The Legend of Lyon Redmond (27 page)

October 2015

Pennyroyal Green

I
T WASN'T UNTIL HER
head grew light that Isabel realized she'd stopped breathing.

Nothing in her wild imaginings—and her imagination was
quite
the playground—had prepared her for the reality of the legendary oaks. They were so vast they nearly created their own atmosphere. Perhaps they were now like a great pin in a map, the only thing that kept the soft green folds of the Sussex downs from curling up at the edges and flapping away in a stiff wind.

The thought seemed almost heretically whimsical, in light of their majesty.

But then she'd always struggled with awe. It felt like a form of surrender.

And she'd always struggled with surrendering, period.

Isabel didn't know she had that in common with every single one of her ancestors. But she did know that one in particular had never truly given up on the man she loved. Her diary was the reason Isabel stood here today.

The lowering sun had begun its kind work of burnishing everything a nostalgic sepia. The crowds of
shoppers and tourists
click click click
ing with their camera phones to capture the storied trees, the picturesque storefronts, the little ancient squat stone church surrounded by a yard crowded with tilting, lovingly tended stones, the pub, the view up the hill to that great brick academy, had thinned to a trickle.

Isabel, at least for the moment, had the trees to herself.

She managed to get her lungs moving in a steady rhythm again. She imagined the trees were as vast below as above, their roots reaching down, down through the earth, little tendrils stretching out to mingle with the roots of the crops that grew here and of the grass the cows and sheep feasted upon, part of everyone who had ever lived here from the time the first Eversea allegedly stole a cow from and was then bludgeoned by a Redmond (or perhaps it was the other way around?) back in 1066. Permanent, known, necessary, beloved.

In other words, the very opposite of Isabel.

Until recently.

It still took her a moment after she opened her eyes in the morning to remember this.

And then sunlight seemed to flood her veins. Followed by a pure swoop of vertigo that was as similar to panic as it was to joy.

And on her iPad now was an image of a family tree that fanned out for seemingly miles in every direction, all those names connected in fine lines, all of those lines connected to her.

Anyone strolling by would see (and they
would
look—turning heads was something else she had in common with the author of that diary) a petite, slim woman whose blond hair was twisted into (but plotting its escape from) an expert chignon. Her boots and jeans and black leather jacket had a
slightly worn, singular quality that made them look expensive. They weren't. Once, long ago, nice bicycles or brand-name sneakers or families who roared with laughter while they played catch together out in their front lawns had hollowed her out with such yearning it was a wonder she didn't sound like a woodwind in a breeze.

She had learned not to want. She'd instead acquired a hard layer of watchful inscrutability, roughly the equivalent of the barrel one climbs into before going over Niagara Falls. Which was what basically it had felt like to be shunted from one foster home to another from the time she was eight.

She was nearly thirty now. She was thriving, if not yet
precisely
prospering, on her own terms. But she still felt uncomfortable owning too many things. Everything she acquired, from her cell phone to her sofa pillows to her thrift store leather jacket to her music collection, was thoughtfully, carefully, chosen and almost tenderly cared for.

One day, maybe, she'd take something for granted.

It was just that she'd lived inside that damned barrel for so long.

She snorted at herself when she realized her hands were trembling, as she really had no patience for ninnies of any kind. She slipped her hand in her jacket pocket and ran her fingers absently over the tiny crystals she'd glued painstaking to her hard phone case one night. Meticulous, painstaking work settled her nerves. They were in the shape of her name.

And then she fished out the phone and impulsively punched in a number.

It was nine in the morning in California.

“I'm having a cup of coffee and reading about that Stephanie Plum girl you told me about, Isabel,
sweetie.” Laura answered without preamble. “She certainly makes a lot of poor choices, doesn't she?”

Isabel laughed. “That's one way to describe her. Hey, Laura, I'm finally here.”

She called her Laura because “Grandma” still didn't trip easily off her tongue.

