Catching the Wind(96)

“How long have you been operating this house?”

“My sister has been living here for fifty years.”

Quenby took a deep breath before asking. “I believe my mother might have visited here as a child, perhaps even lived with the other children.”

“What was your mother’s name?” Hannah asked.

“Jocelyn.”

Hannah reached for the arm of the couch, steadying herself as if she might faint.

“She used to talk about a house of buttercream.”

Hannah leaned forward. “You’re Jocelyn’s daughter?” she asked as if she hadn’t quite understood.

“I am.”

“I—I didn’t know she had a girl.”

Quenby’s heart skipped. “Did she grow up here?”

“Oh no,” Hannah said slowly. “She grew up in London.”

“How do you know her?”

Hannah’s eyes focused on the shelves of fairy tales before looking back at Quenby. “Jocelyn was my daughter.”

And with those words, Quenby thought she might faint as well.





CHAPTER 58





_____

Raw tears funneled down Quenby’s cheeks as she climbed into the rental car. She didn’t even care that Lucas was sitting beside her. Their work was done. She’d come here to find Brigitte for Mr. Knight, and yet it seemed as if two lost girls had been found.

Dietmar had rescued Brigitte from the Nazis long ago, but in their afternoon together, Hannah explained that Bridget had spent her life rescuing her and a host of children. Bridget was worried, saying she still needed to protect Hannah from Lady Ricker’s descendants, but Hannah assured her that she didn’t need protection anymore.

The truth unfolded like a shaky ladder in Quenby’s mind.

Lady Ricker wasn’t just some aristocratic woman bent on harming her country. Janice Ricker was the mother of Rosalind. And Quenby’s great-great-grandmother by birth.

She grieved deeply in that car, for the people who’d died at Lady Ricker’s hand, for the children during the war who’d lost their parents, for children today who continued to lose them. This wasn’t someone else’s story any longer. This was her story, rooted in a muddy reality. And she couldn’t make peace with her past, she realized, until she cried. Couldn’t love again until she grieved her loss.

Lucas didn’t try to stop her. Instead he reached out and pulled her close to him. She wanted to say something witty, something smart to keep him at bay, but the strength of her aloneness seemed to siphon out of her. And in its place was a weakness—not of character or physical power but of a deep heart’s desire to have someone there next to her, someone who wasn’t afraid of her tears. Or her story.

He kissed her hair, kissed the tears from her cheeks.

She leaned back. “I know God has forgiven my sins, but there are so many ghosts roaming around in my past.”

“A clean slate—that’s what you and I have in Christ, Quenby. Whiter than snow.”

And she saw it in her mind, the powdery snow of a ski slope, waiting to be forged. Everything was changing for her. After today, she was no longer alone. She had family left in this world—a grandmother who’d been racked with guilt as well over Jocelyn’s leaving. A grandmother who said she’d welcome Quenby into her life and her home.

She couldn’t change her past, like any of the children here, but it didn’t define who she was today. Nor did she have to hide behind someone else’s script, play a role like Hannah and Rosalind had once done.

She had the power to write a new story from this moment forward. Her story. One where the past molded and then empowered and strengthened instead of crippled her. A new story filled with strong, healthy relationships with people she loved and a heart open to trusting God and Lucas as well.

A heart willing to forgive.

She prayed silently that God would help her forgive her mother for what she had done. She’d never forget what happened, but she wanted to let go of the bitterness that she’d kept locked inside her, stop using it as a weapon against anyone who wanted to love her.

Lucas rolled down the window, and images fluttered into Quenby’s head with the breeze, pictures of a new story. She and Lucas together, following wherever God led. A smile when she thought of the good memories with her mother. Prayers for those trapped, like Jocelyn, in an addiction.

She glanced out the window, at the tree branches fluttering in the breeze. “What do we do now?”

“We fly to Solstice Isle for the reunion of a lifetime.”

Quenby nodded; that’s exactly what she’d hoped he would say. “Are you going to call Mr. Knight?”

“I tried, but Eileen said he still couldn’t talk on the phone.”

“We need to leave soon.”

He nodded. “Quenby, you don’t have to be afraid of me.”

She almost told him that she wasn’t, but it would be a lie. She was terrified.

“If you’ll have me,” he said, “I won’t leave you.”

She looked into those dark-brown eyes that had captured her days ago. “You can’t promise that.”

“I won’t run or walk away—how about that?”

“You hardly know me, Lucas.”