Catching the Wind(81)

She closed her eyes, remembering the smile on her mother’s face when, in hindsight, she shouldn’t have been smiling at all. But Quenby had known something was wrong even though she couldn’t put it into words. Wrong because her mother was happy.

Had the thought of leaving her daughter filled her with joy?

Her stomach turned as she opened the envelope and saw the neat stack of corporate paper, stapled together. A dossier. Whoever Mr. Knight hired to research had done their job well.

The first page was polished and precise, lifted from the biography on the syndicate’s website. It was the kind of description one used to portray a life neatly put together, every piece in perfect place. College, writing credentials, her love of English literature and all things British. Of course, no one’s life was perfect, and no one could truly contain a synopsis of twenty-eight years on one page.

The next page dug a little deeper into her childhood. Where she was born (Nashville). The short background on her father, Trevor Vaughn, an aspiring country music artist who’d died in a motorcycle accident when he was twenty-three.

A brief background on her mother, Jocelyn Vaughn, a flower child growing up in the decade after being a flower child was cool. Quenby had never known her mother’s maiden name, and the dossier didn’t mention it.

Trevor and Jocelyn had met at a country music festival in Atlanta, their mutual passion for music solidifying a bond that lasted six years. And the story began to unravel from there, chock-full of details that Quenby hadn’t known.

There was the story of Grammy, who’d left Germany two decades after World War II with her American husband, a soldier stationed in Berlin before he went to Vietnam. About Grammy’s father—Quenby’s great-grandfather—a devout Nazi who had fought for the Wehrmacht. About Grammy’s uncle who’d died when his plane was shot down in Poland in 1939.

Quenby closed her eyes for a moment, processing the words on paper. Grammy had told lots of the Grimm stories, but she’d never talked about her own childhood. And no wonder. The shame from her family’s devotion to Hitler must have been overwhelming for a woman who loved almost everyone, except perhaps Jocelyn.

Grammy had tried to hide her contempt for her daughter-in-law when Quenby was young, but there was no hiding it after Jocelyn abandoned her. As a girl, Quenby remembered being glad that someone understood her pain, even as part of her heart still yearned for love and approval from a woman who could never give it.

There were three pages left in the report. The top of the next page was a photocopy of a newspaper article that ran in the Orlando Sentinel, two days after Jocelyn disappeared. Beside the column of copy was a picture of Quenby’s mother on her wedding day, wearing a crocheted dress, white cowboy boots, a wreath of flowers around her head.

Quenby tentatively flipped the page. Mr. Knight’s file followed Quenby’s life from college to England; then the final page began to detail her mother’s movements after she stepped away from Dumbo.

Her fingers brushing over the top of the page, she tried to steady her breath. Then she lifted her gaze and watched the tail of the kite as the boys rushed away. Finally, after all these years, perhaps she would finally find out what happened to her mother. Courage was what she needed. An internal strength as she sought truth about her own story.

As she prayed for that strength, her gaze fell back to the paper.

According to the investigation, Jocelyn left Disney World that Thursday afternoon and drove to a man’s house in a place called Narcoossee. Her boyfriend’s house, the record said, though Quenby hadn’t known her mother was dating anyone. The last few lines in the profile sounded so impersonal, an outsider’s sketch.

When she finished reading, Quenby slammed the file shut, her chest void at first, and then tears began falling down her cheeks.

Seconds later, Lucas slipped onto the sand beside her again, waiting quietly at first before he spoke. “Are you okay?”

She pulled the file to her chest. “I will be.”

“Does it say what happened to your mother?”

Nodding, she took a deep breath. “My mother’s dead,” she said simply, her words seeming to come from someone else’s mouth.

“I’m sorry, Quenby.”

“The police told Grammy, but she never told me.”

“She was probably trying to protect you.”

“I know.” Grammy had loved her dearly. She wouldn’t have done anything purposefully to hurt her.

“How did your mother die?” he asked.

Her gaze fell back to the paperwork, her stomach churning. “She overdosed on methamphetamines.”

He reached for her hand and gently covered her fingers. Instead of fighting him, she sat quietly beside him as sorrow streamed down her cheeks, neither of them moving again until the tide swept salty tears of its own across their toes.





Chapter 48




Rodmell, April 1953

Lily Ward lived in the village of Rodmell, five miles north of Newhaven. She’d lost her husband during the Battle of Britain, and then she’d lost their only child, a six-year-old daughter, when a bomb dropped on her school’s playground. Much later, Lily told Brigitte that God gave her two new daughters, not to replace her first one but to redeem what had been lost.

It was in Lily’s house, years after they arrived, that Brigitte finally began to believe that God might indeed be good. That He gave each person the opportunity to cultivate His creation and care for those in need. And that He sacrificed His Son to redeem hearts laden with bitterness and hatred. Some of His children still chose evil, but He was even willing to forgive those who’d murdered the people Brigitte loved, if they would repent and turn from their sins.