by Jo Watson
“So, be happy, then.” Mike leaned even closer to me.
“How?” I asked. I couldn’t help the tears in my eyes now. “I don’t even think I know what would make me happy anymore.”
“Writing makes you happy, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“It did. But now it just feels stressful.”
“So, don’t do it,” he said quickly.
“I can’t do that,” I whispered. “If I’m not Becca Thorne, bestseller, then who am I?”
He leaned closer to me. “Then you’re Pebecca Thorne. The girl with the wrong name, who lost her dad and who overcame a crappy childhood and a bad break-up and then rose above that all to write a book that changed people’s lives.”
I looked over at him, tears escaping my eyes now.
“Why do you have to be someone else, when being that person seems perfect to me?”
My heart thumped in my chest and I gazed out the window. I felt like I couldn’t look directly at him; if I did, I might cry. Ugly cry.
“Do you ever speak to your mom?” he asked.
I shook my head. “We lost contact many years ago. Somewhere between me living with her sister and then me living with one of her cousins. I’m not sure I can forgive her for the childhood she made me have,” I said thoughtfully. I looked at the police station, and it was then that I noticed the sign that had been painted over. “Bottle store?” I pointed at the faint paint on the wall. “This used to be the bottle store?”
“I know. Nothing is really what it seems, in this place,” he said, in a mysterious tone, and, before I could turn around and say something in response, he was already out the door and walking across the parking lot.
Nothing was as it seemed, here. Everything had another side to it. Everyone and everything had a story . . . I wondered what mine was, and whether it had a happy ending?
CHAPTER 70
We walked into the “jail cell,” and Ash and Emelia were no longer stooped over papers; they were sitting happily at the desk, laughing together. I didn’t know them that well, but, in the short time I had, I could see what a great couple they were. It was obvious how perfect they were for each other, how in love they were.
“Hey,” Mike called out, when we walked inside. “Did you find anything?”
“Did you find Petra?” Ash asked.
He nodded.
“Was she looking for her son again?”
I walked up to where they were sitting. “It was so sad. She went to her old house—we found her in her son’s old bedroom. Surely someone can do something about this?” I said.
“God, that’s so awful,” Ash said. “Imagine getting to a place like that, where you can’t remember who and where you are, and missing someone so badly that you—” She stopped talking and looked at Mike. “Wait. She went to her old house, as in . . . ?”
“Yup.” Mike sat down at the table and I followed suit.
“Did you see her?” Ash asked, sitting up straight.
“I did,” he replied flatly. “She said I must tell you guys congrats on the engagement.”
“What a bitch!” Ash said, and Emelia nodded in agreement.
“She seemed genuine,” Mike mumbled.
“Oh, please! A genuine thing hasn’t come out of that woman’s mouth in, like . . . forever.” Ash was getting really worked up now, just like Mike had mentioned. “Do you know what she did to him?” Ash looked at me and I nodded. “Broke up with him—twice!” Ash shook her head, and I couldn’t help the smile that flashed over my face. She looked at me, shocked. “You think that’s funny?” she asked.
“NO! No. Not at all.” I waved my hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. I smiled because I just think it’s so nice, how upset you’re getting on your brother’s behalf. It’s sweet to see, that’s all.”
Ash’s face softened. “No one must fuck with my little brother,” she declared, and then wrapped her arm around his shoulder.
“She put play dough down someone’s pants in kindergarten because they teased me,” Mike said, with a smile.
“I can’t imagine you being teased,” I said.
“Uh . . . You know how the doctor said that he couldn’t tell whether Mike was a boy because he was so—” she inflated her cheeks—“chubby?”
“Yes?” I smiled.
“Well, he was. For a while, anyway, and then it all turned to pure, hard muscle.” She poked her brother on the arm and they both laughed. If there was a prize for the best siblings in the world, these two should get it.
“He was so cute, though,” Ash said.
“You should show her the photos!” Emelia piped up.
“No. Please. No photos.” Mike hung his head a little.
“I’d love to see photos,” I said, feeling like I was part of the group now.
“So . . . what did you guys find, while we were out?” Mike changing the subject.
“Well, do we have some good news or what,” Emelia declared, pushing a piece of paper in front of us.
Mike pulled it towards himself and started reading. “Eugene Abrahams?”
“I think Abe was a nickname, and actually it’s short for Abrahams, his surname.”
“How do you know?” Mike asked.
“Aaah, so that’s when Google came to our rescue.” Emelia pulled out her phone. “Look.” She held it out and both Mike and I leaned in.”
“What?” I gasped when I saw the profile pic for Eugene (Abe) Abrahams. “It’s him! It’s HIM!” I almost yelled as I looked into the eyes I knew so well. The photo was of his younger self, and not how he would look today. “Is his profile open? Has he posted anything?”
“No,” Emelia said. “And it’s weird that he used that photo as a profile picture. Do you think he had it like that in case Edith ever searched Facebook?” she asked.
Mike looked up and then his face dropped. “Oh God. Towards the end, Gran asked me about Facebook, about whether you could find people on it. She’d heard about it. She asked me to help her set up a page . . . I never did.”
