Finally, Georgina being a hoarder was paying off. I’d seen elephants all over the living room before her whimsical detritus was cleared out, so I trundled down into the cavernous storage room of Apartment 1A to dig through some boxes. I found a beautiful one made of jade—I couldn’t think why we’d spurned it; it would fit nicely in the front hall, although perhaps that line of thinking is exactly how people become hoarders. I set it aside, along with a small white porcelain elephant, and a few others carved of wood. When I lifted out the last one, I heard a clattering and dug around in the bottom of the box. My hand closed around something cold and round, and when I pulled it out, a long chain came with it. A necklace.
I turned it over in my palm. The charm was in the shape of a portly camel, fitting neatly inside my cupped hand, with a small hinge along the bottom and a pin-size latch at the top. I ran my thumbnail under the latch, and half the camel flipped open; a small silver key and a knot of paper tumbled out.
My heart leapt. Slowly, carefully, I undid every painstaking fold, until a scrap lay in front of me that was barely legible around all the creases. I flicked on my phone flashlight and leaned over it.
very heart. I understand the obstacles. Ellie will see only the betrayal. We may lose her, but we will gain life. For I die when I can’t feel your presence. I suffocate when I don’t breathe your air. I love you. I am yours. Always. Be brave.
Forever,
Georgina
“Holy shit, I found it!” I crowed aloud to the crumbling, crumpled piece of paper. Then I squinted at it and realized something was scribbled on the other side. She’d addressed it with a crooked heart, and H. V. written inside.
“H. V.,” I murmured. “H. V. Who are you?”
I tucked the page in the back pocket of my jeans, taking care not to rip it, and then heaved the box back where I’d found it, atop a chaise longue that had an old rusted French weathervane standing next to it with an O where the W would have been. I turned to figure out how to carry the elephant trinkets upstairs when suddenly I sat down hard on the couch.
A vane. Vane. Henry. Nick’s grandfather. Eleanor’s husband.
H. V. was Henry Vane. It had to be.
I raced up the basement stairs, leaving my pile of elephants for later as I speed-walked through the house to get to my bedroom and up to Narnia. It was serene as ever up there, but my brain felt like it was on fire. Did he reject her? Did she demand the note back, hurt and enraged? Or did she never send it, and hold her secret to herself for her whole life? Did this break her?
Nothing up there had a keyhole that would fit the silver one she’d hidden with the letter’s end. I unzipped the throw pillow case in which I’d stashed the original pages, pulled them out, and added the last—only one, but somehow it made the whole thing infinitely heavier in my hand. I heard Nick enter the bedroom below me and came within a second of calling out to him. But my voice died in my throat. The doomed love of a sibling’s partner. A spurned spare whose relationship with her sister never recovered. This all felt uncomfortably familiar. Was Georgina’s future the same one that awaited Freddie? If I told Nick, would he feel like destiny foretold that he’d never forgive Freddie, and needlessly self-fulfill a prophecy?
I prayed he wouldn’t notice the armoire door ajar. The letter burned hot in my palm. But then Nick’s footsteps receded and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I wasn’t about to let Lyons family skeletons intrude on another Porter wedding day, so I folded the whole thing up with the key inside it and zipped them back into the pillow. The secret had kept for half a century. It could keep again. For now.
* * *
Nick and I drove into Cambridge the morning of the wedding. My loyalty as far as ancient university towns went obviously lay with Oxford, but its rival was nonetheless powerfully charming. If Oxford felt like living history, then Cambridge and its picturesque river dotted with punters was a living postcard, and especially on my sister’s wedding day, I would