“They?”
She gave me a lopsided smile that made her look like a much younger woman. “The bad guys. I worked with them, you see. Because I thought I had no choice. It’s not an excuse. It’s simply the truth of who I was: the woman I was before I learned how brave and strong I could be.”
I turned away, unable to look at her, remembering why she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about her heroism in France. Because no heroic deed is done for the simple act of heroism. There’s always some payment due, some penance owed. Some wrong to right.
“That’s why you went to France? To atone for your sins?”
“Partly. And to die.” Her lips wobbled. “But it’s true, you know. Only the good die young.”
Her Southern accent remained true, never straying from the persona she’d portrayed for almost eighty years. I sat back in my chair. “What did you do in France?”
“I’d found someone to sell my jewels and furs to, and I gave all the money to the Resistance, to build their trust in me. And then I did the only thing I knew how—I modeled for various designers and met Coco Chanel. She’d already sold her shops by then, but we became friends. I was invited to her parties, where I listened to her drunk Nazi friends who said things they shouldn’t have. No one ever suspected I was Resistance.” Her cheeks creased in a skeletal smile. “I even had a code name.”
“A code name?”
“La Fleur. They called me La Fleur. I took the name from a very brave and heroic woman I’d only known for a short time. She was an inspiration to me, a reason I worked so hard. But I enjoyed my role, and I was quite good at it, probably because I wasn’t afraid to die. I anticipated it, actually. But the work almost made up for who I’d been before.”
“Because life is about reinvention. You said that to me.”
“Because it’s true. I decided that if I was still breathing, I needed to live.”
“But when the war ended, why didn’t you come back to England?”
“I wanted to. I’d planned to go live with my mother in Bournemouth. When I left, Sophia and David promised that they’d look after her and let her know that I was safe. That I would return when I could.”
I sat up, seeing another piece of the puzzle fall into place. “K. Nash?”
“That wasn’t her real name, you know. I made it up when she moved to the coast to escape my father.” She smiled to herself, opening her hand to see the ivory dolphin. “Graham loved the architect John Nash—that’s where I got the name. I had dreams that he’d join me there after the war. That he’d build us a house by the sea.”
I didn’t ask her what had happened, because I already knew. I’d seen the pictures, the obliterated row of homes. And Graham had died. “Why did it take you so long to come back?”
“London was full of Graham and my memories of him. My past had become the ghost that haunted me. I think you know what that’s like, don’t you, Maddie?”
Grief is like a ghost. I looked away, then answered with a question of my own. “Was it Sophia who asked you to come back to England?”
She nodded. “To be near Graham’s son. She knew James would help heal me. And she was right.”
I nodded, understanding. “That’s why she took the photos of Precious out of her wedding album, and cut you out of the pictures of the two of you together. That way, no one would ever suspect that you weren’t the real Precious.”
“We looked so much alike, Precious and I. Of course, I was the natural blond—she was born a brunette.”
I almost laughed at this small nod to her vanity. “And Sophia didn’t want anyone comparing the photos of you and Precious side by side.”
“But she didn’t throw them out. Sweet Sophia. Precious was her friend, too. She didn’t want to get rid of her completely. She never expected that those photos would be found. Or that anyone would ever go looking for them.”
“So you never thought to come back as Eva? Surely the people who were looking for you were gone after the war or no longer cared that you were alive.”
She shook her head slowly. “Possibly. But Eva died with Graham. And for all those years in France, I’d reinvented myself as Precious Dubose. The new personality suited me.”
I nodded, the words and pieces of the story loosening like an unfurling knot. “Why did you ask me to find Eva? Weren’t you afraid we’d discover your secret?”
Her eyes brightened. “It was time. I owed it to Precious, to her son and grandson. They should know who she was. That, at the end, she was brave. And I wanted you to be the one who discovered the truth.”
“Why? Because I’m kin?”
“Partly. But partly because you, dear Maddie, needed to learn how to free your own ghosts.”
I sat back, my chest heavy with the burden of secrets that still carried the power to wound. “So, whose story do you want me to tell? Yours or Precious’s? My article—it needs to be about so much more than fashion in a time of crisis. I can’t write the story of the clothes without sharing the lives of the remarkable women who wore them.”
She squeezed my hand, the ivory dolphin digging into my palm. “It doesn’t matter to me, Maddie. I won’t be here. I’ll leave it to you to write the ending.” She let go, leaving my palm cupping the dolphin. “I want you to have that.
