The Forgotten Room(102)

Cooper walked toward the bed and placed his hat and cane on top of the blanket. After a quick glance in my direction, he approached the fireplace where three squares had been painted on the bricks in a heraldic design. But the one in the middle was different, displaying Saint George, the red cross over his chest like a beacon marking treasure. Cooper reached out his hand, hesitating only a moment, then gently pressed his fingers against the cross. A cluster of bricks slid out from below the square, revealing a shallow opening.

Looking back at me, he raised an eyebrow. “I feel like Caesar, fixin’ to cross the Rubicon.”

I almost laughed at his Southernism but found I was trembling too much to do anything else but watch. I didn’t come forward, choosing instead to look over his shoulder into the dark space within. At first I thought the hole was empty, hoped it was empty. Because then there would be nothing that would bind us together, nothing that would make our good-bye less than permanent.

But when Cooper reached in and pulled out a stack of paper, I knew that the connection between us that I’d felt the first time I’d seen him was as real and constant as morning following night.

He sat down on the bed and smoothed his hand over the top sheet of paper, staring at the heavily embossed letterhead. “Pinkerton Detective Agency.” He looked up at me as if it were my decision for him to proceed. But we both knew that we were already on the far bank of the Rubicon.

I waited quietly while he bent his head to read. When he was done, he slowly raised his head, his eyes troubled.

“What does it say?”

He looked from me to the letter then back again. “Harry hired a detective to find Olive, to make sure she was all right. It says she married Hans Jungmann in 1893. It’s dated end of January, the same month you told me that Harry Pratt disappeared. Which, coincidentally, is right before my grandfather, Augustus Ravenel, went to Cuba.”

“And changed his name from Harry Pratt.” My legs didn’t feel strong enough to hold me up anymore, and I moved to the bed and sat down next to Cooper, being careful not to touch him. “I think I know why Olive and Harry were separated.”

Cooper turned to me with a lifted brow.

“Prunella,” I whispered.

“Prunella, as in Harry’s sister. My great-aunt Prunella, apparently.”

I nodded. “When I visited her, she told me that she’d always wanted to see Harry again so she could make amends for something horrible she’d done. Maybe she said something or did something that tore them apart. Something they were both powerless to stop.”

Cooper nodded slowly. “The timing of it all certainly lends itself to that theory. His sudden disappearance from New York and reappearance in Cuba, and Olive’s marriage all in the same year.” He gave me an odd look. “When was your mother born?”

I sucked in a quick breath as I found my thoughts wandering down the same dark path. “Not until November of 1893.”

“Thank God,” he said under his breath.

I glanced at the other letter still folded on his lap. “What’s that?”

Laying aside the detective report, he pulled out what appeared to be several attempts at the same letter and then held them between us so we could read them together.

The date at the top read January 30, 1893. My darling Olive it began. My eyes read quickly, each word more painful to read than the last, the ink heavier and darker as the author wrote, as if his grief were pouring out onto the paper along with the black ink.

“Farewell, my love,” Cooper and I both read out loud as we reached the end, the words soft and sacred.

Cooper carefully placed the letters in the rear of the small stack, leaving another letter, this paper thicker and heavier than the last, the handwriting bolder and crisper, lacking the artistic flourishes of the first writer, and written nearly thirty years later.

Dearest Lucy, it began. My gaze quickly scanned to the bottom of the page. I love you, Lucy. Always.

“My father’s handwriting,” Cooper said softly. “John Ravenel.”

I glanced away, not sure I could read it, knowing it was a love letter to my mother from a man who wasn’t my father. But I forced myself to read every word of John’s plea to convince my mother to move to Charleston and be with him.

“I don’t understand why she didn’t go with him. There was nothing here for her except for Philip Schuyler, and I know he wasn’t her first love.”

He let the letters slip from his hands and I looked at the papers scattered around us, the detritus of ill-fated love.

I clasped my fingers together on my lap. “Olive was Harry’s muse. His great love. And even though they both married others and had their own families, a piece of their hearts always belonged to the other.”

I stood so I could think clearly. It was too hard with Cooper so close. “And my own mother must have orchestrated her entire relationship with my father so she could somehow claim what she thought was hers, a mistaken belief that she was part of the Pratt legacy because of her mother’s love affair with Harry Pratt.” I looked up as a thought occurred to me. “She probably even wondered at least at some point if she could be their daughter.”

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, as if I could erase the memory of the mural and the necklace. And my mother’s constant search for something that could never be hers. “I wonder . . .” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I wonder if my mother ever loved my father. If he ever really knew who she was.”