Thorns of Truth (11 page)

Kissing her daughter’s cheek, Sylvie was pleased to see that Rose was wearing the ruby earrings that had once been hers. Old, precious—yet, like so much of what she’d tried to share with Rose, those, too, had been given to her in the most unorthodox fashion—the first earring when Rose was just a little girl, the second not until many years later.…

Her mind slipped its groove, and she was seeing Rose again as she had on that long-ago day, standing outside her school—a little girl with olive skin and wild dark hair … and the grave eyes of a grown-up. Except for the one glimpse of her daughter just after Rose’s birth, Sylvie had not laid eyes on her until that moment. She remembered the shame she’d felt … and the longing. She’d yearned to hold her daughter. To give Rose something of herself.

On impulse, Sylvie had snatched the earring from one ear and thrust it into the hand of the child gaping at her in disbelief. A mistake, of course. She’d realized it at once. What must that astonished little girl have thought? How could she have imagined that the strange lady acting so crazy was the mother she hadn’t even known existed?

Yet that lone earring had proved to be the compass that years later had led Rose back to her, to this very spot.

Had her daughter ever regretted seeking her out, finding the truth?

Over the years, their friendship had grown, like the roses in her garden—slowly, and not without its thorns. But they never spoke, except obliquely, of the secrets that had been revealed that cold afternoon.

Now, as she saw the sun flash off the ruby teardrops in her daughter’s ears, it struck Sylvie that Rose must have worn them for a reason. And that maybe whatever it was had something to do with why she was here today.…

Sylvie shivered, her fingers growing icy again.

Inside, the house felt cooler than usual for this time of day. Sylvie led the way through the sun-splashed morning room, with its chintz-cushioned wicker chairs and forest of potted plants, down the hallway, and into the sitting room just off the parlor.

Sinking onto the velvet sofa, she felt embraced somehow. In this room, unchanged in over half a century—since she’d come here as a young bride—she could honestly believe that the best things in life were the most lasting. Her tired gaze welcomed the sight of her Queen Anne secretary, glowing in the muted sunlight as if freshly polished. And the rich jewel tones of the Berber rug in front of the fireplace, with its ornate lion-headed brass andirons. Even the flowers arranged in the Chinese vase on the marble mantel—a mass of daylilies and gladioli—seemed a part of the lovely timelessness.

She watched Rose lower herself into the easy chair under a pair of framed Audubon prints. “Sorry to sneak up on you like this,” she apologized with a nervous little laugh. “You’ve probably guessed why I’m here.” The polite smile slipped from her face. “Rachel, I’m sure, has told you.”

“About the engagement? Yes.” Sylvie sighed.

Dear Lord, give me the strength to help her.…

Rose was frowning, her face clouded. At the same time, Sylvie couldn’t help thinking how much lovelier she had become with middle age. The bold features that had once seemed too large for her face softened somewhat by her years. Even the sadness she’d worn since Max died hadn’t diminished her beauty. If anything, she was even more haunting. It was hard to take your eyes off Rose—and, in some ways, even harder to look at her.

“Then you must know, too, about the party she’s throwing.” Her daughter’s dark eyes flashed with outrage. “As if this ridiculous engagement was anything to celebrate!”

“Celebrate? Oh no, I don’t believe Rachel sees it that way.” Sylvie didn’t add that Rachel had asked her to help organize the party, for which she’d already set a date—little more than three weeks away. “She wants for Iris to be happy, that’s all.”

It was the wrong thing to have said, Sylvie realized at once.

“It’s what she’s always wanted, isn’t it?” Rose replied coolly. “A magic bullet to fix whatever’s wrong with her daughter. What would surprise me, frankly, is Rachel having any illusions about it being the best thing for my son.”

Sylvie, feeling boxed in, was moved to defend Rachel. “I know how fond she is of Drew. Rachel wouldn’t want to see
either
of them get hurt. Anyway,” she gently pointed out, “it isn’t up to Rachel.
Or
you.”

“If it
had
been, believe me, I’d have had plenty to say about it,” Rose shot back, her face flushed.

Sylvie winced in sympathy. “Oh, my dear … I don’t blame you. I’ve had my own doubts.”

