Blackberry Winter: A Novel (36 page)

“He’s my grandfather,” Ethan said.

Eva looked at me and then at Warren, astonished.

Warren nodded. “And this fine reporter here cracked the case.”

Eva looked shaken. “You mean, you’ve been alive this whole time?”

Warren sat down beside her and smiled. “Well, this old ticker’s still beating, so I guess so.”

Eva reached her hand out to Warren’s arm. “I can hardly believe you’re here,” she said. “Your mother missed you so.”

“I can only imagine,” he said.

“Do you remember, Daniel?”

“I think so. I have moments when I believe I can remember that life. When I close my eyes, I can see her face.”

Eva smiled. “Vera’s face?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

I knelt down beside Warren’s chair. “I found her grave site,” I said.

Warren looked deeply moved. “How?”

“Eva told me.”

“My God,” he said. “I’ve been looking for her for so long, I…”

“Would you like me to take you there today, after we visit the old apartment building?”

“Yes,” Warren said, shifting in his chair. As he lifted his leg, he knocked a magazine from the coffee table. I reached to pick it up and my bracelet slid down to the base of my wrist. The sapphires sparkled in the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.

Eva sat up in her chair. “Claire, that bracelet,” she said. “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I noticed it on your wrist the other day. May I ask where you got it?”

I turned to Ethan, who waited quietly near the door, leaning against the doorframe. “My husband gave it to me,” I said proudly. “It was a gift.”

“Let me see it,” she said, extending her hand.

I held my wrist out to her and she studied the gold chain for a long time. “Yes,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Vera’s bracelet. The one Charles gave to her as a gift when he was courting her.”

“It can’t be,” I said.

“She’s right,” Warren said with certainty. “Father gave it to me when I was a young man. He said to give it to a very special woman because it had belonged to someone he once loved. I gave it to my wife, and when she died, I passed it on to Ethan to give to you.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “All this time, I’ve been wearing her bracelet.”

Ethan knelt beside me and I squeezed his hand. “I remember now,” I said, recalling my research. “The autopsy report. Charles Kensington”—I turned to Warren—“your father picked up her personal effects. This must have been after Josephine told him the truth about you, after he found out that Vera had died searching for her son.”

I clutched the bracelet with new appreciation. It had clung to Vera’s wrist the night she took her last breath and had found its way to my arm some eighty years later.

“My late wife always loved that bracelet,” Warren said. “If only she could have known the real story. We’ll meet again,” he said,
looking up toward the sky with a wink. “And I’ll have quite a story to tell her.”

“Will you ever,” Eva said.

I stood up. “I’m sure you two could reminisce forever, but Warren has one more stop to make—that is, if you’re ready.”

“Yes,” he said, standing. “I am.”

Eva followed us to the door. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” she said to Warren. “I feel like Mother’s soul can rest now.”

“Aunt Caroline?” he said, as if extracting a memory long buried in his mind.

“Yes. My mother. It was her dying wish to find you.”

“I hope she’s smiling down now,” he said.

“I know she is,” Eva replied. “With Vera.”

My heart pounded as Ethan drove toward Café Lavanto. He pulled the car into a load-and-unload zone at the foot of the hill leading up to the café. “Doesn’t look like there’s any parking on the street,” he said, squinting ahead. “I’ll just drop you off here.”

I unfastened my seat belt in the backseat and inched closer to Warren in the passenger seat. “It may be the last chance to see the old building,” I said. “They’re going to tear it down.”

“What a shame,” he said, trying to get a look at the scene ahead. “Why?”

“Condo buildings,” I said.

“Doesn’t this city have enough of those?”

I shrugged. “Seattle seems to have an insatiable appetite for condos and Starbucks.” I looked out at the café. “It’s a shame, really. The owner is a good man. He’s selling it to support his mother. She’s been ill for a long time and she can’t pay her medical bills.”

I wasn’t sure if Warren was listening. His gaze remained fixed on the street.

“Are you coming in?” I asked Ethan, before stepping out onto the sidewalk. The afternoon sun beamed in through the windshield and made his green eyes sparkle.

He glanced at his grandfather and then at me. “You go ahead, Claire,” he said with a smile. “It’s your story to finish.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I’ll be back to pick you up in a half hour,” he said, his eyes filled with the love I’d missed so much. “Think that will be enough time?”

I nodded and gave Warren’s hand a squeeze as we stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk, inching toward the café cautiously, quietly. “Are you ready?” I asked.

He nodded, and we walked slowly up the steep block, pausing many times so Warren could catch his breath. A construction zone was no place for someone recently released from the hospital, and for a moment I felt guilty about taking him there. But then I remembered that it had been his idea, his wish.

“Claire!” I looked up to see Dominic rushing toward us. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to call you back all afternoon, but your phone must be off.”

I reached into my bag and realized that I’d accidently turned the ringer off. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t blame you.”

He clutched a manila envelope. “I’m signing the papers this afternoon,” he said apologetically. “It will be a day or two before they start demolition.” He rubbed his brow. “Claire, I really hate that I have to do this, but it’s the only way I know how to provide for my mother.”

I held up my hand. “Please, don’t apologize. I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just wish there was another way. I’m sick about seeing this old place go.”

