For a terrible second, Etta thought no one was home. She leaned forward, her ear against the wood, when she heard a girl cry, “Just a moment!” and the sound of feet on the stairs. Etta stepped back. Something scraped—the peephole cover, maybe? She glanced at Nicholas, who stood at the base of the steps with one hand on his bag. There was an audible gasp, a cry, as the door flew open.
“Rosie? But what are you doing—”
Etta drank down the sight of her in one long gulp.
The girl’s long, auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, her face shaded by a green felt hat. The collar of her grayish-green dress had been unbuttoned down to the spot where a white patch was placed over the pocket on her chest, its red letters reading WVS CIVIL DEFENCE.
She was so young. Unbelievably young. Alice had freckles, a whole galaxy of them spread across her nose and cheekbones. Etta had seen pictures…but…but this Alice hadn’t yet lost the baby fat from her round face. It was her eyes that Etta instantly recognized—that pale gray she knew so well. Etta’s whole body seemed to seize, her voice too thick to speak, and she had to cross her arms over her chest to keep from throwing them around her.
“You’re not Rose,” said Alice slowly, gripping the door as if prepared to slam it shut.
“No,” Etta said, reaching out to keep the door open. “I’m not.”
“I HAVEN’T ANY TEA TO OFFER you, but there’s no milk or sugar for it anyway. Rationing and such. Very sorry.”
Alice led them into the front parlor of the house, motioning for Nicholas and Etta to sit on a stiff, overstuffed Victorian couch. She disappeared for a moment, but rather than let her vanish completely, Etta leaned into the hall to track her progress. She returned with glasses of water and a few crackers.
“Everything all right?” Alice asked her.
Etta forced her eyes away from her and onto the painting hanging over the fireplace—an impressionist’s take on a field of red poppies—and let a smile curve across her lips. It was like seeing another old friend. The thing had traveled, complete in its ornate gold frame, across the Atlantic to Alice and Oskar’s apartment on the Upper East Side. But that wouldn’t take place for another ten years.
Sheet music was piled neatly on top of a closed piano, and tucked beneath its gleaming wooden body was a small music stand and a violin case—Alice’s violin case—containing the violin that Etta would, decades later, hold and practice on for hours every single day. She’d forgotten this, that the war had forced Alice’s lessons to come to a halt; she’d only begun playing professionally in her twenties, after she grew restless with London.
“You’ll have to excuse me for being rude,” Alice said, sitting in a leather chair across from her. “But I’ve got to be off to my shift in a few minutes.”
“That’s okay,” Etta said, her voice thick with the need to cry. All those things she’d said to her at the Met before the concert…
Some things never changed; including, apparently, the way Alice’s face softened in sympathy.
“I just have a few questions,” Etta continued. “If that’s okay with you?”
“About Rosie?” she asked, studying Etta as closely as Etta was studying her. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I haven’t seen her in years.”
Etta shifted uncomfortably in her seat at Alice’s firm tone. Up until now, Etta had been convinced the coolness she’d detected from her had been mere wary politeness. Now she recognized it for what it was: outright suspicion. Etta’s appearance, so close to her mother’s, must have caught Alice completely off guard at the door.
She’s not going to tell us anything. Did she actually know anything at this point in time?
“Were you…are you close to her?” Etta asked.
“Hardly,” Alice said, and Etta knew it had to be a lie, just based on how she’d opened the door. “We went to school together until the professor—her grandfather—passed. She disappeared on and off, ran with a certain crowd, but she stayed with us occasionally. As I said before, I haven’t seen her in years.”
Etta shifted in her seat, drawing a look of concern from Nicholas, who’d been studying his water for the entire duration of the conversation, as if he couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t dirt swimming in it.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Alice said again, this time with more steel in her tone, “but who are you, and why are you here?”
Might as well have it out than keep burning time. “My name is Etta. I’m her daughter.”
Nicholas sprayed the water he’d just taken a sip of, subsequently pounding his chest and choking on what he’d managed to swallow. He spun toward her in disbelief.
“Daughter?” Alice said, her voice changing completely. She was practically chirping. “That’s wonderful! My goodness. You look so much alike it’s startling. I should have known. Etta—is that short for something? What century were you born in? It’s so confusing to meet out of order, you know.”
A flood of confusing, conflicting emotions—anger, excitement, hope, frustration—swept through Etta, and it took her a second to catch her breath and process this.
“Henrietta,” Etta said. “And this is Nicholas Carter.”
“Your servant, ma’am,” Nicholas said with a nod. He put a steadying hand on Etta’s shoulder and kept her firmly in place. Etta was grateful, as she felt she was about to float up out of her skin.
“But, darling, who’s your father?” Alice asked. “Henrietta…is it…is it possibly Henry?”
Etta felt the world bottom out for the second time in less than a minute. “Henry?” she whispered.
“Etta doesn’t know her father,” Nicholas explained. “I’m afraid the situation is rather complicated.”
He did the best that he could to explain what had brought them both to her doorstep—a far better job than Etta would have managed with the thousands of thoughts rattling around her head. She watched Alice’s expression transform again, from horror to amazement to something that looked like genuine fear.
“Then you’re like us?” Etta asked. “I’m not even sure where to start with my questions.”
“I wish!” Alice let out a faint laugh, looking as overcome as Etta felt. “Professor Linden—your great-grandfather—was cousin to my father, a great friend and mentor. Neither he nor I inherited the ability from the Linden side of our family.”
“A guardian, then?” Nicholas confirmed.
Etta sat back, stunned. In her heart, Alice had always been the grandmother she’d never had. Love had been enough to sustain that feeling, even knowing there wasn’t a drop of shared blood between them. But apparently they were from the same family; distantly, maybe, but both Lindens all the same.
Alice had aged like anyone else. And when Etta’s mother had escaped Ironwood, Alice had gone to find her. Etta felt the tears prick her eyes again, swamped with the now-familiar guilt, the frustration of knowing the truth too late.
Alice protected us. She was a guardian in every sense of the word.
“They had quite the little game going,” Alice continued. “The professor would ‘happen upon’ some relic and use my father to bring it into the museum. It was very hush-hush, of course.” She lifted a chain from under her plain uniform dress, showing them the coin hanging from it. “Rose brought this back from a holiday in Greece. Greece before Christ.”