13 Little Blue Envelopes(62)

The polite British Airways stewardess at the door to the plane didn’t change her expression at all when Ginny came aboard her nice, clean aircraft. It was as if disheveled, stinky, empty-handed urchins always flew with her. She remained composed later on when Ginny accepted everything that she offered. Yes, she’d have a water. She’d take a soda, and a sandwich, and a cup of tea.

Cookies, towelettes, nutcrackers, basketballs . . . Whatever she had in her little silver cart, Ginny was taking. Two, if she could get them.

It was dusk in London when her plane touched down at

Heathrow. This time, after she walked the ten thousand miles of hallway, there was someone waiting for her at the end.

Richard didn’t seem to mind hugging her, even if she was filthy.

“My God,” he said, pulling back and taking a good look at her. “What happened to you? Where are your things?”

“Everything got stolen.”

“Everything?”

She reached into her pocket and produced her only two

remaining possessions, the passport and the useless ATM card.

“Well,” he said, “not to worry. As long as you’re all right. We can get you some new clothes. What about the letters?”

“They got the letters too.”

“Oh . . . right. Sorry to hear that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded heavily. “Well, let’s get you back.”

The train was fairly crowded, despite the late hour. Richard and Ginny were squashed together. Ginny explained where

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she’d been after Rome. Now that she strung it all together, she realized how much had been packed into such a short time—

just under a month. Seeing Keith in Paris. Getting stuck with the Knapps in Amsterdam. Riding in Knud’s house to the

north of Denmark.

“Can I ask you something?” Richard cut in as Ginny

reached the end of her story.

“Sure.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, you know, private,

but . . . did Peg tell you anything?”

This wasn’t nearly specific enough to be answered, and

Richard seemed to realize that.

“I know we didn’t get to talk much when you were here a

few weeks ago,” he went on. “But there’s something you should know. In case you don’t know. Do you know?”

“Know?”

“It seems like you don’t. I was trying to think of a good time to sit down and tell you this, but I couldn’t figure one out. So do you mind if I do it now?”

Ginny looked around the train car.

“No,” she lied.

“I suppose she probably explained this in the end,” he said,

“in the one you didn’t read. Your aunt and I were married. She needed medical care. Not that that was the only reason, of course. It just happened faster than it would have, perhaps. She told me not to say anything until you’d read everything that she’d written to you.”

“Married?” Ginny said. “That means you’re my uncle.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what it means.”

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He glanced over nervously. Ginny fixed her eyes in front of her.

She hated Aunt Peg at that moment. Hated her completely

and totally. It wasn’t her fault that the envelope had been stolen, but it was her fault that she was here, that Richard was forced to rescue her and explain these things that he obviously felt awkward about. It was better when it was all a mystery—when Aunt Peg had just been out there in the wild somewhere. She wasn’t married. She didn’t have a brain tumor. She was always on her way home.

In that second, as they pulled into Angel, Aunt Peg was

gone. Really and truly gone.

“I have to go,” she said, bolting out the door ahead of him.

“Thanks for everything.”

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The Runaway Niece

The one advantage to having everything you own stolen is that travel becomes very easy.

She started walking, following the bus route down Essex

Road. People were dressed for their night out or they were coming back from work. In both cases, it meant that they

looked, as Richard would say, “smart.” Or as she would say,

“clean.” They probably didn’t smell of train funk and old wet clothes and they’d most likely bathed sometime in the last forty-eight hours.

But she didn’t really care. She just kept walking, feeling her face set into a determined grimace. It was about half an hour before she realized that she had passed from the busy area with the brightly lit stores and pubs and restaurants to the smaller, tighter streets filled with liquor shops and off-track betting.

The route had imprinted itself in her mind. She turned down 285

to the street where all the houses were the same—all flat-fronted, dull-gray brick with white-rimmed windows. Halfway down the block she saw it, the red door with the diamond-shaped yellow window. The black blinds in the upstairs windows were crookedly pulled up halfway, and lights were on. As she got closer, she could hear music.

Someone was home, anyway. It couldn’t be Keith. He was

in Scotland. She’d only come here because this was the only other place in London she knew how to get to on foot. The only other place she knew besides Harrods, and she couldn’t go there, obviously.