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, massaging them lightly with her fingertips. “You’re right about one thing—Drew isn’t interested in what
I
think. But Iris … Well, there
is
one person she might listen to.
You.
The two of you have always been so close. She trusts you. You could tell her how crazy this is. How wrong.”

Sylvie sat back, flattened by the heated force of Rose’s request. No, not a request. More of a demand—one that Sylvie, for the life of her, couldn’t satisfy. Oh, how could she explain it so Rose would understand? It wasn’t that she didn’t care … but that she cared enough to keep her distance.

“If what you say is true,” she replied quietly, “then Iris needs to find that out for herself.”

“When? After she’s ruined Drew’s life?” Rose sucked in a breath. “Look, I don’t mean to sound heartless. I care about Iris, too. But don’t you see? This will be a disaster for
both
of them. Iris needs more than Drew can ever give her. Much more. And you know it.”

Sylvie pulled herself up straight, tucking an embroidered pillow against the small of her back, where a cold ache was sinking roots. “Whatever our fears, don’t you see how useless it would be to try and prevent them from coming true? Drew and Iris would only resent it and pull away from us. Then, if and when they
really
needed us, they might not let us back in.” She wanted so for Rose to see it as
she
did, but Sylvie felt as if she were floundering in the great cold sea of Rose’s resentment. Weakly, she added, “We’ll just have to pray that the situation will sort itself out in its own time.”

“In other words. Drew can sink or swim—without your help.” Rose’s stare was flat and unwavering.

“I
can’t
help him. There’s a difference, don’t you see?”

“Maybe it’s the difference between
me
asking … and if it were Rachel.”

The room’s temperature seem to plunge sharply. Sylvie was left shivering in a shaft of sunlight that angled like a drawn saber across the sofa where she sat. A dull ache bloomed in the hollow just below her rib cage.

“Oh, my dear … you can’t honestly believe that.” Filled with dismay, she simply stared at Rose, unable to say what she was really thinking.

I abandoned her in favor of another baby. Rachel. And years later, when I begged Rose not to reveal my secret, wasn’t I looking out for Rachel then, too? She’s right. Always Rachel.

Who wouldn’t resent that? Sylvie was seeing it now as she must—Rachel growing up in this beautiful house, attending private school, whereas Rose, living in a cramped Brooklyn apartment, had to beg for the few scraps of attention she’d gotten from the hateful woman she’d believed was her grandmother.

And now there was someone else Sylvie had to protect: Iris. However unfair it might be to Rose and her sons, the reality was that Iris simply was not capable of withstanding the blow of learning that her beloved Gran, whom she trusted, had lied to them all. Until she was strong enough to stand on her own, she had to be nurtured—as tenderly as a rosebush in spring. Not with stakes and twine and force-feedings, but with love …

Not everyone was like Rose, who, instead of being beaten down by adversity, had only grown stronger. Against all odds, she’d triumphed. If only Rose could know how proud her mother was of her—and how humbled.

But, no, Rose could only see it through her own eyes, which right now were fixed on Sylvie with dark accusation.

“What difference does it make what
I
believe? Or what I want.” Rose leaned forward. Her hands, gripping the arms of her chair, were clenched, white-knuckled. “All these years, you never cared. You never once stopped to think what it was like for me, being introduced as your
friend,
having to pretend it was all just so nice, your taking an interest in me and my boys. After all, I’m nothing to you, right? Not your
daughter
, like Rachel.”

The ache in Sylvie’s chest sharpened into real pain, and she fought to keep from pressing a hand to her heart.
Oh, my Rose, if only you knew …

The letters. Dozens and dozens of them, written over the years but never sent. All the thoughts and feelings she’d wanted to share with her daughter, her Rose, which she could never speak aloud. Each tear she’d shed in private, each milestone she’d celebrated fully, as any proud mother would: Rose’s graduation from law school, her marriage, the births of her sons. In words written in secret, she could explain why it was necessary to remain silent even now. Especially now. For with each passing year, hadn’t the stakes merely increased? The result was a wrong that had grown in on itself so many times over that the path back to forgiveness was now covered with brambles.

