everything appears to be in working order,” Dr. Eaton said, taking off the stethoscope. “But no playing sports until after you see a neurologist in London.”

  “Or climbing trees,” Lucas added.

  “And no electronics, for at least a week.”

  Lucas leaned forward. “When can she travel?”

  “I’d like you to stay at least one more night nearby, just in case.”

  “In case of what?” Quenby asked.

  Dr. Eaton slipped the chart back into its box. “In case you miss me.”

  There was only one bed-and-breakfast in the village of Rodmell, and the owner—Clara—had two
rooms available, with an interior door between them. Lucas made Quenby promise to keep the exterior one to the hallway locked and barricaded, just in case the man in the lorry decided to show up for an encore.

  Her bedroom was painted a warm olive color, and there were white hydrangeas in a large vase on her nightstand. At the foot of her bed were two curtained windows and a case made of ash wood and glass, filled with dozens of trinkets.

  She fell back asleep quickly, as if she hadn’t slept in days, and when she woke again, the clock beside her bed blinked 6:45. Her headache was finally gone and she was itching to use her iPad, but she followed the doctor’s orders and took a shower instead.

  Lucas tapped on the door an hour later, looking vastly relieved to see her out of bed and ready for the day. He kissed her cheek. “How is your head?”

  “A hundred times better.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I think I could climb a tree.”

  “Not on my watch,” he said before escorting her downstairs to the breakfast room.

  With her ban on electronics, she carried the stack of files about Brigitte and the Rickers to review with Lucas over breakfast. Clara already had sausage, grilled tomatoes, and fresh fruit waiting for them along with coffee that she’d roasted in the barn.

  Quenby placed her files on the table beside her food and set Princess Adler on top. Then Clara pulled up a chair at their table. “What brings you two to our little village?”

  “We’re trying to find someone who might have lived here near the end of World War II,” Quenby explained. “A woman named Brigitte.”

  Clara shook her head. “I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’ve never known anyone by that name.”

  Quenby reached for the top file, moving the princess to the side of her plate. “I have her picture here.”

  Clara examined the photo of the girl with the braids and bow. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize her.”

  Quenby returned the picture to the file and placed Princess Adler back on top.

  “That’s strange,” Clara said, reaching out to touch the wooden princess.

  “What is it?”

  “Where did you find this toy?”

  “Brigitte’s best friend gave it to me. He made it for her when they were children.”

  Clara stood. “Let me show you something.”

  They followed her upstairs, to Quenby’s room. Clara moved toward the glass case and opened it, rummaging through the trinkets. Then she pulled something off the top shelf.

  When she turned, Quenby and Lucas both gasped. There was a knight in her hand, about three inches tall, carved out of the same wood as Princess Adler.

  “Extraordinary,” Lucas said.

  Quenby took the knight, rolling it in her hand before passing it along to Lucas. “Where did you get that?”

  “Would you believe it was once Hannah Dayne’s toy? I like to think she left it for me.”

  Quenby’s and Lucas’s eyes met briefly before they looked back at Clara. “Hannah Dayne, the actress?”

  “Yes, except she was known as Hannah Ward when we were children. She lived right outside Rodmell.”

  Quenby’s mind raced. She’d only spoken to Hannah once for their interview, over the phone, and when Quenby asked about her own childhood, she’d said it had been a happy one, living with her single mother in a village south of London. “I didn’t realize Ms. Dayne grew up here.”

  Clara nodded. “Her parents were killed during the war, but Lily Ward raised her and her sister. After Lily died, the two women left Rodmell and never returned. I found the knight when I helped clean out their home.” She paused. “What was the name again of the woman you’re searching for?”

  “Brigitte.”

  Clara’s voice trembled. “Hannah’s older sister was named Bridget.”

  Quenby glanced at the knight in Lucas’s hand. Could Hannah Dayne be Rosalind’s daughter? Alexander had said that Rosalind left Brigitte and the baby near Rodmell, at the cliffs along the river. Brigitte must have taken the baby to Lily Ward’s house.

  Had Hannah followed in her mother’s footsteps as an actress without realizing who her biological mother was? Or had she somehow discovered that Eliza Cain was her mum? Her chosen surname was eerily similar to the one her mother used on stage.

  Quenby retrieved the knight from Lucas. “Where did Bridget go?”

  “Last I knew, she was going to work as a children’s nurse up in Yorkshire, but that was back in the 1950s. Lily Ward left her house to the girls, but they never returned to claim it.”

  Pieces began to click together in Quenby’s mind. The knight. The soft wind. The story of Hannah Dayne.

  She looked toward the desk. “I need to look up something on my iPad.”

