As Bright as Heaven(95)

“I’m so happy for you. For all of you.”

“I know! It’s the only thing I’ve wanted since the day he left. It’s all I prayed for. And now? My prayers have been answered.” She hugs the plate to her chest.

“How wonderful after all these years.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Has he . . . mentioned why he decided to come home?”

Dora cocks her head to the side. “You know, I haven’t asked him. I don’t care why he came home. Only that he did. That’s all that matters to me. He wanted to come home. And he did.”

“Right.” Any hope that Dora Sutcliff might shed some light on the situation vanishes. “So, I’ll just head downstairs, then.”

I start to turn, but she reaches for my arm. “Here. Come in through the apartment and use the indoor stairs.”

I follow her inside, through a tiny entryway and to a set of stairs that lead to the office below.

“Want me to take you down?” she asks.

“I’ll be fine. Thank you, though.” I take the first couple steps.

“We should have an engagement party,” Dora calls out from the top of the staircase.

“Oh. Um. Well, that’s a nice idea,” I answer.

“Let’s talk later.”

“Certainly.”

I get to the bottom of the stairs and open the door that leads to the office space. I find myself in a back room full of file cabinets and shelves of ledgers that reach to the ceiling. The door to this anteroom is ajar and beyond it I hear the clicking of an adding machine.

“Jamie?” I poke my head through the door’s opening.

Jamie is seated at his old desk, working the machine, with an open ledger in front of him. The desk where his father sits is empty. Beyond him is the counter that separates his and his father’s offices from the reception area. Beatrice’s chair is empty, too.

He looks up as I come into his office. He’s had a haircut and is clean-shaven. The clothes he’s wearing are new and tailored.

“Maggie!” His smile is one of surprise but also of obvious delight.

“Your mother let me come down the stairs from the apartment. I need to talk to you for a minute if that’s all right.”

He stands. “Of course. Please. Come in. Have a seat.” He moves newspaper pages off a chair directly across from his desk. He motions for me to sit and then he takes an identical chair next to it.

I look past him to his father’s office. “So, your father is away at the moment?”

He glances behind him and then back to me. “Yes. He’s meeting with a client.”

“And Beatrice?”

He slightly crinkles one eyebrow. “I’m afraid she’s out sick today.”

I nod. The conditions are perfect for what I want to ask, but I don’t know how to say it.

“It’s true, then? You’re getting married?” He is looking at my ring.

I gaze down at the sapphire on my finger. “Yes.”

“Congratulations. I’m sure you’ll be very happy.”

I lift my head to look at him. “You are?”

He blinks. “Pardon?”

“You’re sure I’ll be very happy?”

“You’re not?”

“I don’t know how any of us can be sure of anything.”

He studies me for a moment, and I know he’s wondering what in the world I am talking about. I close my eyes for just a moment to dispel the notion that I might not love Palmer like he loves me.

“Maggie?”

“I saw the letters.” The words tumble out too soon. But once they are out, they are out. I open my eyes.

Jamie is looking intently at me. I cannot read his expression.

“I didn’t mean to look inside your rucksack. It just happened. You were leaving my house to come here and you’d forgotten it in the sitting room. I went to get it for you and because it was open, a few things started to fall out when I picked it up. I merely wanted to put everything back inside. And that’s when I saw them. My letters.”

He is quiet for a second and his unreadable thoughts are making my heart pound.

“I’m not angry you saw those letters,” Jamie finally says. “I was going to tell you myself that I still had them. I figured at some point I’d have the chance.”

“You were?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you keep them?”

“Because they are precious to me.”

I can’t make sense of those six words strung together like that. How could my letters be precious to him? How?

“You never wrote to me after you came home from the war,” I say. “I sent you all those letters after you left and you never wrote back. Not once.”

“That doesn’t mean your letters aren’t precious to me.”

My mind is whirling with confused thoughts. I want to reverse time and spin the earth back to before I had decided I meant nothing to him. Before he made me feel like I had meant nothing to him.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “You left. You wanted nothing to do with any of us. You left!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was a broken man when I came home from the war. I hated who I was, who I had become. I hated what I had seen and what I had done. I didn’t want to be here where life had been beautiful. When I was in France, everything I believed to be true was turned on its head. It was like waking up every morning in an upside-down world where everything that had been sacred had become profane. Every time a shell knocked me to the dirt or blew apart the man next to me or I aimed my gun and fired, I felt myself disappearing. Some of the other soldiers found a way to navigate the upside-down world. I never figured out how I was going to stay me. When I was shipped home, I didn’t know how to be the man I was before. That’s why I couldn’t stay here.”