The Light Over London(15)

Cara laughed. “You’re not wrong. I actually wanted to ask you about something I found at work today.”

“In Mr. Wilson’s shop?” Gran asked. A lifelong patron of Wilson’s Antiques & Curiosities, she’d been the one to suggest to the crotchety Scotsman that he might want to take Cara on for a few hours a week while Cara was at university.

“At an estate we were clearing out. It’s a diary from the war.”

Gran sat back in her pistachio-and-white wing chair, saying nothing.

“I think the writer was in the ATS.” Cara rose, crossed the room to the sideboard cluttered with mementos, and lifted up the portrait of Gran at eighteen. “There was a photo with the diary. It was of a woman wearing the same type of uniform you’re wearing here.”

“Is that so?”

A long pause stretched between them while Cara weighed her next move. Finally, she said, “I’m planning to read the diary.”

“Why?”

“I thought the woman who owned it would want it back if she’s still alive. Or one of her family members might.”

Gran set her teacup down on the coffee table. “Then I hope she’s an entertaining writer.”

Cara knew she was in danger of being shut out. When Gran didn’t want to talk about something, her lips thinned and her eyes danced around to look at everything but the person she was speaking to. It had been like this the first time Cara had tried to ask about Gran’s war work. And it had been like this when she had tried to ask about the phone call between Gran and Mum just three days before the crash that had claimed Mum’s life.

She swallowed hard as she remembered letting herself into her parents’ house with her spare key on a break from the office. Both Mum and Dad were supposed to be at work, so she’d thought she’d just drop the book she’d borrowed off with a note. But when she’d opened the door, she’d heard her mother’s voice.

“I can’t believe you’ve kept this from me for so long,” Mum was saying.

Cara froze, thinking she’d walked in on a fight—all the more disturbing because her parents rarely quarreled. But no one responded. Instead, a pause lingered on, filled only by the sound of Mum treading across the parquet drawing room floor.

“I do have a right to know, Mother.”

Gran. Mum was arguing with Gran. Cara had known to expect some tension as they all worked to sort through Gran’s house in order to ready her for her new home at Widcote Manor, but this was something else. Something weightier.

“I don’t care that it was during the war.”

Another pause. Cara could imagine Mum, hand pressed to her right temple as she tried to stave off a headache.

A sharp laugh echoed out into the hall. “Well, it’s too late for that. I’m not sure I can forgive you lying to me since the day I was born.”

Something clattered on the floorboards. Cara was pretty sure it was Mum’s phone tossed down in frustration. Slowly she backed up, closing the door softly behind her. She’d return the book another day. Only another day didn’t come because three days later, Mum was dead.

After the funeral, when all of the mourners had finally left the house Cara had grown up in, she’d asked Gran what the fight had been about. Gran had sat, her face blank and drawn and her hands twisting in her lap around a handkerchief. Cara had meant to press again after the pain of the funeral subsided, but she’d been swept up by her divorce and she hadn’t wanted to risk losing Gran’s support. But now it was time to try again, and the diary was the perfect entry point.

“Will you tell me what it was like serving?” she asked now.

Gran waved her hand. “It’ll just bore you. I never left the south of England.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want to know more about the family past before . . .” She swallowed, unable to bring herself to talk about a day when Gran, her last living relative, would no longer be with her. Fresh from the divorce and with the sting of grief still catching her at unexpected moments, Cara was struggling to reconcile herself to the idea of that.

Gran’s expression softened, but still she said, “There’s not much to tell.”

“Why . . . why did you and Mum fight over the phone before she died?” When she saw Gran flinch, she hurried to add, “I’m not angry. I just want to know.”

Even from across the room, she could see the older woman’s eyes begin to well up. “Why would you want to know about a petty fight?”

“Because it didn’t sound petty,” Cara said softly.

Gran shook her head, her silver hair swinging clear of her shoulders. “We’ll talk about this another time. It’s been such a trying day. Beatrice from the fourth floor came for tea. I adore her, but she does overstay her welcome and I’m exhausted. I’m sure you’re tired too.”

Cara tried to push through her disappointment at being dismissed and forced a brightness into her voice. “That’s fine. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“Don’t forget to bring the tea cakes,” Gran said.

Cara nodded, making a mental note to add a box of Tunnock’s marshmallow-and-chocolate treats to her shopping list. “I won’t, Gran.”

She leaned down and kissed Gran on her soft, cool cheek. She was about to pull away, but Gran stopped her with a birdlike hand on her wrist. “You know I love you, don’t you, dearest?”