Ash reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Shit, she was probably looking for him.” Mike stood up and paced the floor a few times, as if he could no longer sit down. “I should have done it for her. I should have helped her.”
“You didn’t know what she was looking for,” I said quickly.
“She could also have found him in others ways—like, by using a private investigator. Why didn’t she look for him? She could have, couldn’t she?” Ash pressed.
“Where is he? Can we drive there?” Mike asked.
Emelia and Ash shook their heads together. “He moved to England. He moved a week after she wrote her last letter to him.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, as the impact of those words hit home. “So, that letter that she was forced to write by her father, that really was the last communication between them?” I held my face in my hands, trying to imagine what I would feel like, if I was him.
“Oh my God,” Emelia exclaimed.
I held my head and shook it. This couldn’t be how this story ended. This story needed a happy ending; this could not be it. I jumped up off my chair.
“We have to go there, now, and give him the letters,” I said. “He cannot live a minute longer thinking that last letter was what she felt about him. He needs to know the truth.”
CHAPTER 71
“You’re squirming a lot.” Mike turned his head towards me.
“There’s no space.” I wiggled in my seat and tried to stretch my legs out.
“Used to traveling business class?” he joked.
“Actually, yes!” I said, with a playful smile.
“Well, you’re just going to have to slum it, like the rest of us.”
“Did you know,” I leaned in and whispered, “that men still pee on the toilet seats in business class?”
Mike laughed loudly and someone turned and looked at us.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Do you know how ha
rd it is to pee standing up in a moving vehicle?”
“Do you know how hard it is to pull some toilet paper off, make it into something like a little square and give the seat a wipe, or—hey, here’s a novel idea—why not lift the seat?”
“I lift the seat,” Mike said to me, in a strange voice that seemed loaded with something.
“Good to know,” I teased.
“In case we ever decide to co-habit.” He mumbled that last part and then quickly smiled, turning it into a joke, even though it hadn’t sounded like one at first. Was I imagining things? I smiled back at him and he gave me that warm, crazy, sexy smile that lit up the dull interior of the plane around us. This was better than any business class I’d ever flown.
“So, what’s the plan?” Mike asked.
“The plan,” I said thoughtfully. We hadn’t really had a chance to formulate that much of a plan between yesterday and today. We’d only discovered the man’s name yesterday, and everything had happened so quickly after that. Mike had used his fake police powers and had gotten a cop friend from Morgan Bay to track down an address for Abe, in the UK. Emelia had booked us flights there, with three clicks of a button, then we’d packed as fast as possible, then we’d all piled into my car and driven back to Jo’burg, crashing at my place for the night—everyone had fake ooohed at my coffee table. Then we’d all woken up the next morning and gone to the airport, said goodbye to Ash and Emelia, and before I really knew what was happening, we were cruising 30,000 feet in the air, in economy class.
“The plan,” I repeated, thoughtfully. “Well, the plan is that we go and take these letters to him.”
“And what about your book?” Mike asked.
“What about it?” I repeated. What about my book? I hadn’t thought about my book in days.
“How are you going to tell him you’re writing it? You’ll need to get his permission, now, from a copyright perspective, if I’m not mistaken,” he said, suddenly sounding like a lawyer for the first time since I’d met him.
My stomach twisted a little; I hadn’t thought of that. “I guess he could be married and maybe he wouldn’t want this out?”
“But—as her heir and the person who inherited her estate—technically, all her letters and the diary are now mine. So I can give you permission to do whatever you want with them. You can turn those into the book; you don’t need his letters anymore.”
I listened to him. It was all starting to sound complicated now, and the whole idea was making me feel nervous and nauseous. Somewhere along the way, I’d almost forgotten that I was writing a book. I’d become so swept up in Edith and Abe’s story, I’d forgotten I had one to write.
“It’s okay.” Mike slipped an arm through mine. “We’ll ask his permission, but, if he says no, you can put her letters into the book. We’ll photocopy them all and give him the originals. It’ll be fine.” He sounded so sure of himself.
I leaned my head back on the uncomfortable seat and let my mind wander. I let it wander to all the places I’d been, this last week. All the things I’d seen and done, and the people I’d met. I closed my eyes and let it wander some more; this time, it wondered what it would be like to be with Mike, permanently. What it would be like to wake up with him in the morning, in Willow Bay. I might stay at home and write at that little desk by the window, looking out over the river. He’d go out during the day and fake-police around town. I smiled to myself at the thought. Maybe, in the evenings, we could walk on the beach together, we could sit on the veranda and drink wine—and I wouldn’t care how red I went. At night, we would climb into bed and sleep together, and he would hold me in the same way that he’d held me the other night. Maybe I would go out and have a cup of coffee and some cake at Emelia’s coffee shop during the day. Maybe I would go and work in the library, too, in between all the hot dinosaurs and mermen threesomes. Maybe I would become friends with Techno Tannie and download her music and listen to it, and maybe I would become a regular at Reddy’s, buying condoms. Maybe I would paint with Ash in the afternoons, help out around the B and B. I could rewrite their terrible web copy, I could . . .