The letters were in a locked drawer in her desk, to which Sylvie had the only key. She’d thought about destroying them, burning them in this fireplace, lest she die before Nikos could get rid of them for her. But something always stopped her. Perhaps it was that the letters were her only real legacy to Rose.

There were no framed photos on her mantel of Rose and her sons, as there were of Rachel and Iris. No snapshots in an album, either, except those taken of their two families as a group. Her bundle of letters was the only history she had of Rose. But not the only legacy she would leave …

In that locked desk drawer, along with the letters was a copy of Sylvie’s will. After her death, when Rose learned what she’d inherited, maybe then she would know at least some fraction of what she’d meant to her mother.

Now, in this room, all Sylvie could do was what she’d always done: far too little.

Her throat tight with anguish, she confessed, “Every single day for the past fifty years I’ve wished there was some way of undoing what I did.”

“It’s not too late to undo another wrong,” Rose urged fiercely. “You can at least
try
.”

Sylvie shook her head sadly.

Rose stared at her, long and hard. And in that moment Sylvie saw what for all these years she had, for the most part, been spared: the world of pain behind her daughter’s dark eyes that until now she’d only glimpsed. The intensity of that pain nearly robbed Sylvie of her breath. She realized that the relationship she and Rose had painstakingly fashioned—the warm exchanges, the thoughtful cards and phone calls, the holidays at which they’d sat across the table from each other—was nothing more than a flimsy structure built on quicksand. Not enough to shelter either of them from the cruel wind of her own cowardice … and her daughter’s deep-seated resentment.

At last. Rose pulled herself to her feet. She looked more tired now than angry, her shoulders sagging.

Even so, Sylvie felt the need to tread softly. “I won’t pretend I’ve been any kind of a mother to you,” she said in a low, halting voice. “I only wish …” She had to swallow hard before she could go on. “It … it doesn’t matter anymore what I wish. And you have every right to be angry with me. You deserved better. But you’re wrong about Rachel. If she’d asked me to interfere, I would have told her the same thing.”

Rose eyed her for a moment, then, in a voice like frost on a windowpane, said, “In that case, I’m sorry I came.” She rose abruptly. Turning from Sylvie, she paused in the doorway, just long enough to cast a glance about the room, as if memorizing it—or seeing it for the first time. “I won’t be back. I’m sick of pretending. For what? So you can feel virtuous without taking the risk that anyone might learn the truth?”

Then she was gone, and Sylvie was left staring at the empty sunlit doorway, in which a storm of dust motes swirled like tiny trapped insects. She closed her eyes, and thought,
How, dear Lord,
how
has it come to this?
By doing what she’d thought was right, she had succeeded only in making the situation worse.

In her mind, Sylvie heard her mother’s firm, sweet voice admonish:
It’s not too late. She’s still your daughter … and she needs you. Don’t abandon her a second time.

With her eyes shut, Sylvie imagined she could hear her heart, each beat like the ponderous ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway outside. When she was dead, there would be only one person on this earth in whose veins her blood flowed, and in whom her family’s history was written: Rose.

Sylvie sat without moving for minutes that stretched unnoticed into hours, until at last she was stirred from her trance by the deepening shadows that caused her to fumble for the switch on the lamp next to her chair. She listened, dry-eyed, to the rustling of the swallows that had foolishly made their nests deep inside the chimney. She had no more tears left—she’d used them all up, years ago. All that remained was a hard stone of regret.

Too late, she told herself. The time to have openly acknowledged her daughter was long past.…

Is it? Or is that just what you tell yourself to make it easier?
her mother’s voice persisted, maddeningly, like the warbling of those swallows, whose babies, when it came time for them to leave their nest, Sylvie knew, would not be strong enough to fly up out of the chimney … and would most likely die from the effort.

By the time Nikos arrived home, Sylvie had summoned the strength to put away her gardening tools and arrange the roses she’d cut in her best Waterford vase. She was setting it down on the lacquered chinoiserie chest in the hall when he walked in.

“You promised Dr. Choudry you would stay off your feet … and look at you,” he scolded gently, capturing her wrist in a large, callused hand. “Pink from the sun, and dirt under your fingernails.”