Spring House

by Taylor, Mary Ellen

  “Yes,” Natasha said.

  “These two people were Jews and not permitted to leave the country.”

  “Why?” Natasha asked.

  “Nazi Germany forbade it.” Megan studied the young boy’s sweet face. “Remember the dreidels?”

  “You think they belonged to him?” Lucy asked.

  “Perhaps,” Megan said. “This woman and I guess her baby boy were trying to flee to safety.”

  “How did Samuel figure into this?” Lucy asked.

  “I have no idea.” She thought about Claire and Diane sitting in the Le Havre café circa 1909, thirty years earlier than this woman and her child. “Diane is the one Hedrick sister I was never able to track down. All I could ever figure was that her father had given her to a wealthy family just as he had done with his three other daughters.”

  “Maybe there’s an answer in those letters,” Rick said.

  “Believe me, I’ll read them all,” Megan said.

  Megan thought about the letters all afternoon, and when she finally arrived back at Winter Cottage about six, she could barely wait to read them and research Elise Mandel and the boy. After a quick supper, she hurried to her room and opened her laptop. An internet search of the Mandels revealed nothing, which was not surprising. So many historical documents were not posted online. As she stared at Elise’s face, she realized she would have to find help in Europe to complete the search.

  After Megan had graduated college, she had worked a summer in France as a tour guide. The job was nonstop for nearly four months, but at the end, she had had enough money to pay for her first year of graduate school. She returned for two more summers and, in the process, made several student friends who still lived in Europe. She emailed her friend Chloe, who lived on the outskirts of Paris, and asked if she might be interested in doing a little digging in the national records.

  When she glanced up at the clock, she was surprised so much time had gotten away from her. If she did not start mixing her piecrusts tonight, the pies would never be ready for the Friday delivery.

  Pushing off her bed, she changed into sweats and a large T-shirt and pulled her hair into a thick ponytail. Fifteen minutes later, she was standing in the kitchen. As she stared out over the calm waters of the bay, her mind drifted between the renovation schedule flowcharts and flour and sugar ratios for her crusts.

  She dug her hands into the sticky dough, kneading the crumbling mixture until it formed a tight ball. If she stayed on schedule with these pies, she would see this order filled and make a nice chunk of change for her and the baby.

  As she wiped her hands and wrapped the first batch in cling wrap, her thoughts kept drifting back to Elise, her baby boy, and the missing Hedrick sister. She measured more butter and flour into the large mixing bowl and began working it with a pastry blender. Why would Samuel have hidden the Mandels’ travel papers? How had he come to know a young woman who lived near the border of Germany and France?

  By 8:00 p.m. Megan’s back ached, and she was beginning to shift her weight from foot to foot and wondering if she should sit.

  When she had committed to this order, she had been three months pregnant and feeling good. Now plagued with aching muscles and swollen feet, she wondered what she had been thinking. But bloat and belly aside, she had made a promise to deliver one hundred pies for the Baugh-Smith rehearsal dinner on Friday, and that was exactly what she would do.

  She measured out ten more cups of flour and dumped it into the bowl. Two or three batches to go, and she would have enough for the Thursday-night baking session that would begin about six and not end until midnight. Some bakers made their products ahead of time and froze them, but she had always stuck to her motto of handmade fresh. It was not as profitable and likely would not be sustainable after the baby came, but for now it felt right.

  Footsteps had her looking over her shoulder to see Lucy yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What are you still doing on your feet?”

  “Making piecrust. I’ll be done in an hour or so.”

  Lucy walked to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. “When do you plan to rest and put your feet up?”

  “I’ll sleep in tomorrow.”

  “Isn’t Helen coming tomorrow?”

  Megan sighed, irritated that she had already forgotten. “One hundred years ago pregnant women plowed the back fields and then went home and had a baby.”

  Lucy washed and dried her hands. “It isn’t a hundred years ago. Wash your hands, I’m taking over this gig.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I can finish this.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t, but you and the spud need to sit.” She bumped her aside with her hip. “Sit.”

  The baby did a sudden somersault, punching her way around Megan’s insides. Her back aching, she gave in, washed her hands, and after filling a glass with ice water, sat at the kitchen table.

  Lucy began to cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender. “Who’s getting married?”

  “Jessica Smith and Danny Baugh. Their venue is an old plantation outside of Norfolk. Thankfully, it’s a moderately sized rehearsal dinner. There are only seventy-five people coming.”

  “So how many pies?”

  “One hundred individual ones.” The order had sounded relatively small when she had booked it months ago. Now it felt a little overwhelming.

  Lucy winced. “How much dough have you made so far?”

  “Enough for forty.”

  “Does Jessica know there’s weather coming on Saturday? According to the old guys at Arlene’s diner, it’s going to be heavy rains and wind.”

  “Do I look like a weather woman? But I’ll text her with a warning.” Megan took a long sip of water and then typed a message to the wedding coordinator. “I did reach out to a friend in Paris who travels to Alsace a few times a year. She might find our Elise for us.”

  Lucy poured iced water into the dough and worked it into the butter-and-flour mixture with her fingers. “Do you think Elise knew Samuel?”