“My brother and sister offered to chip in,” he said. “We started a fund in her name to get community support. A bank back home has offered to match donations dollar for dollar. But we haven’t raised near enough.”

Warren stood next to me, half-listening to the exchange without taking his eyes off the door to the café. The trim, a burnt red, was in dire need of paint, particularly the upper right edge, which exposed the bare wood underneath the chipped topcoat. I wondered what color the doorframe had been in the 1930s.

Dominic gave me a knowing look and nodded toward the café, just as another truck pulled up to the street. “It’s OK,” he whispered. “I’ll ask them not to go in until you two are done. Take all the time you need.”

I looked at Dominic curiously. “How do you even know who…?”

He smiled. “Daniel, right?”

I nodded. “But how did you…?”

“I knew you’d find him,” he said, grinning.

We took a step closer, and Warren looked at me for reassurance. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” he said, staring at the door, then turning to face me with misty eyes.

I worried about his heart, both the physical and the emotional toll. But he needed this. His life was like a tragic novel missing the final chapter, a beautiful one. We’d found it, dusted it off, and now it was time to read it. “Thank you, Claire,” he said.

Dominic held the door open and we walked inside. The old La Marzocco espresso machine had been moved from its spot on the
bar. A dark shadow of coffee stains remained in its place. The tables and chairs had been pushed to the side wall, lined up and ready to be carted out. The beautiful fireplace looked lonely on the far wall. I took a deep breath. Those beautiful tiles by Ivanoff the mason. They’d be destroyed along with everything else.

“Warren?” I said.

He didn’t answer.

I reached for his hand. “Warren, are you all right?”

“I remember,” he said, his eyes big and his body still. “This hallway. There were men here. Drunken men. Mother used to hurry me inside and we’d run past them, up the stairs.”

He walked a few paces, slowly, toward the back of the café. “May I?” he asked, turning back to Dominic.

“Please,” Dominic said.

I followed Warren through the door that led to the back room and up the staircase. The stairs creaked underfoot, and I offered my arm to steady him, but he shook his head.

He stood on the little landing and ran his hand along the baluster. “All these years,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his coat, “I have dreamt about this place.” He paused to pull out a handkerchief and dab the corner of his eye. “And to be here…it’s just as I remember it.”

I reached for his hand. “Do you remember her? Vera?”

He nodded. “I do. Well, I suppose it’s less of a memory, and more of a…
feeling
.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “An instinct. Your heart never forgets your mother.”

I blinked back a tear, watching his eyes search the wall by the stairs. He walked closer, operating on instinct, patting his hand along the base of the trim.

I approached the wall. “What is it?”

He stepped back and sighed. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I thought I remembered something, but…”

“It must be difficult,” I said, “to be here again.”

His eyes glimmered. “It must have destroyed her, losing me the way she did. It would have destroyed my wife to lose one of our children. She would have never been the same.”

“To have searched for you the way she did, she must have loved you very much,” I said.

Warren nodded, before starting his descent down the stairs. I followed, keeping my hand near his elbow to help steady him.

“I’ll take you back now,” I said. “You must be tired.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He looked right, then left, as if he could sense something,
feel
something.

“Warren?” I asked. “Are you OK?”

He walked back to the stairs in silence, then stopped in front of a few boxes nestled against the wall. He knelt down and pushed them aside, exposing the paneling along the crumbling lath and plaster. Dominic and I watched as he traced the grooves in the wall, as if operating on muscle memory. Moments later, we heard the creak of a hinge, and Warren pried open a tiny door.
A secret compartment.
My heart beat faster.

He pushed his hand inside the little space in the wall. I knelt beside him and watched as he pulled out a feather caked in dust. He twisted it between his fingers and smiled to himself before setting it on the hardwood floor. Beside it, he set an apricot-colored pebble, a penny, three white shells, and a tattered ace of hearts. “I found it downstairs,” he said, marveling at the card. “Mama let me keep it.”

Mama.

I watched as he reached inside the wall again, this time pulling
out an envelope. He held it up to me with a trembling hand. In faded ink were the words “To Daniel.” He turned to me. “Claire, could you please read it to me?”

I nodded, lifting the edge of the yellowed envelope. I pulled out the delicate page inside and unfolded it, looking at Warren before casting my gaze on the first line:

Here was little Daniel before me. I could see him as Vera once had. Soft, plump cheeks where wrinkles were. Blond curls instead of white wisps. Bright blue eyes unclouded by age.

Warren looked up to me. “The café,” he said. “It’s being destroyed?”

I nodded. “I’m so sorry, Warren. Dominic is selling. He has to—”

“How much is the offer?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The developer who wants to buy it, how much have they offered?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Dominic didn’t say.”

“I’ll double it.”

I couldn’t contain my smile. “Really, Warren? You’d do that?”

He smiled. “I can’t let them tear down my childhood home, now, can I? And didn’t he say that his family needed the funds? Might as well put this old Kensington money to good use.” He looked around the little room. “Yes, that fine young man can keep things just as they are. I won’t change anything.” His eyes looked misty. “Well, except
one
thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“The name,” he said. “I will change it to Vera’s Café.”

“Oh, Warren!” I exclaimed, hugging him tightly. “She’d be so proud.”

I glanced at Vera’s letter a final time, and a sentence at the bottom of the page caught my eye. A postscript. I’d overlooked it somehow.