The Art of Inheriting Secrets(54)

“No, she was a lone wolf, for sure.”

“That’s a good way to put it. She liked things her own way, and she didn’t like parties or any of that. She just wanted to draw and paint and read a book. And of course, the countess was that enormous personality, so it was easy to hide in the shadows.”

I imagined my mother and her mother in that ruin of a dining room, over breakfast perhaps. Light streaming in the ceiling-high mullioned windows, paintings on the walls, the antique table gleaming. My mother young and beautiful, my eccentric grandmother in her silks, each of them disapproving of the other.

It made me sad.

“I’m glad I had a better relationship with my mother.”

“You must have been a great joy to her. I can tell you loved her very much.”

“I did.” Lifting the strawberry to my mouth, I took a bite. All strawberryness in all the universe filled my mouth, my brain, my entire being. It was exactly the right depth of juiciness, not too sloppy, not too dry, and if I had ever tasted a sweeter berry, I couldn’t remember. I closed my eyes. “Wow.” Took another bite. “Mmm.”

Helen chuckled.

I opened my eyes and plucked another berry from the bowl. “I feel like I’ve never tasted a strawberry before.” Still trying to savor rather than devour, I ate the second and then a third. “They’re amazing.”

“English strawberries,” she said. “And I think you’re more like your grandmother than your mother.”

“She liked strawberries?”

“I don’t know. I meant your sensuality.”

I very nearly blushed and then thought, Oh, why. I was a sensualist—no one became a foodie without that essential thing. And I couldn’t help who I was. “I wonder if I reminded my mother of Violet.”

“Oh, surely you did. It must have felt like Violet was following her.”

Stricken, I held a new strawberry by its stem. “How awful!”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. Don’t pay me any attention.”

She meant well. “Where did you buy these?”

“Farm stand over by Haughton.”

Of course, because everything was going to keep reminding me that I needed to learn to drive. “Too bad.”

“They’ll be good everywhere, though. Fresh cream, a little cake.”

“No, just the berries. Did I tell you that I’m an editor for a food magazine? And I write a regular column about a single ingredient. I’ve never done one on strawberries, and I’m very glad right now.”

“You’ll have to share that with me.”

“Yes.” I took a breath, sucked juice off my finger. A breeze wove through the chimes, one after another. “What I can’t figure out is what happened. Why did she leave?”

“I was abroad when it all happened, but I do know that she’d been seeing someone just before I left. She was keeping it a secret because her brother wouldn’t have approved, but I saw them in London together, and she took me into her confidence.”

“Her mom was dead by then?”

Helen nodded, frowning. “You’d have to look it up, but Violet must have died in the early seventies.”

“So she wasn’t that old.”

“No.”

I wanted to get it straight in my head. “And at that point, Caroline’s brother inherited the title. Roger? No one talks about him. It’s kind of strange.”

“He was a very unpleasant man. Something was just wrong with him. He was cruel to Caroline but sly about it. She really hated him.”

“But she kept living in the house after her mother died.”

“Where would she go? He held the purse strings.”

That one thing had never occurred to me. Because I was operating on the assumption of a certain privilege women enjoyed in the modern world. I looked down at the sketchbooks, touched the cover of the one on top. “That’s really sad.”

“At least she did get out eventually.”

“Right. But why then, after a couple of years? When did you see her in London?”

“I was in Greece in ’75, so it must have been—’76, ’77? Somewhere in there. She’d met a man. She didn’t say that much about him.”

I brushed my hand in a circle over the sketchbooks, thinking.

Helen said, “Any possibility that her lover was your father?”

I flinched. “No. My dad was American. I was born in San Francisco.”

“Just curious. I wondered if maybe they fled together, perhaps.”

“Oh, but that would be the worst, wouldn’t it? If she’d been happy and then lost him so young?”

She touched my hand. “I’m sorry. I was only speculating aloud. What else did you bring?”

“Some of her old sketchbooks, but now I don’t really know what I’m hoping to find out.”

“Let’s have a look, shall we?”

One by one, I piled the sketchbooks on the table. It was a motley collection of several eras, I thought. “This seems to be the earliest,” I said, offering her the square one that contained a sketch of a bird, so gracefully rendered. The rest of the book was studies of the same sort—other birds, singing and sitting, flying and grooming. One even in a birdbath. She’d also sketched squirrels, a ladybug, and many other creatures.