  “I’ll do it for you,” Lucas said.

  A bell rang on the floor below, and Clara moved toward the door. “Take the knight when you leave, in case you find either Bridget or Hannah.”

  Lucas propped up Quenby’s iPad on the desk and opened her web browser. She told him exactly what to search for, and he began reading off the names of the country homes in Yorkshire. Abram Park. Acklam Hall. Adler House.

  Quenby smiled. “Princess Adler.”

  “The woman who wanted to fly.”

  Lucas continued searching, but there wasn’t anything else about Adler House online. No images or stories or links.

  “We can take the plane into Leeds this morning,” he said.

  “Can you check my e-mail first?”

  “Of course.” He tapped on the keyboard before scanning the screen. “You have two e-mails from Chandler. In the first one, she says she’s been trying to contact you on your mobile.”

  “Tell her I’ve been swimming in the River Ouse.”

  “In the next e-mail, she says that Evan has changed his mind and wants you to finish the story on the Ricker family. He’d like to meet with you in his office, first thing tomorrow.”

  “Tell her—” Quenby paused, her head starting to ache again. “On second thought, don’t tell her anything at all.”

  Chapter 54

  Hannah gave birth to her daughter in the summer of 1967. She’d managed to hide her pregnancy, all the way up until the opening night of Cinderella in London’s Adelphi Theatre. The director was furious when he discovered her secret. Ian Levine demanded that she get rid of it, the very next day, but she refused to visit the man who made babies disappear.

  Hannah left the West End for three years, but the stage kept calling her back. Her audience of one rewarded her hard work with cries instead of applause. Sleepless nights without any praise. She missed her beautiful costumes and the lights that poured down on her. The appreciation of an audience cajoling her onto the stage for a curtain call.

  When Ian showed up at her door, he said he’d forgiven her, as if she’d done something wrong. That he wanted her back for Gone with the Wind. Years later Hannah told Bridget that he’d never even asked about their daughter.

  She returned to the West End. Not because she wanted to work with Ian, but because she wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara.

  After Jocelyn was born, Bridget had saved up enough money to take a long holiday from her work. She offered to come to London, to stay with her niece in the evenings while Hannah was performing, but Hannah assured her that she’d found a governess who watched over Jocelyn while she was onstage.

  So Bridget had stayed at the children’s hospital, working with some of the most courageous children she’d ever met, not knowing that Hannah’s child was suffering alone.

  Bridget traveled to London twice a year and took Jocelyn out for afternoon tea at the elegant Palm Court. She was a lively girl, just like her grandmother and mother. And she loved beauty and joy. When Jocelyn was eleven, Bridget asked Hannah if she could spend the summer with her, and for those months, they’d hiked over the dales, sung songs, and pretended to fly. She was what Bridget might have been if she’d stayed a princess for a few more years.

  Child
hood is fleeting, and she’d wanted Jocelyn to dream like she and Dietmar had once done.

  As she and Jocelyn played, Bridget wondered again what happened to the boy who’d helped her in spite of her fears. The boy who’d saved her life.

  Though Dietmar, like her, had probably changed his name, she still searched the phone books whenever she was in London, but she had never found a listing for Dietmar Roth. She’d stopped letting herself think that he’d died during the war. Instead she imagined him with a houseful of his own children, spread out on the floor with dozens of the wooden toys he’d liked to carve, charging the grand castle he’d built for generations of Roths.

  Autumn of 1979, Hannah was offered a part in The Music Man on Broadway. New York City. Bridget had said good-bye to the two people most dear to her, not knowing what the future held. Then she counted down the days until they returned home.

  But those weeks turned into years. Each time Hannah thought she could bring Jocelyn home, another commitment delayed them. Hannah invited Bridget to New York, but her old fears flared, chaining her to England. She’d even stood one morning at the door to a Jetway, pilots and passengers alike encouraging her to walk down the corridor, but between the narrow walls, all she saw was the dark hold of a fishing trawler, the walls caving and crawling over her, waves hurling her and Dietmar back and forth.

  She couldn’t move. Nor could she breathe. An attendant wheeled her back to the ticket counter, and the plane left for New York without her.

  Her body betrayed her when she so wanted to be strong. If she’d known what the future held, she would have forced herself to fly across the pond.

  Seventeen years passed before Hannah’s stilettos stepped back onto British soil.

  Jocelyn never returned.

  Fame for Hannah had been like the apple for Snow White: one bite and she was hooked again. After New York, she answered the call of a Hollywood producer. Her career on the silver screen flourished at first, four films that gave the illusion of success. But somewhere in her rise to stardom, she misplaced her daughter.