trying to see the stacks of bags and other lost belongings on the other side of the wall.
“Yup.” He pulled a ledger from beneath the counter and opened it. “Everything that gets turned in is logged here. No suitcases in the past day.”
Then why, she wondered, had he bothered checking in the back? “Is it unusual for a person to lose something as big as a suitcase?”
“You’d be surprised the things people leave behind,” he replied. “Bags, boxes. A couple of bikes. Even dogs.”
“And it all comes here?”
“All except the dogs. Those go to the city pound. You can leave your name and information. If someone turns in your bag, we’ll contact you,” he added.
“Grace Flemming,” she said, using her maiden name as a reflex. She stopped, suddenly ashamed. Was she erasing Tom already, as if their marriage had never happened at all?
Hurriedly, she scribbled down the address of the boardinghouse in the ledger where the clerk indicated. Then she stepped away from the counter and started up the steps. When she reached the main level, she crossed the concourse to the bench and stopped, staring at the spot underneath where the suitcase had been. Perhaps the owner had come back for it after all. Guilt washed over her as she imagined a woman opening the bag and finding the photographs gone.
Grace stood, holding the orphaned photos uncertainly. She could turn them in to the lost and found on their own. They weren’t her problem, really. Then she would be done with the whole matter. But they remained weighty in her hand. She was responsible for separating the photos from the suitcase. The owner was probably wondering where her pictures had gone. Perhaps she was even distraught over losing them. No, Grace had taken the photos and it was her responsibility to return them.
But how? The suitcase had disappeared and Grace had no idea as to the owner or who might have claimed it. Or almost no idea, she corrected, remembering the single name that had been chalked on the bag: Trigg. She recalled, too, that there was a watermark on the photos. She opened the envelope furtively, as though someone might be watching. The watermark was there: O’Neill’s, London. The suitcase was from England, or at least the photos were. Perhaps she should take them to the British consulate.
But the clock in the middle of the station showed half past five and the throng of rush hour commuters was beginning to thin. The consulate would be closed now. Grace was suddenly weary. She wanted to go home to her room at the boardinghouse—which she hadn’t seen in nearly two days—and soak in a hot bath and forget all of this.
Grace’s stomach rumbled. She started out of the station toward the coffee shop across the street. Ruth’s, it was called, though the th of the lighted sign above the door had burned out. No fancy steakhouse dinner tonight. Really she needed to stop eating out altogether, get some groceries to make simple meals in the rooming house kitchen and save a bit of money. Frugality was not something she’d grown up with, but a skill that she had honed these past months living in the city and stretching what little she had left.
She took a seat at the nearly empty counter. “A grilled cheese sandwich and a Pepsi, please,” she said to the yellow-haired waitress after counting the change in her purse mentally and deciding that she had enough.
As the waitress pulled her drink from the soda fountain, Grace’s eyes traveled to the television above the counter. An image of Grand Central flashed across the screen. They were talking about the woman who had been hit by a car and killed in front of the station that morning.
“Turn it up,” she said suddenly, forgetting in her urgency to be polite.
The newscaster continued, “The accident took place at 9:10 a.m...” That was just a few minutes before she walked by.
Then a woman’s image flashed across the screen, dark hair drawn back, face somber. “The victim,” said the newscaster, “has been identified as British citizen Eleanor Trigg.”
Remembering the name that had been chalked on the suitcase, Grace froze. The woman whose photographs Grace had taken was the very one who had been killed in the accident.
Chapter Nine
Marie
England, 1944
Marie sat in her room in the barracks at Tangmere Airfield, trying not to sweat through the wool of her travel suit because she would surely be wearing it for days. As she waited,