I opened my eyes when I realized what I was doing.
“What?” Mike asked, looking over at me. “Are you okay?”
I looked at him and shook my head. Because I wasn’t okay. I was in serious danger, here, of being very not okay, because I was totally and utterly falling—for him, for a place, for the life I wanted to have, was meant to have.
“I’m fine.” I forced a smile, and he smiled back.
“You sure?” he asked again, as if he didn’t believe me.
I nodded. “Never been better,” I said, and, strangely, in some ways, that was the truth.
CHAPTER 72
“Who’s going to knock?” Mike asked, as we stared at the front door. We’d only landed a few hours ago and we were already standing outside Abe’s house in Chiswick.
I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. “I’ll knock.” I reached out and rapped my knuckles against the wooden door. We stood there and waited as the door remained closed. We looked at each other nervously and both shrugged. I reached out and knocked again—a little harder, longer and louder, this time.
“Are we sure he lives here?” I asked Mike.
“Positive; I checked. He lives here with his granddaughter. I called her to say we were coming.”
I nodded. “Okay.” I knocked again and, this time, I heard movement in the house. I looked at Mike and smiled. “Hello,” I called out.
“Coming,” a small voice returned.
“This is it,” I whispered to Mike, feeling a strange combination of excitement and nerves. I pulled the bag of letters higher on to my shoulder and clutched it tightly. I saw the door handle move and I stared at it, willing it to open. When it finally did, I gasped.
There he was.
It was him. The man I’d been searching for and had traveled halfway across the world to find. It was a strange feeling to see him, like this. He was the same, but completely transformed. It was as if he’d used the face-aging app and posted a picture of himself. His hair was grey, his face was full of deep lines that criss-crossed the planes of his cheeks and forehead and pulled at the corners of his eyes. His body was frail, his fingers and knuckles swollen and crooked with arthritis, the backs of his hands dappled with liver spots, and his skin looked thin, like a piece of rice paper.
“Hi.” Mike stepped forward and held his hand out for him to take. “I’m Mike. I spoke to your granddaughter on the phone yesterday, about coming here and talking to you.”
“Yes?” the man, Abe, said. His voice sounded soft and old and tired.
“Do you know why we’re here?” Mike asked.
“Only that you have something for me,” he said slowly, and then looked over at us. “Your accents,” he said thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard an accent like that in a very, very long time.” He said that last part almost inaudibly.
“Yes, our accents,” I said.
“Where do you come from?” he asked, looking at us.
“Can we come in?” Mike asked. “Maybe we can do this when we’re all sitting down.”
At that, Abe perked up. “What do you think I’m going to do, son? Drop bloody dead in the doorway?” he said, standing up straighter than before.
Mike smiled at him and shook his head. “No, I don’t think that.”
“Well, damn right I’m not!” Abe declared loudly.
“I think what Mike means,” I said, “is that this is quite private; maybe doing it inside is better.”
Abe eyeballed us, as if trying to get a handle on us. He finally stepped aside and we followed him into a small sitting room and took a seat on a floral-patterned sofa.
“I would offer you tea, but my granddaughter says I am not allowed sugar anymore, and, let’s face it, tea tastes like milky water, without the sugar. That’s the best part.” He rolled his eyes.
“It’s okay, thanks. I’m fine,” I said quickly.
“Me too,” Mike said.
“So, out with whatever it is you’ve come here for.” Abe sat back in his chair; it almost dwarfed him. His frame was so small and fragile-looking, despite his fiery personality.
I reached for my bag and, without a word, I started pouring all the letters down on the table in front of us and I kept going until they were all out. There were so many that they spilled off the table and dropped to the floor, like leaves. I watched his face as he leaned forward in his chair. He reached out a crooked hand and took one of the letters. He looked at it briefly, and then, with his other hand, he grabbed his glasses off the table and put them on frantically. His hands were trembling as he raised the letter all the way up to his face.
I turned to Mike and we shared a quick, concerned look.
“Where . . . ? Where . . . ? Where did you get these?” Abe asked. I could hear his mouth had gone completely dry.
“My name is Michael Wooldridge,” Mike said. “I am Edith’s grandson and these are the letters that she wrote to you over the last seventy years.”
At that, Abe brought the letter up to his face and touched the paper against his cheek. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. I gripped the side of my chair, as my chest felt tight.
“Is she . . . ? Has she . . . ?” He opened his eyes and looked over at Mike. Mike didn’t say a word, just nodded. Abe lowered his head and grabbed the arm of his chair, gripping on to it so tightly that I could see the sinews in his arm tensing, like violin strings.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him, trying to hold back my tears. “But she loved you,” I blurted out, and then started rambling. “She loved you so much. She loved you more than she loved anyone in her entire life. With her every breath, every thought. She memorized every single one of your letters and would recite them to herself every day. She loved you so much, right until the day she died. She wrote you letters for the rest of her life, even though she knew you would never get them, and she hid them in her horse’s stable—”