Isabel's mother, perhaps the most zealous black sheep ever born, had disappeared with Isabel's feckless unknown father into the wilds of California and sundered all family ties before dying. Isabel's mother, like Isabel, never did anything by halves.

Neither did Laura. She'd paid someone to put together a family tree, which was how she'd learned of Isabel's existence, and then she'd tirelessly tracked her to San Francisco. (There were explorers in their bloodline, after all.) That was how Isabel had suddenly acquired aunts and uncles and cousins, all of whom she liked (eventually), and all of whom liked her (eventually), and all of whom were subsequently
mighty
pissed off when Laura had given Isabel the cherished family heirlooms, the diary and the gold watch.

“She needs them the most,” Laura had told the rest of them, placidly, unmoved by fits of pique at her age. To Isabel she'd said: “Your Great-Great-Great-Aunt Olivia Redmond would have wanted
you
to have them. You'll know why when you read her diary.”

Isabel could weather her pissed-off relatives with aplomb. She'd weathered significantly worse.

And she'd never wanted anything more than that diary and that pocket watch.

Because when she'd thumbed open the watch, inside was a miniature of a girl who was virtually her twin, apart from the dark hair.

And the diary, when she read it, had the compelling force of a trebuchet.

Two months, a few internet reservations, and a bewildered boyfriend later, she was in England. Alone.

“I'm so happy you made it safely, Isabel!” Laura's voice was suddenly faint. She sounded as if she was not only in another time zone, but another dimension. “What is it like? Where are you right now?”

“I'm actually already
in
Pennyroyal Green. In front of the trees, the ones in Olivia's diary. They're the size of an apartment building. They might even be bigger than Mark's ego. Or his venture capital funding.” Mark was her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Laura had met him. She'd think this was pretty funny.

“Whoop! I didn't quite hear any of that, Isabel. You're crackling in and out now. Can you speak up?”

“I'm in PENNYROYAL. GREEN. By the TREES.”

“You're . . . utting . . . out . . .”

“PENNYROY—”

Alas, the connection was toast.

“Americans,” snorted a woman strolling by. “Always shouting about something.”

She irritably flicked the sleekest sheet of blond hair Isabel had ever seen over her shoulder, so dangerously shiny she could have blinded fighter pilots with it, and Isabel stepped aside lest she be lashed like a lazy peasant.

She bit back a wicked urge to shout an apology after the woman.

Or perhaps she ought to yank her own hair from its chignon and give it a violent retaliatory flick:
En guarde!
Surely a few of her forebears had dueled?

But her own hair was curly. It would likely merely snap back and hit her in the face. In her experience, surrendering to impulses generally did metaphorically just that. Which was how words like “irrepressible” (the magenta hair episode) and “alarming”
(the self-administered tattoo) had ended up in her case file. Neither word was entirely fair or accurate, though she'd thought “irrepressible” was funny because it made her sound like a tap-dancing Broadway musical star: “the Irrepressible Isabel Redmond!”

In truth, incidents like those were a bit like exhaust from an internal combustion engine. The inevitable byproduct of ruthlessly stifling nearly everything she thought and felt. No mean feat, given that she was her mother's daughter.

She'd figured out by the time she was nine years old that she was to be at the mercy of subjectivity and other people's adjectives, and she would just have to wait it out.

Her jewelry designs now benefited from her years of ruthless self editing: She transmuted wildness into exquisitely simple shapes, seductive curves, startling materials, sharp points. (All words, coincidentally, Mark had used to describe
her
.) A number of exclusive boutiques in the Bay Area had begun to sell her work. She was now making enough money to get by without a day job.

The blonde woman tossed a final pretty, quelling frown over her shoulder at Isabel. She swished her tall, willow-switch slim self up the street, her hair swinging in metronome counterpoint to the little shopping bag swinging from her hand.

An
unmistakable
bag.

Isabel went still.