  “She had to have known him. He would have been in his early twenties in 1939 and sailing with the merchant marines. He had a reputation for traveling the most dangerous waters, and some hinted he worked closely with the French Resistance.”

  “Could she be the woman he loved and lost?” Lucy asked.

  “That would be as good a guess as any.”

  “So how does a sailor working for the merchant marines end up with the papers of a German woman and her son? Why hide them? What’s the big deal?”

  “No idea. How about I read some of the letters we found?”

  “Yes. Dying to know more about Diane’s life.”

  Megan rose up out of the chair and made her way to her room, where she collected the letters. She had sealed them in a plastic bag in her dresser. When she returned, Lucy was already dividing out the dough into smaller batches.

  Megan laid the letters gently on the table and counted them. There were eighty-six total. As she created stacks according to each year, she discovered two-thirds of the letters were written between 1900 and 1903. There was a gap between 1903 and 1905, but then the letters resumed and remained steady until 1939. These sisters had stayed in close contact.

  “I’ve never written a single letter,” Lucy said, incredulously.

  “It would have been the primary way the two sisters could have communicated,” Megan said.

  “I can’t imagine living without text.”

  “I love to write letters. I used to have pen pals in middle and high school. In fact, one of them helped me get the job as a travel guide in Paris. She is looking into the travel papers for us. No matter where we lived, I would write to them. It was always exciting having a letter in the box with postage stamps from far away.”

  “Very old-fashioned,” Lucy commented.

  “I wrote Scott letters.”

  “Did he write back?”

  “He texted back.”

  Megan removed the first letter dated 1903 f
rom its envelope. She noted the author’s thick, dark handwriting, which appeared childlike. She studied the envelopes and realized that the first quarter had been mailed from Baltimore and the remainder from France.

  “I hope they’re in English. I don’t speak a word of French,” Lucy said.

  “I’m fluent.”

  “Really?”

  “Someday I’ll tell you about my work as a tour guide in France.” Those days now felt like they were a lifetime ago.

  Lucy grinned and arched a brow. “Why do I get the sense there is a mysterious side to Megan Buchanan?”

  Megan could barely remember the carefree girl who had led hundreds of people through the French countryside. “I’ll have to drink a good bit of wine to talk about those days.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Megan cleared her throat before she read several letters that covered Diane’s new life in France. As she laid them down, another letter caught her eye. It was postmarked from the western port city of Le Havre, France.

  March 1, 1939

  Dearest Claire,

  I need a favor, dear sister. Stories from Germany are as bad as I thought. The Germans are on the march, and I know it’s a matter of time before they . . .

  “Are you reading the last letter?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes. I kind of want to know how it works out for Diane.”

  “I bet you start with the last chapter of every book you read.”

  “I do.”

  Megan couldn’t make out the next several words and skipped to the next line she could read.

  We have agreed to take our dear friend Max’s daughter, Elise Mandel, as well as her son. Though Max’s daughter is French, he fears if his daughter and grandson delay in Germany much longer, they will be trapped. The Germans have already imprisoned her husband and charged him with treason, which of course is a lie. However, we all fear the government will arrest Elise and her son. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

  Yours truly,

  Diane

  “That must have been a terrifying time,” Lucy said.

  “Diane was wise not to delay. Hitler’s final solution was gearing up, and in a little over a year, the Germans would be in Paris. Half of France and the seacoast would be closed.”

  “Mandel sounds German,” Lucy said.

  “But Max was from Le Havre, and his daughter is French. A French girl married a German boy. It happened quite often.”

  “If Max was also a Jew, he was on the edge of being in real trouble himself.”

  “Le Havre would have been fully occupied within fourteen months by the Germans,” Megan said. “The entire western coast became a restricted zone.”

  “So we know that Max sent his daughter to live with Diane and she reached out to Claire.”

  “Thanks to the Buchanan company holdings, Claire had many connections in the shipping industry by the late 1930s.” Megan yawned. “I need to start at the beginning of the letters and read them properly.”

  “I’ll finish the crusts.”

  “It’s my job to make the pies.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I bake and you read. I want to hear the letters and Samuel’s journal. The Buchanans and the Jessups certainly do have a twisted history.”

  “Yes, they do,” Megan said. “I owe it to Claire to fill in the pieces of her life.”

  “And discover Diane’s fate?”

  “Yes. For some reason, that feels more important to me than ever.”

  “Why?”

  “Just an odd sense that we’re running out of time.”

  Over the next couple of hours, Megan read several of the letters to Lucy, and they now understood Diane had moved to an apple farm in the Normandy region of France. But now it was late, and Megan’s eyes were too strained to read the faded ink. Plus her back was killing her.

  With all the dough wrapped in cling wrap, she happily retired to bed. However, hers was not an easy night’s sleep. In fact, it was very restless. The baby continued to toss in her belly as if she had her own worries.

  Her mind kept conjuring the moment the four Hedrick girls were separated forever from their home on Cape Hudson. That was such a different time. Families often had to make hard decisions to survive. But that didn’t stop them from missing their home and mourning what might have been.

