Catching the Wind(94)

Maya motioned her toward a side door as Elias raced away. Quenby and Maya both brushed their shoes off on a rug inside the house.

The floor of the narrow hall was wooden, rugged and unpolished, but neatly swept. Another child glanced out a door, a toy knight clutched in his hand.

“I’ll find Ms. Hannah,” Maya said, dashing down the corridor.

Quenby turned right into a formal library, paneled with knotty pine and filled floor to ceiling with the colorful spines of books. She picked one of the books from a low shelf, titled The Amber Light. It was a fairy tale, illustrated with watercolors, but she didn’t know the author. Sir Vincent was all it said.

Outside the window, divided by a dozen panes, she saw a woman sitting on a wooden bench, surrounded by five or six children, a dark-pink scooter parked at the edge of her bench.

Quenby replaced The Amber Light and moved out of the library, into the sitting room next door. There she lingered beside a set of open French doors, listening to the woman read a story.

One of the older children, standing behind the bench, turned toward Quenby. When the girl saw her, she tapped the woman’s shoulder. And the woman turned as well.

Her pale skin was wrinkled, her blue eyes clear and kind. And strong.

Quenby stepped down the flat ramp leading out of the house. “Brigitte?” she asked.

The woman looked terrified.





CHAPTER 57





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Children were scattered across the garden and park, playing on a swing set and climbing trees. As Quenby slid onto the bench, she removed the metal box from her handbag. The woman glanced down at the rusted box, but she didn’t say anything.

“Brigitte—” she started again.

“Please call me Bridget. There’s no joy in that old name.”

“I think it’s a beautiful name.”

“Only a handful of people know it, and most of them want to bring me harm.”

“Not me,” Quenby said. She opened the box and took out the photograph first, of Brigitte and her parents.

Bridget clutched the old picture in one hand, the other hand over her mouth. “I’d forgotten what they looked like.”

“They must have loved you very much.”

She nodded.

Quenby took the wooden princess out of the box and set it gingerly in one of Bridget’s palms. “Do you recognize this?”

Bridget folded the toy between both hands before clutching it to her heart. “Where did you get her?”

“From a friend who’s been looking for you.”

“Dietmar?” she asked, and in her voice, Quenby heard a thread of hope.

Quenby nodded slowly. “Except his name is Daniel now. Daniel Knight. And he’s been worried about you for more than seventy years.”

Bridget lowered the princess to her lap. “Long ago, he said he would find me.”

“After you left with the Terrells, Mr. Knight was sent to the Isle of Man,” she explained. “He was interned there until 1944, and then after the war, he searched relentlessly but couldn’t find you.”

“I looked for him as well, but I thought he’d died in the war.” Bridget glanced out at the children. “In my heart, I knew he would keep his promise, if he was still alive.”

“Would you like to see him?” Quenby asked.

Bridget fidgeted with her hands, rubbing them across the book in her lap. “It’s been too long.”

“And yet not so long between friends.”

“Do you believe in a God who saves?” Bridget asked.

“I do.”

“I believe God uses our pasts, even our regrets, to help us and other people find Him.”

“You think God kept you and Dietmar apart?”

“No, but He used our time apart to tear open my heart and fill it back up again.”

Maya sailed up beside them. “Ms. Hannah said she’ll be out in a moment.”

“I need to speak with Ms. Hannah before she meets you,” Bridget told Quenby. Then she held up the book to Maya. “We were just reading your story.”

Quenby could see the cover now with its fierce dragon, blowing fire at a little girl. The title was Dragons & Ash by Princess Maya.

Bridget handed the book to Maya. “Could you read it to our guest while I speak with Ms. Hannah?”

Maya looked quite pleased to do so.

When Bridget pushed herself up on the arm of the bench, Maya reached for one of her arms, helping her move onto the scooter, and Quenby reached out to help as well. Then Bridget maneuvered her way toward the house.

Maya settled back down on the bench beside Quenby.

“Did you write this?” Quenby asked, tapping on the cover.

Maya nodded. “With a little help from Ms. Bridget.”

“When did you become a princess?”

“When Ms. Hannah and Ms. Bridget invited me to live here.”

Quenby smiled with her until her phone chimed. “Just a moment,” she said as she dug it out of her handbag.

Should I phone the police? Lucas texted.

She sent him a message right back. No.

Did you find her?

She sent back a smiley face and then dropped the phone into her bag.

Maya opened her book. The first illustration was of the fierce dragon from the cover, more charcoal black than green.