Only graphic design nerds (and Isabel was one of them) knew the narrow deep green stripe edged in hair-fine silver was meant to represent the view of the sea as you looked out over the Sussex downs. But everyone knew what those tiny silver letters—P-O-S-T-L-E-T-H-W-A-I-T-E-'-S—kerned across that green line really meant:
I am made of money.

Postlethwaite's fifteen stores worldwide curated
the simple, the exquisite, the startling, the confusing (also words Mark had used to describe her), and catapulted artists and designers into stardom.

Olivia had bought the very gold watch now tucked into Iabel's pocket from the first Mr. Postlethwaite here in Pennyroyal Green.

And even though Isabel was certain she currently couldn't afford to buy a single thing in there, she intended to convince them to sell her jewelry.

Or her name wasn't Isabel Redmond.

She wanted to be brave. The way Olivia was brave.

Isabel had read that diary in one marathon sitting, awaking groggily the next morning, eyes sandy, fully intending to text Olivia to see if she was free for lunch. That's how vivid and familiar and endearing her voice was.

She was stubborn, very funny, self-righteous, fiercely smart, passionate.

A lot like Isabel.

But the differences between them where what bothered Isabel a good deal.

She might have in common with Olivia an urge to
leave
and the nerve to do it.

But Olivia's courage to leave everything she knew behind had been rooted in love. For her family. And for Lyon.

Her love for Lyon had all but set the pages of the diary on fire.

Whereas Isabel moved easily because she'd always been unmoored, and because she wanted to leave before she was left.

She wasn't certain this counted as courage.

She was somehow certain that diary held some secret she needed to know.

Either that, or it had given her yet another reason to leave.

She was suddenly absurdly conscious of her heart
knocking hard at her breastbone, like a door-to-door salesman who knows, just
knows
someone is home.

“Olivia,” she whispered. “I'm here. You walked right on this spot on your wedding day. Remember?”

She felt a little foolish. But only a little.

She didn't have to edit anymore.

She transferred her phone into her left hand and looked about surreptitiously. She was utterly alone at least for the moment. So she surrendered to an impulse.

She cautiously, gently, laid a hand against the tree. As if feeling for its heartbeat.

She exhaled and closed her eyes. She couldn't decide whether she felt grounded or dizzied. Perhaps both.

She stood like that for perhaps thirty seconds before a motorcycle roared up the road.

She squeaked and leaped backward.

And her phone shot from her hand like a squeezed bar of soap.

She whirled to watch it sail through the air in what felt like excruciating slow motion, right on schedule to be run over and crushed to bits.

She hunched, as if she herself were about to be crushed, slapped her hands over her eyes, and waited.

The murderous crunch never came.

But over the hammering of her heart, she thought she heard the motorcycle cut its engine.

“You can open them.”

She peeled her hands away from her eyes. Abashed.

A man stood between her and the glare of the lowering sun, which was giving him something of a red halo.

Good God, he was tall. Suddenly she fully understood the meaning of the word “rangy.”

He was holding her phone out to her.

“I saw something leap into the road. Is this yours? I managed not to crush it.”

The voice was amused. Solicitous. Baritone with a lovely scorched velvet edge. She'd once dated a guy who was perpetually hoarse from smoking and enthusiastically shouting “WOOOO!” at rock concerts. This was entirely different. This was something she could imagine whispering in her ear in the dark from the pillow next to hers.

Though of course that lovely rasp could be because he'd sucked in one too many insects while riding his motorcycle.

She saw it leaning on its kickstand behind him. A beautiful machine, somehow both sculptural and savage. A vintage Triumph.

He sounded refined and very English, an odd contrast to his helmet-smashed dark curls, the faint mauve circles of weariness under his eyes, the shadow of a beard, the battered leather jacket that hung gracefully from shoulders that went on for kilometers. He had a sort craggy, Tolkien-hero-on-a-quest face. Not pretty. Quite masculine. Compelling, in that she couldn't look away from it. Especially his eyes, deep set and very dark, and at the moment, not blinking

She just nodded mutely. Like a “looby,” a word she'd learned from Olivia's diary.