  She realized that she desperately wanted to set down roots in Cape Hudson and make a life here for her child. Like Claire and Diane, she never wanted to leave.

  The Eastern Shore’s rich, sandy loam was fertile, but like everything here, a shift in the winds could uproot the oldest of trees.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Megan

  Wednesday, March 7, 2018

  Cape Hudson, Virginia

  6:40 a.m.

  Megan gave up trying to get back to sleep, got up, and dressed. She went down to the kitchen and made herself a small cup of coffee—an indulgence she had not been able to give up. She rubbed her eyes and stared out over the calm water as the first hints of sun illuminated the sky.

  As she stood at the kitchen sink, taking her first sip, she pressed her hand into her back. It ached and the muscles bunched. She had overdone it yesterday.

  “Just a few more days,” she whispered to the baby. “And then I’ll put our feet up and take a long nap.”

  Her phone dinged with a text from her friend in Paris, who she imagined was already halfway through her day at the art history department. You have piqued my curiosity. I travel to Alsace this weekend. Stay tuned.

  Megan smiled. Chloe would get answers.

  Upstairs, Natasha’s footsteps thundered as she ran around. “Has anyone seen my green shirt? Never mind, I found it!”

  Lucy calmly cooked breakfast and made her sister’s lunch. Natasha rushed past Megan and into the kitchen. Conversations about homework and after-school activities buzzed as Megan sipped her coffee. Dolly lay on her doggy bed chewing a rawhide stick.

  The front doorbell rang, and Megan turned from the sink. “I’ll get it. You two carry on.”

  She opened the front door to find Mr. Crawford’s truck was parked in the circular drive in front of the house. Hooked to the trailer hitch was his massive blue-and-white fishing boat.

  Mr. Crawford greeted her at the base of the front steps. “I have your table.”

  “I thought you left town yesterday.” She wondered if she still owed Rick those pies.

  “I was delayed,” he grumbled.

  “So you’re selling it to me at my price?” she asked.

  “It’s one valuable table, but it belongs in Winter Cottage.”

  If Megan weren’t eight months pregnant, she’d have jumped up and down. Instead, she politely smiled.

  “Lucy is rushing to get her sister off to school, so it’ll take me a couple of hours to get you a check.”

  “Just run the check by the First National Bank in town.” He handed her a deposit slip. “They know me there, and you can just put the money in my account.”

  “Sure. I can do that.” A flutter of excitement raced through her, and she sensed a piece of the puzzle drop into place.

  He climbed up on the bed of his truck and tossed a tarp aside to reveal the table. “Want me to put it inside?”

  “That would be great,” Megan said. She hurried back to the front door, opening it wide as he carried the card table inside.

  “Where do you want it?”

  Without hesitating she said, “Follow me into the parlor. There’s a corner.”

  She stayed a couple of steps ahead of him as she walked down the center hallway toward the parlor where she felt that it belonged. She would have to search out more photos of the house to determine where the piece might have been.

  Mr. Crawford set the table in the corner by the window, and it seemed to fit almost immediately. “I asked my brother how we came to get the piece. He wasn’t sure but promised he’d ask our aunt. If I hear of anything, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”

  “I would a
ppreciate that. Do you have any idea how long it’s been in your family?”

  “At least seventy-five years.”

  Which meant if the table had belonged to the house, Claire could have sold it during the Depression. He retrieved the chairs and carefully set them around the table before stepping back to study the entire set. “It looks right at home there.”

  “Yes, it does. Thank you.”

  The four chairs reminded Megan of the four Hedrick sisters who had been scattered after their mother died. Perhaps the table had not belonged to Winter House but to the Hedrick family. “And I’ll get that money deposited by tomorrow,” she said.

  “No worries.”

  She followed him outside. “If your family comes across any other pieces, I’m happy to look at them.”

  He pulled off his cap and scratched his balding head. “I’ll warn ’em you drive a hard bargain.”

  She laughed. “You do that.”

  Lucy and Natasha had already left for school, so Megan locked Winter Cottage’s large door behind her and made the short drive to Spring House. As she looked at the dumpster nearly overflowing with years of junk, she sensed the house felt a brighter future in store and was ready to give up a few more secrets.

  Helen pulled up in her Volvo, nearly an hour early. She parked and stepped out, dressed in jeans that looked pressed, a white sweatshirt, and sneakers. “I’m ready to work.”

  “There’s still quite a bit to do,” Megan said, smiling.

  “You look pale. Did you sleep well last night?” Helen asked.

  “The baby does her best aerobics at night. The kid is going to be a gymnast.”

  A small smile tugged at Helen’s lips. “You might as well get used to that. Children take over our lives.”

  The bittersweetness in the words reminded Megan again that Helen had lost her only child. “How is your grandmother-in-law?”

  “Doing well. A broken hip at her age can be quite dangerous, and healing can be almost impossible. But she has impressed all the doctors with her determination to walk again. I told her I was coming here and wouldn’t see her for a couple of days, and she understood. She says when she can travel, she’ll come to see the baby and might have a story or two to share about Samuel Jessup.”