I wanted to tell her not to talk about dying, that she’d be going home soon, but I didn’t want to lie. She had the waxy look I remembered my mother having, the skin pulled taut over sharp bones, turning a face into a skeletal mask.
I leaned forward, knowing I hadn’t yet asked the most important question. “Tell me, then. Who are you, really? Because I’m pretty sure that Eva Harlow never existed.”
“Oh, she did, Maddie. She was a woman who made mistakes, who was brave and strong. Who loved fiercely. And she was a formidable woman. Like you.”
I started to argue, but she held up a finger to stop me. “I was born Ethel Maltby in Muker in the county of Yorkshire in nineteen nineteen, the daughter of a drunk and a seamstress. Ethel died the day Eva Harlow was born. The day I decided to become more than what I was. And it’s taken me nearly one hundred years to learn that we don’t need a new name or identity to reinvent ourselves. We only need to believe ourselves worthy of love.”
She settled back on her pillow and closed her eyes so that I thought she was going to sleep. But instead she began to talk, telling me the story of how a young, beautiful girl from Yorkshire became the fierce and brave Precious Dubose.
—
Arabella and Laura had arrived while I’d been with Precious, and everyone had a chance to spend time alone with her. We didn’t say it aloud, but we knew we were making our good-byes. We were all together in the room with her when the alarms sounded. Doctors and nurses rushed in. Precious took her last breath two weeks shy of her one hundredth birthday, surrounded by people who loved her. Which, considering her age, was a testament to who she was, and to the person she’d been, regardless of which name she’d claimed.
Although her death hadn’t been unanticipated, we still found ourselves stunned by it, walking stiffly like silent zombies as we left the hospital.
Despite Penelope’s invitation to stay with her and James and Colin at their town house, I insisted on returning to Precious’s flat, where I could touch the clothes that had illustrated her stories and imagine Eva and Precious, Graham and Alex, sitting around the wireless, listening to a declaration of war. Where good and evil weren’t as clear-cut as I’d once thought.
And I needed a good cry. I hadn’t cried yet, feeling that I shouldn’t; I hadn’t known Precious for long. Yet I felt as if I’d always known her, that what she’d said about her capturing the lost wisdom from my mother’s and grandmother’s shortened lives made her part of my own life in turn.
So I returned alone—Laura having to fetch Oscar—to the quiet flat, and walked into Precious’s room, which smelled of Vol de Nuit. I looked out of the window toward Regent’s Park, trying to picture the hellish night when she’d sacrificed one love for another. It was terrible and awful and wonderful all at the same time, the swirl of emotions draining me as I paced, listening to the creaking floors beneath my feet.
I cried then. Not just for Precious, but for Eva and Graham and all those who’d died before their time. For my mother and grandmother, too. And I cried for the burden of Precious’s story, of which I alone knew the full extent. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do about it.
For a long time, I stood in the guest room, where the dresses and gowns of a bygone era hung on racks, each one with a story. I flipped on the light and spent two hours finishing the hangtags, remembering Precious with each story I noted. Laura returned and Oscar surprised me by licking my hand, as if sensing my sadness. As if knowing I needed to be alone, Laura disappeared into her room and closed the door.
I allowed my fingers to caress the fur collar of a once-white cashmere cape and the beaded chiffon of an evening gown that had danced at the Dorchester during an air raid, the bandleader conducting the music in time with the exploding bombs.
I paused in front of a fine navy wool siren suit, a version of a onesie designed to be pulled over nightclothes as the wearer scrambled to a shelter. It had been artfully tailored to cinch in the waist, the trousers skimming tactfully over the thighs. I straightened it on the hanger, documenting on the tag how Precious had told me it was made to look as if the wearer was attending a slightly chilly cocktail party, rather than about to spend the night in a communal shelter beneath the street.
As I continued with my pacing, I found myself overcome with a horrible homesickness, thoughts of my family and the town in which I’d been raised like a rope around my heart, gently tugging. I felt like a survivor of some sort of internal catastrophe I could not name, and I wanted to curl up in the one place I knew I’d be sheltered. It had been too long since I’d been home, and I missed it now with all the longing of a wandering soul who’d finally discovered a soft place to lay her head.
I stopped pacing and began packing, washing sheets, and making up my bed. Throwing out old food in the refrigerator, including a jug of Laura’s terrible sweet tea. I opened my airline app and checked for availabilities and booked a ridiculously expensive ticket on a flight from Heathrow to Atlanta.
Then I texted
